by Annie Dean
She found his nipples with her thumbs. Bold. Dev writhed, gazing up at her with hot, haunted eyes. Teresa touched him in slow circles, watching his face tighten. Just as she’d imagined a few days past, his elegant fingers knotted in the covers. A single sound escaped him, broken.
At that she ran her hands lower, hardly believing she would do it, but with dreamy fascination she watched her pale fingers encircle his penis. Found him hard and hot, but sleek. His hips lifted as his knees came up. Gasping, Dev wrapped his hands around hers.
Heat simmered, threatened to boil. Teresa caught her breath at the thrill of touching him. Reciprocation might kill her.
“Do you want me to stop?” Her gaze on his, she tugged.
“Yes. No.” His thighs trembled, tensed and relaxed in time to her rhythm. “Tess, Tess, I need…”
“What?” Her fingers became more certain, working up and down.
She smoothed a thumb over the tip—sweeping strokes with her fingertips—explored the tender curve of his testicles, and he gasped, gazing up at her as if he were the helpless virgin. Eyes locked on his, she read what pleased him. Willed him to feel a fraction of what she did, beneath layers of fear and uncertainty. Willed everything she felt, straight into him.
“To feed.”
I can’t … this isn’t how—ah.” He arched, eyes wide and incredulous as a series of tremors shook through him. His skin flushed to a radiant hue.
Her body felt flushed, moist, and she wished she could fling away the terrycloth robe. Too much weight on sensitized skin. How she wished she could let him touch her.
Still, Teresa smiled as she lay down beside him in the lavish bed. After a moment’s hesitation, she dropped her head onto his bare chest. Nutmeg and cloves saturated the air.
“You fed me,” he murmured. “But it’s not supposed to work like that.”
“Apparently it does.”
“With you it does.” In the lamplight his face held an oddly vulnerable cast. “With a real man you’d have no doubt—I mean…”
“I saw your face. And not to rely upon a cliché, but … you’re glowing.”
Why didn’t she feel more elated? She could prevail. Tonight she’d resisted incredible temptation, turning the tables back on him. Instead she ached, desperately.
Winning suddenly seemed like the biggest loss of her life.
Day Five
For a while, Teresa pretended to sleep.
A knock gave her an excuse to rise. She felt drained. Perhaps the feeling sprang from lack of rest, the energy he’d siphoned the night before, disruption of her routine, or a combination of all those factors. Wordlessly she slipped her novitiate’s robe over the top of her nightgown—crazy how she’d become nocturnal so quickly—and padded over to answer the door.
“You have a telephone call.” Sister Agnes fluttered her hands like two distressed birds, beckoning Teresa toward the library.
Those simple words formed a core of dread in her stomach. Barefoot, she followed, and the sensation increased when she saw all the sisters standing in a dove-gray line. All wore sad, solemn expressions.
“Go on.” The Mother Superior nodded at the heavy, black rotary phone on her desk. “We’ll talk afterward.”
After lifting the receiver to her ear, she swallowed twice before she could speak. “Hello?”
“Hi Teri. It’s been a long time.” Awkward pause. For a moment she couldn’t place the voice, and then—
“Ben?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I have news.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Her brother hadn’t called her since she left for the Sisters of Peace, and he’d only visited her once at St. Mary’s. They weren’t exactly close, never had been.
“It’s Dad. A fight broke out in his cell and … he didn’t make it.”
She swayed, and one of the sisters shoved a chair under her before she hit the floor. “I … how did it happen?”
“I don’t know much yet, Teri. I’m going to Graterford tomorrow to sign some papers and make funeral arrangements. Do you think you’ll come back for it? It’ll probably be on Monday, cheaper than Sunday. Viewing is Saturday night.”
Rubbing a hand over her face, she thought about it, trying to work out what day it was. Lately they all blurred together. Friday.
“I don’t know. You still living in Clairton?”
“Yeah. This house won’t sell.”
