The Confessions(18)

“A lot of things hurt that aren’t sins. Longing isn’t a sin. Regret isn’t a sin. Hope isn’t a sin. They all hurt.”

“It’s not any of those. So what is it?” She rubbed her temples and looked tired—tired but lovely. It hurt his heart to see it.

“Tell me when you feel it the most, dear. Tell me when you first felt that…” He tapped his own chest. “That ache right there.”

She sighed and leaned forward in her chair, crossing her legs at the ankles. She looked so elegant, so much like a lady. Was this really Marcus’s Eleanor? The teenaged car thief who’d made off with his heart twenty-three years ago? She looked more like a duchess than a car thief.

“Ah, f*ck it,” she said, leaning back in the chair again. She threw one leg over the chair arm and threw her arm over her eyes to hide from him.

All right. So it was that Eleanor.

“Eleanor. Talk to me.”

“He’s going to kill me for telling you this.”

“He won’t ever know you told me.”

“You promise?”

“I swear. I’m an old man with no reason to lie. I’ll guard your secret with my life.”

She groaned or maybe it wasn’t a groan. Maybe it was a growl. You must drive him mad, Stuart thought. You must make him wild for you. You are a teenage girl in a woman’s body with a woman’s needs and a teenage girl’s savage heart.

If he were forty years younger…

“I found a picture,” she said at last. “I didn’t mean to find it. I wasn’t looking for it. I just found it. Last week.”

“This all started last week?”

“Yes.”

“Because you found a photograph?”

Behind the arm draped over her eyes she nodded.

“Where did you find it?” Ballard asked.

“In his old Bible. He keeps private things in it—love notes from Kingsley from their high school days, the bookmark I made him once, the list of questions I wrote for him when I was 16 that he promised to answer for me one day… All his most special secrets he keeps in this Bible. He left it at my house one night, and I flipped through it for no other reason than plain heathen nosiness. Is nosiness a sin?”

“Venial.”

“Shit.”

“Keep talking. You found the photograph in his Bible?”

“I did. Of her.”

“Of Grace.”

“Yes. Of Grace holding Fionn. As a baby. He’s a toddler now, but he was a baby in the picture. And on the back of the photograph Grace had written the date and a short message.”

“What did it say?”

“Grace wrote, S?ren, Here’s the picture you asked for. It’s in black and white because I’m blushing so much. All our love, Your Grace and Fionn.”

“Is that what bothered you? That she called herself his Grace?”

“No, she does that even with me: Nora, Miss you! Come visit us soon. Love, Your Grace. It’s a joke.”

“Ah—‘Your Grace.’ Aristocracy nonsense. So what’s wrong then? That he asked for the picture? It’s really not unusual for the father of a child to want to have a picture of his child. He hasn’t met his boy yet, has he?”

“Not yet. Next year. S?ren wants to wait for reasons he hasn’t told anyone. I think he wants Fionn to be old enough to remember him in case, you know.”

“In case it’s their only meeting?”

She nodded, swallowed visibly. He had touched a nerve, a soft spot. Good. It meant they were getting closer to the heart of the matter.

“A photograph of his son in his Bible shouldn’t be much of a surprise. So why did it bother you so much?”

“The picture is of Grace nursing Fionn.”

“Ah, I see.” Stuart nodded and rubbed his chin in understanding. “A very private and intimate picture. Hence the blushing.”

“A private and intimate picture he asked her to send him. And that’s a big deal because Grace is so modest that she never nursed Fionn in public. She never even nursed him in front of me or her own mother. Only alone or in front of Zach, her husband.”

“And in that photograph.”

“A photograph which he kept in his Bible along with Kingsley’s love notes and my list of questions and the bookmark I made him. He keeps his heart in that Bible. There are no other pictures in there, and we have dozens of pictures of Fionn. But that picture…”

“That must have stung,” Stuart said, employing the art of the English understatement.

“Stung? Ever had your genitals whacked with a wet whip?” she asked.

“That bad?”

“That bad. And the worst part?” Eleanor sat up again and faced him. “I don’t even know why it bothers me. It’s a beautiful picture. Absolutely gorgeous. Grace is luminous in it. Fionn is…a miracle. And even more than that, he’s S?ren’s son. Of course he wants to keep a picture of Grace and his son in his Bible. I just didn’t expect it to be that picture. I just…” She held up her hands. “I didn’t expect to find it in his Bible. If he’d shown it to me, it wouldn’t have hurt. But he didn’t show it to me. Why can’t he hide creepy fetish porn from me like a normal boyfriend?”