Page 23
Author: Tiffany Reisz
“We can talk about Kingsley. Whatever you like. ” Nora decided she’d probably pushed enough of Marie-Laure’s buttons today. Morning had dawned bright and beautiful today. She would love to see another morning.
“Good. Let’s talk. But work while you talk. Clear the dishes. ”
Nora glanced up at Fat Man, who nodded at her. With his permission, she pulled herself off the floor and started piling dishes in her arms.
“You can answer my question anytime now,” Marie-Laure said, sipping her tea again.
“Um. . . Kingsley and I, we’re complicated. No, some days he doesn’t like me very much. Some days we’re thick as thieves. ”
“Why is that? Because you aborted his child?”
Nora almost dropped the dishes on the floor. With only force of will did she manage to keep the dishes and herself from shattering.
“I did, yes,” she admitted without shame. “But no, that’s not why he doesn’t like me sometimes. The pregnancy was an accident, his and mine. He’d never be petty enough to hate me because of that. ”
“Then why does he hate you?”
“He doesn’t. Not all the time, anyway. If he’s mad at Søren, I’m his partner-in-crime, the only person on the planet other than Kingsley who can get to Søren. If he’s. . . if he’s remembering what he and Søren used to be and missing it, he sees me as the enemy. ”
“Are you?”
Nora put the plates on the sideboard.
“No, I’m not the enemy. Even if I didn’t exist, I doubt Søren would let them have the kind of relationship they had back when they were teenagers. Hard to tell that to someone still a little in love after thirty years. So yes, Kingsley might be in the ‘I don’t like Nora club’ but you should know, he’s very much in the ‘I don’t let bad things happen to my people’ club. And I’m definitely one of his people. ”
“The threat is duly noted. ”
“Can I ask you a Kingsley question?” Nora picked up a napkin and started wiping at the crumbs on the table. Marie-Laure’s dark eyes glinted with dark pleasure.
“Please do. ”
“Kingsley and Søren have been friends, for lack of a better word, for years. Barely a day passes without them talking to each other. And despite that, Kingsley’s managed to move on more or less. He has someone he loves and shares his life with—”
“Oh, yes, that. I’m a little disgusted about her. The Haitian woman? My brother could do better. ”
Nora briefly envisioned stabbing Marie-Laure in the eye with a fork. She might have done it but didn’t have a fork handy. She’d left them on the sideboard.
“There is no one better than Juliette. Besides, what do you care about Kingsley or Søren or anybody they fuck? That’s my question. It’s been thirty years. Of course, Kingsley still has feelings for Søren—they’re together all the time. But you. . . you disappeared thirty years ago. Why are you back? Why now? Why not five years ago, ten years ago?”
“That’s an interesting question, and I have a more interesting answer. You’ll find it especially interesting considering your history with my brother. ” Marie-Laure sat her teacup down and adjusted her robe. “You see. . . a certain nostalgia overwhelmed me last year. I’d been living in Brazil on my estate and quite happy. And yet, I did miss France. Every August when we were children, my parents would take my brother and me to a lovely seaside town in the south of France. I adored those times in that tiny village. I decided to go back for a few days. Self-indulgent, I know. . . but I thought it would be nice to see some old ghosts. ”
“Did you see any?” Nora brushed her napkin off in a small trash can.
“I did. I walked the narrow winding streets, along the beach, down the dock. I stopped for coffee in an outdoor café. And there. . . I saw him. . . ”
“Who?” Nora asked.
“I saw Kingsley. ”
Nora shook her head.
“No way. Couldn’t be him. He never goes back to France anymore. He says he has too many people there who’d like to see him dead. ”
“But it was Kingsley. I promise you it was. I’d wondered for years how Kingsley grew up after I died. I wondered what he looked like at age twenty, twenty-five, thirty. . . and there was Kingsley walking down the street with a beautiful girl on his arm and secrets in his eyes. You see, I found out about my brother’s true inclinations by accident. And by that I mean, I met one of his accidents. ”
“Accidents?” Nora wasn’t quite sure she heard right. Kingsley. . . had a. . .
“I assume he wasn’t planned. My brother’s son, that is. ”
The entire room rattled with the sound of the dishes in Nora’s hands clattering on the sideboard. Marie-Laure glared at her. Nora ignored it.
“Kingsley has a kid?”
“Non, not a kid, as you say. He looked to be in his twenties. A son he doesn’t even know exists. ”
“Oh, my God. Kingsley has a son,” Nora repeated. And for whatever reason, a reason she didn’t want or need to think about, that knowledge gave her renewed hope. She would have wept for the joy of it had she learned this news in any other context. Kingsley had a son? A son in his twenties and handsome as his father? It seemed too good to be true, and yet she believed it. And once she believed, a wound she didn’t know she’d had suddenly closed up and healed over.
“Are you sure he’s Kingsley’s? Completely certain?”
“I doubted it, too, at first,” Marie-Laure said. “Although the resemblance was uncanny it was possible he was a distant relative. . . or merely a doppelgänger. So I had someone do some digging on him. Turns out my brother had been feeling nostalgic, too, about twenty-four years ago. He’d met a woman and spent a few days in her bed. A married woman whose husband had gone to Paris for a week of business. She kept the boy’s parentage a secret even from his real father. ”
“Do you. . . ” Nora paused for a breath. Tears lined her eyes. She knew then she had to survive this nightmare no matter what if only to find this young man, this child of Kingsley’s. “Do you know his name?”
