The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (19 page)

“Leaving now,” he said into the phone. “It’s all saber rattling. They’re trying to scare you. I know this trick. Don’t fall for it.”

A pause followed and in that pause Søren took her duffel bag off her shoulder and sat it on the kitchen table. She took comfort in how casually he’d welcomed her into his home, acting as if she’d been here a thousand times before. She checked out the kitchen while she waited for him to get off the phone. Pretty kitchen, clean and quaint and homey, like something out of a movie that takes place in turn-of-the-century New England. They would fuck in this kitchen someday. On that very table.

“Have you spoken to Claire?” he asked the person on the other end. Another pause, and then... “You know more about teenage girls than I do,” he said and winked at Eleanor, who had to cover her mouth not to laugh. “It’s fine. I’ll talk to her. You have enough on your mind.”

The hint of a smile faded from his face.

“Take heart,” Søren said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Søren hung up the phone.

“Girlfriend?” she asked.

“That was my sister Elizabeth. Half sister. You’ll meet her at some point this weekend.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have? And why are you dressed like that?”

“I have three sisters,” he said, sitting on the kitchen table. “And this is a suit. Do you not approve?”

“You look amazing. I didn’t expect you in, like, a business suit.” She grabbed the lapels of his jacket as she pretended to examine his neck. “No collar. Weird. No tie. Even weirder.”

“I have the tie. I haven’t put it on yet.”

“Leave it off. You look good in normal-person clothes.”

“Thank you. I am attempting to stay incognito this weekend. A priest at a funeral and everyone wants to talk about God and the afterlife with you.”

“Can’t imagine why they’d think a priest would want to talk about God.”

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” He grinned at her. “Car’s on the way. Would you like to see the house?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Well, yes. I do. But I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not ready to know that my fantasy of your bedroom doesn’t match the reality. I’m guessing there’s no hot tub in there.”

She expected Søren to laugh but instead he took her by the wrist and pulled her closer to him. He put his hands on each side of her neck and caressed her jawline with his thumbs.

“Little One, there is something you’ll have to understand. Your fantasies about us and the reality will not match.”

She raised her chin.

“You don’t know what I fantasize about. How do you know?”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead and she closed her eyes, relishing the touch of his lips on her skin.

“A fair point,” he said, brushing her hair off her shoulder. Outside the house she heard an engine. “Our chariot awaits us.”

Eleanor heard a car door open and close. Søren walked into the next room and came back with a small suitcase and a black garment bag over his shoulder. Meanwhile she had an army green duffel bag with a large yellow pin on it that read Jesus Loves You. Everyone Else Thinks You’re an Asshole.

Søren started to pick up her duffel bag, but she took it from him. He had enough burdens to bear this weekend. She could carry her own damn luggage.

Outside in the back of the rectory sat a black BMW M3.

“Nice,” she said, running her fingers over the still warm hood. A woman got out of the driver’s seat and shut the door behind her.

“Sam?” Søren asked, raising an eyebrow at the driver—an incredibly beautiful woman with a shaggy pixie cut wearing a thick leather jacket and black jeans.

“This is as understated as Kingsley gets and you know it.”

“Eleanor, this is Sam—Kingsley’s second-in-command.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Eleanor said.

“You and me both, beautiful,” Sam said with a wink. She held out the keys to Søren.

“She’s the driver,” Søren said.

Sam looked at Eleanor.

“It’s a stick.”

“I love a stick.”

“Then here you go,” Sam said and tossed Eleanor the keys.

Eleanor caught the keys in midair. “You’re not kidding? I’m driving?”

“Of course you are.” Søren opened the back and put his luggage in. “My first car was a motorcycle.”

“You don’t know how to drive a car?” She would have been more shocked if he’d confessed to not knowing how to read.

“Never took the time to learn,” he said without apology. “Are you comfortable driving?”

“Of course I am. My first bike was a car.”

“Good,” he said. He opened the passenger-side door.

