“Don’t call me little girl.”
Her bravado lasted until the door slammed behind her. Alone in the backseat of the squad car, she started to shake. The temperature had dropped. Rain had soaked her clothes and hair. Her skin felt clammy and cold. But that wasn’t why she couldn’t stop shaking.
Once at the station the two officers pulled around to the police entrance. Officer Ferrell opened the door and ordered her out. As they headed toward the door, she saw two figures ten yards away at the main entrance standing in the rain both holding umbrellas. One was her mother. She’d recognize that shabby pink umbrella with the ruffles anywhere. Her mother stood watching her, her face as wet with tears as Eleanor’s was wet with rain. Behind her under a black umbrella loomed someone else. Tall, stern and watchful, he followed her every step with his eyes. She raised her head, not wanting him to see her fear and her shame. Something about the sight of her must have amused him because his gaze darted once to her handcuffed wrists before meeting her eyes with the subtlest of smiles on his lips. Officer Hampton ushered her inside and put her in a plastic chair.
“Can I see my mom?” she asked him as the officer at the desk took her mug shot, and another starting typing on a computer behind the high desk.
“Soon. We’re gonna get you in a room. Somebody’s coming to talk to you.”
“Do I need a lawyer?” she asked, having learned long ago from her father that in their world the L word had magic powers.
“You can talk to your mom about that later,” Officer Hampton said as he scribbled on a clipboard. She wondered if he was drawing dinosaur doodles the way his hand flew all over the page. All the files and the forms and the pictures were intimidation tactics. They’d asked her fifteen times in the car on the way over where she’d planned on taking the car. She knew they wanted her father and his shop, and they weren’t about to get that information from her.
“How long do I have to keep wearing the handcuffs?” The metal cuffs kept hitting the back of her plastic chair and making a scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard.
“We’ll get those off in a minute,” Officer Ferrell said. “Once I remember where I put the keys.”
“Come on, Speed Racer.” Officer Hampton snapped his fingers in her face. “We got a room for you.”
He took her gently by the upper arm and escorted her down a dingy beige hallway to a room with nothing but a table in the center and two chairs.
“You’re going to interrogate me?” Eleanor asked as she sat down in the chair.
“Nothing but a friendly conversation. Someone will be in soon.”
He shut the door and left her alone in the room with nothing but her fears. Calm down, she ordered herself. It’ll be okay. Dad will find out and he’ll come straight down here and tell them it was his fault, his doing, that he asked me to help him because he owed the mob a lot of money. He’d never let her take the fall for him. Not his own daughter, his only child. Right?
But deep down she knew he wasn’t coming for her.
Time dripped by as slowly as frozen honey from a bottle. The adrenaline drained from her body and soon Eleanor felt the exhaustion under the fear. Her head throbbed; her arms ached. She’d give anything to get out of these handcuffs and stretch.
Eventually her chin dropped to her chest. For a few minutes she even slept.
The sound of a door opening alerted her to the presence of someone entering the room. She kept her head down, her eyes closed.
Something touched her cuffed hands behind her back. Fingers brushed her palm, caressed her wrists. She heard a click and the cuffs came off. In any other room under any other circumstances she might have enjoyed the sensation of large warm hands on her cold skin. Some cop touching her in such a personal way made her stomach turn.
She heard the rasp of a chair on the floor and the sound of the metal handcuffs landing on the table.
If she opened her eyes and raised her head, it would start. The whole ugly mess would start. Interrogation, investigation, accusations … Her eyelids were a wall, and until she opened them the world would stay behind that wall. But she couldn’t hide forever.
She opened her eyes expecting to see a cop or a lawyer or maybe even her mom.
But no, it was her priest. He didn’t speak, not a word. She brought her arms around in front of her and started to rub her wrists. It had been him touching her fingers and chafing her skin as he’d removed the handcuffs, not some creepy cop.
Eleanor hated that he’d been dragged into this mess. Her mother had probably called him in a panic the second after the cops had called her. Anytime anything bad ever happened, her mother’s first call was to Father Greg. Had it been Father Greg she’d called, the old priest would have prayed on the phone with her, offered her words of advice and comfort. He never would have dragged himself out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a police station in the city. But Søren had. Why?
He continued to stare at her in silence and Eleanor felt like she’d unwittingly entered into a staring contest. Fine. Staring contest it was then. She knew how to get him to blink.
“So,” she began, “since our last talk about rules and priests and sex and stuff, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question. Are you one of those priests who likes to fuck the kids in the congregation?”
She waited.
He didn’t blink.
“No.”
Okay, so he was good at this game. She was better.
She raised her chin and gave him the sort of smile she’d dreamed of giving a handsome older man but never had the guts or the chance to try it.
“Too bad.”
“Eleanor, we need to discuss the predicament you’re in at the moment.”
She nodded her agreement.
“I’m in a real pickle.”
Smile? Laugh? Withering glare? Nothing.
“You were arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto. Several luxury vehicles with a combined value of a quarter of a million dollars were stolen tonight. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I take the Fifth,” she said, proud of her legal knowledge. “That’s what I’m supposed to say, right?”
Now she received the withering glare she’d been hoping for.
“To the courts, yes. To me, never. To me, you will tell the truth always.”
“I don’t think you want to know the truth about me, Søren.” She dropped her voice to a whisper at the moment she said his name. It seemed like a magic word to her, his name. Like knowing his name meant something special like it did in fairy tales.
“Eleanor, there is nothing I don’t want to know about you. Nothing you tell me will shock or disgust me. Nothing will cause me to change my mind about you.”
“Change your mind? You’ve already made up your mind about me? What’s the verdict?” She braced herself, not wanting the answer. They had nothing in common, she and her priest. He looked like money, talked like money. He had the whitest fingernails she’d ever seen on a man. White fingernails, perfect hands like a marble sculpture of a Greek god. And her? She was a fucking train wreck. Chipped black nail polish, soaked clothes, dripping wet hair and her entire life over in one night.
“The verdict is this—I am willing and capable of helping you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into tonight.”
“Can we call it a pickle? Pickle sounds less scary than mess.”
“It’s a disaster, young lady. The car they caught