The Virgin
“Then I suppose you deserve a medal,” Kingsley said with more venom than he intended.
“I didn’t call to start round two.”
“No,” Kingsley said. “I know. I’m done. C’est fini.”
“Good. Because if you try that again, I will hit back.”
“I haven’t taken a beating in months. Your threats aren’t having the desired effect.”
“They never did.”
Kingsley paused and prepared his confession.
“I met someone in Haiti.”
“Is that where you went?”
“For a while.”
“Who is she? He?”
“Her name’s Juliette. But it doesn’t matter,” Kingsley said. “It didn’t work out with her. I might have taken my unhappiness about that out on you.”
It’s the closest Kingsley would get to saying he was sorry. Mainly because he wasn’t.
“She must have gotten to you for you to assault a priest in his church.”
“She was...is very special to me,” Kingsley said, hating the past tense. “I’m not telling you this for any reason other than...”
“What?” Søren asked, the slightest note of compassion in his voice.
“If what you feel for Elle is like what I feel for Juliette...”
“If you feel anything close to what I’m feeling and have felt since she left...then you have my deepest sympathies. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
“I want to ask you how you are, but I don’t want to know the answer,” Kingsley said.
“You know my life. You know my past.”
“I do,” Kingsley said.
“Then you know what it means when I say this is the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”
Kingsley winced. “For that I am sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault. I promise, if I could make it your fault, I would.”
“Do you think she’s coming back?” Kingsley asked him.
“Yes,” Søren said.
“You’re sure about that?”
“I know my Eleanor. I know my Little One. She will come back to me.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
Søren didn’t answer that, and Kingsley was glad. He didn’t want to know the answer to that question, either.
“She told you I asked her to hurt me?” Kingsley asked. “She told you she did hurt me?”
“She did.”
“You didn’t like that.”
“No. I still don’t.”
“I told you what she was a long time ago. That girl is no submissive. She’s a—”
“She’s mine,” Søren said. “Nothing else matters but that. She is mine. The end.”
“She’s yours, is she?” Kingsley pushed a wet swath of hair out of his face. “Too bad someone forgot to tell her that.”
“Are you finished now?”
“Finished with what?”
“Finished trying to hurt me?”
“I think so,” Kingsley said. “But I’m not ready to forgive you yet.”
“Is that because you haven’t forgiven yourself for letting her go through it all alone?”
“You smug bastard, I should have put you in the hospital.”
“Where do you think I’ve been the last hour? Good thing I have a doctor in my congregation.”
“How convenient.” Kingsley sat on his bed and hung his head. He and Søren were silent for a long time, long enough for Kingsley to get angry again. “Ten years ago the three of us stood in the hall of your church and had our first little conversation. There’d been a wedding and she was cleaning up afterward. You went over and I followed you and found her there. And I asked you if I could have her. Do you remember what you said?”
“Remind me,” Søren said, although Kingsley was utterly certain Søren remembered every word from that night.
“You said ‘Wait your turn.’”
“So I did. And?”
“And you should know,” Kingsley said, “if Elle ever comes back, it’s my turn.”
32
THE DAY HAD come.
Time to go.
Those were Daphne’s first thoughts when she woke up for the last time in John’s bed. The clock on the bedside table read 5:17 a.m. She dressed in the darkness as the sun wasn’t up yet and if it had been, the curtains were closed tight to whatever light was out there. She’d been living behind closed curtains since her first night with John. She went to his house at night in the dark and left before sunrise. In a book or a movie maybe she would have been a vampire who woke at sunset to her life and fell into a sleep like death at dawn. That had been her life, such as it was, for the past six months. From dawn to dusk, she lived in a daze, the hours empty of purpose and meaning. At sunset she came to life the moment she crossed his threshold.
This morning she would cross it again for the last time.
She pulled on yesterday’s clothes that had ended up here and there on the floor. John had been playful last night and tossed her panties in one direction, her socks in another. Did he have an inkling of what she’d planned? Had it been a delaying tactic? No, of course not. She knew John. If he had any idea at all she was leaving him today, she would have woken up tied to the bed by her wrists and ankles, her car keys hidden and her money gone. And she’d been disappointed when she woke up and found her hands and her ankles free, her keys where she’d left them, her money all in her purse.