“Not good. Community service? Probation? No getting a license until I’m eighteen? Remember all that?”

“Taken care of.” Sam pulled a manila envelope out of her jacket pocket and handed to her.

Eleanor opened the envelope and found a driver’s license with her picture on it, a high school ID card to some school in Long Island and an insurance card for the BMW.

“What the hell?” Eleanor asked.

“In case you get pulled over,” Sam said. “But try not to do that.”

“Who’s Claire Haywood?” Eleanor glanced back down at the driver’s license and noticed the name and birth date. “And why did Kingsley make me a year younger?”

“Because he made you my sister,” Søren said in a tone of abject disgust.

“What?” She looked at Søren and then Sam again.

“King said you’d be pissed,” Sam said to Søren, a wide grin on her face. “He told me to remind you that Claire is the only teenage girl in the world you could be alone with in a car without raising eyebrows.”

“He might be right. Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Søren said, almost smiling, but not quite. “Tell him I get the joke. And tell him I don’t find him amusing.”

“I will pass that right along,
Padre,
” Sam said.

“I don’t care who the hell she is. I have a fake driver’s license. If you both don’t get out of the way, I’m taking off on my own.”

“I’m out of here.” Sam gave them both a salaam-style bow. “You two kids have fun at the funeral.”

“Keys are in the ignition,” he said and Sam walked over to his Ducati.

Eleanor threw her duffel bag in the trunk and got behind the wheel.

“So we’re doing this?” she asked as Søren got into the passenger side.

“We are.”

“We’re going to your father’s house in New Hampshire. This is a real thing. This is not a joke. And I am driving.”

“All of that is correct. Are you nervous?”

Eleanor didn’t answer. Instead she watched Sam rev up his Ducati and head out to the street. The woman handled the bike like a pro. How was it that Søren had all these amazing friends she knew nothing about?

She started the car and closed her eyes as the engine purred to life.

“Eleanor? Do you and the car need a moment alone together?”

“I came already. Let’s go.”

She drove out of the wooded back driveway. With the new trees he’d planted in early spring, the rectory now stayed hidden almost completely from the church. People could get in and out without anyone noticing. Wasn’t that convenient?

“I have no idea where I’m going,” Eleanor said as she turned onto Oak Street.

“I know where we’re going.”

“I also have no idea what you and I are going to talk about for the next four hours.”

“We can talk about whatever you like.”

“Can we talk about your father?”

“I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Can we talk about Kingsley and what his deal is?”

“That’s a more complicated question than four hours could cover.”

“So the whole ‘we can talk about whatever I want to talk about’ was...”

“Not an accurate statement.”

“I give up.”

“Don’t give up, Little One.”

“Fine. So...hobbies?”

“Piano playing.”

“Phobias?”

“All my fears are rational.”

“Pet peeves?”

“Calvinism.”

Eleanor glowered at him.

“What?”

“Calvinism? Your pet peeve is Calvinism?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor sighed as she turned onto the highway.

“This is gonna be a long drive.”

Luckily Søren came to her rescue. More accurately, his little sister did.

“We should talk about Claire since she is your new identity.”

“Claire’s your younger sister, I guess.”

“One of two. Freyja lives in Denmark. We have the same mother.”

“And Claire?”

“Claire is the daughter of my father’s second wife. She was born when I was fifteen, although I didn’t know she existed until my older sister—Elizabeth—found out and told me about her. I met her for the first time when she was three.”

“So Claire’s a year younger than me, then?”

“Yes. Does that bother you?”

“No. Does it bother you?”

“I’ll admit I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Because, you know, it would be like Kingsley and Claire together.”

“Eleanor, are you trying to make me carsick?”

She laughed openly, easily. It felt so good to be alone with him, teasing him, being near him.

“Sorry. I promise Claire and I will be cool.”