Teresa supposed it wouldn’t. “Then I know where to find you. You think you’ll use Finney again?”
Home of the Affordable Funeral and Cremation. Ask about our cremation packages! Memories bombarded her. She didn’t want to see smears of blood on black and white tile, didn’t want to see her mother’s twitching fingertips or her ruined face. Closing her eyes didn’t help.
“Probably. I’m not exactly rolling in it.”
She hung onto her composure by a thread. “I’ll try to come.”
“I’m sorry I had to tell you over the phone.”
“It’s all right. Bye, Ben.”
Sister Ruth took the phone from her nerveless hands, replaced it in the cradle. “I’m so sorry, child. I’ll put you on the train myself.”
The rest of the sisters gathered around her, hugging her as she bowed her head, not in prayer but in an attempt to stem the tide of mental images. Dark things, pictures she kept walled up.
Lo, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil…
“No, I need to fly.”
She needed to ride the winds on the back of a dragon. Needed Dev’s arms around her, not these. Though they meant well, their hands entrapped her. Teresa suffered the group embrace for a moment longer before she pushed to her feet. Gazing into each face, one by one, she wondered whether this tainted her in their eyes. They hadn’t known about her father, sentenced to life in Graterford. The order preached forgiveness, but perhaps it didn’t extend to one whose line was so steeped in blood and darkness.
“Of course your vows can wait until you return,” the Mother Superior said kindly. “We’re truly sorry for your loss. Let’s pray a little.”
She followed to the chapel and she knelt. Teresa whispered her responses through the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but she did not feel the usual sense of peace. Instead she felt as though she were unraveling, any moment to fly apart at the seams.
“Thank you,” she said when they finished. “I need to pack a bag. Excuse me.”
Back in her room, she stuffed the remainder of her street clothes into the battered backpack she’d used at St. Mary’s. Today things came full circle, though she’d only ever wanted to escape Clairton and find some measure of peace. The weight of it hit her anew and she slid along the wall to the floor. Teresa wrapped her arms around her legs, her chin dropping onto her knees. Twilight bathed the room in strange shadows.
Suddenly he was beside her. “Tess? Can I hold you?”
“Please.” She shook with the effort of keeping herself locked down. Just a moment or two and she’d be all right. Then they could fly.
His arms came around her. Dev leaned his head against hers, whispering in muffled French. He possessed no heartbeat above which she could rest her head and listen to its comforting rhythm, but his fierce heat offered its own consolation.
Long moments later, he murmured, “We should go. If they find you huddled on the floor, they may insist on sending someone with you. Unless that’s what you want?”
“No. Let’s go.”
At the threshold she paused, took one last glance at the plain room where she’d spent the last year and half. I always felt so safe here. She led the way to the front doors. At first she thought they wouldn’t encounter anyone, then Sister Ruth came down the hall with Agnes close behind. “You need a ride to the bus station?”
“It’s not far,” Teresa said, not expecting to go without a fight. “I can walk. I know you don’t like driving at night.”
The other woman’s dark eye
s searched hers. “You’re sure about this?”
Oddly, she felt as though the question encompassed a much grander scale, but she didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I’m positive.”
Sister Ruth sighed. “Sure enough, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Go on then before it gets any later.”
Turning, Teresa heard Agnes protest, “You can’t let her go out alone into the dark, recently bereaved! Why, anything could happen.”
Ruth’s quiet response as she stepped out the door astonished her. “She’s not alone, Sister, and it’s out of our hands now.”
Pulling her hood up against the spring chill, Teresa glanced at Dev. “She saw you?”
He seemed astonished. “I think so.”
“And she still let me go,” she said softly.
The gloaming sky showed charcoal and plum over the tree line. They angled their steps in that direction. As they ran, she cast one last look over shoulder at the monastery. It sat still and quiet, golden light spilling from the kitchen windows.
“Ready?” When she nodded, he began to change. She could see the beauty in him like this now, such savage grace.
