NORTH
The Present
The drive from the city to Søren’s sister’s house in New Hampshire took approximately four hours. Søren usually grabbed every opportunity to take his Ducati out on the open roads, but Kingsley managed to talk him into riding in the Rolls-Royce with him. They needed to talk, Kingsley insisted. They needed to plan. With a skeptical tilt to his smile, Søren finally agreed. Kingsley knew full well that Søren wasn’t fooled. They had nothing to talk about yet. They knew nothing yet. Kingsley simply wanted to be alone with Søren in the back of his Rolls-Royce.
“What will we tell her?” Kingsley asked as they neared Elizabeth’s house. “She’ll want to know why we’re here.”
“We will tell her the truth. You received a threatening package postmarked from Lennox. I’ll watch her eyes, her face. We’ll see what it betrays.”
Søren sat on the opposite bench seat, staring out the window. He’d made little eye contact for the entire drive. Unusual for him. Søren seemed to delight in intense eye contact. He could read someone with a single glance—know their motives, their plans, what they wanted, who they trusted…. As teenagers, Kingsley had thought it a great parlor trick. It wasn’t until years later, working as a jack-of-all-trades for the French government, that he understood the root of Søren’s talent. Abused children often grew up with extraordinarily astute abilities to judge character. It wasn’t a gift. It wasn’t a parlor trick. It was life or death, a survival skill. But Søren wouldn’t look at him today. Kingsley decided to take it as a compliment.
The Rolls pulled into the long and winding drive that led to Elizabeth’s house. Although Søren wouldn’t look at Kingsley, that didn’t stop Kingsley from looking at him.
“I’m fine, Kingsley,” he said, giving him the barest of glances before turning his eyes outside the window again.
Kingsley nodded toward the house. “Your mother was raped in that house. Raped by your father.”
“This is not news to me,” Søren said, his voice even. “That is, in fact, the reason I exist.”
“You were raped in that house. By Elizabeth, with whom we are about to have a polite chat.”
“Kingsley, I said I was fine.”
“I know you’re fine. I know you aren’t simply saying you’re fine. And that’s why you alone of all the men and monsters in this world terrify me.”
“That is a lie and you know it. You and Eleanor are the only two people in the world who aren’t afraid of me.”
“Tell yourself that if it helps you sleep at night.”
Søren finally looked at him, looked him straight in the eyes.
“Boo,” Søren said, and Kingsley could only laugh.
“No ghosts, please.” Kingsley held up his hands. “There’s more than enough ghosts in that house.”
“I’m not one of them.” Søren sat back against the leather seat.
“Elizabeth is. She haunts that house still…or perhaps it haunts her.”
“I’ve asked her to move. She’ll have none of it.” Søren shrugged elegantly. He touched his neck where his Roman collar rested against his throat—a gesture that Kingsley rarely witnessed. He knew most priests seldom wore their clericals when visiting family. With his other sister, Claire, and his niece Laila, Søren always wore lay attire. But with Elizabeth he wore his clericals and his collar. Always. Simply another part of his armor.
“Masochist, you think?” Kingsley asked, smiling. “Fitting, since her brother’s a sadist.”
“Possibly. Or perhaps she has something to prove to herself. That our father didn’t win.”
Kingsley raised an eyebrow, stretched out his legs and rested them, ankles crossed, on the seat next to Søren’s knees.
“Or…”
Søren glared at him. “Or what?”
One deep winter’s night thirty years ago, after Søren had bared his body to Kingsley, he’d allowed himself to bare a sliver of his soul. He’d told Kingsley of his sister Elizabeth, what she’d done to him that night when he was a boy of eleven and she only twelve. And then, after a long pause, Søren had told Kingsley what they’d done together the next night and every night after until their father had caught them in the act.
“Perhaps it’s nostalgia.”
Søren didn’t deign to answer that with anything other than an even colder glare.
“You can’t deny jealousy would make sense as a motive for this,” Kingsley continued, taking his legs off the seat and sitting forward to return Søren’s glare.
“Jealousy? Really?”