“Good. I’ve been worried about her lately.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Søren adjusted the seat to give himself more legroom. This was not an issue she ever had. “Claire has been a marvelous correspondent. I have almost a thousand letters from her. She’s been writing me since she first learned how. I receive at least one a week. Or did until two months ago, when she stopped writing. I’ve spoken to her on the phone a few times and planned to talk with her at Thanksgiving. She’s been secretive, unusually so. I’m hoping she’ll talk to you since she won’t talk to me.”

“I’m not going to spy on your sister and report back to you. That is a violation of the Girl Code.”

“The Girl Code? Is this something you’ve invented or is it actually codified somewhere?”

“It’s a real thing. You can’t write the rules down because that’s also a violation of the Girl Code. Boys might find a written copy, and then they’d know the secrets.”

“Are you violating the code by telling me about the code?”

“Yes, but the Girl Code is really fucking stupid, and I only follow it when I feel like it.”

“And I assume you feel like following it now?”

“Right.”

All the way to New Hampshire, she and Søren talked. They started with music. She confessed that for the past year she’d been trying to learn about classical music. He confessed he’d borrowed Sam’s copy of Pearl Jam’s
Ten
so he’d know about this mysterious band she adored.

“So Sam’s a Pearl Jam fan, too?” Eleanor asked.

“She is.”

“Can I ask a theological question?”

“I have no idea why you think I would be interested in theology, but ask anyway.”

“If I were to fool around with a woman, would it count as sex?”

“If the rumors about Sam are even half true, I can guarantee she would make it count.”

“You have the coolest friends.”

The four hours passed in what felt like minutes. She’d been worried the trip would be weird or awkward, but instead she discovered Søren, despite being a pompous, pretentious, arrogant, overeducated snob, was the easiest person in the world to talk to. As they neared the house, Eleanor almost regretted the end of the trip. She could talk to him forever.

“Is that it?” she asked, stopping the car at the end of a long driveway.

The sun had set two hours ago, but a spotlight shone on the house ahead. Søren had called it a “Federal” style mansion, whatever that meant. He said his father had married into money and gutted his first wife’s family home, remodeling it to his exact specifications. It had two stories, two wings, twelve bedrooms, fourteen bathrooms and six thousand square feet. Søren also added that he’d rather be back in the leper colony than back at his childhood home.

“That’s it.”

She saw his jaw clench and his eyes narrow.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Little One. Only bad memories from that house.”

She reached over and covered his hand with hers.

“I’m here. I don’t know if that helps any.”

Søren raised her hand and kissed the back of it.

“It helps more than you can imagine.”

She eased the car down the driveway and at Søren’s instructions followed the winding path to the back of the house, where they parked. She turned off the car, got out and stretched a few seconds before pulling her bag from the trunk.

“Oh, another thing, Eleanor, before we go in the house.”

“Is it the body? Is the body in the house?” She tried not to make a face. “No offense but dead bodies creep me out.”

“No body at the house, I promise.”

“Then what’s up?”

“You’re here with Claire, not with me.”

She knew she was here with him, for him. Still, she nodded.

A light on the back porch flipped on.

“Here we go,” Søren sighed. “Brace yourself.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Hurricane Claire is about to hit.”

20

Eleanor

A DOOR SLAMMED,
a loud sound that was followed by an even louder sound—a squeal and a laugh and then a blur of arms and legs racing toward the car.

A girl launched herself into Søren’s arms and wrapped herself bodily around him.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, burying her head against his shoulder.

“I would never have guessed,” Søren said, breathless. The girl must have knocked the wind out of him with the force of her attack hug.

He put her down and leaned back against the car.

“I missed you, Frater,” the girl said, grinning broadly.

“Missed you, too, Soror.”

“I didn’t miss either of you,” Eleanor said, deciding to interrupt if only to get the awkward introductions out of the way.

“Claire, this is Eleanor.” He crooked his finger and Eleanor stepped out of the shadows. At one glance Eleanor could see Claire and Søren were related. She had his mouth and nose, his pale complexion and long dark eyelashes. She didn’t have his height, however, or his blond hair. And although very pretty, she wasn’t nearly as striking as Søren. “Eleanor is a friend from church. I didn’t want you alone here at the house.”

