When Father Michael is delivering a funeral service for a woman, he observes an irregularly shaped birthmark on her neck that looks exactly like his own. What follows is a voyage of self-discovery during the grief process. Will Father Michael gain the answers he so badly seeks?
Eleanor, who was regarded throughout the community as a giving but reticent woman, left behind a considerable fortune as well as an everlasting mystery.
Father Michael took a deep breath, the weight of another funeral pushing down on him as he neared her casket. He’d never met Eleanor in person, but her presence had always felt familiar, almost frighteningly so.
He stopped, then leaned in, bending his head and beginning the prayer. But his eyes shifted to her neck, and he froze.
A little, purplish birthmark appeared just below her ear, standing out against her light complexion. It looked nearly like a plum, the same shape and color as the one he had carried his entire life.
His heart pounded as memories swamped him, half-forgotten sounds and occurrences from his time in the orphanage, from his search for any record of his parents.
Following the service, as the organ played its final verse, the mourners dispersed, and Father Michael approached Eleanor’s children.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” he said. “But I… I need to know something.”
“I just wanted to know if there’s any chance that Eleanor… if she might have had a child. Another child, I mean. Years ago. Many years ago?”
“Did our mother come to you in confidence? Was there a confessional?” one of the daughters asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking at Mark. “And no, your mother didn’t come to confessional. But I have reason to believe that it is true… If… if I could request a DNA test, just to put this to rest, I would be grateful.”
“Wait,” Eleanor’s youngest daughter, Anna, spoke. She moved forward, her gaze warm as she looked at him.
“If you believe that it could be true, then I’ll do the test. I’d want answers, too. Are you the child?”
“I could be,” Father Michael said. “It’s that birthmark on her neck. I have it, too. And when I was at the orphanage, the old woman who was in charge of the kitchen said that all she could remember of my mother was the birthmark on her neck.”
Then, one morning, an envelope arrived in the rectory. He ripped it open, hardly able to see through his quivering hands as he read the contents.
It was a match.
Since the results had been out, he had visited Eleanor’s family, believing they would be willing to listen now that the results were concrete.
“Father Michael?” an elderly woman’s soft voice brought him back to the present. “I’m Margaret, a friend of your mother. I was Eleanor’s best friend. Her daughter, Anna, told me everything when I went to have tea with them.”
“Please, I need to know everything. I spent my entire life wondering where I came from.”
“She was always so careful, our Eleanor. Always afraid of what people would think. But one summer, she met a man, a traveler, a free spirit. He was very different from who we were back then. And she said that he was like no one she’d ever met.”
“When she found out she was pregnant, she was terrified. Her family had expectations. A child born out of wedlock would have ruined her. So, she concocted this story, and she told everyone that she was leaving for the North Pole, studying penguins of all things.”
“I thought it was absurd, but she left. She had you in secret and arranged for you to be taken to the orphanage.”
“I spent my life thinking that she’d abandoned me. And all this time, she… she was watching from a distance?”
“She didn’t forget you. It broke her heart, Father. She loved you in her own, quiet way. She just had to do this because it was either this or… who knows what your grandfather would have done.”
In the weeks that followed, Eleanor’s family chose to greet Father Michael with caution but open arms. Anna became a regular presence in the rectory, popping by with scones or muffins and eager to fill him in on family stories and memories of Eleanor.
The next day, Father Michael discovered himself at Eleanor’s grave.
“I forgive you,” he said. “And I thank you for watching over me.”
