The Original Sinners: The Red Years

Nora entered her bedroom and collapsed on her bed without undressing. She was too tired to sleep, too broken to cry. She curled up into a ball, clutching the combs in her hands so hard the metal prongs bit into her skin. She held them tighter, let them hurt her more. Finally it hurt enough she could sleep.

* * *

Morning’s relentless assault finally defeated Zach’s resolve to sleep Saturday away. He opened his eyes reluctantly, knowing from the silence that Nora had already gone. Everything hurt, but he couldn’t care less. Had there ever been such a woman in all the world like her?

Zach got into the shower with as much reluctance as he’d left his bed. The hot water burned his skin. He couldn’t remember when his body had been this raw from so much sex. He lingered in the shower, needing the heat on his sore and aching muscles. After getting out he toweled off and dressed carefully, cursing himself for behaving like an eighteen-year-old lad in his forty-two-year-old body.

By midmorning he remembered Nora had unplugged his phone last night. He plugged it in and checked his voice mail. One message—most likely from work, he guessed.

“Zachary, it’s me.” At the sound of Grace’s voice Zach’s hands went numb and his legs turned to stone. “I’m in New York. Not sure why.” Pause. “That’s a lie. I do know why. You don’t seem to be home. I stopped by and knocked but no one answered. I called Mr. Bonner. I may try what he suggested. Anyway, I’m only in town until tomorrow morning. I wish you’d get a bloody mobile. Never mind. I’m staying—”

Zach grabbed a pen and scrawled the name of Grace’s hotel on his palm. He considered calling to see if she was there but didn’t want to waste a second. He threw on his coat and raced from his apartment. If the lift had broken the sound barrier on its way down, it still wouldn’t have been fast enough for Zach. She’d come by his flat? When? Probably when he was in the shower. Of all mornings to take an hour-long shower, he cursed himself again. Traffic was blessedly light, but it still felt like a lifetime passed before the taxi pulled in front of her hotel.

Zach shoved money in the driver’s hand and raced into the hotel lobby.

“Could you ring Grace Rowan’s room please?” Zach asked the hotel desk clerk.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no one registered under that name.”

Zach swore under his breath. Had he heard Grace wrong? Unless…

“Try Grace Easton.”

“Ah, yes. I’ll call her room for you.”

Zach sagged with relief. The clerk dialed her room number. After what seemed an interminable amount of time passed, he hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, sir. She doesn’t seem to be in. Would you care to leave a message?”

Zach decided his course of action that instant. “I’ll wait for her.”

He found a seat in the lobby that afforded him a clear view of the entrance. He stared at the elegant revolving doors, trying not to let their endless spinning hypnotize him.

Now that he was finally at her hotel his heart was still racing as if he’d run the whole way there. Why was Grace here? What on earth had she come for? He knew her. She’d always been brave enough to deliver bad news face-to-face. But he’d already heard the bad news. So why?

It didn’t matter, he told himself. Whatever the reason he would get to see her. That was reason enough to wait in the lobby. Forever, if necessary.

* * *

Two hours after falling asleep with the combs in her hand, Nora crawled from her bed and showered and dressed in a daze. Numb from exhaustion, exhausted from shock, she entered the kitchen on feet made of lead. Wesley was there loudly opening and closing cabinet doors.

“What are you looking for?” she asked between slams.

“My coffee thermos. The blue one with the lid.” His voice sounded tight and strained.

“Did you check the dishwasher?”

Wesley stopped, wrenched opened the door of the dishwasher and yanked out the top rack.

“Dishwasher,” he said, as much to himself as her. “Right. Of course. How could I have been so completely stupid?”

Nora winced and sat down gingerly at the table. It hurt to be in the same room with him. Wesley leaned against the counter for a moment and just breathed.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked in a small voice.

“I want to be. I oughta be.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not mad at you. Just myself.”

She nodded and met his eyes.

“Are you sad at me?”

He released a cold, empty laugh.

“Yeah, I’m sad at you.” She could tell he was trying not to cry. She tried, too.

