Father Lantom was tired, which wasn’t necessarily a new feeling. He was a priest and overseer of an orphanage, he was used to late nights. Sometimes the children had nightmares. Sometimes he was called away to give last rites to a dying father. Sometimes he sat vigil all night beside a boy he used to comfort when he cried and willed his heart to beat stronger.
Matthew was both getting better and also experiencing new struggles every day he struggled to remain alive.
Last night he had been awoken by an urgent Sister Maggie, who demanded his presence in the infirmary. Matthew’s heart is beating irregularly, she had explained, sometimes it beats so slow it feels like it's about to stop.
There was nothing medically he could do to remedy this, but he could sit with Sister Maggie and pray while a much more medically competent Sister Isabelle worked to steady Matthew’s heart beat.
It had been a long night. By the time Matthew was stabilized and Sister Maggie comforted and convinced she could close her eyes for sleep and he would still be there when she opened them, it was almost 7 am.
Father Lantom rubbed his eyes roughly as he pressed start on the espresso machine. Today, he would be exhausted and then maybe after 10:00 mass he would be able to catch a nap before 5:30 service.
He was thinking abstractly about what his homily would be later as he steamed his milk when a tentative knock on the kitchen door pulled Lantom from his work. It startled him, not many people who would wander into this part of the church would knock before entering the communal kitchen, perhaps some of the younger nuns who were still nervous around him, but even they weren’t often that timid. He spun quickly to see his guest.
“Hello,” he said, warmly, “can I help you, are you lost?”
A woman stood tentatively in the doorway. She was tall, and blonde, and dressed in a way that suggested she was on her way to work. Her face was friendly; open, and Lantom quickly shuffled through his recurring parishioners in his mind to try and come up with her name. He was sure he knew her from somewhere.
The woman tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Ah,” she began, her voice watery. “I’m sorry to bother you, Father, especially this early in the morning.”
“It’s not trouble, dear,” Lantom reassured her. He moved away from the espresso machine, hoping his open nature would encourage her to step more firmly into the kitchen. She was lingering in the shadows of the doorway like a ghost. “What can I do for you?”
“I, uh, I just stopped in to say a quick prayer before work and light a candle, but you seem to be out of matches,” the woman said quickly, taking a few steps into the room. Lantom offered her a supportive smile as she spoke. She seemed sad, and nervous. He didn’t want her to feel like she’d bothered him. “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, I was looking for a caretaker or nun I could ask, but then I heard whistling and just followed it here. To you, it seems. I can keep looking for someone, it’s not-”
Father Lantom put his hands up to stop her rambling. “It was actually my espresso machine, the milk frother makes that whistling noise, which I’ve been assured by the young ones is actually the sound it’s supposed to make.”
The woman chuckled politely at his bad joke.
“It is,” she replied, “they didn’t lie to you.”
“Good. That’s less ‘hail marys’ I have to assign,” he said. “Anyways, the extra matches are over in the supply room which is locked until Sister Catherine comes over at 9:00 to set up.”
“Oh,” the woman cut in, her face falling, “I don’t have that long to wait, I have a meeting with my boss. I guess I could stop by after work…”
“Don’t trouble yourself with that,” Lantom said, moving to lead her back to the nave. “I have a lighter in the sacristy we use to light the altar candles. You can use that, and not have to double back here in the dark later.”
The woman smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you, Father, that’d be great.”
As he led her back to the main part of the church, he was still searching through his mind for her name. The more time he spent talking to her, the more he was sure they were acquainted. He didn’t often forget names or faces, so he knew if he didn’t ask, it would bother him for the rest of the day.
“You'll have to forgive me, dear, but my memory isn’t what it once was,” he said, right as they reached the sacristy door. He went up the two stairs that led inside, but the woman stayed waiting just at the bottom. He spoke a little louder to her as he retrieved the lighter. “Do we know each other? Your face and voice are familiar, but I can’t seem to come up with your name.”
“Karen Page,” she offered after only a moment of hesitation. “We weren’t well acquainted, um, I’m not a member of this church. But my good friend is- was-, um, and you were quite close with him, I believe. I’ve also been to a few funerals you’ve performed. One for Ben Urich, and one for a client of ours that my friend asked you to perform.”
