“Yeah, but I only keep the secrets that would…”
“Hurt his little feelings?” Stuart finished her thought for her.
“Damn, you are a good priest.”
He blew on his nails and brushed them on his cassock. That got another laugh at her.
“Father, I love S?ren and Nico. I’m in love with them. I don’t want to feel this way about someone else. What do I do?”
“First you have to see your feelings for what they are, not what you think they are. What happened that week with Zach that sticks with you? And not the…you know.”
“The sex,” she said.
“That. You said that week with this Zach gentleman left you with ‘a dream of what could have been.’ What’s that dream?”
“That week is the week I met Nico. It was right after we found out about Fionn. That week with Zach in France was the last…I don’t know, the last easy week of my life.”
“Easy? How so?”
“When I met Nico, he fell in lust with me. Has a thing for older women.”
“I used to. Then I turned 81. Now I can’t find any older women. But tell your boy I approve of his tastes.”
“I absolutely will. Anyway…Kingsley’s son, Nico. That was hard after meeting him, knowing that he was going to complicate my life. Complicate it even more. Wes made things difficult, but at least we lived on the same continent. That week with Zach was the last week before everything changed. I keep going back to it in my mind, living there, wishing we’d had more time, wishing I could stop time and stay in France longer. Not forever. Forever belongs to S?ren. Just longer. I love my life but it’s not easy being in love with two men in two different counties. Why couldn’t Nico have been Canadian or Mexican? He had to be French? Really? So unfair.”
“I suppose I don’t have to tell you, of all people, that life isn’t fair?”
“Nope.”
“You say that was the last week before everything changed, before everything got harder,” Ballard said. “Isn’t it possible that what you’re lusting for is not the man but the life you were living before meeting Nico? That and…”
He punched the air and she nodded. She caught his drift.
“By your own choosing, you have two lovers—and one of your lovers has another lover of his own and a child. You enjoy that life. You chose that life. But you know better than I do that it’s a hard life, “ he said. “You’re not merely lusting after a married man. You’re lusting for a life you can’t have—a simple life. Simpler, anyway.”
“That’s a big part of it. Maybe the biggest part.”
“The great heartache of my life was discovering this truth—there is no such thing as a simple life. We all want it, all seek it. It doesn’t exist, Eleanor. Not on this side of Heaven. I’m a man without a wife, without children. I don’t pay my own bills. I have a guaranteed roof over my head until my dying breath. I have my health and nothing to worry about, and even I don’t lead a simple life. You can’t have a simple life with a wild heart like yours. The simple life is a mirage. It’s like a perfectly clean and polished wine glass. And you want that pristine chalice, but the second you reach out and pick it up, it’s covered in your fingerprints. It’s only clean until it’s yours, then it’s dirty. That’s the simple life. It’s simple until you show up and start using it.”
“I know you’re right,” she said. “But the desire’s still there. Such a beautiful mirage. It’s hard not to look at it when I’m on the plane to France leaving S?ren and America behind, and I know I only have four weeks with Nico before I’m back again. And I already miss S?ren and I already miss Nico.”
“Steal him then. Your Zach. If you tried, could you steal him?”
“I’m Nora Fucking Sutherlin. You bet your ass I could.”
Stuart laughed. He did love a woman with moxie.
“What’s stopping you then?” he asked.
“My conscience?”
“You sure about that?”
“No.”
“What’s stopping you then?” he repeated, more slowly this time, letting the words hit her one at a time.
“Because I’d have to give up Nico and S?ren.”
“And you don’t want to.”
“No. I don’t want to. My life is harder. But it’s better,” she said. “So much better than it was before…”
“There’s your answer.”
“And yet the fantasy remains.”
“Well, I still fantasize sometimes about getting married and having babies, and I’m 81 and a Jesuit. Wonder if Marcus ever has that fantasy? The simple life?”
“I’m sure he does,” Eleanor said.
“I’m sure he does, too. You think that’s what that photograph is? A small glimpse into his dream of a simpler life?”
“I’m sure it is,” she said. “But he wouldn’t choose it anymore than I would. And yet you still dream…”
“Exactly. Human nature,” Ballard said.
“What are you going to do?”
The question was rhetorical. He answered it anyway. “I’m going to absolve you, dear girl. That’s what I’m going to do.”