“No one down there can see us up here, can they?” she whispered after the kiss.
“Even if they could, I don’t care today. Happy birthday, Little One.”
“Thank you, sir. Now, I believe you said something about two presents?” She batted her eyelashes at him.
“I do have a second gift for you. Pick a number between one and five.”
“Oh, I love this game. Five, five, five,” she said.
“Are you sure about that?” His gray eyes twinkled mischievously at her.
“I told you, I’ll always pick the biggest number. I’m greedy.”
“Very well. Five it is.”
Søren reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out five white envelopes, each of them with a number on the front, the numbers one through five.
“There are five dates on cards inside the envelope.”
“Dates for what?”
“Our first night together.”
Eleanor looked at him then back at the cards.
“You mean—”
“Open the card.”
With trembling fingers she picked up the card marked with a five. She resisted the urge to rip right into it. She could do this. She could be calm. From inside the envelope she pulled a piece of paper.
“And the winner is …” she said, opening the note.
“Holy Thursday,” Søren said. “Less than three weeks away.”
Eleanor stared at the words and forced herself to breathe. She’d been in love with Søren for four years and now in front of her was the day written in ink.
“I can’t wait.” She pressed the card to her heart. He cupped her face and she grinned up at him. This was happiness—simply being with him.
“I should go. I’m needed back in Wakefield.”
“Yeah, I have swim practice. I should go to that.”
“Eleanor, about that.”
“What?”
He said nothing and he didn’t have to. From the look on his face, she understood.
“Okay. I’ll quit the team.”
“I wish it could be another way.”
“This is how it is. I’ll tell them today.” If she and Søren were going to be lovers, she’d have to spend the rest of her life learning how to hide her bruises and welts. No way to hide bruises in a swimsuit. She knew there’d be a price to pay. This was a small one.
“Jeg elsker dig, min lille en.”
Søren kissed her again.
“I’ll see you soon,” he promised. “You should open the other cards and see what your options were.”
“Sadist,” she said, smiling against his lips.
Søren left her alone in the balcony with the four remaining unopened cards. She shouldn’t open them. She knew she shouldn’t. They were the roads not taken, so why even given them a second thought?
Fuck that, she wanted to know.
She opened envelope number one and nearly swore aloud as she read the one word written on it.
Tonight.
If she’d picked number one, she would have lost her virginity on her birthday.
God damn her and her greediness. Maybe card number two would have said Easter or some day after Holy Thursday.
“What the—”
Card number two also said Tonight.
Card number three? Tonight.
And card number four? Eleanor ripped the envelope open.
“Motherfucking priest.”
31
Eleanor
ON THE EVENING OF HOLY THURSDAY, ELEANOR stopped by her old house in Wakefield but didn’t go inside. After Eleanor started college, her mother had gotten an apartment in Westport closer to her job and put the Wakefield house on the market. Now it sat empty, abandoned, alone. Her mom had picked Wakefield because of its proximity to its good Catholic schools. Eleanor wondered if her mother regretted going through all that trouble. Her mom assumed Eleanor had turned into a godless heathen at her liberal arts school—the sort of girl who slept around and drank and never went to church. She was no saint, but she’d made it to twenty still a virgin. And God knows she loved the Catholic Church—at least one part of it—with all her heart.
Although she hated it then, now she was grateful that her mother had made her go to church. Otherwise she wouldn’t have met Søren, and through Søren she’d found her way to God.
She wondered about who might buy the house someday. Whoever it was, she hoped God took as good care of them as He had of her. Four years ago she’d sat in a police station thinking her life had ended at age fifteen. Now all she saw before her were endless beautiful possibilities.
A thousand times as a teenager she’d walked from her house to Sacred Heart. She could have driven to the church or asked Kingsley to drive her. But she wanted to walk tonight like she had so many times before. She would have walked all the way from New York if she had to. She would have walked barefoot on broken glass.
At the rectory she paused outside the door and removed her shoes. No one told her to, and she had no idea why she did it.
On bare and silent feet, she slipped in the side door and once inside the house she heard music. Piano music. She’d never heard the piece before but it spoke to her, whispered to her, beckoned her farther in. She found Søren at the piano, his fingers gliding across the keys, waltzing in the shadows cast by a single candle. She sat next to him on the bench, her back to the keyboard, and rested her head against his shoulder. He played until the end of the piece before lifting his fingers off the keys and letting the notes hang in the air. He closed the fallboard and looked at her.