The Angel

“Those were good works.”

“I’ll say.”

“Eleanor, what else?”

She heard in Søren’s voice an expectation. He knew she had more to confess.

“I lied about something else,” she finally whispered.

“You never have to be afraid to tell me anything,” Søren said, in that priestly tone that coaxed confessions like scared shadows from the darkest corners of hearts.

“You asked me today why I don’t answer the phone when Wes calls. I said it was because you hadn’t given me permission. That wasn’t the truth.”

Nora stared at the floor, unwilling and unable to meet Søren’s eyes.

“What is the truth?”

Swallowing, Nora forced herself to meet his eyes.

“I think,” she began and took a hard breath, “it wouldn’t be good for us if I did.”

Søren seemed to study her through the low and dying light of the fireplace. Her heart ached at the thought of hurting Søren. But he wanted the truth from her no matter what.

“Your penance,” he began and she braced herself.

“Yes, Father?”

“Make your peace with Wesley this summer while you’re away from me. Make your peace and do not return to me until you do.”

Nora’s stomach clenched. Make her peace with Wesley? What did that even mean? Just get over him? Or would she have to talk to him? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

“Yes, Father” was all she could answer.

She bent her head.

“Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Nora crossed herself.

“Amen.”

Nora stood up with a heavy heart. She hated that on their last night together before she left, she’d had to confess something so hurtful. But suddenly she was off her feet and in Søren’s arms. Without a word, he carried her upstairs to his bedroom.

“You aren’t angry?” she asked as he stripped her of his shirt and laid her in the bed. He slipped out of his pants and pressed his naked body into hers.

“Eleanor, will you ever learn that when I say ‘I love you’ I mean it?”

“Eventually maybe,” she said and smiled at him through the dark. “I’ll miss you so much this summer. Are you sure I have to go? Running away really isn’t my thing. Not anymore anyway.”

“I’m afraid in this scenario, discretion will be the better part of valor. Eleanor, this isn’t simply about the Church or the public finding out about us. There is more to fear than someone simply discovering that we’re together.”

“You don’t agree with Kingsley, do you? You don’t think it was just an old client of mine who stole my file, right?”

“I’m truly in the dark on this matter.” Søren gazed toward the shadows that lurked outside of the lamplight. “Whoever it is, and for whatever reason … I will not let them harm you. I’d let them cut out my heart first.”

Nora reached out and touched the wound over Søren’s heart. A superficial cut, it would heal in just days. The wounds underneath, however, were old and scarified and likely would never completely heal. Scar tissue, she’d once read, was the strongest of all tissues. Maybe Søren’s heart was so strong because it was so scarred.

“Eleanor? Do you remember my father’s funeral?”

Nora closed her eyes and became suddenly seventeen years old again. She’d faked a good excuse for her mother and accompanied Søren to his father’s funeral. She was there for Claire, his sixteen-year-old sister. Or at least, that was the cover story.

The night after the visitation she’d found Søren sitting in a large armchair in his childhood bedroom—a bedroom that held only the memories of nightmares for him. She remembered walking in and seeing him sitting, praying silently in a pool of moonlight. The white light had illuminated his face, his pale hair. On silent feet she came to him, and he’d taken her in his arms and held her. It had been the first time he’d admitted that he loved her, had loved her from the moment he saw her when she was only fifteen years old. His sadness and grief for the father who’d tried to destroy him came out that night as he told her the horror story that was his childhood. She’d only meant to comfort him. She’d made it to the next morning still a virgin, but just barely.

Nora giggled. “Oh, no. As long as I live I will never forget that night.”

Søren caressed her lips with his fingertips. “I know what you overheard, little one.”

