“We met in church.”
“Twenty-three years,” he said. “How the hell did you two not get caught?”
She grinned. “Location, location, location. Tiny parish in a small town. And with the priest shortage, Søren didn’t have to share the parish house with any other priests. Which is good. That place was tiny. But it was far back from the church, trees everywhere, and to get to it, you had to drive in from a side street. Very secluded. That helped. We also fucked at Kingsley’s house a lot.”
“You must have been young when you met him.”
“I was,” she said. “I don’t like talking about it. People think things about us that aren’t true. I was two weeks away from my sixteenth birthday when we met. But we didn’t start sleeping together until I was a junior in college. Twenty years old. I’m not saying that makes us angels or anything but…you know.”
“He’s not a pedophile.”
“Exactly.”
Cyrus took a couple deep breaths. This was heavy, but he’d carried heavier secrets.
“Yeah, I’m definitely not telling Paulina that,” Cyrus said. “She’d make some phone calls on him.”
Nora laughed softly. “Too late. He’s already been suspended. Forced leave of absence for a period of no less than one year.”
“Cause of you?” Cyrus asked.
Nora ran her fingers gently over the binding of Ike’s old Bible again.
“Søren has a son—Fionn. He’s three now.”
“He has a son? But you don’t?”
“This would be so much easier to explain if you were a freak, too. You sure you aren’t?”
He laughed. “Last I checked.”
“I’ll give you the short sweet vanilla version. First, it wasn’t cheating,” she said. “We’re in an open relationship. Always have been. He didn’t have sex with other people, but he did kink with them which can be much more intense and intimate than sex. Meanwhile…I actually had sex with other people.”
“This is the sweet version of the story.”
She took a deep breath. “Something…bad happened. I was nearly killed. Him, too. We were both staring death in the face. I’m not exaggerating. There were guns to our heads.”
“Shit,” Cyrus said. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Men like Kingsley, they have pasts. His, in particular, is filled with some very dangerous people. One of them caught up with him. Wanted to destroy us—King, Søren. Me. Thank God we got out alive.”
“Jesus.” Cyrus shook his head.
“You’ve been shot,” Nora said. “You know what a near-death experience does to you. You see things you’ve never seen before. You feel like you better get your life together while you still have it.”
“I hear you. If I hadn’t gotten shot…I don’t even want to think about it.”
If he hadn’t gotten shot, there’d be no Paulina in his life. Funny how the worst thing that happened to a man could turn out to be the best thing sometimes.
“There was always this secret part of Søren that wanted to have a child,” Nora said. “And it was never going to be with me. I can’t even have kids anymore—by choice, I promise. So…when given the chance, he took it. I don’t blame him. I’ve taken my fair share of chances. Being in an open relationship, there’s always more risk. Like someone getting pregnant, which…happens.”
He sensed there was a story there, even more story than she was telling him.
“Anyway,” she continued, “it’s fine. I love Fionn. He was a surprise but a good one.”
She took something out of her bag that looked like a passport wallet. She opened it and showed him a photograph of a little blond boy, about two years old.
“He’s cute,” Cyrus said.
She slid the photo carefully back into her bag, but only after glancing at it one more time and smiling.
“That ‘ordeal,’” she said, putting “ordeal” in finger-quotes, “changed everything for us. I was seeing someone else at the time. Søren and I had been on and off for years. But after that, we were on and we’ve stayed on. And King and I had some bad blood between us. We cleaned the blood up finally. That was also right when King stopped fucking around with everyone on the planet. After Céleste was born, King decided to turn over a new leaf. That’s why we all moved down here. We wanted to leave our pasts in New York.”
“I think yours might have followed you down here.”
“Seems to be the case,” she said.
“Anything else you holding out on me?”
“Well…I told you I have two men in my life. My other lover, the twenty-seven-year-old…is Kingsley’s son.”
“God. Damn.”
“Oh, it gets worse, my friend.”
“I’m out.”
She smiled, halfway giggled.
“About time you told me this,” Cyrus said. “This matters to the case, you know. If Father Ike knew about you and your Viking—”
“I promise, Søren did not know Father Ike. He would have told me if he did. And Søren wouldn’t have given Father Ike my business card. And if he had, for any reason at all, he would have told us both. Hand to God.” Nora put her right hand on Father Ike’s Bible and lifted her left hand. Cyrus had to admit it was compelling testimony.
“It’s a motive, though, right? For a priest to call you? Say he found out this lady in town was sleeping with a priest. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend, too, feels guilty as hell over it, wants to talk to someone who gets it.”
“He had a chastity device in his nightstand. You really think he was calling me just to chat?”
“All right, good point.” If they hadn’t found the chastity whatever thing, Cyrus might be able to convince himself Father Ike was looking for some understanding in his final hours from a priest’s mistress. But they had found it, and there was no pretending it didn’t exist.
“You don’t seem very shocked,” Nora said.
“More priests than we want to admit got side pieces. I’ve had two cases with people cheating with clergy—one wife, church secretary. One husband, groundskeeper.”
“Both Catholic priests?”
“Both,” he said. “It happens.”
“Yeah, it does.”
They met eyes.
“You pissed at me?” she asked.
“Why? I stole Paulina from the Ursulines.”
“She wasn’t in the order yet. Søren’s been an ordained priest for a long time.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Done too much in my days to judge how you spend your nights.”
She smiled. “I like you.”
“We gonna be friends?” Cyrus asked.
“For the time being.”
“It’ll make our counselor happy. Check ‘female friend’ off the wedding checklist.”
“Can I come to your wedding?” Nora asked, eyes wide.
“Hell no.”
“Fair.” She laughed again. Good to hear her laugh. He promised himself a long time ago he’d stop being the reason why good women cried in this town.