“What, Mistress?” he asked, looking up at her from the floor with groveling eyes.
“I’m going to leave this shit-hole house of yours and forget you ever existed. Now take off your clothes.”
Nora made it back to New York on December 20th. She spent a sleepless night in her bed wondering if she’d done the right thing fucking around with a mob guy. Victor hadn’t been that bad. He, like her, had been an unwitting accomplice to the mafia far more than a willing participant. Victor hadn’t chosen to be born of a crime boss and claimed to hate his father’s world.
“Yeah, you hate the sinner,” she said as she carved a shallow dollar sign into his back with a razor blade, “but you love that sinner’s money, don’t you?”
“I couldn’t give it away, could I?” he asked as if she’d suggested he should put the money into a rocket ship and aim it at the sun. “Who would do that?”
“I know a guy who did.” Søren had inherited a vast fortune from his monster father and kept not a penny for himself. “I’d let you meet him, but you don’t even deserve to tie his shoelaces. Fuck you, Rich Bitch, you don’t even deserve to tie mine.”
She showed him that night and all week how little he deserved any mercy, compassion, or kindness from her. By the end of the week, he was so in love with her he offered her another fifty grand to stay through Christmas. As she walked out his front door without even a backward glance, she’d told him to shove his dirty money up his ass.
Knowing what a freak he was, he probably did.
The morning after returning, Nora called Theremin’s and made sure the piano delivery would take place. They promised it would, and she spent the rest of the day working on her new book. Without Wes around, the house echoed with silence. She played some Christmas music, but it didn’t fill up the emptiness in the house. She put on her coat and went for a walk, but the emptiness went with her. It wasn’t in the house at all. It was inside her.
At six that evening, she put her coat on, grabbed her keys, and got into her car. She drove to Wakefield and found herself parking across the street from Sacred Heart. The memories pressed in so close she had to shove them away lest she trip over them.
The parking lot was empty, thank God. No one around to recognize her, ask her what she was doing hanging around.
She stepped onto the cobblestone path that led down a tree-lined walkway to the rectory. It had snowed the night before, and a thousand footprints marred the new-fallen powder. The piano movers had come this way as they’d rolled the piano toward the house. She wished she’d been here to see the look on Søren’s face. She’d given the piano anonymously, although she knew he’d know the gift came from her. After all, it was she who’d broken the sustain pedal on his Steinway. She sort of owed him a new piano.
As Nora reached the end of the path, she paused and cocked her head to the side. Through the windows of the rectory, she heard music emanating. She stepped closer and listened harder. Yes, music. Piano music. Søren was already playing his new piano. At the front door, she pressed her ear to the wood. She knew this song. Of course she knew it. She could even hear the lyrics in her head as the notes drifted through the door.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices...
For yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn...
Fall on your knees...
Nora wanted to fall on her knees right then and there. She wanted to fall on her knees at Søren’s side and rest her head on the piano bench like she had so many years ago. He played the song because he knew it was her favorite. He played even though he didn’t know she could hear him. He played it for the memory of that night and all the Christmases they’d celebrated together in secret, each one more holy than the last.
She raised her hand and let it hover two inches from the door. When she knocked, the music would cease. He’d come to the door, open it and let her in, and he would beat her brutally, the way she liked it, and make love to her all night long.
Tonight was Søren’s birthday. If she crossed the threshold tonight, she knew she would give herself to him. And not only for one night, but forever. She would lose Wesley. She would lose the life she’d made for herself. She’d even lose her name. Infamous, notorious Mistress Nora would turn back into Eleanor again if she returned to Søren.
Maybe he would let her be herself. Maybe he would let her keep her name. Maybe they would find a new way to be together. And maybe magic elves would show up at her house and crown her Queen of the Christmas Fairies.
Nice dream, but Søren had already told her when and if she came back to him, his first order would be to give up her job with Kingsley. She could be with Søren or she could be Mistress Nora. She couldn’t be both.
Nora took a step back without knocking. But before leaving, she reached out and drew a heart with her fingertip in the window.
“Merry Christmas, Sir,” she whispered into the crisp night winter air. “Happy birthday, my love.”
When she walked away from the rectory, she didn’t take the path. Instead, she crossed the unmarred snowy ground, leaving her small and familiar footprints behind her. At least he would know she had been there.
Sometimes that’s all one needed to get through a hard day—someone just being there.
Maybe one of these days she would finally tire of being Mistress Nora, and she would go back to him and fall on her knees at his feet again. Maybe someday she’d give up the new life she’d made for herself and be his once more.
But not tonight. She’d already given him his Christmas and birthday present this year. He wasn’t getting anything else from her.
Nora drove the forty minutes back to her house. She’d make it through Christmas even if she didn’t celebrate Christmas at all. Once upon a time, Christmas had been a fearful time for the early Christians, which is why they’d hidden their celebration under the mantle of a pagan one. The earliest Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas at all, she told herself. She would be like one of them this year. She would skip Christmas, and it would be fine.
When Nora pulled into her driveway, she noticed a light in her window. Hadn’t she turned them off when she’d left?
She opened the front door and found a teenage boy sitting in the middle of the living room floor wrapping a present. He was wearing jeans and a red-and-green plaid flannel shirt over a white V-neck tee. With the Christmas lights on the tree so bright and shining, even his sandy hair was glowing red and green.
“Holy shit, Wes. What are you doing here?”
Wes smiled at her, and it felt like summer had snuck in the house while winter had its back turned. “I told Mom and Dad I had to work over break and could only come home for a few days. We did Christmas yesterday. I got back this afternoon.”
“But...”
“I know your dad’s long gone,” he said a little sheepishly. “And you said you and your mom don’t get along. You don’t do Christmas with your friends like you used to… I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Well. Damn.”
“Since I don’t want to be a liar, you’re gonna have to put me to work,” Wes said. “Does your office need cleaned again?”