First of all, she had to think of a way to explain her absence to her mother. Easy enough. One phone call to her friend Jordan took care of it. She told her mother she’d be accompanying Jordan on her college visits this weekend. Done.
As for everyone else? She’d have to wing it.
School dragged by the next day. She couldn’t think about anything but the prospect of being in a car for four straight hours with Søren. In a car for four straight hours? Eleanor stopped drinking water at noon. Last thing she wanted to do was interrupt Søren to tell him she had to pee.
She stopped at her house after school and picked up her duffel bag. She left her mother a note reminding her she’d be gone all weekend. Hopefully she’d be able to use a phone at the house in New Hampshire to call her mother on Saturday night. As long as she checked in once during the weekend, her mother wouldn’t get suspicious. Then again, it wasn’t like her mother gave a damn what she did anymore.
As she neared the church Eleanor realized it might raise a few eyebrows if someone saw her trekking over to the rectory, overnight bag slung across her back. She walked around the block and found a path to the rectory through a back driveway. She’d have to remember this trick. If life proceeded as she wanted it to, this wouldn’t be her last time sneaking over to Søren’s.
Outside the house she paused. To knock or not to knock … While she debated those choices, she studied the house. She’d always loved the rectory at Sacred Heart. A beautiful Gothic cottage, the rectory had been around even longer than the church. She’d heard the church had practically arm-wrestled with the original owners to get the land and the house. She didn’t blame them. As a little girl she’d thought of the house as magical, enchanted. It looked like the houses in her fairy-tale books—the steeply pitched roof, the gable dormer windows, the stone chimney, the cobblestone path, the trees that encircled it, hiding it from prying eyes.
It still enchanted her now, although for different reasons. No longer did she see the two-story cottage as something from a fairy tale. It had taken on much more potent significance. Søren lived in this house. He ate here, drank here, dressed here, bathed here and slept here. Someday, she knew, she would sleep here, too.
She knocked on the door.
Søren opened it without a word. He didn’t speak to her, because he had a phone held to his ear.
“Leaving now,” he said into the phone. “It’s all saber rattling. They’re trying to scare you. I know this trick. Don’t fall for it.”
A pause followed and in that pause Søren took her duffel bag off her shoulder and sat it on the kitchen table. She took comfort in how casually he’d welcomed her into his home, acting as if she’d been here a thousand times before. She checked out the kitchen while she waited for him to get off the phone. Pretty kitchen, clean and quaint and homey, like something out of a movie that takes place in turn-of-the-century New England. They would fuck in this kitchen someday. On that very table.
“Have you spoken to Claire?” he asked the person on the other end. Another pause, and then … “You know more about teenage girls than I do,” he said and winked at Eleanor, who had to cover her mouth not to laugh. “It’s fine. I’ll talk to her. You have enough on your mind.”
The hint of a smile faded from his face.
“Take heart,” Søren said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Søren hung up the phone.
“Girlfriend?” she asked.
“That was my sister Elizabeth. Half sister. You’ll meet her at some point this weekend.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have? And why are you dressed like that?”
“I have three sisters,” he said, sitting on the kitchen table. “And this is a suit. Do you not approve?”
“You look amazing. I didn’t expect you in, like, a business suit.” She grabbed the lapels of his jacket as she pretended to examine his neck. “No collar. Weird. No tie. Even weirder.”
“I have the tie. I haven’t put it on yet.”
“Leave it off. You look good in normal-person clothes.”
“Thank you. I am attempting to stay incognito this weekend. A priest at a funeral and everyone wants to talk about God and the afterlife with you.”
“Can’t imagine why they’d think a priest would want to talk about God.”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” He grinned at her. “Car’s on the way. Would you like to see the house?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Well, yes. I do. But I don’t.”