Author: Tiffany Reisz

Once again, Griffin made the shooing gesture. Michael’s father shot everyone in the room a look of pure hatred.

He stormed out of the kitchen and down the hall, Griffin following hard on his heels, no doubt wanting to make sure he actually left. Michael and his mother trailed behind Griffin.

Out on the front lawn, Michael’s father turned around.

“It’s a sin, you know that right?” Michael’s father said, looking back and forth between Michael and Griffin. “Sex between two men. It’s against nature and against God. It’s an abomination even. You go to church, Michael. You know that.”

“If it’s an abomination, Dad, you’re just doing it wrong. Bear down hard, then release. It’ll fit better.” Michael nearly shouted the words.

Michael’s father shook his head in disgust as he strode to his car and drove off. Griffin looked at Michael and they both broke into unrestrained laughter.

“Do you usually yell sodomy tips on your front lawn?” Griffin asked, dragging Michael in for a quick kiss.

“What? You don’t?” Michael was still laughing when he pulled out of Griffin’s embrace. It was then he saw his mother standing on the porch in silence. “Mom…oh, Mom, I’m so sorry…” Michael said, his heart sinking through the ground. “I didn’t even think…and the neighbors, I’m—”

Michael’s mother took two steps forward and wrapped him into a hug.

He froze, unable to remember the last time his mother had held him like this.

“Mom?” Michael tentatively returned the hug.

“I missed you, kid. Long summer without you.”

Michael glanced at Griffin, who only shrugged and mouthed,  Women, at him.

His mother didn’t seem ready or willing to let him go yet. So Michael leaned into the hug and closed his eyes.

“I missed you too, Mom.”

Finally she pulled away and wiped a tear off her face. Turning to Griffin she held out her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Griffin.”

Griffin looked down at her hand and rolled his eyes. He took a step forward and hugged her so hard she came off the ground.

“Griffin, you should put my mom down.”

Griffin put Michael’s mother back down on her feet.

Michael looked at Griffin and then at his mother and back again.

“So,” Michael said. “Lunch?”

25

Suzanne entered Sacred Heart’s sanctuary and found it empty. She’d made one final appointment to talk to him; she had a few questions left to ask, but the questions weren’t why she came. What she really wanted was to apologize for her suspicions and thank him for helping her believe, if not in God again, at least in one priest.

Wandering the perimeter of the sanctuary, she studied the plaques on the wall, images of Christ’s passion with Roman numerals engraved on them. She stopped at one plaque that showed a woman kneeling in front of Jesus holding out her veil. Suzanne furrowed her brow and tried to remember the woman’s name. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d prayed the Stations of the Cross. Maybe she never had.

“What’s your name?” she asked out loud as she started to dig out her iPhone.

“Veronica,” came a voice from behind her.

Suzanne spun around and saw a woman standing at the end of a pew with her arms crossed over her chest. The woman wore a tight black skirt that hugged her shapely hips, strappy high heels, a fitted red blouse and a mysterious little grin on her stunningly lovely face. The woman looked familiar. Extremely familiar.

“Oh, God,” Suzanne said, suddenly making the connection. “You’re Nora Sutherlin.”

The woman nodded as she uncrossed her arms and pushed a strand of wavy black hair behind her ear.

“Guilty,” she said with the kind of smile that told Suzanne this was a woman who had possibly never experienced a moment’s guilt in her life. “And you’re Suzanne Kanter. You’re even more beautiful than he said you were.”

Suzanne blushed and shoved her shaking hands into the back pockets of her jeans. As intimidating as she found Father Stearns, she’d never felt half as nervous as she suddenly felt around Nora Sutherlin.

“Um…” Suzanne began and rolled her eyes at her own awkwardness. “Well, you are as beautiful as he said you were.”

Nora Sutherlin, unlike her, didn’t blush. She only stared at Suzanne with her darkly intelligent eyes.

“One question,” Sutherlin said.

Suzanne blinked.

“One question? You have one question for me?”

Sutherlin shook her head.

“You’ve been hounding him all summer. Following him. Breaking into the rectory. You even went to see his sister. You’re tenacious. I can appreciate that. It is, however, time for you to leave us alone. You know he’s no danger to his congregation. I can only assume you’re still here for other reasons. Reasons I don’t have to guess at because, let’s be honest, we’ve both seen him.”

Suzanne’s blush deepened but she couldn’t deny the truth of Sutherlin’s words. Her attraction to Father Stearns was still too fresh a wound to bother denying.

“Yes,” Suzanne admitted. “I’ve seen him.”

Sutherlin raised her eyebrow, obviously hearing the deeper truth to the words. She smiled again, uncrossed her arms and sat on the arm of the pew.

“I said one question and that’s exactly what I mean, Ms. Kanter. You can ask me one question—” Sutherlin held up a single finger “—and I’ll answer it. Truthfully. Without subterfuge or disingenuousness. I will tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to whatever one question you ask me.”

Suzanne’s eyes went wide.

