CHAPTER 16
If he kept his eyes closed and she didn’t talk, he could probably go through with it. His hand slid under her silk blouse and stroked the soft skin of her stomach. His lips moved from her mouth to her neck while her hands roamed down his chest. With his eyes shut tight, his body started to respond to the press of her hips against his and the warmth of her curves. She released an amorous sigh as he started to push her skirt up.
“This might be more comfortable in my bed, Wesley.”
Wesley exhaled and opened his eyes. One sentence from her and the moment shattered. He shouldn’t have stopped kissing her mouth. Then she wouldn’t have been able to talk.
Sitting up in the backseat of his car, he ran his hands through his hair, and rubbed his forehead.
“What’s wrong?” Bridget asked as she tugged her skirt back down. “You didn’t have to stop. Just saying we should probably finish somewhere other than in the car.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just…” Wesley didn’t finish the sentence as he could think of no true words that wouldn’t hurt her feelings.
“Just what?”
He heard the edge in her voice and sighed.
“Just…not ready.”
As he knew they would, the words not ready inspired an eye roll and an unhappy crossing of her arms over her chest.
“Wes, we’ve been going out for two months. Two months. My last boyfriend and I had sex our second date. You and me? Two months and you won’t even let me touch you.”
“I like taking things slow. I’m…” He stopped and considered telling her the whole truth. But the whole truth would involve talking about certain things—and one certain person—he had zero desire to talk about. “Old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned. All right. I can accept that. Maybe. Can you at least give me an idea when an old-fashioned type like you would be ready to have sex with his girlfriend?”
He turned his head and gazed at Bridget. Such a beautiful woman—dark hair with blond highlights, tall and slender, a stunner, as his dad would say; a stunner seven years older than him.
“You’re Dad’s secretary. I think it’s a bad idea for us to be involved.” A lame excuse. His Dad had been thrilled to see him and Bridget flirting. He’d practically ordered Wesley to ask her out.
“If that’s what it is, then break up with me and get it over with. Stop screwing around with my feelings.”
Break up? For some reason those two words that he should have dreaded sounded not like a death knell to him but like freedom. Break up—maybe they should.
“Okay,” he said, nodding.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, we’ll break up. You’re right. I’m an ass for being like this. It’s complicated and I don’t really want to go into it. But you’re totally right.”
Bridget’s brown eyes widened.
“I didn’t say I wanted us to break up. I only meant—”
“Then why—”
“Why are you being like this?” she demanded. “We’re good together. At least I thought we were.”
“But you complain the entire time about us not moving fast enough. Obviously you don’t think we’re good together.”
“I think we could be. Wes…” She held up her empty hands.
His stomach clenched into a tight fist of guilt. If Bridget felt even a fraction of the misery he felt that day that Nora—
No. He wasn’t going to think about Nora. He’d gone all day without thinking of Nora and he wasn’t about to let her creep back into his thoughts. He and Bridget and their problems had nothing to do with Nora or what he felt for her. Felt—past tense.
“Can we—” he began and stopped. He’d meant to say, Can we talk about this tomorrow? But he knew he had to go through with it, get it over with. Bridget at least deserved the truth. Not the truth that he was still a virgin. That wasn’t why he couldn’t go through with it with her. That might even be the least of all the reasons.
“Can we what?”
Wesley took a deep, steadying breath and met Bridget’s eyes through the dark.
“I’m in love with someone else. And I can’t have sex with you because I’ll be thinking about her the entire time, and you don’t deserve that.”
For a long time Bridget said nothing. She didn’t even look at him.
“Who?” She finally spoke.
Wesley laughed then, a miserable, tired laugh.
“Ever heard of Nora Sutherlin?”
Bridget’s jaw dropped. “That crazy writer?”
Wesley nodded. She stared at him a long moment before shaking her head and throwing open the car door.
“Dump me if you want to dump me.” She grabbed her purse from the front seat. “But at least be man enough to tell me the truth.”
