With a practiced flick of the match, Nora lit a votive candle and whispered her brief prayer as she touched the tip of the flame to the wick.
“God, bring Søren home to us.”
Nora left her little prayer burning and slipped out the side door, Gmork at her heels. She saw almost no one out and about as she walked back to her house, Gmork at her side, keeping her safe from all the ghosts and goblins and dangerous drunks of New Orleans. Where Kingsley lived in a six-thousand square-foot Italianate mansion, she lived in a much smaller house, painted red and nearly hidden by a wrought iron fence and an enormous oak tree. The fence and tree were both festooned with Mardi Gras beads.
The beads were there when she bought the place, and she’d left them there since they were colorful and pretty. She assumed they’d wear out and drop off at some point, but mysteriously they’d multiplied. She never saw anyone adding to the beads, but there were undeniably more beads now than when she’d moved in. Reds and blues and purples and gold and black and white. But mostly silver.
One of these days, she was going to catch someone in the act of beading her house and she’d ask them why her and no one else on the street.
And why silver?
So far, no luck. But she could live with a little mystery in her life. Kept things from getting boring. Søren had taken a few strands of beads off her tree once and tied her up with them. It had been Mardi Gras in her bed that night.
“Søren,” Nora said to herself as she unlocked her backdoor. “Hurry up and get home, please. I miss you. My pussy misses you…”
That was not a prayer.
It was a cry for help.
Nora entered through the back door into her kitchen and flipped on the lights. She had mail—a handful of junk mail flyers. An electricity bill for her dungeon. A vet appointment reminder. The book she’d ordered (The Power and the Glory)…and a check from her publisher. A large check. After paying her bills with it, she’d have enough left over to buy that Harley-Davidson SuperLow in Iced Pearl she’d been eying. One step closer to being a Hells Angel than Søren.
A postcard slipped out from between the junk mail as she was tossing it into recycling. She bent to pick it up off the floor.
For weeks now, she’d been receiving postcards from her lover. It was the only communication either she or Kingsley had received from him on his trip. No calls, no texts, no emails, no letters. Nora had simply woken up one morning a month ago to find her bed empty. Two days later, she received a postcard from Texas with nothing written on the back but her name and address in Søren’s handwriting.
Nora had no idea what specifically set Søren off on a cross-country road trip without so much as a goodbye kiss, but she planned on asking him—loudly. After he fucked her, of course.
Why couldn’t Søren have a normal midlife crisis like every other man she knew? She’d much prefer he buy a sports car and get a twenty-two-year-old girlfriend than simply disappear on them. He could have at least written something on the postcards. Something like, I love you. I miss you. I wish your vagina was here.
For a month, she’d been sneaking to St. Mary’s at night to pray for Søren’s return. And for a month, Søren was getting further away from her, not closer. She had over a dozen postcards now—Houston, Austin, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Denver, Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Salt Lake City. The last one was a photo of Hells Canyon in Idaho. A week ago. She assumed the next postcard would come from Oregon or Washington, maybe even Canada.
Instead, the postcard was from, of all places, a French Quarter hotel right here in New Orleans.
When she flipped it over, she found a message this time.
Suite 301. Key at the desk under your name.
Søren’s handwriting. No stamp or postmark.
Nora took a deep breath. Her head fell back and she closed her eyes.
“About God damn time.”
Then she sent Kingsley a quick text message.
Søren’s back.
Kingsley replied in typical Kingsley fashion.
Thank fuck, he wrote, which was the closest Kingsley Edge ever got to saying a prayer.
Chapter Eight
Priority number two was figuring out why Father Ike killed himself. Priority one was getting Paulina’s mind off Father Ike until Cyrus could. And he knew just what to do. He ordered take-out—Honduran food from Los Catrachos—poured cocktails, hit Play on his favorite jazz album, and put Paulina on the love seat. Although not a cure for sadness, Christian Scott’s trumpet was a highly effective treatment. And if that didn’t work, a kiss or two or ten thousand. As many as Cyrus could get away with.
He slid his hand across Paulina’s stomach, soft and trembling under the lightweight linen of her blouse and held her by the hip. She turned her face to meet his eyes. There was no woman in the world who had eyes like Paulina. They reminded him of sepia photos, pale brown, and out of another time and place with lashes almost long enough to tickle his cheeks. But even more, they were honest eyes that hid nothing, nothing at all from him and asked him to hide nothing, nothing at all from her. So he didn’t hide a thing from her. He let her see how much he loved her, adored her, treasured her, wanted her, and then he kissed her on her soft full lips to make sure she got the message.
The kiss she gave him in return was the kiss he wanted—nervous at first, slowly growing bolder, and by the time one song switched to another, they were both breathing each other’s breaths. He pushed her gently down onto her back on the plush sofa and guided her legs around his waist. He didn’t ask for much in this world…but if he didn’t feel her heels on his lower back right this second, his heart would break right in two. When he told Paulina that, she laughed and he felt her breasts moving against his chest.
“Well, I’d hate to break your heart,” she said. “Especially when it’s so easy to keep it in one piece.” She let her heels come to rest on his back. It was enough to make a grown man cry. “Better?”
“So much better.”
Her tongue tasted sweet like the blueberry wine she’d had after dinner. Sweet and spiked and he couldn’t get enough of it. He knew marriage wouldn’t be like this all the time. He’d be a fool to think it was all low lights, jazz, and making out like teenagers on the sofa. But still, he would have married her in that room that second if he could have talked her into it. Especially since he knew any minute now…any second…she would say…
“All right, behave, Cyrus.” She said this right when he slipped his hand under her shirt and started inching up and up.
“I am behaving,” he said.
“Behaving bad.”
“Behaving bad is still behaving.” He bit her earlobe. She laughed, but she placed her hands on his chest.
“That’s enough,” Paulina said. Cyrus groaned and sat up.
“Already?”
“Already.” Paulina slowly pulled herself back up and righted her clothes and her hair. He was pleased to see she was at least breathing hard. Maybe he could flatter himself that she stopped because she was about to lose control, not him.
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“I will. I said ‘yes’ six months ago. I’ll say ‘yes’ again tonight.”