The Angel

Suzanne pulled away from Patrick and found her cell phone.

“You’re the pro,” she said, giving her phone to Patrick. “I’m just a war correspondent. Show me how it’s done.”

Patrick sighed heavily and flipped his laptop back open. Peering over his shoulder, Suzanne watched as he looked up the phone number for the chief editor of the Wakefield newspaper. Patrick dialed the number and talked his way past a few peons.

“Patrick Thompson for the Evening Sun,” he said, and Suzanne was impressed he was using his own name and newspaper. “I’m looking into an incident that happened at Sacred Heart Catholic Church a few years ago. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to.”

Suzanne covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. What a bullshitter. She and Patrick knew absolutely nothing about anything that happened at Sacred Heart in its entire history.

Patrick had been smiling when he called but the smile faded as he listened to whatever the voice on the other end was saying.

“Two years ago,” Patrick repeated and scribbled something down on the notepad next to his knee. As she read the words, the blood drained from her face and hands.

Patrick hung up and looked at Suzanne. Suzanne tore her eyes from the page and looked back at Patrick.

“Now you know why I’m going after this,” she said, and Patrick nodded. “It’s not just about Adam. Not anymore.” She gazed down at the words again.

Michael Dimir, age fourteen, attempted suicide in Sacred Heart sanctuary.

One witness—Father Marcus Stearns.

3

Nora waited until after dark and drove to Sacred Heart. She parked her car in the shade of the densely wooded copse that shielded the rectory on all sides. As she walked the short path from her car to the back door of Søren’s home, she smiled up at the trees. She remembered sneaking out to the rectory one Friday when she was sixteen, when she was still Eleanor Schreiber and Nora Sutherlin didn’t even exist yet. She’d skipped school that day for no reason in particular other than the sunshine called to her, and she’d had a hunch that if she had to sit through chemistry, she’d end up chugging the acetone in the supply closet. Strolling through the woods behind her church, she’d come upon Søren in his backyard. Never before had she seen him wearing anything other than his vestments or clericals. But that day he wore jeans and a white T-shirt. Even in his clericals she could tell he was well muscled but now she could see his sinewy arms, taut biceps and strong neck without his Roman collar for once. His hands were covered in dirt as he dug holes with impressive strength and efficiency and put three- and four-foot saplings into the ground. In his secular clothes and sunglasses, the April sunlight reflecting off his blond hair, her priest appeared a being of ungodly beauty. The deep muscles in her hips tightened just at the sight of him.

“Eleanor, you’re supposed to be in school.” He didn’t even look up at her from his work as he squatted on the ground and covered the roots of the sapling in black earth.

“It was a life-or-death situation. If I stayed in school, I would have killed myself.”

“As suicide is a mortal sin, I’ll absolve you for cutting class. But you know you are also not supposed to be at the rectory.” He didn’t sound at all angry or disappointed, only amused by her as usual.

“I’m outside the fence. I’m not at the rectory—I’m just near it. What are you doing anyway?”

“Planting trees.”

“Obviously, but why? Are the two million trees around us not enough for you?”

“Not quite. You can still see the rectory from the church.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Søren stood up and walked over to the fence. Nora remembered how her heart had hammered at that moment. She thought for certain he could hear it beating through her chest.

Face-to-face with only the fence and a fourteen-year age difference between them, Søren pulled off his sunglasses and met her eyes.

“I like my privacy.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile.

“It’ll take years before you get any.” Søren arched an eyebrow at her, and she’d blushed. “Privacy, I mean. Trees take forever to grow.”

“Not these. Empress trees and this particular species of willow are some of the fastest growing.”

“In a hurry for your privacy?”

“I can wait.”

Something in his eyes and his voice told her that they weren’t talking about the trees anymore. I can wait, he’d said and looked at her with a gaze so intimate she felt as if it was his hand on her face and not just his eyes.

She summoned her courage and returned the gaze.

“So can I.”

Nora shook off the memory and entered the rectory through the back door. In the nighttime quiet, the only sound came from the creaking hardwood. She would miss that sound this summer, miss this house and the priest who presided here. Tonight would be their last night together until the end of summer and the bustle about a replacement for Bishop Leo had died down. Then she and Søren would be able to return to their own unusual version of normal life.

But only if he wasn’t chosen to replace the bishop. Please, God, she prayed, please don’t pick him.