Bridget’s high heels clicked across the concrete the short distance from her driveway to her house. He heard her screen door open and fling itself shut. Wesley crawled from the backseat into the front of his father’s spacious Cadillac and turned the car on. Taking Versailles Road he headed out toward the farm. He hated this drive at night. Too long, too dull, too easy to let his mind wander places it didn’t need to go. The small castle some weirdo had built his wife twenty years ago constituted about the only thing of interest on this stretch of road. Wes glanced at the castle on the right. Yeah, still there. He kept driving.
The entire way home Wesley berated himself for how badly the evening turned out. Bridget…she was great. Smart, beautiful, older—he liked that. A year and three months living with a woman in her early thirties had made Wesley nearly allergic to girls his age—their drunk texting, their obnoxious Facebooking, their Ugg boots and their wide-eyed flirting. Nora didn’t wear Ugg boots. Or play on Facebook. Or drunk text. She wore black leather boots with straps and zippers. She swore like a sailor, drank like a fish, fought like a man—literally. He’d watched her box once and she KO’d her sparring partner—a retired featherweight boxer named Bruce—in three rounds.
And Nora didn’t flirt with anybody. “Flirting’s for people who don’t mean it, Wes,” Nora had once said. “I seduce.”
Dammit…he’d just broken up with Bridget and here he was thinking of Nora. Again. As always. As he had every single day since moving back to Kentucky. He’d never told his parents about Nora—just said he’d decided he missed the farm too much. His mom had bought it. His dad had been more suspicious. Of course, he’d been something of a zombie those horrible weeks after Nora kicked him out of their house. He’d finished out the semester in a daze, crashing on his friend Josh’s couch and staring at his cell phone waiting for Nora to call and say she’d made a mistake, that she wanted him home with her again.
But the phone never rang. And even when he called her, she never answered. And now thirteen months later, he still hadn’t heard a word from her. Was she happy? Safe? Was she with Søren right now? Was that bastard hurting her? Wesley’s heart clenched at the very thought of them together. Only his hatred of Søren burned hotter and stronger than his lingering love for Nora.
But just barely.
Wesley turned into the drive and paused to punch in the security code. The iron gates yawned open and he drove through. He checked the time—11:53 p.m. Mom and Dad had been in bed for hours, thank God. No one would bother him with questions if he ran into the main house for a few minutes.
He killed the headlights as he pulled into the circular drive. Ever since coming back home, he’d lived in the guesthouse way out back. But all the mail went to the big house. He’d applied to Tulane—great pre-med program—but wasn’t quite sure he could handle NOLA weather. Kentucky summers were bad enough.
Wesley stood in the foyer and flipped on the lamp by the big entryway mirror. Glancing at himself he still didn’t quite recognize the person reflected back. For months he’d put off a much-needed haircut. When he lived with Nora she would pounce on him about his hair when it got too long, sometimes literally. Once he’d been lying on the couch reading when he felt a weight on his chest. His book went flying and he found Nora straddling his hips with her knees; she had both hands on his chest and a pair of scissors clenched between her teeth like some kind of guerrilla hairstylist.
“What are you doing?” Wesley had demanded as Nora held him down with one hand while her right hand wielded the scissors.
“Cutting your hair. You have the most beautiful brown eyes of any guy on earth and you let your damn hair hide them. Now don’t move unless you want me to blind you.”
The scissors inched closer and he’d tunneled his head into the couch cushions as far as he could. Nora only backed off when he swore on the grave of Anaïs Nin—her personal hero—he’d get his hair professionally cut that week. Now his hair almost reached his shoulders. His mom gave him hell for his hair, but her complaining didn’t make him nearly as happy as Nora’s haircut ambushes. Secretly he thought of his long hair as a source of strength, like Samson. He hadn’t cut it just to spite Nora. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t care less. But he knew if she saw him, she’d hate how long it was. And that gave him a little dark measure of satisfaction. Stupid really. She didn’t care about him, didn’t love him, didn’t miss him. Why bother?
Wesley flipped through the mail and found nothing of interest. Nothing from Tulane yet. Still too soon probably. Only sent his stuff in two weeks ago. He dropped the mail back on the side table and noticed a large padded envelope addressed to him.
He read the return address and saw it came from somewhere in New York. Had one of his old Yorke friends sent him something? Wesley tore the envelope open.