Father Lantom froze. He knew who she was referring to without her needing to say it. He could now picture it- a funeral for a convict and only three people in attendance sitting in the front row; a man with long hair, a blonde woman with tear tracks on her face, and him.
“Matthew Murdock.”
Karen cleared her throat after she spoke, but that didn’t stop it from breaking on his name.
Suddenly, Lantom was grateful he hadn’t had breakfast or coffee yet, it would have been like lead in his stomach.
“Ah, yes. I’ve known Matthew since he was a little boy, since before his father passed,” he said, returning to Karen’s side and handing her the lighter.
In silence, they moved toward the votive candles. She seemed to already know which one she wanted to light. He watched as Karen made a quick sign of the cross, and then bowed her head and lit her candle. Father Lantom had a strong suspicion of who she was lighting it for, and sent his own small prayer up to Heaven with hers.
Restore him to her. To all of us. Is that too much to ask for someone as devoted to you as he’s been?
After a moment, Karen turned back toward him, holding the lighter out in front of her.
“Thank you.”
“Of course,” he replied, softly, taking it from her.
She seemed more saddened than she was before she lit the candle. Her eyes were freely flowing now and she was trying to collect herself, desperately, to save face.
It was clear to Lantom that Karen knew about Matthew’s ‘other life’ and whatever had transpired at Midland Circle that led to Matthew’s public disappearance, both as himself and as Daredevil. She believed him dead and was grieving for her friend.
“Would you like to sit for a minute?” He asked, gesturing to the pew behind them. He couldn’t restore Matthew to her, not yet, but he could offer comfort. He was good at that.
“That would probably be best wouldn’t it?” Karen replied, “If people on the street see my crying like this they might think I’m crazy.”
“New Yorkers? Never,” he joked, “we know how to mind our own business and look the other way.”
Karen huffed out a laugh, pulling a tissue from her bag to wipe her nose.
“Not all of us.”
Lantom was quiet for a minute, letting his guest collect herself. When he spoke again, it was with an offering to talk.
“Matthew was never good at letting bygones be bygones,” he began. “He used to get in so much trouble- for mouthing off, for wandering during field trips, but mostly for fighting. For a while it was almost an everyday occurrence, and I know I didn’t even hear the half of it. None of the other kids wanted to admit they’d been bested by a scrawny, little blind boy.”
Karen smiled, allowing his walk down memory lane.
He continued.
“And, although I know he sought out the occasional fight just because he was angry and wanted to hit something,” Lantom said, “I also know that most of his fights were from standing up on the behalf of other children. Kids who couldn’t do what he could do and who were easy targets for bullies.”
“He’s good at sticking up for the little guy,” Karen added, thinking fondly of her friend. “At the firm he was always trying to take so many pro bono cases that Foggy would have a limit on how many they could be working on at a time.”
Lantom smiled. He could believe that.
“Yeah. It was a wonder to witness. One moment he would be spinning his cane, minding his own business, the next he’d be half way across the courtyard to grab the arm of a boy about to land a nasty shove on some younger girl who wouldn’t give him the swing he wanted.”
Lantom looked Karen directly in the eye. He’d been working up to this part.
“I never knew how he did it, how he knew,” he said, his voice taut with hopes she would understand what he was trying to say. “It wasn’t until much later that I learned the truth. But, by then he was so set on his path, I don’t think even God could have knocked him off it with a lightning bolt from the Heavens.”
Karen’s eyes widened. She leaned in closer, her voice lowering to barely a whisper.
“You- you knew?”
“I’m his priest,” he answered, simply. “I knew everything he wanted forgiveness for. And trust me, there was a lot. Even for a Catholic he carries a lot of guilt with him.”
“So, uh- have you heard about what happened? At Midland Circle?”
Lantom pursed his lips. He knew what she was asking. Did he know Daredevil had been trapped at the bottom and presumed dead by everyone involved, and that Matthew Murdock was suspiciously absent in his professional life as of late?
Of course he did and he knew so much more. But, he wasn’t going to tell Karen that. It wasn’t time. Not with Matthew’s survival and recovery still up in the air as it was.