“Don’t act so skeptical. I sent that reporter to Elizabeth to ask her questions about you. A strange woman she’d never seen before investigating her brother and what did Elizabeth do? Told her every last thing about you two.”
“Elizabeth was trying to protect me.”
“Or she was bragging.”
“I pray for you, Kingsley.”
Kingsley grinned. “Pray harder.”
“It’s not Elizabeth. She hates what happened between us as children even more than I do.”
“Hate? Really? You know you enjoyed yourself. What did you call it, that summer you two played together? Like Adam and Eve?”
Søren fell silent for a terrible moment before answering. “I said we were like Adam and Eve…in hell.”
The chauffeur opened the door and Søren got out without another word. In silence, they walked to the front door.
Before Kingsley could knock or ring the bell, the door flew open, to reveal Elizabeth standing in the vaulted foyer. Last time Kingsley had seen her, she’d looked ten years younger than her actual age. Auburn hair, violet eyes…a true New England beauty. But today she looked panicked, frantic and aged by fear.
“Thank God,” she breathed. Rushing forward, she threw her arms around Søren’s neck. Kingsley tensed, but Søren embraced her with the affection of a brother and nothing else. “Andrew called you?”
Søren pulled back. “No. No one called us. What is it?”
She ran a hand through her curly hair. “I even thought about calling the police,” she said and Kingsley’s eyes widened in surprise. Elizabeth had as good a relationship with the police as he did with reporters. Although he did recently fuck a reporter into near unconsciousness in the back of his Rolls. But that was business, not pleasure. Well…business and pleasure.
Elizabeth glanced back and forth between Søren and Kingsley.
“Tell me what happened.” Søren spoke the words in his comforting pastor’s voice, although Kingsley could detect the faintest trace of fear under that calm.
Fear? Søren? Kingsley never thought he’d live to see this day.
“I’ll show you. Come with me.” Elizabeth finally noticed Kingsley. “You, too, Kingsley. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll take all the help I can get.”
“Always happy to be of service. We are family, after all…in a way.” He glanced at Søren, who said nothing to that. Elizabeth knew of her brother’s brief, tragic marriage to Marie-Laure, Kingsley’s sister. What she thought of it, he neither knew nor cared, but the marriage, ill-fated as it was, at least gave Søren a safe excuse to consort with the likes of him.
“I don’t know if this is a family you’d want to lay claim to,” Elizabeth said as she led them deep into the house toward the center staircase. At the top of the steps she turned left and guided them toward the east wing, the nursery wing.
Surreptitiously, Kingsley watched Søren’s face. Every room in this house held memories of the horrors of his childhood. His mother had given birth to him in her tiny room at the end of the east wing. Out of sheer willpower, she’d labored completely in silence, not willing to let Søren’s sadist of a father have the satisfaction of hearing her scream. In the library, Søren had nearly lost his life when his father had found him coupling with his sister on the floor by the fireplace.
Elizabeth led them to the last room on the left.
Søren’s childhood bedroom.
She opened the door and let the state of the room speak for itself.
“Mon Dieu…” Kingsley breathed, and covered his mouth.
In this room, an eleven-year-old Marcus Stearns had fallen asleep one night and woken up inside his own sister.
In that bed, he’d lost his virginity in an act of rape and incest.
And now someone had set that bed on fire and burned it to the floor.
On the wall, written in ashes, were the words Love Thy Sister.
“Should Kingsley…?” Elizabeth whispered.
“Kingsley knows. He’s one of two people I’ve told.”
Wincing internally, Kingsley glanced at Elizabeth’s face. Did Søren just let it slip that he had another confidant? Like her brother, Elizabeth was dangerously intelligent. Kingsley prayed she’d assumed Søren meant his own confessor. If she learned her priest-brother had seduced a girl in his congregation…the whole world would burn for it.
Elizabeth nodded. Søren only stared at the words on the wall.
“I didn’t call the police,” she continued. “I didn’t want to explain to them about us, what that meant. But I have alarms on the doors. I always arm them at night. I even have cameras on the front of the house, the driveway. No one came up. Should I call the police? I will if you say so.”