Claire looked up at Søren.

“Sure,” Claire said, glancing at Eleanor and then back at her brother. “She’s here for me. Got ya.” Claire gave him an exaggerated wink. Eleanor liked this girl already.

“Hi. Call me Elle. He only calls me Eleanor because he has a stick up his ass.”

“You noticed that, too?” Claire asked.

Eleanor turned to Søren.

“Oh, yeah, she and I are gonna get along fine.”

“If I had a white flag,” Søren said, “I’d wave it first to surrender and hang myself with it after.”

The three of them walked into the house together. With that auspicious start, Eleanor expected a pleasant evening of hanging around the house and chatting. But as soon as they entered through the back door, Søren lost his smile and his sense of humor.

“Is Elizabeth here?” he asked Claire. Søren had his sister’s hand in his and seemed unwilling or unable to let it go.

“She said she’d be back soon.”

“Did anyone give you a room yet?”

“I’m upstairs in the red room. I took the one with the big bed.”

“Good. I want you in your room now. You and Eleanor.”

“It’s only ten-thirty,” Claire protested. If she hadn’t argued the point, Eleanor would have.

“I don’t care. I need to talk to Elizabeth, so I can’t keep an eye on you two. It’s late, we all have a big day tomorrow and I can’t have either of you roaming around the house by yourselves at night. If you leave the room, you two leave together. And you lock the door and don’t let anyone in the room but me. You understand?”

“Fine. Fine. If you insist. He’s so bossy.” Claire said the last sentence to her and Eleanor started to agree, but Søren shot her a “don’t you dare” look. Claire stood on a step so she could face her brother eye to eye. “Good night, Frater. Tomorrow you’re going to play with me, though.”

“Have you been practicing?”

“Yes, and I’m awesome.”

“Then we’ll play. Tonight you sleep.”

Claire kissed Søren on the cheek and grabbed Eleanor by the arm.

“Let’s go,” Claire said, dragging Eleanor up the steps. “We can talk about him behind his back, and then he’ll regret introducing us.”

“I already do,” Søren said from behind them.

Eleanor followed Claire to the red room and found that the girl had damn good taste. Giant four-poster bed, huge couches, portrait art on the walls—it looked like a room from an English estate rather than an American mansion.

“Nice.” Eleanor nodded her approval.

“It’s okay. Old-fashioned. Are you in love with my brother?”

Eleanor dropped her bag on the floor.

“Can you tell me the right answer to that question before I answer it?”

Claire grinned ear to ear. With that big smile she came darn close to being as striking as her older brother.

“If I wasn’t his sister I’d be in love with him. I am in love with him, but not that way.”

“He’s worried about you.” Eleanor hoped a careful change of subject would work. “He wants to know why you stopped writing him letters.”

Claire groaned and threw herself onto the bed. She buried her face against a pillow and laughed.

This seemed like entirely inappropriate behavior for a girl whose father died that week. Eleanor decided to roll with it.

Claire flipped onto her back and smiled up at the ceiling. Eleanor dug through her duffel bag for the boxer shorts and Pearl Jam T-shirt she’d packed as pajamas.

“It’s very weird having a brother for a priest.”

“You mean, a priest for a brother?”

“Right.” Claire nodded.

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so having a brother would be weird enough to start with. But the priest thing, yeah, that’s gotta be weird.”

“It’s beyond weird. Plus he’s thirty and I’m sixteen so he should be the one out there doing stuff, dating, getting married, whatever, and I should be the innocent virginal one, right? Instead he hasn’t dated anybody since he was a teenager and I’m...”

“You have a boyfriend.” Eleanor stripped out of her shirt and unhooked her bra.

“I do.”

“And you two are...”

“Yeah.” Claire winced.

Eleanor glared at her.

“You lucky bitch.”

