The Saint

“Where are we going?”

“New Hampshire, to my father’s house.”

“That’s not going to seem sort of suspicious? A priest bringing a date to the funeral?”

“My youngest sister is about your age. I’m sure she’ll come. You can stay with her.”

“Sure. Of course.” Eleanor’s head spun. She and Søren were going away to New Hampshire for the entire weekend. He wanted her to meet his little sister and attend his father’s funeral with him. When she woke up this morning she hadn’t suspected her entire life would change by the end of the day. Apparently God didn’t like to give out any warnings on that sort of thing.

“You can go home. You need to pack. And I need to make some phone calls.”

“Can I do anything for you? Help with anything?”

“You help me by existing. And I promise, I’m fine. In some shock, but I assure you, this is good news.”

If anyone else had heard him call his father’s death “good news” they might have balked. But Eleanor wouldn’t mind if her own father fell off the face of the earth. She could hardly blame Søren.

“So what do we do?”

“Come by the rectory tomorrow. We’ll leave from there.”

“You mean I’m allowed in the rectory tomorrow?”

“Eleanor, the reason I made you stay away from me for so long is so you could grow up and be ready for the things I need to tell you. Are you ready now?”

“I’ve been ready for you since the day we met.”

Søren took her hand in his and pressed the back of it first to his heart and then to his naked throat, before kissing her knuckles.

A man had died.

She smiled all the way home.

Eleanor packed that night as ordered. She’d been to a few funerals in her day. Grandparents, one random great-uncle she didn’t remember. She’d gone with Jordan to her aunt’s funeral. But this was different. She had no right, no business going to Søren’s father’s funeral. She couldn’t begin to think of a single rational way to explain her presence at her priest’s dad’s house. She would have to get creative.

First of all, she had to think of a way to explain her absence to her mother. Easy enough. One phone call to her friend Jordan took care of it. She told her mother she’d be accompanying Jordan on her college visits this weekend. Done.

As for everyone else? She’d have to wing it.

School dragged by the next day. She couldn’t think about anything but the prospect of being in a car for four straight hours with Søren. In a car for four straight hours? Eleanor stopped drinking water at noon. Last thing she wanted to do was interrupt Søren to tell him she had to pee.

She stopped at her house after school and picked up her duffel bag. She left her mother a note reminding her she’d be gone all weekend. Hopefully she’d be able to use a phone at the house in New Hampshire to call her mother on Saturday night. As long as she checked in once during the weekend, her mother wouldn’t get suspicious. Then again, it wasn’t like her mother gave a damn what she did anymore.

As she neared the church Eleanor realized it might raise a few eyebrows if someone saw her trekking over to the rectory, overnight bag slung across her back. She walked around the block and found a path to the rectory through a back driveway. She’d have to remember this trick. If life proceeded as she wanted it to, this wouldn’t be her last time sneaking over to Søren’s.

Outside the house she paused. To knock or not to knock … While she debated those choices, she studied the house. She’d always loved the rectory at Sacred Heart. A beautiful Gothic cottage, the rectory had been around even longer than the church. She’d heard the church had practically arm-wrestled with the original owners to get the land and the house. She didn’t blame them. As a little girl she’d thought of the house as magical, enchanted. It looked like the houses in her fairy-tale books—the steeply pitched roof, the gable dormer windows, the stone chimney, the cobblestone path, the trees that encircled it, hiding it from prying eyes.

It still enchanted her now, although for different reasons. No longer did she see the two-story cottage as something from a fairy tale. It had taken on much more potent significance. Søren lived in this house. He ate here, drank here, dressed here, bathed here and slept here. Someday, she knew, she would sleep here, too.

She knocked on the door.

Søren opened it without a word. He didn’t speak to her, because he had a phone held to his ear.

“Leaving now,” he said into the phone. “It’s all saber rattling. They’re trying to scare you. I know this trick. Don’t fall for it.”

A pause followed and in that pause Søren took her duffel bag off her shoulder and sat it on the kitchen table. She took comfort in how casually he’d welcomed her into his home, acting as if she’d been here a thousand times before. She checked out the kitchen while she waited for him to get off the phone. Pretty kitchen, clean and quaint and homey, like something out of a movie that takes place in turn-of-the-century New England. They would f**k in this kitchen someday. On that very table.

“Have you spoken to Claire?” he asked the person on the other end. Another pause, and then … “You know more about teenage girls than I do,” he said and winked at Eleanor, who had to cover her mouth not to laugh. “It’s fine. I’ll talk to her. You have enough on your mind.”