“He said...‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’”
* * *
She heard footsteps on the choir loft stairs and looked up from her writing.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite lapsarian. How are you, Miss Nora?”
“Hello, Father Mike. You do know lapsarian is an adjective referring to the fall of man, right? Not a noun meaning a lapsed Catholic.”
“Well, it should mean a lapsed Catholic. It sounds like a lapsed Catholic. I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” he said as he lugged what appeared to be a heavy box of something over the back of a pew. “How does a young lady who writes dirty books know so much about theology?”
“Osmosis.”
Father Mike O’Dowell, the priest of St. Luke’s, cocked a white and bushy eyebrow right at her.
“I used to ‘date’ someone who had a PhD in theology,” she explained. “It was a dirty joke.”
“I’m a priest, not a child. You don’t have to put date in quotes. I assume you used to sleep with someone who had a PhD in theology?”
“I did.”
“Osmosis. I get it.” He tapped the side of his nose and pointed at her. “Clever.”
“Did I shock you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“One of these days I’m going to shock you, Father Mike. It’s my top goal in life.”
“Good luck with that, my dear. I used to minister to men on death row. I’d be more shocked if you’d never ‘dated’ someone.”
“I ‘dated’ a nineteen-year-old boy this morning.”
Father Mike sighed wistfully. “God, I miss nineteen.”
Nora laughed. Father Mike looked like an old-school priest, and talked like it with his faded Irish accent, but he didn’t scare her one bit. He had a mighty scowl but it turned to a smile too quickly to intimidate her.
“Do you need some help there, Father?”
“Please. Unless I’m interrupting your prayers.”
“Not praying,” she said as she took a stack of brand-new shiny blue hymnals from the box and helped Father Mike place them in the back of each pew. “Just thinking.”
“Thinking? Sounds dangerous.”
“It is.”
“Boy trouble?” he asked.
“Always.”
“Somebody break your heart?”
“No. I broke someone’s heart.”
“Feeling guilty?” Father Mike asked. “There’s hope for you yet if you haven’t lost your Catholic guilt.”
“Sorry. No guilt. Not where he’s concerned. It’s just...we were very happy together right up until the moment we weren’t.”
“What happened?”
“I changed,” she said. “There was something I needed to do with my life, and he wouldn’t let me do it. I had to choose between staying with him and not being the real me, and being the real me and leaving him. Does that make sense?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been there, lass. My own brother wouldn’t speak to me for five years after I left home to join the church.”
“Five years? But you’re Irish. Aren’t you all supposed to send one child in the family to a convent or a seminary?”
Father Mike stood up straight and stared at a wrought-iron cross hanging on the wall at the back of the choir loft.
“Our priest growing up...he mistreated my oldest brother.”
“Mike,” she said, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“We put that bastard in jail after my father beat him with a golf club. Ten years later when I told the family I was joining the church, Seamus said it was like the husband of a Jewish girl joining the Nazi party.”
“The path I took, it hurt my...ex–whatever he was. What I wanted to do with my life, the person I needed to be, he couldn’t be a part of it,” Nora said.
“It scared Seamus when I became a priest. First time he saw me in the collar he swore he didn’t even know me anymore. I looked the same but he couldn’t see me. Took a while before his eyes adjusted.”
“My gentleman has very good eyes. But he still can’t see me for me.”
“Any regrets about leaving him?”
“If I had to do it over again, I’d do the same thing. And,” she said, glancing down at her closed laptop in her bag, “we certainly enjoyed it while it lasted.”
“Then what’s the problem, lass?”
Nora shrugged as she sorted the hymnals in her hand.
“I miss him.”
Father Mike gave her a look of compassion and the kindness almost undid her.
“That is a problem, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nora said, swallowing. “Yes, it is.”
“You think he’ll come around?” Father Mike asked as he gathered up the old, crumbling hymnals and started placing them in the box.
“I keep hoping he will. No luck yet.”
“Is he a good man?”
“He...” Nora paused, trying to figure out the best way to answer the question. “He sold a very precious possession of his once in order to buy me something I needed and couldn’t afford at the time.”
“What did he buy you?”
“A laptop so I could write my dirty books.”
“What did he sell?”
“His dignity.”
“Sounds like a very good man then.”
“He’s the best man alive,” Nora said and realized as she said the words, she meant them.
“Sounds like you’re still in love with him.”
“I am. He knows I am.”
“He’s still in love with you?”
“He was last time I checked. Seems like it should be easy, right? He loves me. I love him. But it never is that easy.”
“God said ‘Love is patient. Love is kind.’ He never said ‘Love is easy.’”
“Love is patient,” Nora repeated. “You think if I’m patient he’ll eventually come around and love me for me instead of waiting for me to be someone I’m not?”
“I’ve been screwing up mightily for sixty-eight years. God’s still patiently waiting for me to get it right, and He hasn’t given up on me yet.”
“Fine. I’ll give him sixty-five more years to come to his senses. Then I’m moving on with my life. But after that I’m finding a new priest to be in love with.”
