The Mistress

Grace laughed nervously, proving his point.

“She’s only told me good things, I promise.”

He opened his eyes again and stared at her for a long silent moment, searching her face for something. For what, she couldn’t imagine. But she didn’t quite mind his gaze on her. It felt intimate without being inappropriate.

“I refuse to believe that,” he finally said. “I know Eleanor too well.”

“Well, perhaps it all wasn’t good per se. But nothing bad. Fascinating definitely. She did seem to imply you were the one usually putting the handcuffs on, not ending up in them. I could take those off if you’d like.”

“I would like. But as I said, I don’t recommend it.”

“Why not?” She moved a little closer to him, feeling a bit more comfortable now that they’d started talking.

“I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe nonconsensual violence is ever justified. I am trying to remember that I’m a pacifist so I don’t murder Kingsley where he stands.”

Grace laughed again, less nervously this time.

“I don’t think murder will help the situation.”

“It might not hurt it.”

The words should have been a joke but Grace heard no mirth in his tone.

“I’ll go now if you like.” Grace started to stand. “I didn’t mean to be so nosy, but I saw you on the floor and—”

“No. Don’t go. Please.”

He sounded so humble that Grace couldn’t help but sink to her knees again.

“Of course.”

“Stay and talk to me. Distract me from all the thoughts in my head.”

She heard a note of desperation in his voice.

“I’ll stay. I’ll stay as long as you want me to.” Grace moved a little closer to him on the floor. “Do you want to talk about the thoughts in your head?” she asked, as if she were talking to one of the children in her class. “If they’re half as awful as mine, it might help to get them out.”

He said nothing at first, only opened his eyes and stared at something only he could see.

“We’re all terrified,” Grace whispered. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. This doesn’t happen to people you know. This happens in movies, or in foreign countries and the stories get turned into movies, and it’s all madness. I almost died when I was nineteen having a miscarriage, and I’m telling you now, I’ve never been this frightened.”

“I was eleven years old when I looked death in the face the first time. In my early twenties I spent a few months in a leper colony. I have dug my fingers into a teenage boy’s sliced-open wrists to try to stop him from bleeding to death on the floor of my church. I thought I knew terror before today. I was wrong.”

“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.”