“He won’t hurt himself, will he?” Kingsley asked. She was glad he kept his head down when he asked that question so he wouldn’t see the look of horror that crossed Nora’s face.
“No,” she said. “He’s too in love with himself for that.”
“I’m not kidding,” Kingsley said. “I’m worried about him. I’m not used to being worried about him. He worries about us. That’s how it works.”
“He’s still a priest,” Nora said. “Just a suspended priest. When the one year’s suspension is over, he’ll go back to the Jesuits, and everything will go back to normal. Our version of ‘normal’ anyway.”
“Do you want things to go back to normal? I don’t,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter what I want. If he wants to go back, he’ll go back.”
“What do you want?”
“I just want him to come home.”
He nodded. “Moi, aussi.”
“Goodnight, King. I’m going to bed. You should, too.”
“Not yet.” He raised a finger, pointed it at her face. “This detective of yours.”
“He’s not my detective. He’s just a detective. And what about him?” she asked.
“Is he done with us?”
Nora shook her head. “He’s going to come see you. He wants to find out how this dead priest had my business card.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Then tell him that. It’s no big deal.”
Kingsley raised his eyebrow. She pushed it back down.
“Goodnight,” she said again.
She started to walk away. Kingsley called out after her, and Nora went back to him.
“If you hear from him,” Kingsley said softly, “tell him I bought him a present. He needs to come home so I can give it to him.”
“You bought Søren a present?” she repeated.
“A little one,” Kingsley said. “A trifle.”
“A trifle?”
“Barely a trinket.”
Nora raised her eyebrow now. Kingsley pushed it back down.
“Just tell him,” Kingsley said.
“I’ll tell him.”
“And remember,” Kingsley continued, “no strange men in the house. We keep the barbarians at the gate. That’s why I have the fucking gate.” He pointed at the iron fence that encircled the house.
“You’re forgetting something, King.” She patted his cheek. “We are the barbarians.”
Chapter Seven
Nora whistled for Gmork, who followed her from the house, neatly avoiding Kingsley’s outstretched hand on their way out the back door. Poor King. The man loved dogs, and yet Gmork had never warmed up to him or Søren or any man he’d ever met.
Nora left Kingsley’s house and walked in the direction of her home.
But she wasn’t going home. She was going to church.
Søren had been given a key to St. Mary’s, a few blocks from her house, as he occasionally celebrated Mass there when one of their usual priests was sick or out of town. She took Søren’s key with her to St. Mary’s, unlocked the side door, and slipped inside the darkened sanctuary.
Tonight the city cooled off quickly after dark. When she arrived at St. Mary’s around eleven, she could smell the slightest trace of autumn in the air. That was all Nora missed from living in New England—autumn, and nothing else. Not the traffic. Not the toll roads. Not the hectic pace of life.
Only autumn, which did come to New Orleans, but slowly and late, late in the season. No winter either, unless she counted Søren who carried winter with him, wherever he went. Winter in the scent of his skin, like frost on sleeping tree branches and the hard freeze of new snow under star-wild skies. Winter in his eyes when he glared, a look that could bring the temperature of any room down if you happened to be on the wrong side of that icy gray stare. Winter in his touch…when she burned for him, only his touch would cool the fires. But only after fanning the flames.
God, she missed him.
Nora sat in the third pew from the front. Gmork curled up on the floor at her feet. The arched windows cast long shadows in the chapel dark. From her purse, she took out a velvet bag that contained a set of tarnished silver rosary beads that had belonged to her late mother.
She didn’t pray the rosary. Nora couldn’t even remember the last time she prayed the rosary. But Søren prayed it often, his fingers flicking through the beads like gears turning on a bicycle.
Once Nora had asked Søren, “Does it mean anything to you? The rosary? Or are you just doing it because you’re a priest and they expect you to do it?”
His answer surprised her.
“All over the world, thousands of Catholics are praying the rosary right this very moment. I like thinking about them, about all of us reaching out to God together. If enough people all over the world were singing the same song at the same time, the whole world could hear it. I like singing in God’s choir.”
“You’re a good priest,” she said to that and kissed him. But he wasn’t a priest anymore.
No. Not true. Søren was still a priest. It was a sacrament, after all, the priesthood. Once a priest, always a priest, they said. Even if a priest were to leave the priesthood, even leave the Church altogether, he would still bear on his soul a brand that said PRIEST in ornate all-capital letters.
What he wasn’t anymore—technically—was a Jesuit. Six weeks ago, after the very last day of the summer course he’d been teaching at Loyola, he’d gone to his Jesuit superiors with a photograph. He showed it to them, a picture of a blond three-year-old boy in a suit jacket and short pants. “This is Fionn,” he said. “This is my son.”
The silence that followed, Søren told her, had sucked the sound from the entire city.
But thanks to a severe shortage of priests in the Church, he’d been spared the worst-case scenarios—he hadn’t been laicized or excommunicated. The punishment handed down was still severe: he was to be suspended from the Jesuits for the period of no less than one year for the crime of fathering a child with a married woman.
Alone in the dark, stuffy chapel, she cried. She cried because Søren had disappeared without a word to her or Kingsley, which meant he was in such deep pain he wanted to protect them from the sight of it.
She cried because she was afraid for him out there alone with only his thoughts to keep him company. And though she didn’t know his thoughts, she knew they were dangerous company.
“Keep him safe, God,” she prayed aloud. “Don’t let him forget how loved he is. I love him and Kingsley loves him. Protect him and bring him home.”
These were simple prayers, children’s prayers, but they were all Nora had.
Usually, she prayed and went home again. But tonight her prayers felt insufficient. She needed something more. Not for God’s sake, really, but her own peace of mind. She left Gmork lightly snoozing on the floor by her pew and walked through the nave to the narthex, where she found a bank of votive candles and matches on an iron stand.
She stuffed a twenty into the offering box. A dollar for the candle. Nineteen dollars as a guilt-offering for all the dog hairs Gmork left behind.