The parish house was behind the church and the church was St.
Mary’s and St.
Mary’s was a small stone church with a bell tower that didn’t ring and stained glass that didn’t let in the right color of light.
Daniel wasn’t at the parish house on purpose.
He had been walking past the church on his way back from the cannery and a hymnal had fallen out of the back pew’s rack, a thing he only knew because he had been inside the church returning a book he didn’t remember borrowing, and the book was a hymnal, and the hymnal had his name written inside the front cover in handwriting that wasn’t his handwriting.
Father Bell caught him at the door.
The priest was a thin man with thin hands and thin patience, and he looked at Daniel the way a man looked at a puzzle piece he had found under the couch, which was to say with curiosity and mild suspicion and the particular hope that the piece was from a puzzle he already owned.
“You’re Dan,” Father Bell said.
“The cannery.
Mrs.
Hennessey mentioned you.
She mentions you a lot.” “She’s kind,” Daniel said.
“She mentions everyone a lot.” “She doesn’t.” The priest stepped aside and gestured toward the parish house door, and the gesture was an invitation, and the invitation wasn’t negotiable.
“Come in.
Sit.
I have tea.
The tea is terrible but it’s hot.” The parish house was a single room with a desk and two chairs and a shelf of books that were all about the same thing, and the thing was faith, and the faith was the particular faith of a man who had been a priest in a cursed town for twenty-eight years and had never stopped believing that someone was going to come and un-curse it.
Daniel sat in the chair that wasn’t the desk chair and the chair was hard and the tea was terrible and both of these things were honest, and the honesty was a relief after weeks of cursed bread and cursed coffee and cursed weather.
“I don’t need a confession,” Daniel said.
“Everyone needs a confession,” Father Bell said.
“I need a confession.
I’ve been carrying one for twenty-eight years and I can’t tell anyone what it is because what it is doesn’t make sense to anyone except the people who don’t need it explained.” He sat behind the desk and his hands were still on the desk and the stillness was the particular stillness of a man who had been a priest long enough to know when someone was carrying a weight.
“You’re carrying something.
I don’t know what it is.
I know it’s heavy.
I know it’s not something you can put down.” The hum under Daniel’s sternum was quiet.
Not the quiet of disinterest.
The quiet of respect.
The particular quiet of a counterparty that recognized holy ground and had decided not to interrupt.
“I carry rent,” Daniel said.
“Due Friday.” Father Bell smiled.
The smile was a thin smile, a priest-smile, the particular smile of a man who had heard a lot of deflections and recognized all of them.
“A man who carries other people’s needs becomes a man who is carried.
I read that somewhere.
I don’t remember where.
I think I might have written it.” Daniel did not answer.
He filed the line the way a paralegal filed a clause in a contract, the particular filing of a sentence that was going to matter later.
The priest was right.
The priest was right in a way that Daniel couldn’t acknowledge without confessing everything, and the everything was too large for the parish house, and the parish house was too small for the everything, and the tea was too terrible to drink and too hot not to drink, and he drank it anyway.
He did not stay long.
He left the hymnal on the desk and the hymnal had his name in it and the name wasn’t his name and the priest didn’t ask about the name.
The priest let him go and the letting-go was the particular letting-go of a man who knew that confessions came when they came and pushing made them come slower.
“One more thing,” Father Bell said from the doorway.
Daniel stopped on the parish house steps and didn’t turn around.
“Whatever you’re carrying — whoever gave it to you — it’s not a gift.
Gifts don’t feel like that.
I’ve seen gifts.
I’ve seen curses.
I know the difference.” Daniel turned.
The priest was silhouetted against the parish house door, a thin shape in a thin coat, and the shape was the shape of a man who had been a priest long enough to recognize a curse when he saw one.
“How do you know what I’m carrying?” “I don’t,” Father Bell said.
“I know what it looks like from the outside.
It looks like a weight that wasn’t yours and became yours because you picked it up and now you can’t put it down.
I’ve seen that weight before.
I’ve seen it in this town a hundred times.
The curse gives people weights and the people carry them for twenty-eight years and then one day the weight lifts and they remember who they were.
You’re not carrying the curse’s weight.
You’re carrying something else.
Something that was here before the curse and will be here after.” He paused.
“Something that chose you.” Daniel said nothing.
The wind moved through the churchyard and the wind was cold and the cold was real and the realness of the cold was the only thing keeping him from telling the priest everything.
The hum under his sternum was very quiet, the particular quiet of a counterparty that was being discussed and didn’t want to interrupt the discussion.
“If it chose you,” Father Bell said, “you have leverage.
Things that choose have preferences.
Things that prefer can be negotiated with.
You were a paralegal.
You know how to negotiate.” He smiled, and the smile was a thin smile, a priest-smile, the particular smile of a man who had just revealed that he knew more than he was supposed to know.
“I don’t know how I know that.
I looked at you and the word ‘paralegal’ was in my head.
I don’t know what it means.
I think it means something where you’re from.” Daniel’s heart stopped for one beat.
The priest had seen through the curse.
Not all the way through.
Not enough to know the truth.
But enough to see a word that didn’t belong in Storybrooke, a word that had no cursed equivalent, a word that the curse hadn’t been able to overwrite.
“I don’t know what it means either,” Daniel said.
It was a lie.
It was the largest lie he had told since the handshake.
The priest knew it was a lie and the priest let it stand, and the letting-stand was the particular letting-stand of a man who had been lied to by parishioners for decades and had learned that lies were confessions in reverse.
Daniel walked home and the hum was still quiet, and the tightening behind his sternum was still there, and the priest’s line was still in his head, and the line was going to stay in his head for a long time, and the line was going to be true in a way he didn’t yet understand.
A man who carries other people’s needs becomes a man who is carried.
The hum was content to carry him.
The hum was content to carry him all the way to the Dark One’s throne.