Another memory came to her. This time it wasn’t nearly so pleasant. After leaving Søren that night, she’d headed for the room she and Claire were sharing. The house had over a dozen bedrooms but Søren insisted that neither she nor Claire sleep alone. The minute they’d arrived at the house, Søren changed. He’d always been highly protective of her, but suddenly he’d turned almost paranoid with both her and Claire. He acted as if there was a dangerous ghost haunting his childhood home. And in Søren’s arms that night she learned that wasn’t far from the truth. On her way to the guest room she saw the outline of a woman standing by an open window. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed. Next to her stood Søren, and they whispered back and forth to each other. Nora had slipped into a shadow and hidden herself there. Closer she crept and heard the woman say to Søren three words—I’m not sorry. And she heard Søren’s three-word reply. Neither am I.

At that moment Nora knew she’d heard something she shouldn’t. She disappeared into the room she shared with Claire and stared wide-awake at the ceiling until dawn—her body burning from where Søren had touched her, her mind reeling with what she thought she’d heard.

At the funeral she’d come face-to-face with the woman Søren had been speaking to the night before. Tall and elegant with auburn hair and violet eyes, the woman had terrified her with both her beauty and the despair that seemed to surround her like a dark halo. Søren introduced her as Elizabeth, his elder sister, and introduced Nora as a friend of Claire’s. Nora remembered studying Elizabeth and realizing that she was looking not at a person, but at a ghost. A living, breathing ghost, but a ghost all the same. Even in the dark, Nora saw that ghost flicker across Søren’s gray eyes.

“I promised I would protect you, little one. That is the only reason I’m sending you away,” Søren said and pulled Nora into his viselike arms.

“Your sister … You’re afraid they’ll find out about what Elizabeth did, aren’t you?”

Søren pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

“My fear of Elizabeth is the same as it has always been. I’m afraid she’ll find out about you.”

5

On Monday morning, Suzanne woke up with the dawn and didn’t even bother turning on her computer. She’d never been stymied like this before. It was as if some sort of presence sat on the other end of the internet purposely thwarting her every attempt to find out anything of substance about Father Marcus Stearns. But today she was going to pull out all the stops. Desperate times called for desperate research.

She was going offline.

The library opened early but she arrived even before the doors unlocked. As soon as they let her in, Suzanne rushed the research desk with pencils and notepaper. She hadn’t done hardcopy research in years. Probably not since middle school when her entire class had taken a field trip to the library and learned how to dig through the fat green tomes and write down the name, date and issue of the periodical they were looking for. Suzanne didn’t have much to go on. All she’d gleaned from her online research was that Father Marcus Stearns had been at Sacred Heart for nearly twenty years and had presided at no other parishes. Apparently Father Stearns also acted as confessor to a nearby order of Benedictine sisters. One of them had a blog and mentioned that their Father Stearns, like her, had been born in New Hampshire. Guessing he graduated seminary at age twenty-eight, that meant he would be forty-seven or forty-eight. So she knew his name, approximate age and state of birth. A place to start at least.

By noon, Suzanne decided to give up again. There was simply nothing on Marcus Stearns out there. But she took one more dive into the stacks and came up with a Marcus Stearns who’d been in his early forties in 1963 and lived in New Hampshire. At least it was the same name if not the right age. Possibly a relative, she decided, and kept digging.

By one o’clock, Suzanne knew she was onto something.

Marcus Augustus Stearns, born in England in 1920, was the heir to a small barony. He’d come to New England in his late thirties and used his title to marry into a spectacularly wealthy family. The mother, Daisy, had realized her Edith Wharton fantasy and married the baron despite the fact that his only asset was his title. After just one year of marriage, Daisy had given birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Bennett Stearns. Not just an Edith Wharton fan but a Jane Austen fan as well, Suzanne noted. And then barely one year after, Suzanne was thrilled to discover, a son, Marcus Lennox Stearns, was born. Beyond that, the trail went cold. Marcus the Younger seemingly disappeared. No school records, no college records, no mentions of him at all.

Suzanne leaned back in the chair in her cramped library study carrel and closed her eyes.

Catholic priests made almost no money. No one became a Catholic priest to get rich. And yet, if this was the same Marcus Stearns, he’d given up a huge inheritance and a title, albeit a minor one, in the British peerage to become a priest. She had trouble believing it was possible. Still, a tantalizing possibility.