Part 52 (1/2)
”I should go. I'm needed back in Wakefield.”
”Yeah, I have swim practice. I should go to that.”
”Eleanor, about that.”
”What?”
He said nothing and he didn't have to. From the look on his face, she understood.
”Okay. I'll quit the team.”
”I wish it could be another way.”
”This is how it is. I'll tell them today.” If she and S0ren were going to be lovers, she'd have to spend the rest of her life learning how to hide her bruises and welts. No way to hide bruises in a swimsuit. She knew there'd be a price to pay. This was a small one.
”Jeg elsker dig, min lille en.”
S0ren kissed her again.
”I'll see you soon,” he promised. ”You should open the other cards and see what your options were.”
”s.a.d.i.s.t,” she said, smiling against his lips.
S0ren left her alone in the balcony with the four remaining unopened cards. She shouldn't open them. She knew she shouldn't. They were the roads not taken, so why even given them a second thought?
f.u.c.k that, she wanted to know.
She opened envelope number one and nearly swore aloud as she read the one word written on it.
Tonight.
If she'd picked number one, she would have lost her virginity on her birthday.
G.o.d d.a.m.n 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.
”Motherf.u.c.king 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 a.s.sumed Eleanor had turned into a G.o.dless 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 G.o.d 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 S0ren, and through S0ren she'd found her way to G.o.d.
She wondered about who might buy the house someday. Whoever it was, she hoped G.o.d 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 gla.s.s.
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 S0ren 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.
S0ren 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. S0ren smiled at the pencil lying on her palm.
”You're so certain you're going to pa.s.s this test tonight?” he asked her. She laid the pencil on the piano by the candle, thrilled S0ren 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,” S0ren 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-S0ren 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.