The Saint

“Eleanor, allow me to finish apologizing—”

“What did he mean my shepherd is a wolf?” She turned her eyes to Søren. He didn’t blink, blush, laugh or demure. But he didn’t answer the question, either.

“The wolf eats the sheep,” she said. “Should we, the sheep of Sacred Heart, be scared of you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I only eat other wolves.”

“That’s a comfort, I guess.”

“It shouldn’t be,” he said.

“Why not?”

Søren gave her a look so dangerously hungry she’d almost describe it as wolfish.

“Because, my Little One, you aren’t a sheep.”

After that, Søren bid her the most perfunctory of goodbyes. She didn’t blame him for leaving so abruptly. If that Kingsley person were in her house, she wouldn’t want to leave him unsupervised, either. No telling what, or whom, he would get into. So that was the brother of Søren’s dead wife? She had to sit down again while the reality of Søren’s revelations sunk in. It didn’t matter really, did it? Didn’t matter that he’d been married once twelve years ago? No, it didn’t. The dead wife was a dead issue. Buried. Gone. Eleanor shoved her out of her mind and resolved never to think of her again.

But Kingsley—now, he interested her. Søren had admitted to jealousy over her and that Lachlan guy getting to third base. But Kingsley had stood six inches in front of her and joked about beating her, raping her, f**king her, losing his watch inside her, which she didn’t even understand…. Oh, f**k. Yes, she did.

Ow.

Kingsley had eye-fucked her, word-fucked her, teased and taunted her, and all the while Søren had stood by doing nothing except trying not to laugh.

And what had Kingsley meant when he called Søren a wolf? What had Søren meant when he admitted to being one? Too many questions. Not enough answers.

Eleanor finished cleaning up. It didn’t take long, as Diane and James had a small wedding with fewer than a hundred guests. They couldn’t afford much more than that, but neither of them seemed to mind. They’d both smiled so much today Eleanor’s cheeks had sympathy pains. It had caused some controversy when Søren had hired twenty-five-year-old Diane. She was black, for starters, and Wakefield was a lily-white town. Black and very pretty, which also raised eyebrows. Even more shocking, she’d been divorced. A divorced woman working for a Catholic priest. Søren had helped her get her first marriage annulled so she and James could marry in the church.

If only all priests were as rational and open-minded as Søren. Never once in his year and a half at Sacred Heart had she heard him give a homily condemning homosexuality, premarital sex or abortion. Instead he focused his attention on social justice issues—feeding the hungry, helping the needy, visiting the sick and the dying and those in prison. He was a good priest, the best priest. No matter what his secrets, no matter that he desired her as much as she desired him, he was still the best priest on earth.

A little after 3:00 a.m. Eleanor finally made it home. Mom had no doubt been in bed asleep for hours. Alone in her room, Eleanor stripped out of her shoes and jeans. In her T-shirt and panties she sat on her bed, the radio tuned to the classical station. She wanted to sleep, needed to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t let her. She wanted to talk to someone, but there was no one to talk to. No one but God. Might as well give it a go.

When Søren had been taking her through the Spiritual Exercises, he’d taught her a specifically Jesuit way of praying. Søren said most people couldn’t concentrate during silent prayer. The mind wandered here and there. Speaking prayers out loud helped with the focus. But Jesuits didn’t stop there. One technique, Søren told her, involved standing before an image of God or Christ and speaking the prayer aloud to it. Some Jesuits even sat empty chairs in front of them and spoke to the chair as if God sat there.

“And this really helps them get through to God?” Eleanor had asked with more than the usual level of skepticism.

“No. It helps God get through to us. To quote my grandfather’s namesake, Søren Kierkegaard, ‘Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.’ All these tricks and techniques are for our benefit, not God’s. God’s a parent. Call Him, send Him a letter, go to His house, it doesn’t matter how you reach out to Him, He wants to hear from His children.”

Tonight Eleanor wanted to hear from God. She didn’t expect an answer, but those few minutes she’d spent in Søren’s arms had been like a gift. The embrace, the words of comfort, they’d come from nowhere. She hadn’t asked for them or expected them. When given a gift, she’d been taught to say thank you. She didn’t know who to thank for the gift of comfort she’d received today so she thought she’d give thanking God a try. She put a chair in the middle of her room and sat on the edge of her bed staring at it.

“I feel like an idiot,” she said to the empty room.

The empty room didn’t answer.

“Something’s not right here. Søren’s getting drunk tonight with the second-hottest guy on the planet, and I’m home alone praying. I think we accidentally switched our to-do lists.”

Still silence.

“Tough crowd,” she said and pulled a pillow over her lap, squeezing it for comfort.

She considered giving up and crashing, but her heart hadn’t stopped racing since the moment she’d stepped foot onto that rose-petal–strewn carpet today. And today, after a year of ignoring each other to the point of pain, she and Søren had finally had a real conversation. She’d been living with a question mark for a year now wondering what, if anything, would happen with Søren. And tonight with a hug and a few words he’d proved himself worthy of her devotion again. She couldn’t loiter in limbo anymore. She had to make a decision.