"I didn't want to do this, Eleanor. I never wanted to do this. Not like this anyway. But perhaps the Bible was right in this instance-spare the rod, spoil the child."

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"You going to hit me?"

"Not tonight," he said simply. "The night we made our little bargain, I told you there was nothing I wouldn't do to protect you. I meant it. Which is why you'll have to forgive me doing this now."

"Doing what?"

"Raro solus, nunquam duo, semper tres." S0ren sounded as if he were quoting something.

"What does that mean?"

"It's an old Jesuit rule they beat into us. Figuratively, of course. It means 'rarely alone, never two, always three.' The Jesuits have rules against what they call particular friendships. In seminary we were to talk in groups of three or more. It's considered dangerous to be alone with another person, even another priest."

"Why? They thought you'd start having crazy gay s.e.x the minute you were alone together?"

"Yes."

"Did you?"

"No. Although I was propositioned more than once."

"Color me surprised."

"But still, I thought it a pointless rule. I understand it now. You and I have a particular friendship. And it has to end."

"End?" Her voice broke on the word.

"I told you if you watered that stick every day for six months, I'd answer your questions. You failed in this task. You will not be rewarded. I told you that you had to obey me forever, and I would give you everything. You disobeyed me and went to your father and now you're suffering the consequences. For the foreseeable future, Diane will monitor your community service. This particular friendship of ours will cease until that day comes that I'm certain you are mature enough to be in an adult relationship. And by adult I do not mean s.e.xual. I mean a relationship between equal partners."

"What do you mean? We can't be friends anymore?"

"Unfortunately, yes, that is what I mean. Of course, I'll still be your priest. And if and when you need a priest, I'll be here for you, but only in that capacity. Go, Eleanor. Go be a normal teenager for a year or two. Go grow up."

"A year or two?" It sounded like the worst prison sentence imaginable. No more long talks in the choir loft? No more help with her homework? No more cocoa when she was fighting with her math homework?

"I'm your priest, not your babysitter."

Eleanor only looked at him. Even in the faint light of a pa.s.sing streetlamp, she could see how hard his eyes had turned. His face was as cold and stony as granite. All affection, all concern, all mercy had drained from his expression.

"You're a cold b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said, refusing to let another tear fall. "You know that, right?"

"I do. And it is for the best you know it now, as well."

The Rolls-Royce pulled up at the end of her street, far enough away her mother wouldn't see where she'd come from, close enough she'd only have to be in the cold a minute or two.

She wanted to say something more to him, wanted to beg him to change his mind, wanted to tell him how much she hated him. Instead she simply opened the door.

"Eleanor," S0ren said before she left the car.

She looked at him and saw the faintest look of anguish in his eyes.

"What?"

"This will hurt me more than it hurts you."

"Good."

She left him alone in the back of the Rolls.

As quietly as she could, she took the spare key from under the mat and unlocked the back door. She locked the door behind her and started when she heard a voice in the dark.

"Do I even want to know where you've been?" her mother asked.

Eleanor slowly turned to face her mother, who flipped on the kitchen light. Once more Eleanor was bathed in the fluorescent lights of an interrogation.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to stay out so late."

Her mother stood in the doorway wearing her dingy white bathroom and slippers. Disappointment lined her mouth.

"That's not an answer."

Eleanor weighed her words and decided to try the truth, at least half of the truth.

"Dad called. He said he was about to get sentenced. This might be my last chance to see him."

"You went to see your father? Oh, Elle."

"Yeah, Mom. I'm sorry. I missed him. But it was stupid. He didn't want to see me. He wanted me to lie for him. I ran out and left my coat behind."

"I could have believed that once. But this doesn't really help your case."

She pointed to the side of Eleanor's neck, where Lachlan had bitten her earlier. She must have a hickey the size of Delaware from how hard he'd bitten and kissed her.

f.u.c.k.

"Mom, nothing happened. I swear I didn't-"

"I don't care." Her mother raised her hand. "I don't care anymore. I told you the night you got arrested that if you pulled something like that again I was done with you. Now I come home from work and you're gone. No note. Nothing. I call Jordan's and you're not there. School. Church. Gone."

"I got lost in the city. It took me a while to figure out how to get home."

"I don't know why you came home. You obviously can't stand it here. Not if you're running off to see your father, whom I forbade you from having any contact with."

"He said I might not see him again for years."

"That's a bad thing?"

"I thought it was. Now I know ... I never want to see him again. I'm sorry. Nothing happened-"

"Save it. No matter how much I care you go off and you do whatever you want with whomever you want anyway. So I'm going to stop caring. I'm not even going to punish you. That's how little I care right now."

"No, Mom, don't be like that. Please don't ..." Tears burst from her eyes. "Don't give up on me, too."

"Too? Who else is giving up on you?"

"I did something stupid, and now Father Stearns isn't even going to monitor my community service anymore."

