by Selena Kitt
This photograph was nothing, lumped in with a bunch of innocuous family photos. So why were they in here, hidden away with things far more illicit?
Of course he was hiding something.
That was obvious, with the locks, the secret doors, the contraband photographs. He’d said he would explain it to her some day, but Leah knew she was going to have to demand answers before long, because now that he was hers, she couldn’t reconcile the man she loved standing behind a camera and taking photographs like the ones pinned to the clothes line, and the look on his face when she’d asked him about it told her he knew that.
She was about to close up the box when she noticed an envelope stuck all the way at the bottom. It was sealed, and she frowned, hesitating, but then she shrugged and opened it, expecting to find baby teeth or locks of hair. It was more photographs.
Mother?
Patty Wendy was much younger in the picture, and she was wearing the dress, the same dress Leah had worn to The Bronze Door that night, the one he had pulled up when he bent Leah over in the bathroom and fucked her.
And then she wasn’t wearing it.
In the next photograph, Leah’s mother wasn’t wearing anything at all and Erica’s mother wasn’t wearing anything either, and the two women were kissing and touching.
Leah closed her eyes and closed the envelope, not looking at the rest, although there were plenty more. She couldn’t bear to look through them, the only thought on her mind not the two women captured on film, by the man who took the photographs.
Because there was really no question.
Leah knew exactly who had been holding the camera.
She put the box back, turned out the light, and went back into the darkroom. To think she’d believed her mother would be shocked by what she’d discovered under Mr. Nolan’s bed! Leah was careful to slide the bolt and lock the padlock, putting the tapestry back in place before starting to get dressed. She was tying a pair of Keds when Erica came down the hall, still wet from her shower and wearing a robe, hair wrapped in a towel.
“Where are you going?” Erica asked with a frown.
“I’m going to my house.” Leah pulled her hair out from under her collar. “I need to get some things.”
Erica’s eyes widened. “What about your mom?”
“I’m invisible.” Leah smiled and Erica gave her a knowing look. Leah’s room was on the bottom floor of their split-level, and she couldn’t count how many times she’d snuck in and out of her room after her mother was asleep, or when she was supposed to be grounded.
Leah put an arm around her friend’s neck, giving her a long hug.
“She’s not going to kill you!” Erica pulled away, laughing. “I’m sure you’ll be right back.”
The walk to Leah’s house was short, and she came to the house from the back, through Mr. and Mrs. Kohut’s yard, so as not to be seen. She checked all the windows to make sure she didn’t see anyone before sliding her screen and window open. Her room was untouched—clothes still all over the floor, books strewn on her desk. She shoved those into her book bag and then grabbed a duffel out of the closet, quietly emptying her drawers into it.
Kneeling to get her skirts, she heard her mother’s voice drifting through the heating grate. Leah’s room was right on the other side of the kitchen, and she realized her mother must have company.
“You can’t do this,” her mother said.
It was a man’s voice responding to her, too soft for Leah to hear.
“I know you care about her,” her mother went on. “But you’re making a huge mistake. This is just some mid-life crisis drama. You’ll get over this.”
Leah froze, heart leaping in her chest. Who was she talking to?
“Rob, you have to stop this!” her mother cried. “You can’t be with Leah, you just can’t. Just think—what would Susan say if she knew? She’s rolling over in her grave!”
Oh my God.
She remembered the phone ringing at the Nolans’ that morning and realized it must have been her mother. He’d come here to tell her, and now her mother was pulling out Erica’s dead mother as ammunition? Leah stared at the heating grate as if she could see them, and this time she heard his voice, raised enough for her to make out his words.
“Patty, I love her,” he said, his tone firm.
“It’s impossible!” Her mother’s voice rose to almost a screech. Leah winced, wanting to cover her ears, but she didn’t. “It’s illegal!”
“It’s not impossible,” he replied calmly. “And it’s not illegal. She’s an adult and this is what she wants.”
“Rob, no!” Her mother’s voice, pleading. Was she crying? “You just can’t do this!”
“Give me a good reason why?” he demanded and Leah’s heart swelled, hearing the determination in his voice. He really did love her!
“Because Leah’s just a child—she’s a baby. She never had a father in her life, and that’s all this is. She doesn’t love you—she loves the idea of having a man in her life.”
Leah stiffened at her words. It wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t true—but would Rob believe her mother’s words? She heard his silence and wondered at it. Was he considering it? Leah clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into her palms.
“Rob, you know I love you.” Her mother’s words were softer now, hard to hear, and Leah leaned in, horrified, to hear her. “I’ve loved you for years. After Susan died, you told me you couldn’t…we couldn’t…because you didn’t want to dishonor her or hurt Erica. What do you think you’re doing now?”
