The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Read online

  He pointed at her. “You’re trouble.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” She pushed her sunglasses back on and faced forward, eyes on the road. “Old habits die hard.”

  “I hear that,” he said, wincing.

  “Oh…there’s a story there.” She laughed. “Spill it.”

  “Not telling it.”

  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

  “You already told me yours,” he said.

  “Not all of it.”

  Cyrus laughed. He liked her. That was a fact. Whether he should like her…well, that he didn’t know.

  “I’ll tell you something,” Cyrus said. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “Now I’m intrigued,” she said. “Tell me anything you want.”

  “I’ve had…ah…issues in the past. With women.”

  “Issues?”

  “Honesty issues,” he said. “I’m seeing someone for all that. And it’s helping. One of the things I’m supposed to work on is being truthful with the women in my life. No false pretenses, no lies. Not even white lies. So, you know, don’t ask me something if you don’t want an honest answer.”

  “Are you lying to me about something?”

  “No, no, not that. Just…I’m supposed to have a female friend. A woman in my life who I’m not related to who I can confide in and be friendly with. Paulina said today you might be a good candidate for the job.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Throw me in the deep end, I guess.”

  “And I’m the deep end?”

  “You are definitely not the kiddie pool, lady.”

  They’d turned into construction traffic and slowed to a crawl. The sun was high and hot, so Nora hit the button to raise the convertible top. Once latched into place, she turned the A/C on. Suddenly it was cooler, darker, and much more intimate in the car.

  “This is coming from a therapist, right?” Nora asked. “Sounds like it. What do they call it? Exposure therapy. Spiders freak you out, so they have you make friends with a spider. Women freak you out, so they have you make friends with a woman?”

  “Something like that,” he said. “Therapy was Paulina’s idea. And when I say ‘idea,’ I mean ‘order.’”

  Nora grinned again. “So you used to play around a lot, then you met your dream girl, and now you’re behaving yourself?”

  “I did not play around,” he said. “There was no playing. I made girls my second full-time job.”

  “Nice work if you can get it. I guess you got it.”

  “I got it,” he said. Cyrus didn’t say anything and neither did Nora. She seemed to be waiting for him to go on. “I was not a great guy back then.”

  “No judgment here. I’ve been the bad guy, too,” she said. “And trust me, you’ve got nothing on King. Even after he met Juliette, it took him a long time to settle down. Céleste finally did the trick. That man is lucky to be alive. In his heyday, it was a different girl—or guy—every day almost.” She didn’t sound like she was joking.

  “That’s almost better than what I was doing,” Cyrus said. “A new girl every day and nobody really gets hurt because nobody expects anything. Me? I’d play the girls, play with their minds, their hearts, make them crazy about me, make them think we had something real. Then I’d get bored, pick a new girl, start all over. Run down my list…” he said, miming an imaginary list of women’s names. “Get to the bottom. Start at the top again. Apologize. Flowers. Beg for forgiveness. Win them over.”

  “Power trip.”

  “You got it. Therapist thinks—I do, too—that it’s because my father died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. Tough time to lose your dad. I started looking for any way to feel better, to feel in control. I found girls.”

  “What changed? You don’t seem like much of a player anymore.”

  “I got shot,” Cyrus said. “I was off-duty, rolled up on a bunch of squad cars outside a gas station. Owner got shot during a robbery. They had it under control so I went home. Drove past this alley, saw a kid running—matched the description down to his yellow Adidas tennis shoes. I knew it had to be our guy. I got out and ran down the alley…came out the other side and BAM—hit right in the shoulder. Another cop thought I was the guy.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Nora said. “You got shot by another cop? He didn’t recognize you?”

  “All he saw was ‘black dude running.’ Good thing he’s a shit shot, or I’d be a dead man.”

  “Fuck.”

  She didn’t ask any stupid questions. Cyrus appreciated that. “Fuck” was the right response. At least she didn’t ask Did it hurt? like a lot of people did. Yeah, it hurt. Of course it hurt.