“I’m sorry, Wes. I am. God, you said you wanted your first time to be with someone who knew what she was doing. Obviously when it comes to you I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I don’t care. There’s no one else I want to be with. But if you want to be with Zach…I just want you to be happy. That’s all that matters.”

“Listen, last night with Zach—it was about the book. I went over to his apartment yesterday to throw the book in his face, to show him it was done. I was going to leave. He asked me to stay, to help him finish editing it. We got it all done in one night.”

“I saw you when you came in. You didn’t just work on the book. I’m not completely stupid about everything.”

“You aren’t stupid about anything. I am. I’m the one who forgot to call, who forgot we had plans. I was just so shocked that Zach had changed his mind…that he wanted to read the book. Wes,” she said and Wesley met her eyes. “He signed the contract. We celebrated.”

“I thought we were going to celebrate.”

“We still can. We—”

“I wasn’t talking about dinner and a fucking movie, Nora.” Nora flinched at the sheer agony in his voice. “I wanted us to be together.”

“Wesley…” she began but couldn’t find another word to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said and ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to yell. This is…I don’t know. Last Sunday on your bed, Nora, I can’t even tell you how that made me feel.”

“I never felt anything like what I felt with you, either,” she said and remembered that abject panic she felt when she and Wesley had come so close to making love.

“Felt what?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked cold and tired. She wanted to wrap her arms around him until they both felt warm again.

She laughed a little. “Performance anxiety.”

“Performance anxiety? Nora, you don’t have to perform with me.”

“I think that’s why I was so scared. I don’t know how to be with someone like you. I don’t know the rules to this game.”

“It’s not a game.”

“Then how will we win?”

Wesley didn’t answer, just stared past her.

“I guess that answers my question,” she said.

Wesley took a deep breath. “I’ll try. I’ll try to be what you need me to be. I know I’m not like you, but I can try. It’s worth it if I can be with you.”

“But it wouldn’t be you with me. It would be some version of you that was trying to be what I wanted. I won’t let you sacrifice who you are to be with me.” Wesley shook his head and headed for the door. “Wesley, please—”

She started to stand up, wanting to go to him.

“Don’t.” He raised his hand. She froze where she was. “Don’t apologize and don’t explain. I’ll live with this. I just need you not to talk about it.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Hey,” he said with false levity. “At least it’s not Søren.”

Nora shrugged and clenched her teeth.

“Wes…will you let me give you the combs back? I can’t imagine how much they cost and I know—”

“Keep them.” He grabbed his coffee mug and headed to the door again. He paused next to where she sat huddled in her chair. “They’ll look beautiful in your hair.”

Nora rested her head on her knees. Her stomach rumbled from stress and hunger. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, but the thought of food only made it worse.

“I gotta go,” Wesley said. “Study group.”

“Be careful.”

Wesley left without another word. The door shut. She heard Wesley’s car start and pull away. And she knew she was alone. Coughing on purpose, Nora tried to relieve the pressure in her throat. She rose and poured a cup of coffee and half-considered spiking it with whiskey.

Sipping at her coffee, she swallowed the bitter heat gratefully. She needed more sleep, she decided, or another shower. No, she realized. What she really, who she needed was—

The doorbell rang jarring her from the dangerous trajectory of her thoughts. She set her mug on the table and went to the door.

Nora opened the front door to find a woman standing on the porch. Her hair was an elegant shade of red and her fair skin was dusted with becoming constellations of pale freckles. Lovely beyond description, she looked a year or two shy of thirty, but her shining turquoise eyes glowed with a wisdom and intelligence well beyond her years.

“Hello,” Nora said.

“Ms. Sutherlin,” the woman said and with the first lilting words out of her mouth Nora knew exactly who she was. “I’m so sorry to trouble you. I’m—”

“My God,” Nora breathed, “you’re Grace Easton.”

“I am,” she said. “How did—”

“Welsh, beautiful, freckles. I don’t see that combination much in this neighborhood.” Nora smiled at her, sensing that this meeting was somehow preordained. “Please come in.”

33

Nora poured her coffee down the drain and replaced it with tea. She filled another cup and placed it on the kitchen table in front of Grace.

