“Good. I want you in your room now. You and Eleanor.”
“It’s only ten-thirty,” Claire protested. If she hadn’t argued the point, Eleanor would have.
“I don’t care. I need to talk to Elizabeth, so I can’t keep an eye on you two. It’s late, we all have a big day tomorrow and I can’t have either of you roaming around the house by yourselves at night. If you leave the room, you two leave together. And you lock the door and don’t let anyone in the room but me. You understand?”
“Fine. Fine. If you insist. He’s so bossy.” Claire said the last sentence to her and Eleanor started to agree, but Søren shot her a “don’t you dare” look. Claire stood on a step so she could face her brother eye to eye. “Good night, Frater. Tomorrow you’re going to play with me, though.”
“Have you been practicing?”
“Yes, and I’m awesome.”
“Then we’ll play. Tonight you sleep.”
Claire kissed Søren on the cheek and grabbed Eleanor by the arm.
“Let’s go,” Claire said, dragging Eleanor up the steps. “We can talk about him behind his back, and then he’ll regret introducing us.”
“I already do,” Søren said from behind them.
Eleanor followed Claire to the red room and found that the girl had damn good taste. Giant four-poster bed, huge couches, portrait art on the walls—it looked like a room from an English estate rather than an American mansion.
“Nice.” Eleanor nodded her approval.
“It’s okay. Old-fashioned. Are you in love with my brother?”
Eleanor dropped her bag on the floor.
“Can you tell me the right answer to that question before I answer it?”
Claire grinned ear to ear. With that big smile she came darn close to being as striking as her older brother.
“If I wasn’t his sister I’d be in love with him. I am in love with him, but not that way.”
“He’s worried about you.” Eleanor hoped a careful change of subject would work. “He wants to know why you stopped writing him letters.”
Claire groaned and threw herself onto the bed. She buried her face against a pillow and laughed.
This seemed like entirely inappropriate behavior for a girl whose father died that week. Eleanor decided to roll with it.
Claire flipped onto her back and smiled up at the ceiling. Eleanor dug through her duffel bag for the boxer shorts and Pearl Jam T-shirt she’d packed as pajamas.
“It’s very weird having a brother for a priest.”
“You mean, a priest for a brother?”
“Right.” Claire nodded.
“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so having a brother would be weird enough to start with. But the priest thing, yeah, that’s gotta be weird.”
“It’s beyond weird. Plus he’s thirty and I’m sixteen so he should be the one out there doing stuff, dating, getting married, whatever, and I should be the innocent virginal one, right? Instead he hasn’t dated anybody since he was a teenager and I’m …”
“You have a boyfriend.” Eleanor stripped out of her shirt and unhooked her bra.
“I do.”
“And you two are …”
“Yeah.” Claire winced.
Eleanor glared at her.
“You lucky bitch.”
Claire laughed again and pulled the covers down on the bed. They spent the next two hours talking about Claire’s boyfriend, Ike, and their sex life, which didn’t amount to much more than a dozen encounters in his bedroom or the basement after school while his parents were still at work. Claire had decided sex was the greatest thing ever and Ike agreed with her. They’d do it more often but he came from conservative Jewish parents who didn’t like him dating a Gentile and would have been furious to find out they were having sex.
“I’d sell my soul to get laid,” Eleanor sighed.
“You’re gorgeous, Elle. You can get any guy you want. Why are you still a virgin?”
“Ask your brother that question.”
“Oh, just do what I did with Ike.”
“What is that?”
Claire grinned devilishly.
“Jump him.”
By midnight Eleanor had extracted a promise from Claire that she’d tell Søren she had a boyfriend and that was why she’d been too busy to write lately. Mission accomplished, Eleanor fell asleep without giving a second thought to the fact that she slept in a bed in the house Søren had grown up in and that in bed with her was his baby sister. She was in love with a Catholic priest who acted liked he owned her. Weird was her new normal.
Eleanor woke up the next morning and she and Claire had breakfast in their pajamas. She couldn’t believe Søren hated this place so much. She’d never been in a big old mansion like this before. This sort of country living suited her fine.