“Next you’re going to tell me I won the lottery,” she said, scarcely believing her ears.

“Only the truth lottery. But this prize comes with a price. I’ll answer your question, but the answer will be off the record. And you can use nothing I tell you to hurt him. And you can take nothing that I tell you to find out more. If a single word of mine appears in print, I will have Kingsley destroy your career so thoroughly you won’t even get a job as a weathergirl like your old professor suggested. Do you understand that?”

Swallowing hard, Suzanne nodded. She heard the threat in Sutherlin’s voice and knew she meant every word. That she even knew about her old prof suggesting she become a weathergirl was a sign this woman’s world was not one Suzanne needed to linger inside a moment longer than necessary.

“Also, once I give your answer,” Sutherlin continued, “you will leave me, Kingsley and Søren alone. We will cease to exist to you. You will banish us from your thoughts, your memory, your conversation and your vocabulary. Can you accept that?”

She couldn’t imagine completely banishing Father Stearns from her memory. Her body still tingled when she thought of his hands on her arms. But she would try. For the sake of the truth, the whole truth, she would try.

“Okay. I accept. I’ll be going to Iraq soon anyway. Time I moved on.”

“Yes,” Sutherlin said. “It is. Now ask your question, and we can all move on.”

Suzanne didn’t have to pause even one moment to think of her question.

“Are you and Father Stearns sleeping together?”

If she’d thought such an inquiry would faze Sutherlin, Suzanne was highly disappointed.

Sutherlin looked neither shocked nor scared at the question. She leveled her dark green eyes onto Suzanne’s face.

“You really want to waste your one question on something you already know the answer to?” Sutherlin asked.

Suzanne’s stomach fell a few inches. She’d hoped…believed…at least wanted to believe… But it didn’t matter. Sutherlin had been a virgin even at age nineteen. Whenever she and her priest had become lovers, she’d been at least a legal adult.

“No, I suppose not.” Suzanne sighed heavily. “How about this? The conflict of interest that’s on that anonymous tip someone sent me—what is it? Is it his sister Elizabeth? She practically confessed to killing their father.”

“She did kill their father, and she did confess to Søren. And Søren refused to reveal her confession. I overheard it at the funeral. And he’s been worried for seventeen years that Elizabeth would find out I heard. But no, that’s not the conflict of interest the church is worried about.”

“Then what is it?”

“Søren’s father was a very wealthy man when he died. He got half his wife’s fortune in the divorce and with his ruthless business acumen, he’d trebled it by the time he died. And when he died, he left every single penny to his only son. Nearly half a billion dollars.”

Suzanne gasped. “But…his father had sent him away after what happened with Elizabeth. Nearly killed him.”

“True. But when his father had no more sons and had no relationship with either daughter, he had a change of…whatever he had in his chest in place of a heart. But the money wasn’t a peace offering. It was a bribe. Priests take vows of poverty. To accept all that money, Søren would have had to leave the priesthood. For nothing and for no one will he ever leave the priesthood.”

“So what did he do?”

Sutherlin grinned.

“What any good priest would do. He tithed. He gave ten percent of the money to the church. Five percent to his old Catholic school in Maine. And five percent to this diocese. The rest he split in half and gave to each sister. He kept not a single cent for himself.”

Suzanne covered her mouth with her hand and turned away. In her head she quickly crunched the numbers. Five percent of five hundred million dollars was…

“Twenty-five million dollars,” Suzanne breathed. She turned back around. “He gave that to this diocese?”

“He did. You know how it works. Parish priests get transferred all the time. Yet Søren’s been here for almost twenty years. How does he get such an exemption? He bought it.”

“I wondered why they hadn’t moved him around, moved him up the ladder.”

“He likes it here.”

He likes his privacy, Suzanne realized.

“What would you call giving a promotion to a man who’d donated twenty-five million dollars to your corporation?” Sutherlin asked.

“A conflict of interest,” Suzanne whispered. “I’d thought…I thought he might be a predator. Or, you know, because…with you he had…”

“Sex? You thought the conflict of interest was about sex?” Sutherlin laughed as if that was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “This is the Catholic Church, Ms. Kanter. And the Catholic Church has been winking at sex for two thousand years. It’s the money that makes them nervous.”

Suzanne shook her head. Too many thoughts crashing about inside it.

“He gave away it all? Every penny?”

Sutherlin nodded.

“He did. Stubborn asshole priest. When he and Marie-Laure got married, he got access to his massive trust fund. Once she died, he gave every penny of that away too. He was born to be a priest. Money doesn’t interest him. That’s the conflict of interest. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get on with my life without worrying about a reporter hurting Søren.”

“You call him Søren?” Suzanne asked, the question coming out before she could stop it.

“Of course I do. It’s his name. Why do you ask?”

“He said he only told his real name to the people closest to him, to the people he trusted and who knew the real him.”

“That’s very true.”

“How long have you called him Søren?”

Sutherlin’s face softened as she turned her gaze away from Suzanne to smile at the image of Veronica holding out her veil to the fallen Christ.