Søren slowly shook his head. “No. You shouldn’t. This is beyond them.”
“Then what—”
“Get out.” Søren faced her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Get out and take the boys with you, far away. Europe. Asia. Australia. Go abroad and stay on the move. Leave now.”
“What’s going on? Why did you come today? I found the bed like this just this morning. I sent the boys to a friend’s. Been trying to decide what to do all day.”
Søren looked back at that pile of ash where his bed had once stood, and didn’t speak.
Kingsley answered for him. “I received a photograph in the mail, taken of the two of us in our school days. It was postmarked from here. No other identifying marks. Merely a school photo, but threatening nonetheless.”
Elizabeth pulled away from the door and walked down the hallway a few steps before turning back around.
“Marcus, what’s happening?” she asked, her voice low and cold.
Kingsley stiffened. No one called Søren by his birth name of Marcus…ever. He didn’t allow it. And surely Elizabeth knew better, knew how much he hated being called by the name his father also bore. Either she was so distraught she’d forgotten, or so angry she didn’t care.
Søren looked at her and exhaled. “I don’t know, Elizabeth.”
“You’re lying to me. You know more than you’re telling me.”
“I do know more than I’m telling you. But I am not lying. I truly do not know who is behind this. Tell us everything you know.”
Shaking her head, she turned her back to them. “I have. I woke up this morning. I got out of bed. I noticed a strange smell in the house. I followed it. I checked every room. I came to this one last. I try to never go in here. You know that.”
Her brother nodded. Kingsley didn’t want to imagine what Søren felt, standing in the doorway to this room. He’d paused on the threshold like a film vampire, unable to cross without an invitation. No invitation came.
“I opened the door. I saw the bed, the words on the wall. I nearly vomited. Someone knows about us, about what happened. I racked my brain for anyone who could know. My mother is dead. Our father. Who does that leave? I told that reporter about us. But surely—”
“I know Suzanne,” Søren said. “Not only wouldn’t she do this, she couldn’t. She’s in Iraq right now.”
“That’s it. And you say Kingsley knows.” Elizabeth pointed his way. “Who else? You said he was one of two people you’d told. Who was the other?”
Søren’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. But Kingsley noticed.
“No one who would tell.”
“Are you sure about that?” she demanded.
“I’d stake my life on it.”
“Then that’s it.” She lifted her hands into the air before laying them on her face. “I just can’t imagine who or why…. Kingsley.”
“Oui?”
“You know. Have you told anyone?”
It took all of Kingsley’s self-restraint not to level a look of utter disgust at her. He’d been a spy for the French government. A spy and so much more. Idle gossip could have gotten him killed in those days. He knew to use his mouth for activities other than gossiping.
“I have a reputation for having a tongue that gets around, ma chèrie. But not for talk. Your secret is safe with me. The only person I have told has been dead for thirty years.”
Elizabeth shook her head and exhaled. “Of course. I’m so sorry. This is the panic talking.”
“Pack, Elizabeth,” Søren ordered. “You’re wasting time. We’ll learn nothing staring at each other. Kingsley and I will find out what’s going on. Call me in a month. I’ll let you know if it’s safe to come back. Tell no one where you’re going. Not even me.”
She stared at them both a moment longer before turning and nearly running to the other wing of the house.
Kingsley opened the bedroom door again and studied the carnage. Nothing at all remained of the bed. He couldn’t even grasp how the perpetrator had managed to burn only the bed and leave nothing else damaged. Such a conflagration should have burned the house down. Ashes on the floor. Ashes on the wall. Nothing else out of place.
Love thy sister.
It sounded almost biblical. Love thy neighbor. Love the Lord thy God. What did it mean? Was it an order? Or a signature?
Love, Thy Sister.
The rest of the room remained untouched. As a child Søren had sat at that small ornate desk and practiced his English. As a quiet form of revenge, his mother had taught him Danish but not English. When his absentee father discovered his five-year-old bastard son didn’t understand a word of English, Søren’s mother had been sent back to Denmark. And every language but English had been banished from the house. Kingsley sometimes wondered if that act had been the root of Søren’s obsession with learning languages.
