God damn her and her greediness. Maybe card number two would have said Easter or some day after Holy Thursday.
“What the—”
Card number two also said Tonight.
Card number three? Tonight.
And card number four? Eleanor ripped the envelope open.
“Motherfucking priest.”
31
Eleanor
ON THE EVENING OF HOLY THURSDAY, ELEANOR stopped by her old house in Wakefield but didn’t go inside. After Eleanor started college, her mother had gotten an apartment in Westport closer to her job and put the Wakefield house on the market. Now it sat empty, abandoned, alone. Her mom had picked Wakefield because of its proximity to its good Catholic schools. Eleanor wondered if her mother regretted going through all that trouble. Her mom assumed Eleanor had turned into a godless heathen at her liberal arts school—the sort of girl who slept around and drank and never went to church. She was no saint, but she’d made it to twenty still a virgin. And God knows she loved the Catholic Church—at least one part of it—with all her heart.
Although she hated it then, now she was grateful that her mother had made her go to church. Otherwise she wouldn’t have met Søren, and through Søren she’d found her way to God.
She wondered about who might buy the house someday. Whoever it was, she hoped God took as good care of them as He had of her. Four years ago she’d sat in a police station thinking her life had ended at age fifteen. Now all she saw before her were endless beautiful possibilities.
A thousand times as a teenager she’d walked from her house to Sacred Heart. She could have driven to the church or asked Kingsley to drive her. But she wanted to walk tonight like she had so many times before. She would have walked all the way from New York if she had to. She would have walked barefoot on broken glass.
At the rectory she paused outside the door and removed her shoes. No one told her to, and she had no idea why she did it.
On bare and silent feet, she slipped in the side door and once inside the house she heard music. Piano music. She’d never heard the piece before but it spoke to her, whispered to her, beckoned her farther in. She found Søren at the piano, his fingers gliding across the keys, waltzing in the shadows cast by a single candle. She sat next to him on the bench, her back to the keyboard, and rested her head against his shoulder. He played until the end of the piece before lifting his fingers off the keys and letting the notes hang in the air. He closed the fallboard and looked at her.
“More Beethoven?” she asked.
“The Moonlight Sonata. I can’t complain Beethoven didn’t write a piano part for his Ninth Symphony. He did give us pianists the Moonlight Sonata as a consolation prize.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“So are you.”
Eleanor took a deep breath.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Little One.”
“Are you as nervous as I am?”
He exhaled heavily. “I haven’t done this since I was eighteen years old.”
“So you are nervous?”
“Not at all.”
“Me, neither,” she said and meant it.
Søren dipped his head and her lips trembled against his. She hadn’t lied. She didn’t feel a moment’s nervousness. Only peace and desire as if this moment had been waiting outside her door her entire life and at last she could let it in.
She reached behind her head and pulled out the pencil she’d used to hold her hair back in a loose knot. Søren smiled at the pencil lying on her palm.
“You’re so certain you’re going to pass this test tonight?” he asked her. She laid the pencil on the piano by the candle, thrilled Søren remembered their long-ago talk about how she’d take only a pencil to the tests she’d knew she’d ace.
“I plan on blowing the curve.”
They kissed again, kissed through their smiles.
“Stay,” Søren said as he pulled away from her.
She waited on the piano bench as ordered. From now until the end of time this would be her life—Søren giving orders and her taking them. She would wait when he said wait and where he said wait and she would not move until he told her she could move.
Søren returned to the living room carrying a large ivory basin, a glass pitcher of water and a small white towel.
Her heart caught in her throat when Søren knelt on the floor in front of her.
“Søren, please don’t—”
“It’s Holy Thursday. This is what priests do on Holy Thursday.”
“Why?”
“Because Christ washed his disciples’ feet on the night of the Last Supper.”
She’d struggled with what to wear tonight, struggled until she remembered it wouldn’t matter. If she’d shown up in torn rags, Søren would still love her, still want her. And she’d be naked any moment anyway. She’d dressed in jeans and a sweater. Underneath she wore white lingerie that Kingsley had paid for and Sam had picked out. As weird as it was to get lingerie from Kingsley and Sam, she couldn’t fault their taste. Even if it was weird, she liked that. Life would be weird from now on. She was the mistress of a Catholic priest who was the best friend of the king of an S&M empire. Life was weird and wonderful and all she could say to it was Amen, Amen.