“Milk?” Nora offered.

“Thank you, no. Zachary always called me a heretic for drinking my tea without milk.”

“It’s not very English of you,” Nora teased. “But then again, you’re Welsh.”

“My father is, and my mother is Irish.”

“I can tell.” Nora envied Grace her red hair and exquisite freckles. “Can you do an Irish accent, too?”

“A bit. But I grew up in Wales. Zachary can actually do the better Irish accent.”

“Really?” Nora asked. “That jerk. He never told me he could do other accents.”

Grace smiled and sipped her tea.

“He’s a man of many talents,” Grace said. “You’re being very kind to me. I know I must seem like a lunatic showing up at your home like this. I’m leaving tomorrow morning, and I can’t seem to find him anywhere. I called Mr. Bonner. He gave me your address. He said you and Zachary work together on the weekends sometimes.”

“We did. But the book is finished now, thank God.”

Grace nodded and took another tentative sip of her tea. Nora took a drink of her own and noticed a bruise beginning to purple on her wrist.

“So it’s work then that brings him here so often?” Grace asked, fixing Nora with a surprisingly firm stare.

“We’re friends. Good friends.”

Grace looked down and her eyes appeared to study the tiny ripples in her tea. She seemed nervous as a bird, her delicate fingers fluttering over the rim of her teacup.

“I meant to come sooner. I tried to leave yesterday morning but my flight was delayed.”

“Why are you here?” Nora asked and Grace met her eyes.

“Zachary leaves for California tomorrow. I could hardly stand it when he was in New York. California seems like the other side of the world. His mornings would be my nights.” Grace breathed in and exhaled slowly. Nora stayed silent and let her talk. “I should have come weeks ago. I called him…I told him there was a blackout, and I couldn’t find the torch. There I was with every light on in the house lying to him just to hear his voice.”

“Sounds like something I would do.” It was easy to see why Zach had loved this woman so fiercely. She had a poetic beauty to her, a gentleness that belied her undeniable fortitude.

“There was something in his voice when we spoke, something that frightened me. He sounded farther away than just an ocean. I talked myself in and out of coming. Now I have to wonder—am I too late? No, don’t answer that. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll answer any question you ask, Grace.”

“I shouldn’t ask. I forfeited my right to ask the first night I spent with Ian. I say the first night as if there were dozens of them instead of just three rather humiliating awkward affairs. It only took a week to realize what a foolish mistake I’d made. But I was so young when Zachary and I married, and it was under such horrid circumstances.”

“I know. Zach told me. I’m very sorry.”

Grace gave Nora a quivering but determined smile.

“He must care about you very much to have told you about us. Even his best mates, he never told them.”

Nora shrugged. “I beat it out of him.”

“I think he’s always been embarrassed by it, by me.”

“No, I promise you he wasn’t. I think he was only ashamed of himself. You were young and he was your teacher—”

“My teacher, yes.” Grace laughed. “Every girl I knew was half in love with Zachary. He talked to us like we were equals.” She smiled at a memory. “He wore the most dignified, scholarly ties every day.”

Nora conjured the image last night of Zach blindfolded with her black tie.

“Zach in a tie is quite a sight to behold,” Nora agreed.

“A suit and tie every day.” Grace grinned. “He was so bloody proper and so handsome strolling the grounds with the ancient old profs hoary with beards quoting Shakespeare and Marlowe from memory…we’d all nearly faint when he strolled past, suit jacket over his shoulder and carrying that staid leather briefcase. We girls had our own ideas about what to do with those ties of his.”

“You’re a woman after my own heart.”

“The first night with him—” Grace stopped. Her voice drifted far away. “I thought I was on a suicide mission. I went to tell him I was in love with him. I thought for certain he’d throw me out. Instead, he made love to me. I know I should have stopped it, should have warned him I wasn’t on birth control, but I didn’t want him to stop. The moment he kissed me I felt like I’d won the world. And even after all that happened, I still felt the same. But it isn’t easy to be married to someone when you have this terrible banshee voice in your head screeching that he only married you out of guilt.”

