Author: Tiffany Reisz

“I don’t want to understand.” She set the teacup down so hard it shattered on the counter. “I want my husband to touch me.”

Marie-Laure crumpled to the floor as her slight body shuddered with the wave of grief that overtook it. Kingsley knelt next to her and gathered her in his arms.

“I’m sorry...” He didn’t know what else to say. What could he say? As much as he loved Søren, he still hated to see his sister this unhappy. They would have to tell her…or show her…something.

“What is it?” Marie-Laure whispered. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Kingsley turned her tearstained face up and smiled at her. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s him. I promise you it’s him.”

“Is there…” She paused to swallow a sob. “Is there someone else?”

Kingsley stiffened slightly. What could he say to that? He had to tell her about Søren. But he couldn’t. Søren had said he would explain in time. As much as Kingsley loved his sister, his loyalties had become Søren’s that night in the forest.

“Kingsley…” Marie-Laure put her hands on either side of his face and stared at him with more darkness and determination than he’d ever dreamed his slight sister possessed. Somehow she’d felt his tremor of fear pass through him, the fear that he would tell her even against Søren’s wishes. “He is your friend. Tell me what you know. Is there someone else?”

“There might be.”

She wrested herself from his arms and stood up.

“Marie-Laure…what is it? What—”

Her spine went ramrod straight. Her face hardened like the granite that filled the hills around them. Her eyes blazed. There might be.... Those words ignited a fire in Marie-Laure’s eyes. It burned so bright that Kingsley feared for his own safety. Such fury could burn the world down and leave nothing but ashes.

“If that is true…if there is someone else…then I will walk the world if I must…”

She stopped to breathe. Her tears had ceased. She gazed down at Kingsley and looked not at him but through him.

“Marie-Laure?” Kingsley could barely recognize her.

“And I will kill the bitch.”

NORTH

The Present

A forty-minute drive separated Nora’s home from Søren’s rectory. Once more Kingsley cursed the madness that kept the most important people in his life so far from the city, where he wanted them. A priest of Søren’s upstanding reputation, education and erudition should have been in New York preaching to the educated masses or teaching at the Jesuit University…not wasting his talents in a domesticated small town with only the most bourgeois of sinners about him, committing sins so banal they weren’t even worth the bother to absolve. Kingsley wondered at times if Nora and Søren lived outside of New York because he lived in it.

“Merde.” Kingsley swore bitterly as a wedding procession at the edge of Wakefield halted his progress. A horse and carriage carrying a blushing bride and her plain-faced groom trotted slowly through an intersection, a hundred smiling, laughing guests following on foot.

If only Marie-Laure and Søren had had such a wedding—a daylight wedding with guests who greeted their marriage with joy and not bitter jealousy. If only the love had been mutual and not one-sided. If only…

At last the wedding procession passed by, and Kingsley sped all the way to the rectory. Once there he barely turned off his engine before racing into Søren’s home without knocking. His body still ached with every step. Even as teenagers Søren had never brutalized Kingsley so thoroughly as he had last night. Kingsley wanted to believe it was proof of love, but he wasn’t the fool he’d been as a teenager. Now he knew the difference between lust and love. Back then they were one and the same.

Kingsley didn’t find Søren in the rectory, but he didn’t despair. He’d seen the black vintage Ducati parked just outside—Søren’s one mode of transportation. He couldn’t have gone far. For the first time in years, Kingsley entered Sacred Heart, feeling the weight of guilt pressing down on him as he took in the candles, the shrines, the tiny chapel of perpetual adoration. His was not Catholic guilt. It went far deeper than religion, deeper than faith. It went as deep as his own blood, the blood that ran in the veins of his sister, the blood he’d betrayed the day he’d goaded her young husband into kissing him, knowing full well she would see them together.

Søren wasn’t in the sanctuary. He wasn’t in the chapel. Finally, Kingsley found him in his secretary’s office. At her desk Søren sat with a printout of what appeared to be a newspaper article in front of him.

“Mon père…” Kingsley said, and Søren looked up at him.

Søren held out the piece of paper and Kingsley took it. He scanned the date—January 1980. He read the headline, Canadian Runaway Missing for Three Weeks—Feared Dead. He stared at the picture of the missing girl. She had long brown hair, a lithe figure…a dancer’s body. Had they removed the missing girl’s face, she would have been interchangeable with his sister... Christian’s words came back to him. That valley where the hermitage stood…it had been an underground railroad for runaways. And suddenly he knew how it had happened. Marie-Laure had found the runaway and seen her chance. Seen her chance and taken it.

“It’s Marie-Laure,” Kingsley said, without preamble. “She’s alive.”

Søren stood up and looked him in the eyes.

“I know. Your sister is alive. Which means—”

Kingsley’s knees nearly buckled with the realization. It hadn’t even occurred to him until that very moment, as he stood inside Sacred Heart with Søren before him in his Roman collar and clerics and his vows of obedience and poverty and chastity perfuming the air like incense…

“Your wife is alive.”

SOUTH

Wesley had a plan. A stupid plan. A terrible plan. The worst plan. But it was the only plan he had. And he could only hope that Nora, who was the queen of stupid terrible plans, would go along with it. It started with a horse.

“I’m not getting on that thing.” Nora stood at the white fence while Wesley walked his horse past her.

