The Virgin

“I can, yes,” she said again. This time he heard a tight note of fear in her voice. But she was smart, savvy. She was also barely eighteen years old, but he wouldn’t have hired her if he didn’t trust her judgment.

“I’m going now. I’ll call when I can. It won’t be for a week or two. But everything’s fine. You believe that?”

Calliope answered, “No.”

He cared about her too much to make her believe the lie.

“Me neither,” he said. “Be a good girl. I’ll call when I can. Take care of the kids for me.”

“I’ll walk them every day,” she said. “And pet them all the time.”

“Merci.”

“Come home soon.”

Kingsley hung up and tucked his phone away again.

Once more he fished his keys out of his pocket. He turned back to the lockers. Underneath the one set up for Elle was another locker. He opened it, pulled out a leather duffel and checked it for a passport and money.

For you, Elle, he said to himself as he walked through the bus station and out onto Forty-Second Street. I’m doing this for you. Or was he?

He hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take him to the airport.

Well, it was about time he fulfilled a long-held dream of his. After all, his dream of being a father was dead. But he had other dreams, dreams about seeing parts of the world he hadn’t seen yet. If he didn’t go now, would he ever?

“Which airline?” the Caribbean-accented cab driver asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” the driver repeated.

Kingsley leaned forward. “If you had all the money in the world and could use it to go anywhere you wanted, where would you go?”

“All the money, sir?” the driver asked. “I’d go everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Everywhere,” the driver repeated. “And then I’d go home.”

“Where’s home?” Kingsley asked him. The accent was like music in his ears—French but not French, warm as white sand under the sun.

“Haiti, sir,” the driver said.

Haiti. Well, Kingsley had always wanted to go to Haiti. A tropical island, a long history with France. Maybe he would go there. Or maybe he’d do what his driver suggested. Maybe he’d go everywhere. He’d leave today and travel the world. Elle would have one less person to run from, one less man to fear.

And if Søren wanted to get his Little One back badly enough...

The bastard could do it himself.

6

Upstate New York

IN THE LAST minutes before midnight, Elle arrived at the Abbey of the Sisters of Saint Monica. It stood before her, a two-hundred-year-old stone edifice rising up three stories from the deep green earth. Spotlights shone on it, illuminating the high gray walls and the cobblestone path that led from the winding driveway to its hulking wooden front door. She knew more about this abbey than any laywoman should. Briefly she’d lived with her mother after graduating college in the hopes of repairing their fractured relationship. Her mother had let her move in for reasons unknown. Perhaps she’d harbored the same hopes. Reconciliation was a sacrament to Catholics, after all.

It was on the first day back under her mother’s roof that Elle found a white folder embossed with the initials SSM on the front. S and M Elle understood. But no, this was SSM—The Sisters of St. Monica. That place had been a foreign country to her. Soon she discovered her mother was in complete earnest about fulfilling her teenage dream to become a nun, a dream derailed when a one-night fling with a handsome older boy ended in a pregnancy, a shotgun wedding and a quickie divorce soon thereafter.

Now William “Billy” Schreiber was dead and buried and no one mourned him. Elle was an adult. And now Margaret Kohl was Sister Mary John of The Sisters of Saint Monica, a small order that consisted of five abbeys around the world, less than five hundred women in total. Their charism, according to the literature Elle had read, was to serve Christ like true brides—with love and devotion, and to pray for His church unceasingly until it found salvation, as Saint. Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, had prayed unceasingly for her son’s salvation.

The nighttime air was still warm with the day’s heat, but Elle had put on the black jacket she’d found in the duffel bag. She had no idea what to wear that would be appropriate for a convent, but she guessed the less skin she showed, the better. Under the jacket she wore a plain white T-shirt and dark jeans. At least in her black-and-white clothes she’d match the sisters in their black-and-white habits.

She left the car parked at a gas station a mile away and had walked the rest of the way here. The car would sit and sit and sit until the owner called the police and reported it. The police would run the tags and call Daniel, who would likely say he’d lent it to a friend who forgot where he’d parked it. The police would be dubious, but would say no problem, hang up and Daniel would retrieve his car.

For that moment when owner and car were reunited, Elle had left a little note in the glove compartment for him.

Dear Daniel,

I lied. I didn’t leave Søren because he asked me to marry him. I left because of what he did after I said no. If you’d been there, you would never have ratted me out to King. I hope you never have a daughter someday.

Love, Elle.

P.S. Fuck you.

P.P.S. Nice car. I dented the fender on purpose. And the driver’s side door. And the passenger side.