The Confessions(17)

“You know I can’t answer that,” Stuart said, nodding his head in the affirmative.

“You’re very good at keeping secrets. So you know who Grace is. And you know she had his son.”

“You just told me so if I didn’t know before, I’d know now. Let’s leave it at that. Envy is a sin. Do you envy her for having his child?”

“No,” she said, waving her hand. “It’s not like that at all. Although I asked myself that a few times just to make sure.”

“Why don’t you envy her? Most women would, I think. I assume. I could be wrong. Never been a woman, much to my everlasting regret.”

“Sorry about that. I’ve certainly enjoyed being a woman. I recommend the experience.”

“I believe—and correct me if I’m wrong—that women often desire to have the children of their lovers?”

“They do, yes, sometimes. And their lovers often desire to father their lovers’ children. But I don’t want children. I haven’t felt any strong desire to have children since I was a teenager and maybe not even then, although I certainly fantasied about it. I fantasied about a lot of things as a teenager. But now I can’t even have kids.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. I had a sterilization procedure done recently while I was in France. It’s hard to talk American doctors into sterilizing a woman without children. The French are more open-minded.”

Marcus hadn’t told him about this. He wondered if Marcus knew. “Surgical procedure? Was that a difficult decision?”

“It was a terrifying decision, but not for the reason you might think. I had a pregnancy scare which quickly turned into a cancer scare. Turns out it was nothing but a large fibroid tumor that needed removing.” Her eyes flashed with remembered fear. “When I was nearly as relieved I wasn’t pregnant as I was relieved it wasn’t cancer, I knew I should probably take care of both at once. So I did.”

“Did Marcus know?”

“About the pregnancy scare and the cancer scare? No,” she said. “Not until it was all over.”

“Who did you lean on during that time?”

“Nico, my lover in France. He handles this sort of stuff better than S?ren does. Nico is the eye of any storm. S?ren’s the storm. I didn’t need a storm then. I needed the calm.”

“Was Marcus angry you hadn’t told him?”

“I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled, but the relief was greater than the anger. He and Nico have an understanding. S?ren knows when I’m with Nico, I’m with Nico, 100 percent. Nico knows when I’m with S?ren, I’m with S?ren, 100 percent. I don’t call S?ren from Nico’s house. I don’t write Nico love letters when S?ren’s asleep in bed next to me. We call it the Separation of Church and State. It’s working well so far for all of us. A pregnancy would be disastrous, though—especially not knowing which one of them was the father. I’d never been more scared. That’s why I went ahead and had the procedure. I know the Church sees it as a sin. I’ll tell you what I told a nun once who called me out for my pride: Put it on my tab.”

“Yes, yes, the Church frowns on birth control,” he said without much conviction. Children starving in this world and the bigwig bishops still wrung their old liver-spotted hands about contraception and family planning—nonsense. Absolute nonsense. When it came to sins, he had bigger fish to fry.

“So you don’t want children,” he said with a shrug. “That’s fine. I don’t have any children myself. Not for me. Not for you. What is it then? You said you covet your neighbor’s wife. Is it because Marcus and Grace made love?”

There it was, that laugh again. Big laugh. Beautiful laugh. He hadn’t known he’d made a joke but apparently he had.

“That’s another no,” she said once she stopped laughing. “I do not feel any jealously because they slept together one time on one night. If you knew how many men—and women—I’d been with in my life…”

“Ballpark? You’re not the only nosy one in the room.”

“More than fifty. Less than a hundred,” she said. “Not counting clients.”

“Quite a ballpark you have there.”

“Whereas he’s slept with four people in his entire life. Four.”

“Those four meant something to him. Did your ballpark?”

“Of course. I don’t have casual sex.”

“You know what I mean. You weren’t in love with everyone you’ve been with?”

“No. And neither was he in love with his four. So it isn’t jealousy. We don’t do jealously like vanilla people. When I think about S?ren with Kingsley, it’s arousing. Two beautiful men together? There isn’t anything not sexy about that. They love each other and I love them both. Same with Grace. Grace is a beautiful woman, inside and out, and one of my dearest friends. She’s the wife of a man I love more than I’m comfortable admitting to anyone but you.” Her eyes flashed again, changed color, and it seemed she was remembering something both dark and beautiful. He wished he could see into her mind. What a show that would be…

“And Grace,” Eleanor continued. “She loves S?ren the way he deserves to be loved—unreservedly and with full faith in him. I couldn’t have picked a better woman to be the mother of his child. But even knowing that, believing that, and loving her and loving him and—on top of all that—loving Fionn more than I thought was possible to love a child who isn’t your own…there’s still this thing, here.” She tapped her chest over her hidden heart. “And I don’t know what it is other than it hurts. So I know there’s a sin in there somewhere.”