Next to the desk sat a bookshelf. On it were many classics of children’s literature in beautiful leather-bound editions, very likely worth a small fortune in their mint condition. Mint condition because young Marcus Stearns had never touched the books, never cracked the covers. He’d read the Bible as a child. Shakespeare, Milton. No George MacDonald or C. S. Lewis. Only Lewis Carroll’s books had gotten Søren’s attention at all. Considering Carroll’s obsession with young Alice Liddell, and a young Eleanor Schreiber’s obsession with the books, it seemed rather fitting.
Next to the bookshelf was the window that looked out on the rolling manicured lawns. A small wooded area bordered the back of the house. Søren had confided to Kingsley years ago that he and Elizabeth would often take their activities into the woods, far from the prying eyes of the household staff. There they were, just two children playing in the forest. So innocent. So bucolic and pastoral. If only the maids had known what passed between them behind the veil of those trees.
“The trees…” Kingsley said, gazing out the window onto the lawn.
“What of them?” Søren asked, still steadfastly refusing to cross the threshold and enter his old room.
“Whoever got into your room came from the trees.” Kingsley stood at the window and pointed. “He couldn’t have come through the doors. Elizabeth keeps them locked and alarmed. Had to come in the window. To avoid the cameras, he must have come through the woods. No other logical possibility.” Kingsley looked back at Søren. “Shall we?”
Søren didn’t answer. He stepped from the threshold back into the hall. Kingsley followed him down the stairs and out the rear door. They strode across the lawn in silence.
“I can go look alone if you prefer,” Kingsley offered. “I know this isn’t your favorite place.”
“It’s in the past, Kingsley. All in the past. If Elizabeth can stomach living here, I can certainly survive a day on the premises.”
“When did you come here last?”
“My father’s funeral…years ago.”
“Did you go into your room then?”
“Yes. My father was dead. It seemed a fitting celebration.”
They stopped speaking when they entered the copse of trees adjacent to Søren’s old bedroom window. The forest ground did seem recently disturbed, but with Elizabeth’s two sons living in the house, there was no telling if it had been done by them or the perpetrator.
The two men wandered a few minutes through the woods until they came to a clearing. Kingsley saw footprints in the dirt, small ones. Most likely Andrew’s—Elizabeth’s eleven-year-old son. They could belong only to a boy or a very petite woman.
Kingsley gazed up at the trees and breathed in the scents of the forest.
“Pine…” he murmured. With a deep inhalation, he took in another lungful of the clean, sweet air. Closing his eyes, he became sixteen years old again. He’d been scared that day in the forest, more scared even than today. And out of fear he’d run deep into the woods. He’d run then not to get away, but only to build the anticipation, to delay the inevitable. And to save a little face. He’d wanted it to happen, but there was no reason for Søren to know quite how much. But then…he’d been caught. He could still feel that iron grip on his neck, those fingers against his throat. The hard forest floor biting into his back and the mouth at his ear.
“Kingsley, really.”
Laughing, Kingsley looked at Søren. “I can’t help myself. The memories are too potent.”
“Try,” Søren said, although Kingsley could see the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Do you never think of it?” Kingsley asked, leaving large bootprints in the marshy soil as he strode toward him. “That night in the woods at school? That day changed us both, changed everything.”
“No good will come of us discussing this, as you know. The past must stay in the past.”
Kingsley shook his head. “Non. The past will stay in the past unless it doesn’t want to. Something in your past doesn’t want to stay there.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was Eleanor’s file that was stolen, out of the thousands of files I have. It was a photograph of you and me that I received in the mail. And it was Elizabeth’s house that was broken into and defiled. Eleanor, Elizabeth and me…. What do we all have in common?”
Søren glanced down at the prints on the ground. Right next to Kingsley’s large bootprint was a much smaller bare footprint, lined up side by side.
From there Søren looked up to the heavens and closed his eyes. Kingsley said nothing and let him pray.
Slowly, Søren exhaled and opened his eyes.
“Me.”