Father Martin stood with Henry's friends in the original, though much older nave, talking about the most unusual services he had presided over during his four decades as the parish priest at Saint-Catherine's, and one thing became clear as he talked: there had been something peculiar about Claire and the memorial she'd devised. And the event had taken on mythical proportions over time because many strange things had happened since.
It had been, at least in the beginning, hard to put a finger on exactly what it was about Claire that had seemed so unusual to him. An ethereal quality, he said, that had captivated him. She possessed, after all, a surreal beauty -- that had captivated everyone who knew her. And then there was her sense of time, and of her place in it, that had struck him as wise beyond her years.
Then there was the idea of sending her ashes to be spread at sea.
"But perhaps not so unusual," Father Martin said, though looking at Rolf as he thought of the eternal nature of the sea, "until you consider that her last wish was to be in the sea so that she could be with Henry. And, I think, to rest together -- when his time came."
Dina was wiping her eyes as Father Martin spoke now, realizing for the first time that she'd never really had a chance to be close to Henry, at least not in the way she'd wanted -- the way any wife would want to be. There'd never been room in his heart, she understood now, for anyone but this girl none of them had known. Well, except for Edith, but she was a perilously narcissistic woman -- even if she didn't know her all that well.
"And one other aspect of the event, this spreading of her ashes at sea, has captured my imagination ever since. It was that Henry carried her out into the sea. That he placed her there -- to wait for his return."
"Do you mean to say," Rolf asked, "that Henry swam out into the sea from here?"
"He did," Father Martin replied. "And as now, he did so on a Christmas Eve many, many years ago." The priest looked around the group, at their upturned faces, and at their dawning comprehension, then his eyes rested on Edith's. "You were here that night, were you not?"
But Edith only nodded.
"Claire wrote to me before she passed," the priest continued. "She wrote in that letter that you are evil, that you would do evil things to Henry. I ask you now, before God...did you do such things?"
Again, Edith only nodded, though she began to cry openly now.
"Your heart is not pure," Father Martin added, his voice full of pity. "Confess tonight before God or leave this place forever!"
Edith seemed thunderstruck, her eyes blinking uncontrollably as the import of the priest's words ripped through her soul, but then she stood and walked out into the night.
"Dina Bauer?" the priest said now, his voice suddenly tired -- as if worn down by decades of deceit and all the empty words of false penitence spoken by unbelievers professing their belief. "You professed Love before God when you had none in your heart. Why are you here in this place of belief, if not to mock what is to happen tonight?"
"I found Love, Father. It took walking away from Henry to find it, but I know I will always love him, now and forever."
"Truly?" the priest said. "That is not what I feel in your heart, physician. I feel Wrath borne of Greed, but no Love do I see or feel...so again I must ask...why are you here?"
"To be with Henry when he..."