Claire laughed again and pulled the covers down on the bed. They spent the next two hours talking about Claire’s boyfriend, Ike, and their sex life, which didn’t amount to much more than a dozen encounters in his bedroom or the basement after school while his parents were still at work. Claire had decided sex was the greatest thing ever and Ike agreed with her. They’d do it more often but he came from conservative Jewish parents who didn’t like him dating a Gentile and would have been furious to find out they were having sex.

“I’d sell my soul to get laid,” Eleanor sighed.

“You’re gorgeous, Elle. You can get any guy you want. Why are you still a virgin?”

“Ask your brother that question.”

“Oh, just do what I did with Ike.”

“What is that?”

Claire grinned devilishly.

“Jump him.”

By midnight Eleanor had extracted a promise from Claire that she’d tell Søren she had a boyfriend and that was why she’d been too busy to write lately. Mission accomplished, Eleanor fell asleep without giving a second thought to the fact that she slept in a bed in the house Søren had grown up in and that in bed with her was his baby sister. She was in love with a Catholic priest who acted liked he owned her. Weird was her new normal.

Eleanor woke up the next morning and she and Claire had breakfast in their pajamas. She couldn’t believe Søren hated this place so much. She’d never been in a big old mansion like this before. This sort of country living suited her fine.

After breakfast she hid out in the bedroom while Claire went downstairs with Søren. The wake would last all day and the funeral and burial would take place tomorrow morning. She’d packed books and homework to occupy her while all the family stuff happened.

“Let no one in the door,” Søren ordered, “except for—”

“Except for you and Claire. I know, I know. Am I going to get raped in the night if I leave the door unlocked?”

Søren had given her the most earnest of stares as Claire tucked herself under his arm and rested her head on his chest.

“You wouldn’t be the first person that has happened to in this house.”

Eleanor locked the door.

At about two in the afternoon, Claire returned to the bedroom carrying a plate of food for her. At six in the evening she brought another plate.

“Are you trying to get me fat, or are you looking for an excuse to get out of there?” Eleanor asked as she dived into her food.

“Mostly the second one. I hate stuff like this. I’m supposed to be sad and miserable. I’m not that good of an actress.”

“No offense, but why aren’t you sad? I mean, your dad died.” Eleanor hoped she didn’t sound judgmental. She wouldn’t be all that sad if her own father died.

Claire threw herself down on the couch next to Eleanor.

“I barely knew him. I’m glad I barely knew him.”

“Was he that bad?”

Claire sighed and grabbed a strawberry off Eleanor’s plate. Eleanor pretended to stab her hand with the fork.

“You want to know how bad he was?” Claire asked.

“Probably not, but tell me anyway.”

“Frater won’t tell me much, so I got all this from Mom.”

“Wait, stop right there. Explain the
Frater
thing to me.”

“It’s Latin for brother. Soror is Latin for sister. That’s what he and I call each other—Frater and Soror. He says he hates the name Marcus.”

“That was your dad’s name?”

“Right. And this is why he hates the name, and this is why I’m not sad my father’s dead.”

Claire took a deep breath, kicked off her black ballet flats and curled up against the back of the couch.

“My father is...was a very bad person. My mom says he abused Elizabeth when she was a little girl.”

“He hit her?”

“Worse.”

Eleanor’s heart stopped beating for a few seconds.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Elizabeth’s mom and my father got divorced over that. They got married in the sixties, divorced in the seventies. Everyone kept stuff like that a secret. Then he met my mom and married her. They had me. Elizabeth found out from her mom that our father had gotten remarried and had me. She didn’t know what to do so she wrote a letter to Frater.”

“What did he do?” Eleanor was careful to not call Søren “Søren.” Apparently Claire didn’t know his real name. Interesting that Søren thought her more worthy of knowing his real name than his own baby sister.

“This is what Mom told me. She said it was late November. I was three years old. My father was gone on one of his business trips. Mom said the doorbell rang one afternoon and she answered it. And standing on the front porch was, and these are her words, ‘a blond angel.’”

