“I keep telling myself to stay strong, that Nora would be strong for me so I have to be strong for her. Falling apart won’t help her. We can’t despair.” Brave words but all Grace wanted to do was dissolve into tears.
“Don’t despair? That’s usually my line.”
“I imagine even a priest needs words of comfort sometimes.”
“All the time, Grace.”
He fell silent after that and she feared the thoughts in his head as much as she imagined he did.
“I don’t want to know what’s going on in your mind, do I?”
“Terrible thoughts. Vengeance. Brutality. What I want to do to anyone who hurts my Little One.”
“You call her Little One?”
“I always have. She was a teenager when we met. A very ill-mannered teenager. She demanded to know why I was so tall. She insinuated I had grown this tall simply for attention.”
“Only Nora could be rude and flirtatious at the same time.”
“I explained to her that I was tall so I could hear God’s voice better. And since I was taller and could hear Him better, she should always listen to me. That didn’t sit very well with her. She retorted the next day with a verse from Psalm 114. ‘The Lord keeps the little ones.’ Her biblical proof that God prefers short people. I started calling her Little One after that. It helped us both remember she belonged to God first.”
“And you second?”
“A close second,” he said, giving her a quick but devilish grin.
“These are good thoughts. Keep telling me good thoughts. Maybe we can get you over your murderous inclinations and out of the handcuffs.”
“I have no good thoughts right now.”
He fell silent and closed his eyes. Grace knew that whatever was going on in his mind right now was nothing she wanted to know.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his eyes still closed. “It’s not safe here. You should be with your husband.”
“Zachary’s at a conference in Australia. And I’m not going anywhere, not until Nora’s back. I don’t care if my husband divorces me, Kingsley has me arrested and I get fired for missing school, I’m staying.”
“Missing school?”
“I’m a teacher. School starts next week. But it will start with or without me.”
“What do you teach?”
“Year 11 English Lit. Teaching Shakespeare to seventeen-year-olds is not unlike herding cats.”
He smiled then and opened his eyes.
“I used to be a teacher,” he said. “I taught Spanish and French to ten- and eleven-year-old boys.”
“Sounds like hell.”
“It was. I rather liked it, though.”
“It is rewarding in its own way. If you get through to one student a year, see that spark of understanding, see that little hint of the adult they’ll become and you know you’ve somehow helped him or her along that path … it’s worth all the work, all the sacrifice.”
“It was like that with Eleanor when she was a girl. The moment I saw her at age fifteen, I saw exactly who she would become.”
“No wonder it was love at first sight.”
“Love, lust, fear, wonder and joy—such joy. I considered it my mission in life to make sure she survived her teenage years to become the woman I saw in her.”
“Survived? I recall being a teenager as rather difficult, but certainly not life-threatening.”
“Eleanor’s were not the typical teenage years.”
“I don’t believe Nora has had a typical anything her entire life.”
“That would be an accurate statement.”
“If it helps any, I think you did a good job with her. She’s a rather impressive person.”
“I tried not to fail her. Everyone else in her life had—her father was a criminal, her mother considered Eleanor a mistake. It gave me great pleasure to take her from them. More pleasure than I should admit to.”
“You smiled. Would you like me to take the handcuffs off now?”
“I would like that, but I’m still picturing Kingsley in the morgue. And of course, I’m only focusing my anger at him because he’s here. I know I’m not actually angry at him. I keep trying to tell myself that.”
“He was trying to save you from yourself. You are a priest, after all. Can’t be telling the police and the FBI and the whole wide world that someone has your lover.”
“I couldn’t begin to care less what the whole world thinks of my relationship with Eleanor. All that matters is getting her back.”
“Of course,” she said, smoothing her skirt over her knee. “But will the police help? I’m asking a genuine question. If you think they could help, I’ll call them myself and Kingsley be damned.”
Father Stearns turned his eyes from her and exhaled.
“No, they won’t help. They can’t. It’s been thirty years, but I haven’t forgotten what Marie-Laure was like. Obsessive nature. Clearly she wants revenge. On me. On Kingsley. Eleanor will be that instrument of revenge. She’s not trying to steal a jewel and abscond in the night. She wants to hurt us. She’s died before. I don’t think she’s afraid to die again. My fear is that she plans to take Eleanor with her. Police involvement will only put Eleanor’s life at greater risk.”
“Marie-Laure … Kingsley’s sister was your wife?”
“Was … is my wife apparently. Kingsley missed her terribly back when we were in school. After their parents died, he and Marie-Laure had little but each other and even then they were separated by an ocean—she in Paris, he in America. I thought it would make him happy to see her again.”
“She came to your school?”
“I arranged to bring her over. It had been over a year since they’d seen each other—brother and sister. And yet less than a week after being reunited, Marie-Laure simply announced that she was in love with me.”
“That must have been something of a shock. For you and Kingsley.”
“It was an unpleasant shock. My heart was very much elsewhere, but I didn’t want to hurt the girl. Kingsley seemed so happy to have her back with him. I remember that day like yesterday. I’d gone for a walk alone. Marie-Laure followed me, asked if she could join me. We’d barely gone a mile when she stopped and confessed she’d fallen in love with me. I tried to stay calm, rational. I said to her that I was sorry, but I didn’t feel the same. But she shouldn’t take it personally. I told her I wasn’t capable of loving her like someone else could. She said she didn’t care.”
“She cared. I promise, she cared.”
“I told her that if she wanted, we could be married, but it would be a marriage in name only. I told her about the trust fund I’d receive if I married. She and Kingsley could have every penny of it. God knows I didn’t want a cent from my father. I would ask nothing in return from her. She could be as free as she wanted to be with anyone she wanted. All I asked was that she let me finish out the school year at Saint Ignatius. For legal reasons I thought it would be best if we at least lived together for a few months.”
“She agreed to that?”
“Readily. She said she understood, and that it was kind of me to offer. Kind, she said. More like stupid and foolish. I’m not stupid very often, Grace. That was stupid.”