For at least a full minute Wesley stared at the cover of the hardbound book.
The Consolation Prize by Nora Sutherlin.
With shaking fingers Wesley slowly opened the cover. He turned one blank page…then another. On the title page he found a note in familiar handwriting.
Turn the page, Wes.
Wesley took a shallow breath. His heart raced wildly in his chest. Thirteen months of nothing but the silent treatment and now…
On the next page he found the dedication.
Wesley leaned his weight against the front door. He needed something to keep him standing. The door didn’t work, and he slid to the floor. He remembered…Nora in her bed, her hair still wet, her face devoid of any makeup. And she’d never looked so beautiful. The next day was her anniversary with Søren and as usual she intended to go see him. Finally Wesley had realized the simply horrible fact of the matter.
“You still love him, don’t you?” he’d asked her.
She’d run her hands through her wet hair and let the water droplets fall to the floor.
“Many waters,” she’d said.
Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will rivers overflow it. Song of Solomon 8:7.
In other words, yes, she still loved Søren.
Wesley stared at the dedication until his eyes watered.
To W.R. Many waters.
She’d dedicated the book to him. Not to Søren, as she had all her other books. Many waters… She still loved him too.
Underneath the dedication Nora had written him another note.
Wesley, you twerp, you could have told me.
Could have told her? Could have told her what?
Wesley looked up. Hanging from the ceiling in the entryway to his home was a chandelier that had once hung in Versailles—the French palace, not the town in Kentucky. And the book had come straight to this address, not his old school one and then forwarded.
“Shit…” Wesley breathed. She knew who he was now. How had she found out? Well, not that hard really. She must have looked him up on Google or something. He should return the favor. The address on the envelope wasn’t anything he recognized. Maybe she’d left Connecticut, left New York City, left Søren.
Grabbing the book and the envelope, he raced through the big house and out the back door. At the guesthouse, his house, he could barely get the key in the lock. Once inside he slapped on a light, grabbed his laptop and went to Google. He typed in Nora Sutherlin and the city Guilford.
The very first hit took him to a New York City gossip site. Scanning the article he discovered Nora had gone to some S&M club as the date of a guy named Griffin Fiske. At first Wesley’s heart swelled with happiness that Nora had gone anywhere in the presence of any guy who wasn’t Søren. Maybe they’d broken up. Wesley quickly Googled Griffin Fiske and had the unpleasant shock of discovering he already knew him. Or at least knew of him. He’d seen Griffin’s name in Nora’s cell phone once and he’d casually asked her who he was.
“My personal trainer,” Nora had answered without batting an eyelash. Nora’s “personal trainer” was also the obscenely rich son of the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, a former drug addict who’d had a couple stints in rehab, the grandson of the owners of Raeburn Farm, and kind of obnoxiously good-looking in a tanned and muscley sort of way. God, he looked like one of those guys in Calvin Klein ads in Vanity Fair. Not Nora’s usual type. She went for guys like her editor Zach Easton—handsome in a distinguished sort of way, overeducated and usually older than her. Wesley had never seen Søren, not even a picture of him, but he guessed that’s what he looked like too. They’d spoken on the phone once and even Søren’s voice sounded well manicured. Yet another reason to hate the man.
Wesley took a long, slow, deep breath and ran through the facts in his mind.
Nora didn’t seem to be with Søren anymore.
Nora did seem to be keeping bad company, however.
Nora had dedicated her book to him with the words Many waters…
Wesley got up and started packing.
* * *
Suzanne stared at the ceiling and tried to become one with her sofa. Emptying her mind, she slowed her breathing and focused only on the beating of her heart. It pounded hard, almost audibly. She breathed deep again but the pounding only grew louder. Groaning she raised a hand to forehead and called out, “Go away, Patrick.”
“Open the damn door, Suz,” he called back. “I’m not leaving until you let me in or the cops come for me.” Once more he beat on the door. How the hell was anyone supposed to meditate under these conditions?
She stood up, walked to the door and threw it open.
“Fine. Come in.” Suzanne threw herself back down on the couch and closed her eyes.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Where have you been?” Patrick demanded. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know he stood next to the couch glaring at her.