  “Two weeks laid up in the hospital. Nobody but family came to see me. I had my phone. I let every girl on my list know their poor baby Cy had taken a bullet in the line of duty. I was waiting for my medal, waiting on some sympathy.”

  “At least a sponge bath, right?”

  “Not one of them showed up.”

  “Not one?”

  “They had me figured out.” Even as he said it, he remembered one person had shown up at the hospital to check on him, one of the girls on his list. Detective Katherine Naylor. She’d made the mistake of coming when his mom was there. He’d pretended like they were nothing but coworkers, and that had been the last of Katherine.

  “Not even Paulina?”

  “I hadn’t met her yet,” he said. “I did a couple weeks after I got out. I was staying with Mom while I was recovering. Her rule—you stay in her house, you go to Mass with her every Sunday.”

  “Sounds like your mom and my mom went to the same Mom School.”

  “Mom introduced me to Paulina at church. Love at first sight. For me. She looked at me like she’d been reading my internet search history.”

  Nora laughed at that. She did have a good laugh. The kind of laugh that made a man stand up a little straighter in his seat.

  “Took a long time to convince her to give me a chance. She’d heard enough horror stories from Mom in their prayer group to make me work for her. For three whole months I could only see Paulina at Mass. Lucky for me, she goes every day.”

  “So you started going every day?”

  “Every God damn day,” he said.

  “Explains why your website says you only help out women and children. You’re doing penance.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe that’s what it is.”

  “I think you’re more Catholic than I am.”

  “Bad Catholic. Paulina was this close to joining the Ursulines in town.” He held up his hand, fingers a hair apart. “I stole her right out from under God’s nose. Might be going to hell for that.”

  Nora said, “It’s okay. We’ll ride share.”

  He laughed, couldn’t help it. The lady was fun. Fun enough to be a real friend? Time would tell maybe.

  “You’re all right, Nora.”

  She smiled. “Better reserve judgment there, buddy.” Nora hit the gas.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They arrived at St. Valentine’s, and Cyrus told her to park on the street near the back, close to the parish house.

  When Nora turned off the car’s engine, that’s when Cyrus realized he didn’t quite know how to introduce her to Sister Margaret.

  “Ready?” Nora asked.

  “Hold on. Trying to figure out how to lie to a nun,” he said.

  “Oh, that’s my area,” she said. “What are we lying about?”

  “You. If I’m going to let you snoop around Father Ike’s room, I better tell Sister Margaret something about you.”

  “Hmm…maybe tell her I’m a private eye in training?”

  Cyrus stared at her.

  “Okay, stupid lie,” she said. “Tell her I’m a psychic you hired to read the vibrations of the room?”

  “I could maybe tell that to anyone in this town but a nun.”

  “True. Catholics don’t really trust psychics. You could tell her I’m a therapist who knows a lot about the psyc
hological issues Catholic priests deal with.”

  “Can you pull that off, though?”

  “I think I can handle that one.”

  Cyrus escorted Nora to the front door of the parish house. Sister Margaret greeted them at the door. She looked Nora up and down a couple times but didn’t object to letting him and Nora into Father Ike’s room.

  “Can I help you with anything?” Sister Margaret asked from the door.

  “Did Father Ike have a laptop?” asked Cyrus.

  “Not that I know of. We have a shared computer room in the house,” she said. She lowered her voice. “I already checked the internet history.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. Though I felt terrible for looking.” She shook her head.

  “Don’t feel bad, Sister,” he said. “We all want to know what was going on.”

  “Did you find out what that thing was we found?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “Still looking into that,” Cyrus said.

  Sister Margaret nodded. Then she left them alone in Father Ike’s room without another word. Nora stood by the picture window in the sitting room, staring down at the courtyard below. He stood next to her and saw what she was seeing—two elderly women in gray habits sitting under the shade of an oak tree.

