“Give me a sec. I’m picturing you handcuffed to my headboard.”
He looked over the top of her book at her, eyebrow arched. The look was not friendly.
“You aren’t allowed to do that.”
“A girl can dream.”
He laid the book across his stomach. Nora stood in the doorway a moment longer just to appreciate the view of Søren on her bed. “Done sleuthing?”
“Done sleuthing for the day,” she said. “We didn’t find anything, but Cyrus is out looking for Father Ike’s car. Might be something in there.”
“Or not.”
“Or not,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about Father Ike with Søren. Not yet. Too upsetting to talk to a priest about digging through the private life of another priest. She knew Søren would probably prefer she stayed far, far away from this case. But she couldn’t.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Where God Happens by Rowan Williams,” he said. “Book of sermons by the former Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“I have porn, you know. The good stuff, too. Kinky. Hot. Well-written. I should know. I wrote it.”
“This is Anglican porn,” he said.
Nora shut the door, stranding Gmork in the hall.
“Anglican porn…you thinking of converting?” she asked, crawling to Søren on the bed and resting her chin on his chest. “Last I heard, Anglican priests were allowed to get laid.”
“Not even Anglican priests are allowed to have mistresses. They’re definitely not allowed to have mistresses and children with married women.”
“You’d think the Church of England would be more understanding, founded by King Henry the Adulterer/Wife-murderer/Swan-eater.”
“I believe the swan-eating was the least of his issues.”
“We could, you know…do the thing, if you wanted.”
“The thing? Could you be more specific?”
“Rhymes with ‘carriage’?”
Søren laughed. “I suppose we could. If we were married, it would, as they say, cover a multitude of sins. What a husband and wife do behind closed doors is no one’s business, not even if the husband is an Anglican priest.”
“Or a husband and his former brother-in-law…” Nora said. Then rethought that. “I guess the Church of England wouldn’t be keen on you and King doing your thing either.”
“No. And even if they did, a priest or a pastor’s wife lives in a fishbowl. It’s more stressful in many ways than being in the clergy. Turning you into a pastor’s wife would be sadism,” he said, stroking her hair. “And not the kind either of us enjoy. No, becoming Anglican would cause as many problems as it would solve. And I can’t imagine myself as anything but a Jesuit.”
“Neither can I,” Nora said. “A Jesuit or nothing.”
Jesuits. The scary-smart priests. The scary-scary priests, as Cyrus had called them. The Jesuits were an army of Catholic intellectuals and so liberal, they were often accused of heresy.
Søren dropped his hand to his chest. His smile had disappeared.
“I was only eleven,” he said, “when I was dropped on the doorstep at St. Ignatius. I had a letter with me, written by my father that I had to give to Father Henry, the headmaster. I knew what it said. I was told what it said—that I was a violent delinquent and a deviant, and Father Henry and the other Jesuit priests and teachers should feel free to beat me daily as it was the only punishment I understood.”
Nora closed her eyes, though she would rather have closed her ears.
Søren went on. “Father Henry took the letter, read it, and I knew I was going to spend the next seven years of my life in hell. Instead, he took me to the kitchen, sat me down, and gave me hot chocolate. He said, ‘I think your father’s full of shit, but don’t tell him I said that.’ Then he winked at me and put a dollop of whipped cream on top of the cocoa. ‘We don’t beat boys at this school,’ he said. ‘Except in chess.’ Then we played chess for two hours.”
“You used to give me hot cocoa, too,” she said. “When I was upset.”
“Forty years ago, and I can still remember how sweet the hot chocolate was and how good. I’d never had it before. My stepmother always said sweets were for ‘poor people,’ not ‘our kind.’” A long pause. “I see him every time I look in the mirror.”
“Father Henry?” Nora asked, assuming Søren meant when he wore his collar and clerical garb.
“My father.”
Ah. So that explained the beard. Nora leaned over and kissed the back of Søren’s hand. Then she took it and held it and said nothing. For years, Søren had kept his traumatic childhood mostly hidden behind a shroud of silence and shame. But since becoming a father, Søren’s past had been slipping out in one little dark tale or another. Yes, King had heard a few stories, too, and asked Nora if she thought it was something they should worry about. She’d said “no,” though she was worried.
Ever since Fionn came along, Søren’s walls were coming down. But were they the walls that held Søren in? Or the walls that held Søren up? She didn’t know, but she knew this…she could do nothing for him but listen, no matter how much it hurt to hear the suffering in his past. If anything in the world was truly a sin, it was letting one’s own mild discomfort interfere with someone else’s healing.
“I’m Catholic for a reason,” Søren said, his eyes focusing again on her. The past was vanquished, temporarily at least. “The Church of England is fine, but it’s not for me. I need all seven of my sacraments. King Henry threw out the baby with the baptismal water.”
Nora knew this. They’d talked about it before, once or twice, when they had their serious “What happens if/when we get caught?” talks. Back then, however, those conversations had stayed in the realm of the theoretical, the maybe, the someday, the what if.
Now it was happening.
“Speaking of kings…you seeing King soon?”
“Tonight, at my new house that I do not know about yet.”
“Remember to act surprised and also totally unimpressed.”
“I’ll remember.”
“He’ll see right through it.”
“Without a doubt.”
She picked up his book and read what he was reading out loud:
A hermit said, “Do not judge an adulterer if you are chaste or you will break the law of God just as much as he does. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not judge.’”
Nora put the book back on his stomach. “Nice. Loophole Theology is my favorite Theology.”
“Not a loophole. Have you ever tried going a day without judging someone else?” he asked.
“Sounds impossible.”
“Exactly.”
“I prayed for you,” she said softly.
“Did you?”
“A lot. Almost every night you were gone, I’d pray for you. Went to church, sat in a pew, prayed and prayed…last night, I even lit a prayer candle. Voilà. You’re here.”