“Nicolas. . . a fine French name for my nephew. ” She said the name with relish and in the French pronunciation—Nee-coh-lah. “I’m still considering whether or not to make the acquaintance of my brother’s bastard. ”
Rage surged within Nora. Kingsley’s son. . . Nora had once carried Kingsley’s child, and she’d chosen not to have it. To this day she never regretted that decision, but now she found motherly feelings she didn’t think she possessed rising up in her heart like an army preparing for battle. She would live and she would find him and tell him where he came from and where he belonged. And perhaps she might even give him one chaste embrace and know all the while she was doing something she thought she would never do—hold Kingsley’s child in her arms. She’d never even met him, met Nicolas, Kingsley’s son. But she would fight to the death to protect him from this woman and whatever sick, sordid plans she had in mind.
“Do not go near Kingsley’s son if you value your life,” Nora said quietly and with menace. And something in her tone must have penetrated even Marie-Laure’s madness and darkness.
“I don’t care anything about him. ” Marie-Laure waved her hand dismissively. “Mere curiosity alone. Seeing him simply caused me to wonder about my brother for the first time in years. After all, I was under the impression that his interest in women had been feigned, a cover for his true inclinations. And yet, there was living proof that my brother, in his twenties, had bedded women. I had to wonder. . . what else had I been wrong about?”
“So you started investigating?”
Marie-Laure nodded as Fat Man pointed at the floor. Nora sank to her knees again, listening avidly. After the revelation about Nicolas, she knew she had to hear it all. What other secrets did Kingsley have? More secrets than he even knew he had?
“I did. I even came to New York, something I swore I would never do knowing this was his territory. I learned a great deal on that excursion. He had no idea I followed him, watched him, studied from a distance. Lovers. . . men and women. That Juliette most often, although he tries not to show anyone he cares for her. ”
“He has enemies. He protects her by not letting on how much she matters. ”
“I know he has enemies,” Marie-Laure said with a smile. “I’m one of them. I had prepared myself for everything I knew I would see watching my brother come and go from his town house, in his box at the opera, playing football—I mean, soccer, excuse me—on the field of a school. ”
Nora’s stomach clenched hard at Marie-Laure’s words. Kingsley only ever played soccer these days with. . .
“You saw him with Søren. ”
“Oui. I saw him with my husband. My husband had become a Catholic priest, I learned, and my brother was still in love with him after all this time. But that merely seemed a tragedy to me, my brother lovelorn even thirty years later. Lovelorn for a man he couldn’t have for so many reasons. For surely if he was a Catholic priest, he’d taken a vow of celibacy. It made so much sense to me then. My husband, not interested at all in women, had become a priest. From what I’ve heard, he would simply be one of a legion of priests entirely not interested in women. ”
Nora’s hands started to shake as Marie-Laure continued her story. She didn’t like where it was heading.
“Still. . . ” Marie-Laure continued, “I couldn’t stop watching him. A terrible itch, I had to keep scratching. And so I kept watching. I watched his home from the little copse of woods that shielded it. ”
Nora’s breaths quickened.
“Lovely little rectory, so quiet and alone. He seemed so pathetic to me, my husband. A celibate priest who’d given up love and marriage and children to serve a God who couldn’t care less what the little ants under His feet did with their days. I liked that he’d become a priest. It comforted me to know he slept alone in his bed with no one to touch him, to make love to him. I hoped that in the middle of his loneliest nights he thought of me and our marriage and how I lay next to him waiting to be touched by a man who cared as little for my love as God cared for him. Then I saw her. ”
Nora remained silent. She didn’t have to ask who Marie-Laure saw.
“I saw a woman come to his home in the middle of the night, and walk to the side door and enter without knocking, enter as if she owned it. An hour later he and she emerged carrying blankets, a bottle of wine, a candle and—”
“Binoculars,” Nora completed Marie-Laure’s sentence for her. “It was the night of the meteor shower. We wanted to watch it. ”
“I watched you watch it. I watched you two lay down blankets and stare through the opening in the trees up at the heavens. I saw your head resting on the center of my husband’s chest. I watched him run his fingers through your hair as you two talked and laughed for an hour as stars fell out of the sky. I watched you. . . . ”
Nora closed her eyes and one tear ran down her cheek. She remembered that night last summer. She’d only been back with Søren a few weeks, and yet already it felt as if she’d never left him. It had been his idea to watch the meteor shower. One of his old teachers at Saint Ignatius had been an astronomer and had instilled a love of the nighttime science in the boys. So they’d had a midnight picnic, the two of them in Søren’s backyard where they could hide behind the trees. It was a risk for them to be together outdoors, but one Søren had been willing to take. After the last star had fallen from the sky, she’d turned over and kissed him long and deep, whispering against his lips the apologies she’d been hiding in her heart. I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I had to. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I lied about you. I’m sorry I tried to hate you all this time and blame you for everything. It was only because it made being apart from you easier. . . . He’d forgiven her with a kiss and the words, “I’ll forgive because you’ve asked me to, not because you need my forgiveness. You did what you had to. You had to leave to become who you were meant to be. All that matters now is that you’re here, Little One. ” And then he’d lit a candle and pushed her flowing summer skirt to her waist. He dripped the scalding wax over her thighs and hips and she’d submitted to the pain with peace and pleasure. How good it felt to surrender herself to him again, how safe, how right. . . and then with only the stars to witness, he’d made love to her until dawn.