  “She seemed really upset.” Nora met his eyes.

  “It’s been hard for her,” Cyrus said to Nora. “She’s known him for years. Thought she knew him.”

  “Can you ever really know anybody? Completely, I mean? All the way down?”

  “You been with your Viking for how long?”

  “Known him twenty-three years,” she said, throwing two fingers up, then three. “Kingsley’s known him even longer. King once called Søren ‘the infinite onion.’ No matter how many layers we peel back, there always seems to be more to him…”

  “The infinite onion?”

  “We were really stoned at the time,” she admitted. “But it’s an apt description.”

  “You don’t know him?” Cyrus couldn’t imagine not knowing everything there was to know about Paulina after twenty-three years.

  “I know his heart,” she said. “But he can still shock me sometimes, still surprise me.”

  “Where’d you two meet?” Cyrus asked.

  “Went to Starbucks one day,” Nora said. “Ordered a tall blond with whip. They gave me Søren.”

  Cyrus glared at her. She winked at him but didn’t pony up the real answer. Interesting. He’d figured her for an open book. Seemed like a few pages of that book were stapled shut.

  “I guess we should get started,” he said, glancing around the room. “But I only have one pair of gloves with me, so I better do the digging. You can tell me if I—”

  “I got this.” Nora rummaged through her handbag. She snapped on a pair of disposable, powder-free latex gloves. “I have my own.”

  “Do I want to—”

  “No, you don’t want to know.”

  “All right then. What room do you want? Sitting room or bedroom?”

  “Bedroom,” she said.

  “Thank God,” Cyrus said.

  He thought Nora would smile or laugh. She didn’t.

  Cyrus started in on the sitting room, while Nora worked silently in the bedroom. He found nothing in the sofa but loose change and a pair of fingernail clippers. He had better luck with the coat closet. There was a shoebox on the top shelf full of old credit card bills.

  He went through a few of them. The charges appeared benign. Gas, restaurants, Amazon. But Cyrus knew better—he’d seen it in the river in his mind. Father Ike had a secret, and keeping secrets costs money.

  He carried the shoebox into the bedroom. Nora was sitting on the floor, her back to the bed, a Bible in her hands.

  “Nora?”

  She looked up at him, tears on her face. “Sorry,” she said, hastily wiping them away.

  Although he was wearing a suit, Cyrus sat down on the dusty floor across from her. “What’s wrong?”

  She closed her eyes, then took a breath before looking at him. “It just hit me what we’re doing. A priest died, and these are all his private things. We’re going through them like…like we can. Because he doesn’t have any family here.”

  “This is the job.”

  “Father Ike keeps private notes in his Bible.” She opened the Bible. It filled with scraps of paper. “Søren does, too. That’s why I got Father Ike’s Bible out when I saw it. Because I’ve found all kinds of secret stuff in Søren’s Bible.”

  Cyrus waited. He could tell she had something to say to him. He’d been with enough women in his life to see that look in her eyes. He waited.

  “I need to tell you something about Søren,” she said. “If I can trust you. Can I?”

  “I want you to,” he said. “But I can’t make you. All I can say is keeping secrets is part of my job. There’s a whole lot that happens in this town, and I’m the only person who knows it or is ever gonna know it.”

  “You won’t tell Paulina?”

  “She understands I have to keep secrets in my line of work.”

  “Like a priest,” Nora said.

  “Right. Like a priest.”

  He waited. She waited. He looked at her. She looked away. Finally, she looked at him again.

  “Søren…he’s a priest.”

  Cyrus let that sink in. “You know what’s crazy? I’m not surprised.”

  “You aren’t?”

  “Jesuit?”

  She nodded.

  “I went to Jesuit school,” he said. “They’re some scary motherfuckers, Jesuits. Scary smart. Scary-scary.”

  “They don’t scare me.”