"Then he's smart. You'd run right over him and his feelings like you do with everyone else who tries to care about you and help you."

"Mom ..." Eleanor took a step forward but her mother stepped back and away from her.

Her mother stared straight into her eyes.

"When you were little, you always called me Momma. And you smiled when you said it. Now it's Mom. And you never smile at me."

"Please ..." Eleanor didn't even know what she was begging for.

"Go to bed," her mother said, sounding tired. "Or not. Do whatever you want. You will anyway."

Her mother turned her back on Eleanor and flipped the light off as if Eleanor weren't still standing there in the middle of the kitchen.

She merely stood there in shock and sorrow, not sure what to do. She'd lost her priest, her father and her mother all in the same night. Who did she even have left? Anyone? Anything?

In the dark she found her way to her bed and without taking her clothes off, she slid under her covers. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.

"Are You up there?" she whispered to G.o.d and waited, hoping, praying that someone somewhere was out there who hadn't given up on her.

But G.o.d didn't answer.

16.

Nora "WHAT VINTAGE OF TEAR IS THIS?" NICO ASKED, touching her wet face. "A 1993? Or something more recent?"

Nora smiled shyly at him.

"You're the vintner. What do you think?"

Nico brought his wet fingertip to his mouth and licked it.

"Whatever vintage this is, I can taste that it was a hard year."

"It was a hard year," she agreed. "Like this week. A lot of second-guessing myself, wondering if I could have prevented it. A lot of begging G.o.d to undo what happened. Even now I feel that same awful desperation-that, 'G.o.d, I would give anything, trade anything, to feel something other than this pain.'"

She closed her eyes and breathed deep again. G.o.d help her, she would do anything to not have to spread those ashes tomorrow.

"But," she continued, coming back to the present, "even that night alone in my bed, I knew I'd brought it on myself. And maybe knowing that was the one sign of hope for me."

"How long did he punish you for seeing your father?" Nico asked.

"A long time." Nora sat up while Nico rolled onto his back. She still had her gown on but Nico lay naked in bed, the sheets pulled up to his hips, his chest bare and inviting. "When you're a teenager, every day without getting what you want feels like an eternity. Your heart's under a magnifying gla.s.s at that age-everything is blown out of proportion."

"How long before you and he spoke after that night?"

Nora cast her mind to that awful time. She remembered it as a particularly dark, cold and snowy winter. Streets turned gray with slush and treacherous with ice. But there, in her box of black memories, lay one shining star.

"Christmas," she said. "A few weeks later I went to midnight Ma.s.s, and S0ren and I declared a Christmas truce for an hour. I think my mother had told him my father had been sentenced-fifteen years hard time. He knew I needed something to help me get through it. We talked. He gave me a Christmas gift."

"What did he give you?"

"A St. Louise medal," Nora said, smiling at the memory. "My middle name is Louise. And her Feast Day is March 15th-my birthday."

"A good gift."

"He let me cry on his shoulder a little. That was an even better gift. After that it was March before we spoke again."

"What happened in March?"

"Nothing," Nora said. "And everything. I skipped school and went for a walk. For some reason my wandering feet led me right to Sacred Heart. I didn't think I'd see S0ren that day, but there he was at the rectory ... in his backyard ... planting trees ... and wearing jeans and a white T-shirt."

"You remember his clothes from that day?"

"I remember everything. I'd never seen S0ren in anything but his clerics and collar before. I had convinced myself he even slept in his clerics. But d.a.m.n ..." She smiled down at Nico. "He had dirt under his nails. Like you did the day we met."

"I'd been working that day. I work every day."

"I liked it. I like a man who's not afraid to get his hands dirty."

"Was he angry at you for coming to his house?"

Nora shook her head. "I can count on one hand the number of times S0ren's been actually angry at me. And then it's usually because I've done something dangerously stupid or stupidly dangerous. No, that day he was ... Well, he wasn't angry. By March it had been four months since he told me to back off, go away, grow up. Everything that had happened the year before already felt like a dream, like I couldn't be sure it had happened."

She remembered standing outside the fence and S0ren on the inside. They talked for a few minutes, and from the way he spoke, the way he looked at her, she knew she wasn't the only one who remembered the dream.

"After that day, however ..." Nora's chest heaved slightly. "Nothing. Nothing for months and months and months. No talking, no touching, no nothing. S0ren and I became strangers to each other again. It wasn't awful. I didn't sit in my room and stare out the window for a year or anything. I went to school, got good grades, worked my a.s.s off to finish my community service. I wasn't allowed to get a driver's license until I turned eighteen, but S0ren's secretary, Diane, gave me rides places. I did okay. It wasn't fun, but I survived it."

Nico rolled up and moved closer to her. He took her knees in his hands and pulled her legs around his waist to bring them face-to-face. She relaxed into the circle of his strong arms and rested her chin on his shoulder.

"I'm glad you survived it," he said. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here."