The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,42
after that, we were on and we’ve stayed on. And King and I had some bad blood between us. We cleaned the blood up finally. That was also right when King stopped fucking around with everyone on the planet. After Céleste was born, King decided to turn over a new leaf. That’s why we all moved down here. We wanted to leave our pasts in New York.”
“I think yours might have followed you down here.”
“Seems to be the case,” she said.
“Anything else you holding out on me?”
“Well…I told you I have two men in my life. My other lover, the twenty-seven-year-old…is Kingsley’s son.”
“God. Damn.”
“Oh, it gets worse, my friend.”
“I’m out.”
She smiled, halfway giggled.
“About time you told me this,” Cyrus said. “This matters to the case, you know. If Father Ike knew about you and your Viking—”
“I promise, S?ren did not know Father Ike. He would have told me if he did. And S?ren wouldn’t have given Father Ike my business card. And if he had, for any reason at all, he would have told us both. Hand to God.” Nora put her right hand on Father Ike’s Bible and lifted her left hand. Cyrus had to admit it was compelling testimony.
“It’s a motive, though, right? For a priest to call you? Say he found out this lady in town was sleeping with a priest. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend, too, feels guilty as hell over it, wants to talk to someone who gets it.”
“He had a chastity device in his nightstand. You really think he was calling me just to chat?”
“All right, good point.” If they hadn’t found the chastity whatever thing, Cyrus might be able to convince himself Father Ike was looking for some understanding in his final hours from a priest’s mistress. But they had found it, and there was no pretending it didn’t exist.
“You don’t seem very shocked,” Nora said.
“More priests than we want to admit got side pieces. I’ve had two cases with people cheating with clergy—one wife, church secretary. One husband, groundskeeper.”
“Both Catholic priests?”
“Both,” he said. “It happens.”
“Yeah, it does.”
They met eyes.
“You pissed at me?” she asked.
“Why? I stole Paulina from the Ursulines.”
“She wasn’t in the order yet. S?ren’s been an ordained priest for a long time.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Done too much in my days to judge how you spend your nights.”
She smiled. “I like you.”
“We gonna be friends?” Cyrus asked.
“For the time being.”
“It’ll make our counselor happy. Check ‘female friend’ off the wedding checklist.”
“Can I come to your wedding?” Nora asked, eyes wide.
“Hell no.”
“Fair.” She laughed again. Good to hear her laugh. He promised himself a long time ago he’d stop being the reason why good women cried in this town.
“Back to work,” he said.
Cyrus stood up. His ass was falling asleep fast on that floor. He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.
“You all right?”
“Better. Still freaked out to be digging through a dead priest’s things. Hard to not think about somebody doing this to S?ren if something happened to him. Digging through his stuff, finding out his secrets.” She glanced around the room, shuddered a little.
“Just remember, it’s for a good cause. Nobody deserves to die because they’re, you know—”
“A freak like me?”
“Right,” he said. “Let’s get back to work. You find anything in the Bible?”
“Nothing much,” she said. “A few thank you notes from former parishioners. Birthday card from some Archbishop. Picture of him and his sister as kids. One poem. That was about all that stuck out.”
“The poem?”
“Rumi,” she said. “Heard of him?”
Cyrus shook his head.
“Legendary thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic and poet.”
“Oh yeah, him. You just know this off the top of your head?”
“My boyfriend is half-Persian. I mean, the other one.”
“He a fan of this Rumi guy, or you just like bringing up all the time that you have two boyfriends?”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“Just tell me about the damn poem.”
“Well, Rumi mostly wrote religious poetry and love poetry. I’d kind of expect a religious poem in his Bible, but not this one.”
She opened the Bible and took out a folded sheet of paper. The poem was written in Father Ike’s own hand on a sheet of linen paper, the kind people used when they were trying too hard to make their resumes look nice.
“‘Poem of the Butterflies,’” Cyrus read aloud. He continued:
The people of this world are like the three butterflies in front of a candle’s flame.
The first one went closer and said, “I know about love.”