  “Guess they don’t,” Cyrus said, rubbing his chin. “You didn’t want to tell me how you two met. I now know why.”

  “We met in church.”

  “Twenty-three years,” he said. “How the hell did you two not get caught?”

  She grinned. “Location, location, location. Tiny parish in a small town. And with the priest shortage, Søren didn’t have to share the parish house with any other priests. Which is good. That place was tiny. But it was far back from the church, trees everywhere, and to get to it, you had to drive in from a side street. Very secluded. That helped. We also fucked at Kingsley’s house a lot.”

  “You must have been young when you met him.”

  “I was,” she said. “I don’t like talking about it. People think things about us that aren’t true. I was two weeks away from my sixteenth birthday when we met. But we didn’t start sleeping together until I was a junior in college. Twenty years old. I’m not saying that makes us angels or anything but…you know.”

  “He’s not a pedophile.”

  “Exactly.”

  Cyrus took a couple deep breaths. This was heavy, but he’d carried heavier secrets.

  “Yeah, I’m definitely not telling Paulina that,” Cyrus said. “She’d make some phone calls on him.”

  Nora laughed softly. “Too late. He’s already been suspended. Forced leave of absence for a period of no less than one year.”

  “Cause of you?” Cyrus asked.

  Nora ran her fingers gently over the binding of Ike’s old Bible again.

  “Søren has a son—Fionn. He’s three now.”

  “He has a son? But you don’t?”

  “This would be so much easier to explain if you were a freak, too. You sure you aren’t?”

  He laughed. “Last I checked.”

  “I’ll give you the short sweet vanilla version. First, it wasn’t cheating,” she said. “We’re in an open relationship. Always have been. He didn’t have sex with other people, but he did kink with them which can be much more intense and intimate than sex. Meanwhile…I actually had sex with other people.”

  “This is the sweet version of the story.”

  She took a deep breath. “Something…bad happened. I was nearly killed. Him, too. We were both staring death in the face. I’m not exaggerating. There were guns to our
heads.”

  “Shit,” Cyrus said. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “Men like Kingsley, they have pasts. His, in particular, is filled with some very dangerous people. One of them caught up with him. Wanted to destroy us—King, Søren. Me. Thank God we got out alive.”

  “Jesus.” Cyrus shook his head.

  “You’ve been shot,” Nora said. “You know what a near-death experience does to you. You see things you’ve never seen before. You feel like you better get your life together while you still have it.”

  “I hear you. If I hadn’t gotten shot…I don’t even want to think about it.”

  If he hadn’t gotten shot, there’d be no Paulina in his life. Funny how the worst thing that happened to a man could turn out to be the best thing sometimes.

  “There was always this secret part of Søren that wanted to have a child,” Nora said. “And it was never going to be with me. I can’t even have kids anymore—by choice, I promise. So…when given the chance, he took it. I don’t blame him. I’ve taken my fair share of chances. Being in an open relationship, there’s always more risk. Like someone getting pregnant, which…happens.”

  He sensed there was a story there, even more story than she was telling him.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it’s fine. I love Fionn. He was a surprise but a good one.”

  She took something out of her bag that looked like a passport wallet. She opened it and showed him a photograph of a little blond boy, about two years old.

  “He’s cute,” Cyrus said.

  She slid the photo carefully back into her bag, but only after glancing at it one more time and smiling.

  “That ‘ordeal,’” she said, putting “ordeal” in finger-quotes, “changed everything for us. I was seeing someone else at the time. Søren and I had been on and off for years. But after that, we were on and we’ve stayed on. And King and I had some bad blood between us. We cleaned the blood up finally. That was also right when King stopped fucking around with everyone on the planet. After Céleste was born, King decided to turn over a new leaf. That’s why we all moved down here. We wanted to leave our pasts in New York.”

  “I think yours might have followed you down here.”

  “Seems to be the case,” she said.

  “Anything else you holding out on me?”