“I doubt she’s complaining. Bedtime, Eleanor.”

  “I’m telling him goodnight, I promise,” she said, finishing the message. Another one quickly came back to her.

  Griffin: Goodnight. Merry Christmas. Give the Big Guy another hug for me.

  She showed the message to Søren. He groaned again. “Please no more hugs. Strangers hugged at Mass tonight.”

  “Need a Silkwood shower?” Nora asked as she obediently turned her phone off and tossed it across the room into the dirty laundry basket.

  “Please.” He was joking but she knew he wasn’t really joking.

  “I noticed you did pry Céleste off of you pretty quickly tonight,” Nora said. She knew she was treading in dangerous waters here but felt like it was something that needed to be addressed. Especially after her stupid offhand remark about being glad she didn’t have kids.

  “Does Céleste make you think of Fionn?” Nora asked.

  “Every child I see makes me think of Fionn.”

  “Is that why you don’t like her hugging you?”

  He didn’t answer at first. She tensed, waited. She knew she shouldn’t push him to answer.

  “Part of it,” he began, “is simply because I’m a priest. With all the scandals, I have a knee-jerk reaction to children touching me. I try to keep my distance as much as possible.”

  “What’s the other part? I know you don’t like being touched.”

  Again, he fell quiet. Outside the house she heard wind blowing through her oak tree. A strand of Mardi Gras beads rattled against the window.

  “If I’m honest with myself,” Søren said finally, “I don’t think that’s the case really. I say it is, but it’s more that I don’t know how to be touched in a way that isn’t sexual. I suppose that’s a natural byproduct of only letting two people ever touch me, the two people I regularly have sex with.” He paused, took a breath. “It’s hard to explain. I promise I don’t feel anything sexual when Griffin tries to hug me. Or Céleste. Or anyone but you and Kingsley. It’s only that…I only understand being touched sexually, and when someone touches me for any other reason, it feels wrong. I don’t know what to feel when someone wants to hug me just because they’re pleased I’m there. I’ll do it. I’ll try. It’s part of the social contract, like returning a handshake. But I’m tense the entire time, waiting for it to end. It never feels like I think it should feel. Like I imagine it feels when Céleste runs up to you and hugs you. My brain immediately tells me to step away when I’d much rather be able to enjoy it as a simple expression of affection.” He sighed. “There’s more to it, of course. Nothing I want to go into on Christmas morning.”

  Nora said nothing, only waited.

  “I worry—”

  “What?” she asked.

  The silence after her question was long enough to scare her.

  “What happens if I see my son someday, and I can’t enjoy holding him?”

  Tears sprang to Nora’s eyes. She didn’t have an answer for that. She could only rise up over him and kiss his face—his cheek, his temple, his forehead, his lips.

  “I love you,” she said. “I will love you all my life.”

  He met her eyes and smiled tiredly in the dark. “Then that’s all I need for Christmas. Nothing else.”

  “Nice try,” she said. “But you’re getting your cursed gift whether you like it or not.”

  “Which is the point, yes?”

  “Right.”

  “Any hints?”

  She laid her head onto his chest, listened to the slow steady beating of his good strong heart.

  “I think I have an idea.”

  January 5th

  The evening of the fifth of January was almost cold, down in the low fifties. Nothing like New York in December, of course, but Kingsley really didn’t miss the city or that weather. Although gray days like this made him wish for snow a little, if only to break up the monotony of the gray sky, gray streets, gray haze in the gray air. But that was fine. He was going to spend the night with Søren which meant he’d get all the winter he wanted in bed.

  He took his least impressive car, a black Escalade that Juliette had wanted. It was big enough for Céleste’s car seat and all the thousands of bags they had to take whenever they traveled with their daughter. Nora called it a “dad-mobile,” and he would have been offended if it wasn’t the truth. He didn’t need the dad-mobile tonight. He’d only taken it because it looked innocuous, and he was trying to seem like a normal person tonight. This was the first night Søren had ever invited him to the Jesuit House where he lived now.