Father Mike’s eyes went round as Communion wafers.
“Did I finally shock you?” she asked, handing over a stack of hymnals.
He shook his head again, and his eyes returned to their normal size. “You’ll have to do better than that. I know too many priests. Anyone I know?”
“I’m kidding,” she lied. “I wouldn’t sleep with a priest. That would be a sin.”
“For your sake, I hope you’re kidding.”
“Why is that?”
“You’re a sweet girl, even if you do correct my theology. Involved with a priest? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“That bad, is it?” Nora asked, keeping her voice neutral as she sorted hymnals into the box.
“Priest I went to seminary with had a lover for years. Fifteen, if you can believe it, before it was over.”
“Over? Did they get caught?”
“One dark night she washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of vodka. Never woke up.”
Father Mike said the words casually, but Nora felt them like a punch in the gut. She wanted to ask the woman’s name, what church she attended. Nora wanted to know if her priest called her by a pet name that made her melt, if he told her he needed her, if he told her she was his heart.
“And him?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral as she slipped a hymnal into the box. “What happened to him?”
“They transferred him to a church five hundred miles away. They sent him packing so fast he didn’t even get the chance to pay his last respects to her family.”
“That’s awful,” Nora said not meeting his eyes.
“It’s shameful, is what it is. She thought she was giving him the best years of her life. Tur
ned out they were the only years. Suicide is a mortal sin, but I’d put it on his head, not hers.”
“Do you honestly think God wants a celibate clergy?”
“Doesn’t matter if God wants it or not. The church wants it and the church sets the dress code. God doesn’t want all men to shave their heads and march in formation either, but the army certainly does. You want to join the army, be prepared to march. Don’t want to march, don’t join the army. If you do join the army, for God’s sake, don’t marry a pacifist.”
“You can’t help who you fall in love with sometimes.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Father Mike said. “Which is why God gave us hearts and common sense, and He put them in different places.”
“We’re Catholics, Father Mike. We believe in the Sacred Heart, remember? No one ever talks about the Sacred Common Sense.”
“True. But still, my heart breaks for the girl.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Any regrets about being a priest? Anything to repent?”
“Being a priest has been my North Star on this journey. But I wonder sometimes about the children I didn’t have. You get called Father all you life, you can’t help but wonder...”
Nora looked at the iron cross on the wall.
“My old priest would have made a wonderful father.” She remembered a long-ago visit to Denmark, and seeing Søren holding his baby niece Gitte in his arms. For hours he walked with her, trying to comfort and quiet her colicky cries. He was so patient, so endlessly patient. Nora didn’t want to have children herself and she had no regrets about that at all. But Søren never holding his son or daughter? That hurt her. That she regretted. And she hated to think about it, but Søren was fourteen years her senior and women lived longer than men. Wouldn’t it be something to have part of Søren live on after he was gone?
“Breaks my heart to know he’ll never have children,” Nora said. “And you, too. I wish they’d let priests get married. Don’t you think it’s a little weird, priests preaching about love when they’re not allowed to feel it?”
“Oh, priests know everything there is to know about love.”
“You do, do you?” she asked with a smile.
“Don’t confuse love with romance, young lady. Romance is beautiful, it’s a gesture, it’s a walk in a park with a pretty girl. Love is ugly sometimes. It’s a crawl into a war zone to save a friend. Romance whispers sweet nothings. Love tells painful truths. Romance gives an engagement ring. Love takes a bullet. I gave up marriage and children and sex and the comforts of family, because I love my Lord, and I would take a bullet for anyone in this church, including you, young lady. Now you tell me I don’t know what love is.”
Nora couldn’t tell him that because she couldn’t say a word. She leaned over the pew and took Father Mike in her arms.
“You’re flirting,” he said in a teasing tone. “My heart belongs to another.”
“I’m not flirting,” she said, her head on his shoulder. “Sometimes even a lapsed Catholic needs a hug from a priest.”
Father Mike chuckled and patted her on the back, kindly as a grandfather. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she rolled her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was me.”
“Good. Afraid it was my pacemaker.”
Nora glanced at her phone. “Well. Speak of the devil,” she said.
“Is it him?” Father Mike whispered, grinning at her like a teenage girl at a sleepover.
“It is.”
“Answer it, lass. Maybe he’s finally coming around. I would if I were him.”
Nora leaned over the pew, kissed Father Mike on the cheek and hit the answer button.
“This better be good,” she said.
“Define good,” came a sonorous voice over the line.
“I’m very busy,” she said. “I’m at St. Luke’s helping a priest friend of mine organize his hymnals.”
“If I didn’t know Mike O’Dowell, I would assume ‘organize his hymnals’ was a euphemism.”
“Not a euphemism unless you’re calling to ask me to organize your hymnals.”
“My hymnals are in perfect order already, but thank you.” His voice was cool, tempered, even. Yet she sensed something not right, a fissure in his composure.
“Then to what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”
“I need you.”
