“That’s for me,” Søren said. “I have to go.”

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t answer that,” he said.

“Can’t or won’t?”

Søren rose off the piano bench and walked past her, still without meeting her eyes. She followed behind him.

At the door to the sanctuary he paused.

“We won’t ever have to have this talk again,” Søren said. The sentence was phrased like a statement but she heard an order lurking under the words. She knew what he meant. They would never have to have this talk again because she was never going to sneak into his office and masturbate on his desk again. “And we’ll pretend we didn’t have to have this talk. By tomorrow we’ll both feel better. In a week it will be a distant memory. Yes?”

“Okay,” she said.

Søren nodded. He put his hand on the door handle but didn’t push it open.

“Are you sure you don’t remember what it is that you wanted to ask me?”

“I’m sure.”

“If you think of it …”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, remembering the question she’d wanted to ask him and deciding not to ask it. “Are you sure you can’t tell me where you’re going?”

“Quite sure. I will say this—I wish I could take you with me.”

She smiled. Finally some of the tension started to leave her body.

“Me, too. I’d go anywhere with you.”

Søren met her eyes for the first time that night and gave her the faintest of smiles.

“Don’t worry. Someday you will.”

And with that, he pushed open the door and strode into the night. In front of the church in a shadowy patch of street sat a car, but not any old car. Søren entered the back passenger side and the car drove away.

Eleanor couldn’t believe what she’d seen. But she had seen it. She knew cars. She knew all cars, all makes, all models. But it made no sense what she’d seen. Whose was it? Where had it come from? Where was it going?

Maybe someday she would get her answers to those questions. But tonight she had to content herself with the answer to one question. Only you know the answer to that, Søren had said when she’d asked him whose feet she should sit at.

Now she knew what he meant. It was her decision whose feet she sat at. Only she knew the answer to that question because only she could make that choice. Søren couldn’t tell her, her mom couldn’t tell her, God couldn’t tell her. It was her choice alone. Whose feet? She already knew the answer.

And the answer was being driven away right now in a gleaming, glorious, pristine, worth-a-fortune 1953 Silver Wraith limousine-style …

Rolls. Fucking. Royce.

12

Eleanor

AFTER THAT NIGHT OF THE ROLLS-ROYCE, AS ELEANOR had dubbed it, things between her and Søren went back to normal. Or as close to normal as things ever were. Summer passed so quickly that the days blurred like scenes outside the window of a moving car. She almost grieved when the time came to start her junior year of high school. She’d practically lived at church for the past three months and saw Søren nearly every day. Each week she logged almost forty hours of community service. Søren gave her reading assignments from her Bible and made her meditate on them. Even those couple of weeks she worked at a day camp for underprivileged kids she still saw him in the evenings. She’d even made him an embroidered bookmark.

But time wouldn’t be denied. September came and she survived the first day of school without incident. No fights. No arguing with teachers. No accusing beloved saints of having unnatural relations with seraphim. Fuck, she was a saint these days. She didn’t run away to the city to hang out at her dad’s shop anymore. She didn’t sneak out to her friend Jordan’s anymore. She didn’t stay up until 3:00 a.m. reading dirty books with a hand down her panties anymore. Well, she still did that, but only on the weekends. Before Søren, Elle had wanted school to end so she could go home, sleep and read. But now she counted the hours until she could get out of school only so she could go to church.

When she arrived at Sacred Heart after her first day back to school, she changed clothes and got her watering can. Søren’s office door was shut, and she could hear voices inside. Curious, she pressed her ear to the door and tried to make out the words. Søren spoke clearly and loudly enough that she could hear him, but none of the words made any sense. In fact, it sounded like he was speaking a different language. Definitely not German. No, it sounded kind of sexy and romantic. Hearing him talk like that made her thighs quiver. It must be French.

French? Who the hell was he talking to in French?

Next time he was on the phone while she stood outside his office eavesdropping, he should have the human decency to at least speak in English.

Frustrated, Eleanor started toward the fellowship hall when she heard the door open. She turned around and saw Søren’s arm extending from inside the office like some kind of sideways periscope. He crooked his finger at her and Eleanor walked back to him.

“Are you trapped inside your office?” she whispered as she pressed her back flat against the wall by the door. “Some kind of force field and only your arm can escape it?”

“Yes,” he said as his arm disappeared back inside his office. She faced him from across the threshold. “It’s called a dissertation.”