“Or that,” he said, passing her the bowl of candy. She took one—cherry—but didn’t eat it. “Although something tells me you aren’t nervous. Am I wrong?”
He set the bowl back down on the table and faced her. Funny, he thought she had dark eyes, dark brown eyes, but now her eyes looked green. Not hazel, no. Real green. Contact lenses? A trick of the light?
“No, not nervous. I’d rather not be here, but here I am.”
“If you don’t want to be here, why are you here?”
“To keep a promise I made to someone,” she said. “I’ve been putting off coming here.”
“Tell me about this promise.”
“My mother died two years ago. On her death bed, she asked me to go to confession and be absolved and reconciled. She was very specific about what sins I needed to confess. So here I am doing as my mother asked. Mom, I hope you’re happy.” She glanced up at the ceiling and shook her head in amusement. Looking up was a good sign. Meant that this lady thought her mother had gone to Heaven.
“I’m very sorry about the loss of your mother. What’s her name? I’ll pray for her.”
“Sister Mary John,” the woman said.
“A nun?”
She nodded. “She joined the Monican Order when I was in my twenties. It had been her lifelong dream. She was happy there. First time in her life she was truly happy.”
“She wasn’t happy before then?”
“No, but a lot of that is my fault. I was a disappointment to her.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it,” she said. “I’m being unfair really. She got pregnant with me as a teenager and that ended her convent dreams. I suppose she was a disappointment to herself, and I was the living manifestation of that disappointment. But we were...better? I suppose you could say we were better by the end. I knew she loved me. That’s why I made her the promise. My sins weighed very heavily on her.”
“Is this your first confession?”
“Not by a long shot. I have a priest I confess to once every few months.”
“But that wasn’t good enough for your mother?”
“She didn’t like my priest. Thought he was a sinner.”
“Doesn’t matter. Ex opera operato. The sacrament works because of Christ and through the minister, not because of the minister. As long as your priest is a priest, he can administer the sacraments, no matter the sins on his conscience.”
“Mom knew all that. But this case was a little different.”
“How so?”
“Because I’m sleeping with my priest.”
Clients.
Hotel.
Black eyes that turn green.
Black hair.
Shameless.
“Well, well, well,” Stuart said, leaning back in his chair. “We meet at last, don’t we? I have to say...I thought you’d be taller.”
“I get that a lot. I have a tall personality.”
“You are as beautiful as he said you were. I give him credit. To think I accused him of exaggerating. Then again, he’s not so bad himself, is he?”
“If you’re into six-foot-four blond men with perfect faces and asses you can bounce quarters off of.”
“I hope you’re being literal.” He laughed at the image of this lovely lady flicking coins at Marcus’s backside.
“It was a half-dollar actually. I like a challenge.”
“So...” he sat back in his chair again, crossed his ankle over his knee. Usually arthritis prevented him from sitting so casually but he was feeling good today and even better now. “Do I call you Eleanor? Or do you prefer Nora?”
She grinned broadly, brightly, and laughed. “What does he call me?”
“Eleanor.”
“Does he talk about me much?”
He ran his fingers over his lips as if zipping a zipper, then turned the imaginary key in the imaginary lock and threw the key back over his shoulder.
“I know, I know,” she said. “You aren’t allowed to tell me anything S?ren said during his confessions. Trust me, I know the rules by now. He and I have been sleeping together, oh...almost eighteen years?”
“S?ren. I could never get used to calling him that. He’ll always be Marcus to me.”
“Whereas I can’t imagine calling him Marcus. It’s not his name to me at all. Never has been. He told me his name the day we met.”
“The day you met? Took him years before he told me what his mother named him. By then it was too late—it was Marcus.”
“No, he’s definitely S?ren. Good Danish name. Means ‘stern.’ Fitting name.”
“Marcus, from the Roman god of war, Mars. Even more fitting.”
“For a pacifist priest?”
“He’s been at war with his own soul since the night he was born, and you know it.”
She glanced at the orchid on the windowsill, and then raised her hand to touch its fragile petals.
“I know it,” she said softly and lowered her hand.
“And perhaps,” Father Ballard continued, “you have been a casualty in this war?”
“A few cuts and bruises. Nothing fatal.”
“Pressed but not crushed,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Although…” He paused and narrowed his eyes at her. “Maybe a little crushed?”
“Maybe a little.”
She took a breath and turned to face him again. She crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. They stared at each other.
“Tell me your sins, Eleanor. Let me help you find peace.”