She clung to the animal strength of him as he thundered into motion. The trees blurred to a dim green mosaic as the land receded beneath her. Up high the air felt wet and cold; she needed his heat. If she wept up here, the tears would freeze.
Instead she held on until her knuckles gleamed white. Countless cities twinkled and faded beneath them along with the smoky lines of rivers and the sparkle of the Great Lakes. She wished she could grieve because that would be an honest emotion, but reality came in an ugly snarl, because beneath the numbness lurked a smile.
To her surprise he took them to the park, just blocks from the house on Halcomb where she grew up. That raised a sense of unease, though he’d said she had no secrets from him. She supposed this proved it.
Nothing about the old neighborhood had changed. Same rusty cars, same broken chain link fences, same tired houses with peeling paint or weathered siding. Teresa didn’t know why it mattered, but she hated for him to see where she came from.
She tried to cover it with small talk. “When the mill closed, it hit people pretty hard. The area just hasn’t been the same since.”
A lot of things would never be the same. He didn’t offer his hand or words of comfort. If she wanted tenderness, she’d need to ask. Unless she presented him with overt cues, reading such things wouldn’t come easily to Dev. When would he have practiced?
As they walked, she counted broken streetlamps. Dogs rummaged in nearby alleys. Beneath the heavy web of ugly electrical wires, quiet despair ruled these streets.
The house looked exactly as she remembered it too: a dilapidated ranch with a detached garage done in bile-green siding. Two overgrown hedges nearly obscured the driveway and the half fence her dad had erected to keep out the neighbor’s dogs stood at a drunken angle in the front yard.
He seemed to read her expression. “Some flowers can thrive anywhere, Tess.”
Ben still kept the spare key beneath the mat on the front stoop, so she let them in. “He’s probably still at Graterford.”
Stepping over the threshold sent a cold chill through her. When she left here at eighteen, she’d hoped never to return. At twenty-four, the house seemed smaller than she recalled, tiny rooms, dingy walls and low ceilings. She flicked on the overhead light, noted the dirt caked inside the cheap plastic fixture. Her dad’s tweed recliner still sat before the TV. The stain where she’d spilled her grape Kool-Aid too. The place smelled faintly musty, a touch of mildew in the walls.
From the living room she could either turn left down the hall toward the bedrooms or pass straight into the kitchen. Black and white linoleum. Teresa drew up short, her whole body taut. Seeing that floor hit much harder than remembering it. For a moment she thought she might be sick.
Dev spoke her nightmare aloud. “She died there.” Not a question. “You found her.”
“Yeah.” It took all her self-control to get the word out.
“Your father murdered her.” His voice sounded cool and remote. Except for the intense glitter of his eyes, she might even believe he felt nothing.
“Shut up.”
“He promised to love and cherish her. Instead he beat her to death with his fists.”
“Shut up!”
In two strides he crossed the living room and stood with her in the doorway to the kitchen. Side by side, but not touching.
“That’s why I don’t affect you,” he said, as if in realization. “You’re almost completely armored by fear. He’s why you ran all the way to British Columbia, why you worked so hard to find somewhere you’d be safe.”
“You don’t know anything about it.” The words felt wrenched from her. She wanted to hurt him as he was hurting her, digging deep into the ragged edges of a wound she’d believed to be healed. “He caught her with another man, Dev. She came home with his sweat on her skin, his…”
“So she deserved to die? Did your God bestow the right of judgment on your father, Tess? And because your mother was a whore, you must be a Madonna? Because you were so afraid you’d turn out like her, afraid your father would find a reason to come for you next?”
She went for him with a shriek, hands curled into claws, but he stood and took it. Though she dug deep into his flesh, though she pounded with all her might, it didn’t seem to matter. Ridiculous for her to think, even for a moment, that she could wound him. At last she bowed her head, tears flowing like acid from her eyes. They seared her cheeks.
“He’s gone,” Dev whispered. “You’re free.”
