“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry we disturbed you!” Mrs. Ceiba had stood up. She was talking very loudly.
“I’ve told you, Lydia!” the minister yelled. “There’s no need to yell. I can hear just fine!” His bespectacled eyes roamed around the room, stopping on Faye and Wunder. “Who are you?”
“This is Wunder Ellis,” Mrs. Ceiba said, still very loudly. “And his friend—”
“Faye,” Faye said.
“His friend Faye. Wunder, Faye, this is Mr. Dabrowski. He’s in charge of our Ministry of Consolation.”
“Dabrowski,” Wunder repeated. “Do you know Florence? Do you know Sylvester? We have something for him.” He held up the letter.
The minister raised two bushy gray eyebrows at them. Mrs. Ceiba was wringing her hands together. She looked extremely uncomfortable.
“Come into my office!” he yelled. He shuffled back inside.
The office was a cramped room, entirely taken up by two threadbare armchairs, an old desk overflowing with papers, and a wooden chair. The minister stood at the door and glared as Wunder and Faye sat. Then he shut the door quite forcefully and began making his way back to his desk.
It took a while, and as he waited, Wunder stared across the paper-strewn desk. There was a picture of Saint Gerard on the wall. In the picture, the saint wore a long black robe and cradled a crucifix. Behind him, a woman and a peacefully slumbering infant lay on a bed. The woman was clutching a white handkerchief. The story of this picture, taken from the About Us section of the church bulletin, had featured in one of Wunder’s earliest Miraculous entries:
Miraculous Entry #10
Saint Gerard performed many miracles. The most well-known involves a woman who met Saint Gerard when she was a child. During this meeting, he gave her his handkerchief, telling her she might need it someday. Years later, after Saint Gerard had been dead for some time, the woman suffered complications during childbirth. Fearing for her life and for the life of her child, she remembered Saint Gerard’s handkerchief. As soon as it was brought to her, her pain ceased, and she delivered a healthy baby.
Saint Gerard was the patron saint of pregnant women. He was the patron saint of childbirth.
“Let’s have that letter!” The minister had finally made it to the wooden chair behind the desk. His hand was outstretched.
Wunder turned away from Saint Gerard.
“It’s not for you,” Faye said. “It’s for Sylvester.”
“I am Sylvester, you know,” the minister replied. “And Florence was my wife. But she’s dead.”
Faye shrieked. Wunder shook his head.
“She can’t be,” he said. The minister didn’t say anything. “She can’t be!” he repeated, louder.
The minister glowered at him. “She can be. And she is.”
Wunder knew that the minister was unlikely to be wrong about his own wife’s mortality. But he unzipped his backpack and yanked out The Miraculous. He flipped it open to Entry #603 and thrust it across the desk.
“She was healed,” he said.
There was silence in the little room as the minister took off his large black-rimmed glasses and put on small, gold-rimmed reading glasses. He studied the page. He studied it for a long time, much longer than was necessary to read such a short entry.
“What is this?” he asked finally.
“She was healed,” Wunder insisted. It sounded like an accusation.
“It was a miracle,” Faye added. And Wunder found himself nodding, as if he agreed with her.
The minister didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear. He was still staring down at The Miraculous.
“You made this?” he asked.
Wunder nodded. “I’m—I used to be a miracologist.” The minister glanced up, bushy eyebrows raised high in confusion. “I collected miracles.”
The minister went back to the book, turning the pages one by one, stopping for a moment at each entry.
“She did get well, you know,” he said. “For almost a year, she wasn’t in pain. And she remembered more, remembered me. The doctors had never seen anything like it. I never think about that really.” He took off his glasses and looked up, from Wunder to Faye and then back. “I did your sister’s funeral,” he said, pointing at Wunder.
“Yes,” Wunder said.
He pointed at Faye now. “What about you?”
“My grandfather died,” Faye said. “But you didn’t do any funerals for me. I don’t go to church here. And even if I did, I wouldn’t want you to anyway. You’re extremely unconsoling.”
As true as this was, Wunder thought it probably wasn’t the best time to bring it up.
The minister, however, nodded. “You’re right, you know!” he cried. “I was consoling once, I think. When Florence was alive. But now—” He held up his hands, empty, as if to show he had nothing.
“Why do you do it, then?” Faye asked.
“I started,” the minister said, “when I retired. I wanted to do something useful, and the Church had need of me. It is a hard task, to console the grieving when the ones they love are gone. But I did my best. Then Florence passed. I don’t do much consolation work these days. And I never go to the cemetery, unless I’m doing a funeral.”
Wunder thought of the rows of graves, always deserted, always silent. “Why not?” he asked.
“She’s not in the cemetery, you know,” the minister said. “And I know that’s as it should be; I know that she is somewhere far better. I do wish though”—he paused to glance behind him at the picture of the saint, a guilty look on his face—“I do wish there was a way she could be here too. I wish there was a way they could all be here.”
For the first time in the conversation, Wunder felt like the minister might actually have something to offer him. He noticed that Faye had scooched to the front of her seat. Maybe this was what the witch wanted to talk to the minister about. Maybe Faye had been right. Dark, terrible things had happened—his sister had died, and Florence had died—but maybe the minister knew how to find miracles in that darkness.
“Do you ever feel,” Wunder said slowly, tentatively, “like she could? Like she might be able to come back?”
Then he held his breath.
But the minister shook his head right away, his halo of gray hair bobbing his answer: no, no, no. “I don’t,” he said. “I feel like she is far away, very, very far away.” He looked back down at The Miraculous, back at Entry #603. “I feel, sometimes, like everyone is very far away, you know. Like I am the only person on the earth.”
Wunder let out his breath. Faye sat back in her seat. The room was silent.
Then Wunder did something he’d never done before. He pulled The Miraculous back to himself and very, very carefully ripped out Entry #603. “So you remember the miracle part,” he said. “And here’s your letter.” He held both out to the minister.
The minister took them. He set the Miraculous page gently, reverently at the center of his desk. Then he opened the envelope with a silver letter opener.
The paper he took out had the same aged look as the envelope. When he unfolded it, the light shone through, and Wunder could see words scrawled in the same script as the name on the outside. He couldn’t read them though.
The minister put his gold-rimmed glasses back on. Wunder watched as his eyes moved down the entire page, then went back to the top again. When he had completed his second reading, the minister yelled, “Who gave you this?”
“A woman from the DoorWay House,” Wunder replied.
“The DoorWay House?” The minister took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Have you read this letter?” he asked.
“No,” Faye said. “It was sealed when we got it. But we’re supposed to get one soon.”
“And we know it’s an invitation,” Wunder said.
The minister nodded a few times. “Yes, but an invitation to what?” he said. He looked very old and very, very tired. “I suppose we shall see.”
It was the quietest Wunder had ever heard him.