“There was guilt, I’m sure. But there was love, too, and more of that than anything.”

Grace sat quietly for a moment and seemed to collect her thoughts.

“I know you may not believe me, but I’ve loved Zachary all this time. Even during the worst days. Even those awful nights with Ian…that’s when I missed him the most.”

“I believe you.” Nora tried to give her a reassuring smile. “Five years ago I left the man who had been the center of my universe for thirteen years. Trust me, I believe you.”

“Thirteen years.” Grace sounded stunned. “How did you survive?”

“I wasn’t sure I would. Sometimes I’m not sure I did.”

Grace nodded her understanding. “Ever since Zachary left I’ve felt like a shade. I walk through the empty house and catch glimpses of myself in the mirror or the windows, and I’m surprised to find I’m still there.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. Her eyes held unshed tears. “I scare myself sometimes.”

Nora took a sip of her tea and found she could barely get it down.

“I scare myself, too.”

“I suppose I should be glad Zachary and I stayed married as long as we did. I never believed he loved me. I wanted to. And he certainly did everything he could to show that he loved me. But even after seven years, eight years, I still doubted it. So I pulled away hoping—”

“Hoping he would come after you.”

“And I let him go…”

“Hoping he would come back.”

“But he didn’t come back…” Grace finished the thought.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said, not knowing what else to say.

“I think…I don’t know what I was thinking at the time… . I believe I had the idea that we had to end before we could start again. Nonsense, of course. A romance novel fantasy, I see that now. No offense.”

“None taken. I write erotica, not romance novels.” Nora grinned but her smile faded from her face. “Ask me, Grace. I know you need to.”

“I rang his flat. No one answered. I stopped by this morning and knocked. No one came to the door. Was he with you?”

Nora sensed her claws instinctively wanting to show themselves. But for some reason she harbored none of the hostility she usually felt for a rival.

“I won’t lie to you, Grace. He was with me.” She leaned forward to gaze earnestly at Grace. “But I won’t lie to myself. I think he was with you, too.”

Grace stood up slowly and walked to Nora’s kitchen window.

“When I called him…” Grace began and exhaled. Her warm breath steamed up the cold glass of the window. “He didn’t call me Gracie like he always had.”

“Gracie,” Nora repeated. “That’s cute. You should start calling him George.”

“For King George?”

Nora laughed. “ For George Burns and Gracie Allen. They had a legendary marriage. Might work.”

“I fall in love with him a little bit more every time he calls me that. We’d been married a year and one day it just came out—‘Gracie, come read this.’ It was the first time I felt truly married to him. And it was such a relief after a lifetime of being called ‘princess.’”

“Horrible nickname.”

“It gets worse. It’s a terrible joke. My parents honeymooned in Calais so I’m Grace Calais. Princess Grace and Grace Kelly… Madness.”

“Your middle name is Calais?” A memory came to Nora like a face remembered from a dark dream. She stood up and walked to where Grace still stood at the window.

How do you choose your safe word? Zach had asked.

Pick anything. The street you grew up on, your favorite food, the middle name of the long-lost love of your life…

“I did lie to you, Grace,” Nora finally said and waited for Grace to meet her eyes. Nora reached out and put her hand on Grace’s arm. Grace covered Nora’s hand with her own. “He wasn’t with me last night at all.”

* * *

Long after Grace had left, Nora sat at the kitchen table and stared at nothing until her eyes watered.

Wesley and Zach…somehow without trying she had lost them both. Zach would turn from her and Wesley she had turned away. A realization came upon her with the unavoidable force of the night after the day. She rose from her chair and returned to her bedroom. She threw open the closet door and pushed back the racks of clothes. On the back wall impaled on a nail hung a set of deep red rosary beads with a small key hidden behind the crucifix.

She took the key and dropped to her knees. From the farthest corner of her closet she pulled out a wooden box the size of a small Bible. With shaking hands she opened it and took from a bed of blood-red velvet the white leather collar that had once bound her to Søren, the collar she had not worn in five years.