This isn’t happening. My mother is in love with Rob?
Leah knew she’d always had a little teasing crush on him, but…
Then she remembered the pictures under his bed, the ones tucked way at the back of the cabinet, in the bottom of the box. Hidden.
“The past is past, Patty.” Rob spoke clearly. “I can’t help how I feel. I love Leah and she loves me.”
“But she’s my daughter!” my mother choked. “Please! Don’t do this!”
Leah’s heart should have broken, hearing her mother’s sobs, but it didn’t. Instead, it floated in her chest, beating thick and hard with so much love and pride as she heard Rob tell her, “She may be your daughter, Patty, but she’s her own woman, and she knows what she wants.”
I do, Leah thought. I do, I do.
She knew then it didn’t even matter what had happened a million years ago, between her mother and Erica’s mother and Mr. Nolan. He’d told her what he wanted, what Leah wanted. He loved her. She loved him. That was all that mattered.
“And if you can’t give me a good reason,” Rob said again. “I’m going to marry her.”
“You can’t marry her!” Leah’s mother choked. “You can’t because… oh God… because she’s your daughter, Rob. She’s your daughter...”
The only sound Leah heard was the sobbing coming through the heating grate and the scream in her own head, like a siren going off. She remembered the pictures under the bed, the look in his eyes when he saw her wearing his dead wife’s dress, when he told her, “You look like your mother,” and knew it was true. She just knew it.
“It was only once!” she heard him protest.
“Once is all it takes. Rob! She’s yours! She can only be yours!”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was saving myself for you… or marriage. And I didn’t get either, in the end, now did I?”
A sudden calm came over Leah and she stood, grabbing her bag and opening her bedroom door. They didn’t see her pass the kitchen or go out the front.
She didn’t realize she was crying until she reached the front doors of the church. It was early Sunday—they only offered confession once on Sundays, before mass—and there was a line at the confessional. Leah went to the front of it. The woman standing there waiting took one look at Leah’s face and took a step back, waving her in.
The confessional was dark but she closed her eyes anyway, wiping at the te
ars running down her face, but it was no use—they kept coming.
“Yes, my child?” Father Michael’s voice urged her to speak and she opened her mouth, but no words came out. What could she say?
She took a shaky breath, bowing her head, and whispered, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned...”
The End
CONFESSION
(Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed)
By Selena Kitt
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Confession Book Description
“With the mouth, confession is made into salvation...” ~ Romans 10:10.
The shocking discovery best friends Leah and Erica have made under Mr. Nolan's bed has them down the wicked path of temptation, both girls veering far from the narrow path dictated by their strict Catholic upbringing, and their sexual transgressions have had unintended consequences.
Erica finds her life turned upside down when Leah falls for Erica's father, but just as Erica is beginning to accept their love for each other, Leah disappears. Bewildered and abandoned, Erica and Mr. Nolan are faced with sadness and confusion at their loss, but while Mr. Nolan spirals into mourning, Erica is determined to find her friend.
Erica can’t possibly know why Leah has vanished, but when she enlists the help of Father Michael, her search and the real reason for Leah's disappearance intersect to uncover a multitude of shocking confessions and a secret that will shake not only the foundation of their faith, but the entire institution of the Catholic Church itself.
Don’t miss Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed: GRACE, the shocking conclusion to the three-part series!
Chapter One
Leah thought there couldn’t be anything worse than the four weeks she’d spent in the nunnery, harbored in the sweltering heat of a room just under the attic with the smell of chipped beef or Salisbury steak wafting up from the kitchen below, making her even more nauseous than she already was, all of this set to the sound of the nuns chanting prayers at five in the morning, every morning.
That was until she arrived at the Mary Magdalene Home for Moral Welfare.
She rode in the back seat of her mother’s 1956 Plymouth Belvedere—last year’s model, her mother couldn’t afford to buy new—thinking about everything she was leaving behind. Her best friend, Erica, would be watching American Bandstand and critiquing hairstyles from the duck’s ass on the boys to beehives on the girls, and Leah wished she was with her—anywhere but here, ducked down out of sight in her mother’s backseat until they left the Detroit city limits.
After that, Father Michael told her she was allowed to sit up, but by then, anything familiar was just a memory, the suburban signs blending together. Concrete gave way to gravel, and eventually, she couldn’t have told you exactly where she was to save her life.
Not that it mattered. No one could save her now, not even God.
“We’re here,” Leah’s mother announced unnecessarily as they pulled between the two tall stone pillars flanking the unmarked entrance. It was a long, winding drive, the trees growing thick and tall on either side, some of them so heavy with foliage in the early July heat, they hung over their path.