“Yes,” he answered. Because that was the truth. He wasn’t lying if he didn’t offer where Karen didn’t ask. “As you can imagine, I try to keep up on the news about Matthew’s… extracurricular activities. Just to stay informed. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Karen sniffled.
“Yours as well,” she replied. “I know it’s been two weeks, but it still doesn’t feel real. Every time I’m walking and I hear something tapping I’m expecting him to be there with his cane and his red glasses. Smiling like this was all some big joke.”
“Wouldn’t have been a very funny joke,” Lantom offered.
“No,” Karen said, around a laugh that teetered on a sob. “But I’d forgive him. I’d forgive him for everything if he’d just walk through those doors right now.”
They both stared silently at the door, but it remained securely closed.
“How do I do it, Father,” Karen asked, after a pause. “How do I move on and accept this when in my heart I know that it's wrong. He should be here.”
Grief counseling. He knew a bit about how to help here, even if the circumstances were quite different than usual.
“There’s a story in the book of John,” Lantom began. “Stop me if you’d like at any time, I know sometimes lessons from the Bible are not as comforting to those who do not believe. But you’re here, so you must be looking to derive some comfort from these walls. Matthew believed strongly, so maybe he’d like for you to be comforted by this story as well.”
Karen nodded, “please. Continue.”
“As you may or may not know, Jesus performed a number of miracles in his lifetime, but one that people often recognize as his greatest was the resurrection of Lazurus. Lazarus was a good friend to Jesus, and when he heard that the man had died, Jesus wept. But he did not weep in hopelessness. Jesus raised Lazurus from the dead and returned him to his loved ones so that everyone watching would know the truth.”
He looked to Karen who was staring blankly at him.
“The truth?” She asked.
“That death is not the end.”
“So you think if I cry loud enough, God might return Matt to me?”
“No, or he might. Maybe not in physical form, as you would like, but in everyday acts of remembrance. You will never be without Matthew so long as you look for him in places where he would want to be seen,” Father Lantom said, patiently. “Matthew has a huge sweet tooth, but his favorite treat was vanilla ice cream. When he first left us for college, the orphanage was most certainly quieter without him. Sometimes when the children had vanilla ice cream cups with lunch, I would think of him.”
A small smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, but Karen’s eyes were still red rimmed. All of the make-up she had tried to hide it behind had been wiped away already.
“Matt really liked this Indian restaurant in the East Village. It was really far from us, and he hated the subway so we didn’t go often, but any time I smell curry I think of him.”
“There you go,” Lantom encouraged, clapping his hands in front of him. “You’ve got the hang of it already. It’s not about forgetting Matthew, or accepting that he’s gone. It’s about celebrating how he’s still with you, and always will be.”
Just then, Karen’s phone began vibrating in her purse. She scrambled to silence it and threw a sheepish apology at Father Lantom.
“I’m so sorry. It’s my boss,” she explained.
“It’s no problem. I suppose I’ve kept you here long enough.”
They both stood up and Lantom moved into the aisle to allow Karen to move past him.
“It was nice to reconnect with you,” he said kindly.
“You too,” Karen replied. “Thank you for everything you said. It helped, really helped in a way I wasn’t sure it would.”
“That’s my job,” Lantom said. “I’m always here if you’d like an ear to listen. Or if you’d prefer I talk. I have many stories about our mutual friend that I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me telling you.”
Karen flashed him a smile that seemed lighter than any other he’d seen yet.
“I’ll take you up on that sometime. Thanks again, Father.”
And with that she was gone, her heels clicking lightly on the tile as she headed toward the doors.
When she was out of sight, Father Lantom let his head and shoulders sag. Hopefully the next time he saw her would be in joyace reunion as Matthew was reunited with those who cared so deeply for him.
He still needed that coffee. Father Lantom turned to head back to the kitchen, but not before turning and walking over to stand in front of the candle that Karen Page had lit. Lantom used the lighter he still held in his hand and lit the candle next to it. He had already tagged a small prayer onto Karen’s candle, but he felt this was an important enough task that he should light his own.
The candle came to life with a flash of light and Father Lantom took a step back to say his prayer.