“You don’t have to get on this thing. This thing, which is actually a saddlebred stallion, is my thing. Your thing is still in the stables.”

“Is my thing much shorter than your thing?”

“Much shorter and much tamer.”

“Good. Then let’s get this dog and pony show on the road. Where’s the dog?”

“We don’t have a dog. It’s just a pony show.”

“I can live with that.”

Wesley dismounted from Bob for Short, the most trustworthy and sure-footed of the two dozen saddlebreds his parents kept on the farm, and tied him to the fence while he took Nora into the stable. He saddled up a mare named Purse Nickity and handed Nora the reins.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” Nora said as they walked the horse out in the sunshine.

“Making you do what? Go horseback riding with me?”

“Yes. After this morning? And last night? And yesterday afternoon?”

Wesley stared at her blankly. Nora rolled her eyes as she came to stand directly in front of him.

“Young man, you have fucked me raw.” She poked him in his chest. “I am saddlesore and I haven’t even been on a saddle.”

Wesley winced in sympathy. “Ow. I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I’m sorry.”

A huge grin spread across Nora’s face.

“I’m not. Let’s do this.”

She put her foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle, not even flinching as she adjusted her seat.

“Come on, Wes. If I’m not sore after sex, I assume someone did something wrong.”

Wesley laughed, hopped in the saddle, grabbed his reins, trotted Bob up to Nora.

“Well, I’m glad you’re just sore and not in actual pain. I know that’s kind of your thing, but I’m afraid it won’t ever be mine.”

“It’s okay,” she said as Wesley led them out of the pasture and onto a well-worn trail that wound through a few acres of hardwoods. “I don’t miss the pain as much as you’d think. It’s been kind of nice not feeling like I have to pay for the pleasure with a day off my life. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Kinky sex is intense, to say the least. But being with you…” She turned and smiled at him. “It’s been good, Wes. Better than I ever would have dreamed. Better than I wanted to dream. What about you? You doing okay being with a woman old enough to have given birth to you had she gotten knocked up at age fourteen?”

Wesley gripped the reins and pulled Bob around so he’d be looking Nora straight in the eye when he answered. “More than okay. It’s been the best thing ever.”

“Ever?” she asked, her face flushing. Wesley prayed the color on her cheeks was inspired by his compliment and not simply the exertion of riding in the last summer heat up the side of a sloping hill. He could have picked an easier trail, but he had something to show Nora and the only way to get to it was up. “Ever’s a long time. Almost as long as forever. And definitely longer than for-fucking-ever.”

“I kind of like the thought of forever,” Wesley said as they passed under a canopy of bowed tree limbs and came out on the other side into the early morning sunlight. “Don’t you?”

Nora shrugged. “Depends on the forever we’re talking about. Forever waiting for something you want is another definition of hell in my book. Forever with someone you love? That’s the other definition of heaven.”

“Want to know my definition of heaven?” Wesley asked as they reached the top of the hill.

“Does it involve a swimming pool full of mud, me in fishnets, a hunting horn and seven-layer chocolate cake?”

“No.”

“Then yes, tell me.”

“Here. I’ll take Zach’s advice and show you instead of tell you.” They paused at the edge of the clearing and looked down. “Just look out there.”

“My God…” Nora breathed, and a smile as wide as Kentucky spread across her face. “Damn.”

“Exactly.”

Damn indeed. Wesley had seen this land, this valley a million times, but until he saw Nora’s face light up when she looked on it, he knew he’d never seen it until now. He was happy that his first time really looking at it was with her. He wanted all his first times to be with her. And his last. And everything in between.

From the summit of the hill, they could see for miles into the valley below them. Winding stone walls carved S-shapes in the lush blue-green grass. A thousand horses pranced and danced behind gleaming, pure white fences. The pond glimmered like a diamond in the sunlight.

A diamond glimmered in Wesley outstretched hand.

Nora’s eyes widened at the sight of it.

“Wesley?”

“Everything you see down there is mine. Or will be. I hate being called the Prince of Kentucky, but only because it’s kind of true. I have a kingdom and that’s it. And there’s nothing in the world more beautiful…except you.”

“Wes…you…”

“Stay with me, Nora. Stay here. Forever. Everything you see…I can give it to you. And you can love it and keep it, or hate it and burn it to the ground. I don’t care, as long as you’re here with me and you never go back to him. I know he can give you things I can’t—loneliness and pain and shame and humiliation. But I can give you a few things he can’t. Marriage. Kids if you want them. No kids if you don’t. A life together out here in the sun, where everyone can see us. You’d never have to hide if you were with me, or pretend. You’d have the whole world. You’d never have to work again. You wouldn’t have to even write another book if you didn’t want to. Or you can write until your hands fall off, and I’d hire the best doctor in the world to sew them back on. You can name all our horses, like you name your characters. You can drive my parents crazy by making riding crop and pony jokes every single day of your life. You can…” Wesley’s voice faltered. Bob grew restive underneath him. Drawing a breath, Wesley took Nora’s hand in his and held it tight, the diamond ring pressed into her palm. “You can be safe and no one will ever hurt you again. I won’t hurt you and I won’t ever let anyone else do so. Not now. Not ever. Not even if you go crazy and decide you want them to. I’ll make you happy. I’ll keep you safe. Just please say yes or no before these damn horses bolt and kill us both.”