Then the corridor opened up and veered left, creating a circular drive in front of a building that was more fortress than house, menacing red brick and oppressive turrets with towering golden crosses on their peaks and windows seeming like a hundred eyes boring down on her. Leah looked up the steep, endless marble stairway ascending to thick and ornately carved, wooden double doors and knew, without setting foot inside the place the grown-ups in her life had purported to offer her asylum, it was more prison than sanctuary.
She’d heard stories about places where girls went when they got themselves in trouble. Girls whose families claimed they moved away to stay with an aunt or a cousin or who supposedly got jobs or internships in other cities. They disappeared for six months or a year, and then reappeared again as if nothing had happened. They were known collectively as those girls.
She’d only known one personally—Alice Kernighan—a girl from their strict Catholic high school whose reputation as being “fast” was proven earned when, near the end, she had been going to school with her skirts safety pinned together at the top or her dresses unzipped in the back with cardigans to cover the gap. No one talked about what had happened or where she went, even when she came back, the same and yet not, somehow. She just became one of those girls.
Now Leah was one of those girls.
The walk up the stairs was exhausting, leaving all three of them panting by the time they reached the landing, Father Michael holding Leah’s blue valise as he rang the bell. Up close, she could see the intricately carved cherry wood doors with Catholic figures on them, two forbidding looking pontiffs with tall mitres on their heads holding pastoral staffs like shepherds’ crooks, brandishing bibles like weapons, both looking askance at her as she stood between the doors, as if they knew exactly what she’d done and why she was there.
When the doors parted like the red sea, she looked up at the nun standing at the entrance in her familiar black and white, a large crucifix hanging in the middle of her habit, her hands out of sight, giving them the appearance the door had opened all by itself. Leah glanced behind the sister, seeing another stairway, a wooden banister leading up. Coming down the stairs were two girls in gray dresses and knee socks wearing Mary Janes. They both had no make-up, their hair pulled back into tight ponytails, their faces somber, eyes downcast. And they were both very, heavily pregnant.
“This must be Lily?” The nun took a step back, indicating with her body language alone that they should enter.
“No, I’m—” Leah began.
“Yes, this is Lily,” Father Michael agreed, leaning heavily on his cane as he took a step through the door. He wasn’t old—in fact, Leah was sure he wasn’t much older than she was—but he had a bad limp. He turned toward her, leaning in to remind her, “Remember, your name is Lily now.”
Leah had forgotten this clandestine operation included assuming a different name. Her mother and Father Michael had reminded her, the sisters at the nunnery had reminded her, and still she had forgotten.
“You do not speak here unless spoken to.” The nun’s gaze swept over Leah, eyes narrowing at the sight of her heels and dress, black with white polka-dots. It was unzipped in the back to make room for her expanding belly, a trick she’d learned from Alice, a little cardigan worn over it in spite of the heat. “That’s far enough, Father.”
Father Michael looked up in surprise, setting Leah’s suitcase down in the foyer. The two girls coming down the stairs gave them a surreptitious glance as they passed, almost silently, in spite of their hard soled shoes on the gleaming wood floors.
“I’m Sister Benedict. You will meet Sister Lawrence, the head of our order, at dinner tonight.” The nun looked from Leah to her mother. “We ask our families to say goodbye here.”
“Now?” Leah blinked, looking for rescue from Father Michael. He gave her a tentative smile, but that was all.
“All right then.” Leah’s mother put a white gloved hand behind her daughter’s neck, giving her a one-armed hug. “You be a good girl. You can write me through Father Michael.”
He nodded, looking at Leah. “Send letters to the address I gave you.”
It was an address in New York. Leah was supposed to be at the School of American Ballet, a cover story her mother had concocted. The irony was Leah should have been auditioning for them that very weekend, had she not found herself in her current predicament.
“Mom...” She bit her lip, not knowing what to say. There was nothing else to be done. Her banishment to this place was an unfortunate necessity and they all knew it. Her mother’s face was unreadable, eyes hidd
en behind a pair of sunglasses. Maybe they hadn’t gotten along sometimes, but her mother was the last familiar thing in the world she had to cling to, and she wanted to, like a little girl at her skirts.
Instead, Leah reached into her dress pocket, pulling out an envelope. She should have given it to her before, in the car maybe, but she’d been too afraid.
She was afraid now.
“Will you give this to him for me?” She held the letter out with trembling hands.
Leah’s mother’s eyebrows shot up and her nostrils flared, but she snatched the envelope out of her daughter’s hands, folding the paper in half and then in half again, before unsnapping her pocketbook and dropping it inside.