“Should I bring wine and wear lingerie?” she asked. “Or bring lingerie and wear wine?”
“Not necessary. I’m afraid this won’t be a particularly romantic evening.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, slipping out the side door of St. Luke’s and into the parking lot.
“There was an accident.”
“What happened?” Nora asked, her stomach sinking to the asphalt. “Was someone hurt?”
“We can discuss it tonight. I should go.”
“Søren—wait. Was anyone hurt?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding resigned and tired.
“Who?”
“We can talk about it tonight.”
“Søren,” she said again. “Please, you’re scaring me. Who was hurt?”
He sighed and Nora’s heart died a little in the sigh. That he didn’t want to tell her who was hurt meant she didn’t want to know.
“I was.”
24
Cleaning Wounds
NORA DROVE TO Sacred Heart as fast as she could praying the entire way she’d find Søren alone in the house. She parked her car behind the house in the grove that ringed the rectory. When Nora reached the side door of the rectory she found a sign taped to the window. It read “No visitors allowed. Leave Father Stearns alone. This is an order.” It was signed “Diane, Who Means Business.”
Thank God for Diane. At least she knew no one would bother her and Søren tonight.
“Søren?” she called out when she slipped through the side door and into the kitchen. No one answered. The kitchen counters were bursting with small elegant arrangements in various pots and vases of the sort one received after the death of a loved one or during a long illness. Unapologetically nosy, she peeked at a card in the nearest arrangement, a single orchid in a pale blue pot, and read the note—“Heal fast, Father S. We need you to crush First Presbyterian with us. Love, Your Sacred Heart Soccer Team.”
“Søren?” She called his name louder and raced through the house, seeking him out in every room. He wasn’t downstairs so she rushed upstairs, the soles of her navy blue sandals slapping loudly against the wood stairs.
“In here, Eleanor,” he called back. She ran to the bathroom and found him standing in front of the sink. He had a gauze bandage wrapped around his right forearm and right hand. “I could use your assistance if you don’t mind the sight of blood, which we both know you don’t.”
“Please tell me what happened,” she demanded, her heart galloping as if she’d run a four-minute mile. It hadn’t stopped since his phone call. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Sprained wrist. A few lacerations. Nothing that won’t heal.”
She stepped into the bathroom and washed her hands brusquely.
“If you could remove the gauze and then replace it, I would be in your debt,” Søren said. “It’s not easy to do with one hand.”
“How did you of all people manage to sprain your wrist?” She took his arm into her hands and started peeling back the layers of gauze. “And why couldn’t you just tell me you had a sprained wrist over the phone? You were fighting with King again, weren’t you?” If he was, she’d sprain his other wrist.
“A drunk driver ran me off the road.”
“On your motorcycle?” Nora could scarcely breathe.
“I’m afraid so. But like me, it only suffered cosmetic damage. I’m quite lucky. As a priest I should say I’m blessed, but let’s be honest, sometimes it’s nothing but luck that keeps one out of the morgue.”
“Oh, my God.” Nora could barely speak for the shock and fury. “A drunk driver ran you of
f the road? Who is he? I’ll kill him.”
“She, not he. She was a twenty-year-old college student, and she is already dead so I wouldn’t worry about exacting any revenge. She’s in God’s hands.”
“Jesus...you were involved in a fatal car accident, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I just told you.”
“You told me on the phone you’d been in an accident. You didn’t tell me it was a fatal car accident.”
“I know how you drive under the best of circumstances. I didn’t want you in an accident on your way to see me.”
“You would be furious at me if I’d been in a serious car accident and didn’t tell you.”
“I’m a priest, Eleanor. I can hardly call you from the hospital, can I? I do rounds there and every doctor and nurse knows me. The nurse called Diane, and as soon as the church had word of the accident, I had a dozen parishioners at the ER offering their comfort, prayers and food. Don’t take offense. I would have much preferred your company.”
“When did this happen?”
“Two nights ago.”
“Two nights?”
Søren exhaled heavily. He’d always hated having to explain himself. He did everything for a reason, he’d said time and time again. Couldn’t she simply trust that?
“I’ve had visitors all yesterday checking on me. The bishop, half a dozen Jesuits, Diane and her family, Dr. Sutton, Dr. Keighley and, of course, Claire insisted on staying the night last night. My sister is, as you know, overprotective of me.”
“Did Diane bring you home?”
“Claire did. And she’s also taking care of repairs to the Ducati. I knew you’d be worried about it.”
She couldn’t have cared less about the fucking motorcycle.
“That’s good.” Nora nodded. “I’m glad Claire was here. And you... I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I will be once the bandage is changed.”
“Right.” She took the hint and got back to work. “Sorry. I’m not used to this.”
Her hands shook as she finished unwrapping the bandage from his arm. When she peeled back the gauze pads she found road rash, raw and red but healing.
“Dealing with minor wounds? I would think the most infamous dominatrix in the state would be an expert by now.”
“I’m not used to being the last person to know when something’s happened to you.”
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