  The Jesuit House was a large, shabby-looking white Victorian with not much to recommend itself except a prime location at the edge of Audubon Park. He and Søren had kicked a soccer ball around the park a few times, and Kingsley had walked him back to the Jesuit House, but tonight was the first time he would cross the threshold. Made him miss Søren’s old rectory at Sacred Heart. Back then, Søren had lived in the rectory alone, had privacy. Not here. He lived with a dozen other Jesuit priests in this old house. As he strode up the front steps, he was sweating a little, nervous, like the proverbial whore in church.

  He rang the bell and an older man who wasn’t dressed like a priest but most certainly was a priest opened the door.

  “Can I help you?”

  Kingsley almost said, “I’m meeting Søren,” but then remembered this priest probably didn’t know his name was Søren.

  “Is Marcus here? I’m his brother-in-law.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. He said you’d be coming by. He’s in the library.”

  The living room of the Jesuit House was cozy but looked almost as shabby as the outside of the house. The furniture might have been here since the Spanish were in charge of New Orleans. A few priests in lay clothing sat on armchairs and sofas, talking or watching the news on television. They looked up with curious eyes as Kingsley passed through the house. Kingsley had read the statistics that about half of all American priests were gay. The urge to wink at the one who stared at him the longest was almost overwhelming. But he had promised Søren to behave himself tonight.

  “In here,” the older priest said as he opened a door to the library. Kingsley stepped inside. Søren sat by a large picture window, reading by the fading light of the gray evening sky.

  “There you are,” he said, looking up from his book. “About time. We’ll be late for dinner.”

  “We’ll make it,” Kingsley said. “I changed our reservation to 7:30.”

  They were not having dinner. They did not have reservations.

  “Ah, then we have plenty of time. I’ll change.” Søren was wearing his clerical collar and black jacket.

  “Can I see your room?” Kingsley asked.

  “That’s against the rules, I’m afraid,” the older priest said.

  Søren stood up and said, “Yes.”

  “Marcus.”

  “Will you tell on me?” Søren asked the man. His tone was light as if Søren knew he was a favorite and the rules didn’t necessarily apply to him.

  “Go on,” he said, waving his hand at a door marked Private. “But quickly, please?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kingsley said as Søren led him toward the door. “I didn’t know he was such an entitled prick.”

  The older priest laughed. “We knew.”

  Søren led him through the door and into a hallway. Kingsley couldn’t say what he’d been expecting—he’d never been to the priests’ quarters at their old school in Maine—but he hadn’t imagined he’d be so disappointed.

  “It’s just a house,” Kingsley said.

  “Just a house,” Søren replied. “What did you think it was?”

  “Something, I don’t know…spooky?”

  Søren gave him a look. “We’re Jesuits, not ghosts.”

  “You could have at least hung an antique chandelier.”

  “From these ceilings?”

  They were normal ceilings, normal height. The normality of the place was almost stranger than if the place were actually strange-looking. The Jesuits had been around for centuries. He’d expected something more medieval, he supposed. But no, just a normal hallway, well-worn wood floors, scuffed green paint on the walls, and closed doors with numbers on them.

  “Which one is yours?” Kingsley asked.

  “Number eight, upstairs,” he said. They turned a corner to take a staircase up. Kingsley guessed the younger, more ambulatory priests were sent upstairs so the older Jesuits wouldn’t have to make the climb. As fit as Søren was, he was lucky they didn’t put him on the roof.

  They reached the second floor landing just as a young Black man came down the hall toward them. Young? Well, twenty-eight or nine. That was young to Kingsley these days.

  “New recruit?” the young man said, smiling. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with LOYOLA across the chest. Kingsley had the same shirt, just short-sleeved.

  “This is my brother-in-law, Kingsley Boissonneault.”

  “Right, the French one.” He held out his hand and Kingsley shook it, said it was nice to meet him.

