“So you’re telling me I should manipulate the church into thinking that closing the rectory was a suggestion they made me?”
“Or just flat-out lie. Or lay. Whatever.”
“I could lie. That would be a sin, but I appreciate that suggestion.”
“You don’t sin?”
“I try not to.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t sin?” Søren sounded so skeptical she would have been insulted if he weren’t entirely right to be that skeptical.
“No, I don’t try to not sin.”
Søren closed his eyes and shook his head.
“What?” she asked.
He held up his hand, indicating his need for silence.
“What?” she whispered.
“Do you hear that?”
She tilted her head and listened.
“No. I don’t hear anything. Do you hear something?” she asked Søren.
“I do.”
“What?”
“God laughing at me.”
Eleanor rested her chin on her hand. “You hear God laughing at you?”
“Loudly. I’m quite surprised you can’t hear it.”
“He’s laughing at you, not me,” she said.
“Excellent point. And you made another excellent point about handling the church. I’ll consider your suggestion.”
“You will?”
“It’s a wise and Machiavellian strategy.”
“Is that bad?”
“No. It’s biblical. Matthew 10:16. ‘Behold, I send you forth as a sheep among wolves—be therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’”
“Sheep among wolves. That makes the church sound dangerous. You think we’re dangerous.”
“I think you’re dangerous.”
Eleanor sat back on her heels. They’d been joking the entire time they’d been in the sanctuary, but what he’d said and how he’d said it? That was no joke.
“Me? Dangerous?” she repeated.
“You. Very.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to be. That’s part of the reason.”
“I also want to be six feet tall and have straight blond hair, but wanting something doesn’t make it real. I’m not dangerous.”
“I’d explain my reasons for saying you are, but I have to get back to packing. I promised Father Gregory’s sister I would have all of his things ready to pick up tomorrow.”
“You know there are like a million old ladies in this church who would have packed up the office for you.”
“I know, but I said I would do it, and I feel only another priest should take care of his personal things for him.”
“That’s really nice of you.” She winced. Really nice of you? Could she sound like a bigger suck-up or idiot? “I should go home, I guess. Mom might call and wonder where I am.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Working.” Eleanor followed him out of the sanctuary.
“She works this late often?”
“This early. She works the late shift a lot. It pays more.”
“Does your father not help out financially?”
Eleanor stood in the doorway of the office again while Søren got back to work packing the boxes.
“Mom won’t take a cent from him even if he offered, which I doubt he would. He says he’s broke.”
“I take it the divorce was not entirely amicable.”
“She hates him.”
“Do you?”
“Hate Dad? No way. I love him.”
“Why does your mother hate him? If these questions are too personal you don’t have to answer them.”
“No, it’s okay.” She liked answering Søren’s questions. They were personal but not embarrassing. “Mom and Dad got married when she was eight months pregnant with me.”
“Eight? Talk about waiting until the last minute.”
Eleanor tried to smile but couldn’t.
“What is it?” Søren asked.
“She waited that long because she was hoping she’d have a miscarriage.”
Søren dropped the book on the desk with a loud thud.
“Surely not.”
“It’s true. I overheard her talking to my grandmother one night about some guy named Thomas Martin. She said she felt bad about thinking it, but she had once wished God would handle the pregnancy the way he handled Thomas Martin, whoever that is.”
“Thomas Merton,” Søren corrected.
“You know him?”
“He was a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky. He’s arguably the most famous Catholic writer of the twentieth century. When he was a young man, he fathered a child out of wedlock, but the mother and child were both killed during an air raid in World War II, which allowed him to eventually become a monk without the familial obligations of fatherhood.”