Her breath went. “You … you weren’t with me today. You did this somehow. Did you kill him?” He hesitated long enough for her to recoil, backing toward the front door. “What have you done?”
“Merely planted a seed.”
Clenching her hands into fists, she bit out, “Tell me.”
“Lust is a powerful force,” he said. “Perhaps his cellmate discovered the uncontrollable need to sheathe himself in the nearest warm body. The resulting argument may have ended in a shiv to the kidney.”
“My father would have died before he let another man touch him!”
Untouched by remorse, his smile grew. “So he did. Isn’t it moving when people die true their principles?”
“You monster! Get thee behind me.”
His smile became ugly. “That only works in the movies. He beat the woman he loved to death, Teresa. He stole all the good memories of your mother and by his mindless violence abandoned you to an older brother who then left you to raise yourself. She was human and lonely, so she strayed, but that doesn’t mean she deserved to die. You refuse to remember how much you loved her, how much joy she brought the people in her life. In truth, you hate and fear him so much you rewrote your life in his shadow.”
“You had no right,” she said, livid. “You may as well have stabbed him yourself.”
“I’m not allowed to do that, I’m afraid.” His cold blue eyes said he’d wanted to. “Lie to yourself if you wish, but you’re glad he’s gone. You feel free for the first time in years. No longer do you need to fear him as the divine hand of retribution if you don’t live just right.”
“I believe in God and I want to take vows,” she shouted. “It isn’t because of him!”
He held her gaze with his, fierce and determined. “Yes, you have faith, but you don’t have a calling, Tess. Not like Sister Ruth. If you did, you wouldn’t delight in flying with me quite so much. You wouldn’t be starving for the smallest taste of joy. You just wanted somewhere to hide … but now you have no reason to return.”
“Do you count it a win if you get me to renounce the order?” she lashed back. “Do you get extra points; perks in Hell?”
His eyes closed. “There are no perks in Hell, Teresa. I’ve resigned myself to failure here, which means I’ll never be sent above again. I gain nothing by this, except your freedom. I read your heart in its most secret place, and I sa
w you wanted him dead.”
Truth.
In some ways Dev was like a child, and she’d unknowingly handed him a loaded gun. He probably didn’t understand why she took refuge in anger. Hearing it stated plainly deflated the illusion however. She dropped onto the sagging orange and brown flowered couch and buried her face in her hands.
“God forgive me. I am the monster.”
“No,” he told her, gentle now. “You’re simply human. I don’t blame you for thinking prison wasn’t justice for what he did. You lived in terror he would be paroled, but today John Wolff faces the true judgment. His sins rest beyond both of us now.”
“Ben did the best he could.” She looked up at last. “He was just nineteen and it might’ve been worse if I’d been taken into foster care.”
Dev didn’t argue the point as he sat beside her on the couch. “Now you have no reason not to live.”
She sighed. “So that’s why. You think if you cut the cord that binds me to the Sisters of Peace, I’ll forget myself enough to succumb. Well, time is running out, Dev, and I won’t toss my soul away on a whim.”
“Accursed hell, no!” He continued more quietly, “I just want the rest of the world to see the woman who flies with me.”
He stole all the good memories of your mother…
Maybe it was time to take them back.
“My mom’s name was Sharon, and she liked pistachio ice cream.” Her voice quavered. “She liked pink fuzzy sweaters and she wanted to learn to knit.” Gazing upward, Teresa blinked back more tears. “And she l-loved knock-knock jokes…”
“May I?” His hand hovered near her cheek. When she nodded, his fingertips traced through the damp trails down her face, his eyes vivid and intent. Her tears appeared to fascinate him. Do demons weep? “I will never be sorry for setting you free.”
The moment built, layered intensity, gaze to gaze. Her focus narrowed to his mouth. Before she could respond, her brother came through the front door. Ben pulled up short seeing her sitting on the sofa. “Wow, did you charter a private jet?”
She managed a smile, not knowing whether to hug him. “Something like that.”