  “Kingsley,” Søren said, “this is Brother Eric, former captain, U.S. Army. Eric, this is Kingsley, former Captain, F.F.L.”

  “Really?” Eric sounded impressed. “The Foreign Legion?’

  “Long time ago,” Kingsley said.

  “Much harder to get in than the Army, I hear.”

  “You said it, not me.” Kingsley wouldn’t have said it. He would have thought it, but he wouldn’t have said it.

  “Wish I could stay and swap war stories, but I have chapel in ten minutes. Nice to meet you. Come by anytime.”

  Eric jogged down the stairs. When he was out of earshot, Kingsley said, “Cute.”

  “Stop.”

  “Sorry.”

  Søren led Kingsley to the room with the 8 on the door.

  “I’m tempted to draw a circle around it,” Kingsley said, making an imaginary circle with his finger. He said this in French in case anyone was listening. Who knew how thin the walls were here?

  “The thought occurred to me as well,” Søren replied, also in French.

  No lock on the door. No key. Must be the honor system around here. Søren opened the door and flipped on the light switch. No overhead light came on, only a simple floor lamp with a white shade.

  “Not bad,” Kingsley said, nodding. He’d braced himself for the worst, for hideous wall-to-wall shag carpeting and floral-print curtains. But no, it was a calm, clean, soothing sort of bedroom. Cool white walls and winter light coming in the large window that overlooked the park gave the room a contemplative ambiance. Oddly it felt more sacred in this plain, simple bedroom than in so many of the churches he’d visited. Kingsley took stock of the place, committing it to memory. An oak desk with a brass study lamp. A wooden cross over the bed. And the bed itself was an antique from the looks of it. Iron, sturdy, a twin but extra-long twin obviously. A simple white crocheted quilt covered the bed, one pillow, and neatly made. The only splashes of color in the room were a few red leatherbound books sitting on their sides on a floating wall shelf, and a painting hanging opposite the window.

  “No mirrors,” Kingsley noticed.

  “There’s one in the bathroom.”

  “Shared bathroom?”

  “Of course.”

  “The horror.” Kingsley shuddered in mock disgust. “What’s this?” He pointed at the painting.

  “One of my former parishioners is an amateur painter. She made this for me. Going-away gift.”

  Kingsley recognized it as a slightly impressionistic watercolor rendering of Sacred Heart, Søren’s old parish. The gray stone church surrounded by green grass and tulips brought Kingsley back to the many times he’d snuck over to Wakefield to visit Søren.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “No. I miss a few of the people but it was time to move on. Past time. I belong here with you and Eleanor.”

  Kingsley had never told Søren how much it meant that he’d given up his church to move here. No matter what he said, that he kept a painting of Sacred Heart across from his bed was proof that it was a harder choice than he ever let on.

  He turned from the painting in time to see Søren popping out his dog collar—he loved that Roman collars were called “dog collars” by priests—and unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Need help with that?”

  Søren gave him that look. Kingsley only laughed.

  “I’m really not supposed to be up here?”

  Søren took his shirt off and tossed it onto the bed. He opened the closet door. Kingsley sat in the one chair in the room, content to stare at Søren’s back and shoulders for the rest of his life. Out of curiosity, he picked up Søren’s discarded shirt from the bed and brought it to his nose, inhaled. Even his shirt smelled like winter. Kingsley—reluctantly—put it back onto the bed.

  “It’s not a hard and fast rule,” Søren said, flipping through the clothes in his closet, about one-twentieth of what Kingsley had in his. “Father Lawrence, who you met downstairs, is very cautious. I can’t blame him, but there have to be exceptions for family.” He turned around.

  “Right, right. Because I’m your brother-in-law.”

  “Of course you are.” Søren’s wicked smile disappeared as he pulled a black sweater over his head. A very nice black sweater. Too nice for a Jesuit. Obviously one Nora had bought for him.