“I’ve been busy. I started writing a book about my time in Afghanistan. Been living at the library.”
A long silence followed her words.
“A book…about Afghanistan. That’s why you haven’t called me back or emailed me or answered the door or anything for six fucking weeks?”
“I’m very busy. Can’t you see?”
She’d hoped the bitchiness would send Patrick running. Instead he sat down on the couch right next to her stomach.
“Suz.”
She shut her eyes tight.
“Suzanne.”
Slowly she opened them.
“What happened?” Patrick asked, brushing a lock of hair off her face. The tone of his voice was so gentle, the concern so intimate that tears sprang to her eyes. “Something happened. Tell me.”
She swallowed hard and covered her eyes with her hands.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “I can’t…”
“That priest you were investigating…did something happen? Did he threaten you? Hurt you?”
Suzanne laughed miserably.
Hurt her? Well, she did have bruises the day after. Suzanne’s whole body tingled from the memory of that night a month and a half ago. She’d been such an idiot going to the rectory. Looking back she saw that she’d started to fall for Father Stearns. Maybe not fall for him. Maybe it wasn’t love. But lust definitely. Lust as she’d never experienced before in her life—blazing hot, unbearable, like a fist in her stomach and a splinter in her mind.
Suzanne, are you planning on standing in the hallway all night staring at me? Or are you coming in?
She’d come in. And he’d turned to her. And she’d reached out and laid her hands on his chest. Underneath her hand she’d felt his heart beating slow and steady. He hadn’t been afraid or nervous. Only her. In an instant his mouth had crashed onto hers and she’d thrown herself into the kiss, body and soul. Her nails dug into his back, her breasts pressed into his chest. Nothing would have stopped her from having him that night. Not the Church or the state or her better judgment or her job or even her memories of Adam. She reached between their bodies to unbutton his pants, and a pair of hands with a viselike grip clamped down on her wrists. She found herself backed to the wall, her arms pinned above her head, and Søren’s face by hers, his eyes closed, the slightest grimace of pain on his face.
“I can’t…” he’d whispered and his hands had dug deeper into her soft skin.
And she should have left at that. But she couldn’t. In her twenty-eight years, she’d had sex, she’d liked sex, she’d enjoyed sex…but not until that moment had she needed it, needed it more than the air her lungs demanded of her.
“Please.” She’d said please once and she should have stopped there. But it came out again. “Please, Søren…please…” and over and over again. She begged for him, begged for it. Even now, six weeks later, she couldn’t think of how much she’d pleaded with him without blushing with utter shame. She would have sold her soul to feel him inside her.
Instead he’d covered her mouth with his hand to stop her words.
“Forgive me, Suzanne,” he’d said and she heard her own need echoed in his voice. “I do not belong to myself.”
And slowly he’d let her go. And once free of his shockingly strong hands, she’d run hard and fast from the rectory, back to her car, back to the city and away from him.
The next day she couldn’t stop staring at her own skin. Søren had purpled her arms from elbow to wrist. And looking at those bruises brought back such waves of desire that she’d lain in bed giving herself the pleasure he’d denied her and crying during every orgasm.
“I fucked up, Patrick,” she said finally. “I fucked up the whole investigation. I killed my credibility.”
“What did you do?”
Suzanne pulled her hands from her face.
“I kissed him.”
A half-truth seemed better than a lie.
“You kissed him?”
She nodded miserably.
“And it doesn’t matter. Because he kissed me back. And I know he wanted me and he didn’t do anything. Just stuck to his vows. He’s a good priest. I wasted his time and my time and your time… It’s pointless. You were right. I shouldn’t have pursued it.”
Patrick shook his head.
“No. You were right. There is something weird about him. There’s no way some stranger would send you an anonymous tip about him if he was the saint everyone says he is.”
“I dug, Patrick. And I can’t find anything. The kids at church love him and trust him. The parents love him and trust him. What else is there? I don’t care if he’s cheating on his taxes as long as he’s never hurt a child. I wanted to believe he was a monster just because he’s a priest. Look.” She pointed at a box on the floor by her desk. “There’s all my notes on him. There’s nothing. He’s a saint.”
