The Queen. Tiffany Reisz

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      “Poetic license.” She sat at his side in the pew. “Queen Esther looked suspiciously like me, as well. Anyway...writing that story changed my life. I’d never written anything like that before. All I was trying to do was flirt with you and now twenty-two years later I’ve made an entire career from writing. I didn’t know my life would change that day by writing one little story. And yet...here we are. All thanks to you.”

      “And Queen Esther. And Queen Eleanor.”

      “I’m not really a queen.”

      “You’ve always been a queen in my eyes. Especially now.”

      “I can’t believe I’m wearing a wedding dress. How do I let Griffin talk me into these things?”

      “It’s exquisite. You’re exquisite.”

      Søren kissed her lightly on the lips. His mouth shivered against hers. Søren was a man of quiet depth, as if he kept a secret second heart locked away in a glass case. It would explain how much he felt and how strongly and yet how rarely such feelings were allowed to escape from captivity. Sometimes before they made love he would cut her skin with a sharp paper-thin blade and the act was so intimate and harrowing it would leave him shaking. It scared him to take her life in his hands, and yet it was at such times they felt closest to each other. She knew his trembling now was for a similar reason.

      “Do you forgive me, Little One?” Søren asked.

      “What mortal sin have you committed recently?”

      “You know my sins better than I do.”

      “Yes. Which is why I tell you there is no need to beg my forgiveness for anything.”

      “You have a forgiving heart,” Søren said. “I have always admired that about you.”

      “I know myself. I know my own weaknesses and failures. Jesus was always so kind to sinners and so cruel to hypocrites.”

      “Am I a hypocrite?” Søren asked.

      “You’re human.”

      “You don’t have to be insulting, Eleanor.”

      She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. He sighed so her whole body moved with his. Somewhere behind and above them a bell rang. Six times the bell chimed. Six o’clock and all was well.

      Three hours and counting.

      “It’s strange, isn’t it?” Søren said.

      “What is?”

      “Just yesterday Michael was fifteen years old and had barely healed scars on his wrists from when he tried to kill himself in my church. And today...today he’s twenty-one and married. Michael. Married.” He looked at her and half laughed.

      “I know. Crazy, isn’t it? I swear yesterday I was fifteen, and I saw my new priest for the very first time, and loved him from the moment I saw him, and knew I’d love him until I died. Today I’m thirty-eight, and I still love him and know I’ll love him forever.” The days danced and flashed around her like fireflies on a summer’s night. “Where is the time going?” she asked him. “How did it all go by so fast? And what if it’s all gone tomorrow?”

      “We live each day like it’s our last. But not by running about wildly, attempting to cram every possible experience into one day. Instead...every day we should make our peace with God and each other. Say what needs to be said and not leave it for another time. If I knew I would die tomorrow I’d spend all night telling you and Kingsley how much I love you both, and I wouldn’t let God take me until I was certain you knew I meant every word. I would sing it to you like the angels sing praise to God in heaven—unceasingly.”

      “We know. Kingsley and I, we already know.”

      “But I would still tell you,” he said softly. “Even if you didn’t need to hear it, I would have to tell you.”

      She held him close again, kissed his cheek, his forehead, like a mother kissing a scared child. And he was scared. She could feel it in every touch.

      “Talk to me. Distract me. Help me get through these hours.”

      “Will you hear my confession?” Nora asked. She turned and met his eyes. How she loved those eyes, the strength and color of steel. “This could be my last chance to confess to you, after all.”

      “I won’t leave the priesthood. I promised you I wouldn’t.”

      “You were in the wedding pictures. You performed a same-sex marriage. You kissed me in front of two hundred wedding guests, half of them we don’t know. You can tell me all you want that it’s fine, that it won’t matter, but we both know those are not the actions of a man who is planning on being a priest for much longer.”

      “I have to tell them. Some things shouldn’t be secrets.”

      “You tell them the truth, and they will kick you out.”

      “Possibly. I’ve made choices, difficult ones, but I did it in full knowledge of the consequences. Nothing stays the same forever, after all.”

      “That’s not true. My love for you is forever. I made that promise, and I will keep it. But tomorrow or next week or next month you might not be a priest anymore. So please...hear my confession and absolve me? One last time?”

      He rose from the pew and moved a chair from the side of the chapel and set it in front of her. From the leather sporran of his kilt, he pulled a leather case, unzipped it and unfurled a purple sash. He kissed it and draped it around his neck and over his shoulders. He sat in the chair and pressed his palms together. Nora looked at his hands and saw they were now steady and still.

      She smiled and looked up to the octagonal window. The sun would set in under three hours. By nightfall everything could change.

      “First of all,” she began, “I’m confessing these sins to you because I committed them against you and only you can absolve me of them.”

      “What are your sins?”

      Nora loved Søren. This was an incontrovertible fact of the universe, strong as gravity, inevitable as sunrise. She’d told him almost everything there was to tell him about their years apart, everything but this. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him but she didn’t want to keep the truth from him anymore. No more secrets. No more lies. Nothing between them anymore and never again.

      “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she began her confession. “When we were apart there were two times I almost came back to you and didn’t.”

      “Two?” Søren looked at her, wide-eyed and stunned. Usually she loved shocking him, it was such a feat. Not today. “Why didn’t you?”

      “Are you sure you want to know?”

      Then Søren said to her the two words she’d once said to him that had changed her life.

      “Tell me.”

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