  Since they were speaking French, Kingsley didn’t worry about asking, “I suppose Nora’s never been up here.”

  “You are much easier to explain away than Eleanor. But Claire visited when I first moved in here. Sisters are allowed. Girlfriends are frowned upon.”

  Kingsley enjoyed the view of two very long, very muscular legs as Søren took off his black trousers and put on a pair of jeans. “Did she give you her gift yet?”

  “Not yet, but I’ve given mine to her. And don’t ask because you do not want to know.”

  “Something with Nico.”

  “No comment.”

  Kingsley sighed. “I wish I could say I was surprised. Make it up to me,” he said. “Fuck me in your twin bed.”

  “Also frowned upon,” Søren said. “But don’t think I haven’t imagined it.”

  “We had some very good nights in that cot back at school, didn’t we?”

  “Some of the best nights of my life.”

  He took a black jacket from his closet and slipped his feet into his shoes.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going tonight,” Søren said. “I’ll be disappointed if we really do have dinner reservations.”

  “In the mood?”

  “Already ate.”

  He must have looked disappointed because when Søren passed him on the way to the door, he said, “And in the mood. Now tell me where we’re going.”

  Kingsley leaned back against the door, smiled.

  “You showed me your room. Now I’ll show you mine.”

  The wine in Nora’s glass was red. The time was nearly nine o’clock—Nico should be there any moment. And the song on the radio was “The House of the Rising Sun.” She’d thought this radio station would still be playing Christmas music, but no, it had gone back to its usual format. She didn’t mind. She loved this song.

  In her office at her desk, Nora sipped her wine and counted the minutes until her lover arrived. She still couldn’t quite believe he’d gotten on a plane from New York to New Orleans in the middle of complex business negotiations for the sole purpose of seeing her. If he was coming this far and for just one night, she knew she had to make it good.

  There is a house in New Orleans

  They call the Rising Sun

  And it’s been the ruin of many a young poor boy…

  Søren had made that joke when he’d entered her private dungeon upstairs for the first time, which she’d decked out in red and black and leather and steel. Ropes and whips and chains, oh my.

  “Ah,” he’d said, nodding with amused appreciation. “I’ve always wondered what the House of the Rising Sun looked like. Now I know.”

  She was looking forward to ruining Nico, her young poor boy, tonight.

  What would he want? Sex, of course. All night, of course. He wasn’t going to get it. Not until he’d earned it. In her left hand she held her wine glass. In her right hand she held a black silk blindfold.

  Oh, Mother, tell your children

  Not to do what I have done…

  Her mother had tried to talk her out of her life and the older Nora got, the more she understood those warnings. The more she’d known her mother had a point. But it was like trying to talk a leopard out of his spots. And really, once you’ve fucked your Catholic priest, everything else seems tame in comparison.

  It’s funny that she’d asked to play this game, this Black & Blue Elephant game. Give her a gift she wanted but didn’t want? She’d been playing that game since the night Nico seduced her.

  I got one foot on the platform

  The other foot on the train

  I’m goin’ back to New Orleans

  To wear that ball and chain.

  One foot on the platform, the other on the train. That was her life now. One foot in Nico’s world. One foot in Søren’s. How long could it go on? She didn’t know except that she was determined to ride the train to the end of the line.

  Or until it derailed.

  A car door slammed. Nico’s taxi.

  Nora finished her wine with a swallow and stood up. She walked slowly up the stairs to her dungeon, to her own private House of the Rising Sun. Behind her she heard the doorknob rattle. Then the door opened. Then footsteps. She’d already told him to meet her upstairs in the room at the end of the hallway.

  She went into her dungeon and waited with her back to the wall. Outside the room, she heard Nico climbing the stairs. He paused at the top. He proceeded down the hall. The ancient wood floors of her two-hundred-year-old house creaked. He stepped into her dungeon.

  Before he could turn his head and see her, Nora stepped forward and brought the black silk scarf over his eyes, blindfolding him.