Rising from the floor she left the key in the lock and left the box on the floor. She left no note for Wesley and she left on all the lights. She threw on her coat, found her car keys, and taking nothing with her but her collar, she left. She pulled out of the driveway at breakneck speed and not once did it occur to her to look back.

34

Zach had heard of sleeping with one’s eyes open but not of dreaming that way. But after a two-hour wait, two hours with his eyes on the hotel entrance, he knew his mind must be asleep. And when Grace walked in, saw him and smiled as if the two years of the cold and quiet hell they’d been living in had vanished into thin air, he knew he could only be dreaming.

He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets, afraid if he didn’t he’d drag her to him.

“Hiya,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

“Hiya.” It was her, her voice, his Grace.

“I was waiting for you.”

“I see that. I tried to call you. Several times. When I didn’t hear from you, I called Mr. Bonner. I told him it was an emergency. He gave me—”

“He sent you to Nora’s, didn’t he?”

“Don’t be angry at him, please.”

“I’m not. So you met Nora?”

Grace nodded and hazarded a smile.

“Had tea with her. We talked.”

Zach was afraid to ask, more afraid not to. “What did she say?”

“She said I should call you George.”

“She would say that. Gracie, I—”

“About Nora,” Grace said, cutting him off. “I think she might be the only woman in the world I could ever forgive you for.”

“Say the word,” Zach said, “and she’ll be the only woman you’ll ever have to.”

Grace smiled, but the smile broke in two as she collapsed into his arms. He held her to him and pressed his lips to her hair. She said nothing and that was fine. The weight of her slight body against his, her head on his chest…it made him feel safer than any words she could have spoken.

“Forgive me, too,” she said. “Please.”

“No, Gracie.” He swallowed hard. “Nothing to forgive. Tell me something, please.”

“Anything.”

Zach pulled back and held her by the shoulders. He searched her face, still unable to believe she was here.

“Did I lose you, or did I never have you to start with?” he asked.

Grace shook her head. “You never lost me, Zachary. And you always, always had me.”

Zach’s heart rose so high he thought it would burst from his chest.

“I lied to you,” Grace said, and looked up at him.

Zach’s hands went cold. “About what?”

“The day when I called about the blackout…the lights weren’t really out.”

“They weren’t?” Zach almost laughed.

“No,” she said and pressed her head against his chest again. “The lights were never out.”

* * *

The sanctuary at Sacred Heart sat empty but for the heady air still radiating warmth from the hundred or more souls who had left barely an hour ago. Nora faced the altar and inhaled the familiar smoky scent. She thought of the book of Revelation and how in it the prayers of the church rise before God in the form of incense. She said her own silent prayer and released it like smoke into the sky.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed Saturday morning Mass,” a voice as familiar as her own said.

Nora turned around and found Søren with a pewter pitcher refilling the fount of holy water at the entrance to the sanctuary.

“But we celebrate Vigil mass at five o’clock this evening if you’d like to come back.”

“Søren, you are ubiquitous.” Nora came to him. He set the empty pitcher aside.

“I prefer the term omnipresent,” he said.

“You would.”

Nora didn’t bother attempting to fake a smile for him. She knew him, knew he would see right through it. She waited and let Søren study her. His knowing eyes on her face felt as intimate as a touch.

“You look tired, little one,” he said.

“I am tired.”

“Tell me.”

“I have such a great gift for ruining things. It even impresses me sometimes.”

“Self-pity does not become you,” he chastised her in the same tone he used to silence unruly children in the hallways. “And while you have a gift for creating chaos, I have never known you to be willfully destructive. Now, what is this about?”

Nora gave him the faintest of smiles.

“I finished the book.”

“I had no doubt you would.”

“Zach even signed the contract. Then we celebrated.”

“Of that I have no doubt, either,” Søren said with a wry smile. “So why is there so much sadness in your eyes?”

“I met Zach’s wife today.”

“Ah, the once and future Mrs. Easton. What did you think of her?”

“I think he’ll go back to her.”

Søren nodded. “That was inevitable.”

Nora swallowed. “And last night meant nothing.”

“I’m sure your night together meant a great deal to him. More than you may ever know. The same wind that blows us off course can turn and carry us home.”