Passing through the kitchen, Nora saw a single candle alight on the center of the table. Next to the candle sat a small white card, and written on it in Søren’s elegant handwriting were instructions: Bathe first. Then come to me.

Holding the card by the corner, she dipped it into the candle flame and let the fire eat Søren’s words. She blew out the flame just as it touched her fingers, and she rinsed the ashes down the sink. Like almost all parish priests, Søren had a housekeeper who handled all his household needs. Nora was grateful for Mrs. Scalera—a woman formidable enough that she could force even Søren to sit down and eat something on occasion—but Nora knew all it would take would be for his housekeeper to find a stray note from him to her, a single long black hair or hairpin, or any other telltale sign that a woman had spent the night to endanger Søren’s career.

Nora started undressing even as she took the narrow stairway to the second floor. She loved the rectory. For seventeen years it had been her secret second home. A small Gothic two-story cottage, Nora knew it was a far cry from the sprawling mansion where Søren had been born and had lived until he was eleven. But that house had never been a home to him. For all its exterior beauty it had been a house of horrors. This place, however, had captured his heart just as she had all those years ago.

Breathing in the steam from the warm water, Nora let the heat seep into her skin. Søren often bathed her before their sessions. It was an act of dominance, the act of a parent with a small child, but more importantly, it relaxed her muscles so that his beatings would only hurt, not injure her.

Nora did not linger in the bath. Nor did she bother washing her hair. She wanted him, needed him. Tonight was their last night together for two or three months. Five years, she reminded herself, as tears welled up in her eyes. Five years they’d lived apart. Two months should feel like nothing.

But what if she left him and this time she couldn’t come back?

She pulled herself out of the water and dried off. Wearing nothing but a white towel, she walked down the hallway to his bedroom. At first glance Søren’s bedroom seemed an appropriate reflection of what he appeared to be. The dark wood of the two-hundred-year-old four-poster bed perfectly matched the wood of the floor. The ceiling arched like a church nave. The oriel window broke apart the moonlight that intruded into the room. All was neat, spare, humble, elegant and pious. Unsullied by modern technology, uncluttered by superfluous decoration, it was the bedroom of a man who had nothing to prove.

Still … a trained eye that knew what to look for would see marks on the bedposts that were not the natural byproducts of time. The lock on the heirloom chest under the window seemed unnecessarily heavy for simply guarding linens. And the rosewood box on the bedside table didn’t just hold his white collar—it held hers.

Nora’s eyes scanned the candlelit room trying to locate Søren. She didn’t see him. Instead she saw the bed … He’d changed the sheets. The white sheets were gone and in their place rich black sheets graced the bed. Black sheets meant only one thing. Nora inhaled sharply and forgot to exhale again.

“Breathe, little one,” Søren instructed as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.

“Yes, sir.” In and out she breathed, dragging air into her stomach and pushing it out through her nose. Nora closed her eyes as he brought her collar around her neck; she shivered as he raised her hair to buckle and lock it closed.

“Down,” he ordered.

Nora stepped away from him; her feet trembled beneath her. As she walked to the bed, Søren took the towel from her. Naked, she lay across the sheets, the black sheets, and forced herself to keep breathing.

Søren stood next to the bed looking down at her. He reached up to his neck and removed his own white collar. He unbuttoned his shirt and slowly pulled it off. Nora had never seen a man with a more beautiful body than Søren’s. His morning runs and the five hundred push-ups and sit-ups he did every day kept him in immaculate shape. Lean, taut muscle wrapped every inch of his tall frame. Sometimes she could simply not keep her hands off him. But tonight she feared his touch as much as she craved it.

Søren let his shirt fall to the floor. Barefoot and wearing only his black pants, he crawled onto the bed, crawled over her.

He bent his head and kissed her. She loved how he kissed her, like he owned, as he owned her. Sometimes Nora marveled at the thought that while she’d had more lovers than she could count, Søren had shared his body with only three people in his entire life. His devotion to her humbled her, and Nora wrapped her arms around him to pull him even closer. Rarely, if ever, could she touch him when they made love. Søren was a sadist and a dominant. When he took her she was almost always tied down, bound to the bed, the floor or the St. Andrew’s Cross. Only on nights like this did he leave her arms and legs free. The act he was about to perform was sadistic enough no bondage was necessary to satisfy him.

Søren pulled up from her and reached to the bedside table. Nora’s hands dug into the sheets, the black sheets.