The Saint(72)

Eleanor took another deep breath as she came to the conclusion of her rambling, barely coherent prayer.

“So here’s the deal. I promise that if You let me have him, even in a small way, if You let us be together like we want to be …” She decided to not go into excruciating detail about exactly how she wanted to be with him. Surely God, if He existed, was well aware of the sexual fantasies she entertained on a nightly basis about Søren. “If You do that, let us be together, then I promise You I will never let him leave the priesthood for me. I don’t need to get married. I don’t need to have kids. I don’t even need him. But please, God, let us be together.”

The words hurt coming out. And because they hurt she knew she meant them.

In her mind she wore a wedding dress—white and made of silk—and held two pairs of baby shoes in the palm of her hand. She kissed the toes of the tiny shoes and sat them gently inside a large wooden trunk. Then she took off the wedding dress and carefully folded it, laying it over the baby shoes. She closed the trunk and locked it with a key. With all her might she tossed the key into the sky, flinging it a thousand miles away so it landed into the center of the ocean and sunk into the black waters of night. And on the off chance someone found that key and brought it back to her, she doused the trunk with gasoline, struck a match, set it on fire and watched it burn.

The tears came in silent waves as inside the privacy of her own mind, she burned her dreams to ashes. What would rise from those ashes she didn’t know—she only knew something would be born from them, something she’d never seen before.

A new dream. A better dream.

A wind rustled the ashes at her feet. She opened her eyes and stared again at the empty chair.

“Deal?” she asked God. “Let’s shake on it.”

She held out her hand as a whistle blasted and a train barreled past her house, shaking the walls, the floors, the ceilings, everything to the very foundation.

Eleanor glanced at the clock—3:26 a.m. She stared at the clock in confusion. For seventeen years that train had rattled by the house at the same time every time—12:59, 6:16, 3:38, and 7:02. Never in all the years she’d lived in this house had the train rattled by this late at night.

Never once. Never ever.

Turning back to the chair she lowered her hand.

“Okay, then,” she said. “It’s a deal.”





19


Eleanor

FOR THE THIRD TIME IN TWO HOURS, ELEANOR REFILLED her bucket with cold water and poured in a cup of wood soap. She lugged the heavy bucket back to the sanctuary and sat it on the floor next to the center section of pews. For the past three weeks, she’d been washing the woodwork in the church in an attempt to pay Sacred Heart back for her legal fees. Maybe her dad was right. Turning tricks would be much a much easier way to make money.

As she washed the wood on her hands and knees, she let herself fantasize about her future. Søren had ordered her to apply to five colleges and she had. Now she couldn’t stop dreaming of a life at NYU. She’d been in love with the Village and the NYU buildings since she’d first seen them as a little girl walking through the city with her grandparents. Still she knew it was a waste of a dream. She had good grades but not good enough to get a scholarship. Student loans would only cover a fraction of what she’d need to pay for NYU. Maybe she could find a hot dean or something and trade her body for tuition money.

Eleanor couldn’t believe how hot it was in the sanctuary. Sweat beaded on her forehead and spilled onto the floor. She’d already soaked through her shirt.

For another hour she washed the pews until she could hardly see straight. Her mascara burned her eyes. What the hell was going on?

Eleanor dragged herself off the floor and stretched her back. She shouldn’t be this hot. She’d changed into a sleeveless T-shirt, her cutoff denim shorts, and other than a pair of kneepads, she didn’t have anything else on except for sneakers. She walked over to the wall and squatted down by the vent. Boiling hot air poured from it into the sanctuary.

That wasn’t good. Was the heat broken? She stepped out into the foyer and found the heating controls. Someone had jacked up the temperature to ninety degrees. Ninety. Fucking. Degrees.

Her priest was a dead man.

She stalked down the hall to Søren’s office. Luckily they were alone in the church this fine Thursday evening so she could kill him without anyone trying to stop her.

She found him in his office sipping from a dainty teacup.

“Are you some kind of sadist?” she demanded.

He made a notation onto a piece of paper.

“Yes.”

“You turned the heat up in the sanctuary?”