With a groan, Patrick got up, grabbed the box and sat back down on the couch. He flipped through her notes.
“Nice to see you made sure to write down how hot he is,” Patrick said, reading her steno pad.
“It’s ungodly how gorgeous he is, Pat. You’d turn gay for this guy.”
“Don’t think so. I like young, buxom redheads only.” He winked at her, and for the first time in six weeks she started to feel human again.
“I’ll try to find you one then.”
Suzanne sat up and stared down at the box of notes. She pulled out a newspaper. “Oh, and look at this. We thought something funky was going on with Father Stearns and Nora Sutherlin? Check this out. That guy look familiar?”
Patrick squinted at the Page Six photograph.
“That’s Nora Sutherlin,” Suzanne supplied. “And that gorgeous male-model clone is—”
“Griffin Fiske.” Patrick shook his head. “Yeah, covered his rampages a time or two. Fucking trust fund babies. They get all the girls.”
“They get Nora Sutherlin apparently. Seems she prefers rich boys over poor priests.”
Patrick took the newspaper and tossed it aside before grabbing her notebook from the box.
“What’s this? ‘Min Søren, Min søn er nu en far. Jeg er så stolt. Jeg elsker dig altid. Din mor.’”
“I think you just murdered the Danish language.” Suzanne sat up.
“Danish?”
“Yeah, it means, ‘My Søren, my son I am so proud. Your mother.’”
“The priest is Danish?”
“Half Danish, half English. Mother was an au pair for this wealthy family in New Hampshire. The wife had a hysterectomy after baby Elizabeth was born. Daddy raped the pretty blond nanny who then gave him the son he wanted.”
“Jesus…” Patrick breathed. “That’s fucking awful.”
“Yeah. I can’t imagine what that does to someone knowing your father’s a rapist. She must have been an amazing woman to love her son so much considering how he came into the world.”
“Søren…I thought his name was Marcus.”
“It’s both. Marcus is what the dad named him. Søren is what the mom named him. He says only the people closest to him, who know his past, call him Søren.”
“Søren…I guess that’s a good name for a priest. Like Søren Kierkegaard, right? The theologian?”
“I don’t think Kierkegaard was Catholic.”
“You sure?” Patrick grabbed his laptop and opened it. As long as she’d known him, Patrick would never take her word on anything. He’d been a reporter too long and had to fact-check everything. “Yup. You’re right. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard—Lutheran. You two have the same initials, Suzanne Angela Kanter. Anyone ever call you Suzangela?”
“Only Adam until I punched him in the face for it.” Suzanne glanced over Patrick’s shoulder at the screen. Søren…Aabye…Kierkegaard. Why did that look so familiar to her?
She grabbed her steno pad, flipped through a few pages, and found the words Meine andere Geschenk wird nicht in einer Box passen. AABYE.
My other present will not fit in a box. AABYE.
Aabye.
Suzanne’s eyes bored into the word as if demanding it to tell her what it meant. And it did mean something. She knew it meant something. From Patrick’s computer she turned her gaze to her bookshelf and a book with a bloodred cover written by Nora Sutherlin. In an instant she left the couch and snatched the book off the shelf. There it was, right on the dedication page. The answer had been sitting on her bookshelf the entire time.
Søren’s words from their almost night together rang in her mind.
We are close. She had a nasty run-in with the law at age fifteen. The judge had me supervise her community service. Her parents had little to do with her after that. I suppose you could say I had to become her father.
“Suz?” Patrick asked, turning his face to hers.
“Goddamn you,” Suzanne said to herself. “You were her priest, her father…”
“What?”
“Do you have your car?”
“Yeah, why? What’s wrong?”
“I need it. Don’t wait up. I’ve got a priest I need to crucify.”
“Suzanne, stop right now and tell me what’s going on. It’s almost midnight.”
She grabbed her copy of Nora Sutherlin’s book The Red off the shelf and shoved her feet into her sandals. In the doorway, Suzanne paused only long enough to recite five words to Patrick.
“‘As Always, Beloved, Your Eleanor.’”