“A blond angel?”

“That’s what she said. He introduced himself as the son of her husband, which was a huge shock since she didn’t even know my father had a son. He told her that she didn’t have to let him in the house. He only wanted five minutes of her time.”

“What happened?”

“Ten minutes later, Mom was packing our stuff, calling her parents and getting us out of the house—this house. My ‘blond angel’ brother told my mom she’d married a child-raping monster and if she loved her daughter she would never let her spend a single second in their father’s company ever again. He had a friend with him, my mom said.”

“A friend? Who?”

“Some French guy about his age. They both helped her carry the stuff to Mom’s car. She said she offered to let him hold his baby sister. Me, that is. He said he didn’t know anything about children and was worried he’d hurt me. Apparently his friend held me instead while she packed up the car. He said he liked kids. Now I make Frater hug me all the time to make up for that day he wouldn’t do it.”

“That is crazy.” So a teenage Kingsley had gone with Søren to his father’s house. She couldn’t imagine Kingsley holding a kid. “So your brother left school to warn your mom about who she’d married?”

“He did. And guess what, Elle?”

“What?”

“Because of him coming to my mother that day, I lost my virginity at age sixteen to my boyfriend. Not at age eight to my father like Elizabeth did. So that’s why I’m totally in love with my brother. Not that way, though.” Claire grinned, a slight blush suffusing her cheeks.

“Yeah, not that way. I get it.” Eleanor stared across the room and into the empty fireplace. “It doesn’t surprise me, you know? I mean, it’s horrible and it makes me sick to think about your dad and what he did to your sister. I have this friend at school—Jordan. Her mom won’t let us hang out much anymore because of some trouble I got into once. But last year I could tell something was really wrong with her. I made her tell me. A teacher had felt her up.”

“What a sick fucker.”

“I know,” Eleanor said. “I told your brother about it. He put the fear of God into that asshole teacher. That guy packed up his shit and left town. Your brother has this really strong protective streak toward girls.”

“Elizabeth is the reason,” Claire said. “He’s so protective I didn’t even want to tell him about Ike.”

“He’s protective of me, too,” Eleanor said. “Except with me, he’s protecting me from him, and I wish he’d stop.”

“You
are
in love with him.” Claire studied her with Søren’s steel-colored eyes. They must have inherited that steely stare from their father.

“Yeah,” she admitted, not looking Claire in the eyes.

“Does he know?”

“He does. Does that freak you out?”

“I don’t want him getting in trouble, that’s for sure. But I don’t want him to be a priest, either. When he was in seminary, I’d cut out pictures of sexy women in magazines and send them to him in my letters. I wrote on the pictures ‘see what you’re missing?’”

“And you say I’m evil?”

“I know. He thought it was hilarious. He said mine were the most popular letters at his seminary. It was a joke at first. But then a few years ago when that thing happened in El Salvador, I called him and begged him to quit school and come home.”

“What thing in El Salvador?”

“There was a war,” Claire began, her face wearing an inscrutable expression. “The Jesuits had a school there. They weren’t part of the war. But that didn’t stop the military from killing them.”

“Killing who?”

Claire looked Eleanor straight in the eyes.

“The Jesuit priests. Six of them.” Claire wiped a tear off her cheek. “Elle, they killed them all. The priests, the housekeeper, the housekeeper’s daughter... Mom bought the
Newsweek
that had a story on it. I still have the article—‘Bloodbath in El Salvador.’ November 16, 1989.”

Eleanor couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. All she could do was stare into the vision of Søren on his knees, a man standing behind him with a gun pointed at the back of his head.

“They call the Jesuits ‘God’s Army,’ ‘God’s Marines,’ ‘God’s Soldiers.’ And the Jesuits take that seriously. They go to work in the most dangerous parts of the world, and sometimes they die there. I begged Frater to quit. He said God wanted him to be a priest. That was the end of that.”