why I wanted to come out.” He keeps his eyes on the wide expanse of snow and the treeline as he says it. Then he looks across at me and grins. “And to see your cheeks like that.”
The snow is deep but packed under our feet, with a layer of fluff. Leo lets out a long breath. In a few minutes we’re halfway across the wide lawn. Shortly after we’re at the edge of the forest. Leo stops. “Listen.”
Birdsong. They’re calling to each other, all the forest birds. Singing in the trees. Wind whispers through the branches and toys with the ends of my hair. Leo shifts next to me, and—oh. He stands with his gloved hands at his pockets, head tipped back, eyes closed.
My own body goes still in the presence of that peace. Tears line my eyes. Yet…there’s no wrenching sob fighting its way out. I don’t know if I believe in miracles, but this seems like one. A shimmering feeling expands to fill my ribs, my heart. It’s the same one I felt when I looked into his office that day. Looked past Ronan, to where Leo bowed his head and prayed.
I’ve never asked him what he prayed for.
The few inches of distance between us is too much. I take a step toward him, planning to brush against him just to feel he’s there. Leo moves at the last second and puts his arm around me.
Tucks me tight to his side.
He’s like a furnace, throwing off so much heat. It’s not a bitter day but his solid frame chases away the winter chill. I lean my head against him and close my eyes, too. Without the rustle of the leaves, the birdsongs are crystalline notes, filling out the sky.
It’s like a cathedral.
It is a cathedral.
Goose bumps chase one another down the back of my neck. Everyone knows the Morellis are Catholic, but if I’ve thought about it at all, it’s been in the abstract. Another irrelevant fact about them.
It’s not abstract, or irrelevant.
It would have made up the structure of Leo’s childhood. Real trips to church every Sunday, where they would see and most of all be seen. Timothy mentioned a priest the night I went to the kitchen. It was more than that. The priest. The prayers. Say anything enough times, and it becomes true.
There would have been a rhythm to it. We had one, growing up. Dad doing his best and getting lost in his work. The three of us rushing around to set things in order and sometimes literally put out fires. Love, even through the worst times, like when my mom died.
It would have been different for Leo. A public face for the church. Violence at home. Endless cycles of hiding and pretending. All of it against a backdrop of money and power.
These things made him vulnerable to Caroline.
He thinks he’s going to hell, you know.
Leo blames himself.
He must. I breathe in the crisp air and sit with that heartache. The things you believe early on—they stick around. I believed my dad loved me, and that we might struggle, but money wasn’t everything.
Leo believed that only anger could protect him from a monster. My stomach turns. Affection was a punishable crime in the Morelli household. And the one time he reached outside his family, it was to Caroline.
Leo didn’t keep her a secret only because it would start a war.
He kept her a secret because Caroline is his biggest, most mortal sin. It would have been a sin to want her. To respond to her. And it would have been a sin to let her hurt him. Never mind that it wasn’t his fault.
It must have felt like stepping in front of a bullet, to tell me all those things at dinner. To hold his own heart in his hands and offer it up.
“It hurts less here,” Leo says. “The pain is the same, but it hurts less to remember.”
“I can see why.” It’s not enough, but it’s all I can think to say. He pulls me closer.
For a moment I think he might say more. The whole forest seems to anticipate it. The wind holds its breath. Two birds sing to each other, their songs rising in excitement.
“There’s something else I want to show you. We can go back through the trees.”
By back through the trees, Leo means following a trail, obviously kept up by the grounds staff. Only a few fallen sticks decorate the snow. “There are other loops,” he says