“I got your postcard,” she said. “That split-second I thought you had left again, I think my heart stopped.” She laughed at herself. “Then I saw the postmark and it started again.”

“I won’t leave without telling you again. There was something I wanted to say to you, but it wouldn’t fit on a postcard. I only wanted to say it to you when you were ready to hear it.”

“What is it?”

“What I wanted to say was this. If you ever asked me to choose between you and the Church…”

“I would never—”

“I know you wouldn’t. But if you did, I would choose you. When I was trying to stop you from calling the media, it was only because I was afraid it could come to that. If the Church turned on you, accused you of something, made you the into their scapegoat—”

“I know you’d leave them if they did that to me.”

“I wouldn’t leave them. I would destroy them.”

He met her eyes so she could see he meant it. The threat hung in the air, sweet as perfume, and she fell in love with him again, like she had a thousand times before, like she would a thousand times again before their story was over.

The cat rolled over again, leaving a hundred black hairs on the bed. The spell was broken.

“Blood, come, and cat hair on the antique white counterpane,” Søren said with a sigh. “I’ll have to ask for black sheets as a housewarming gift.”

“It’s fine. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

The cat began licking her own stomach. It was not a graceful procedure.

“Cats are very strange,” Søren said.

“You like your housewarming gift?”

“I do. Both of them.” He picked up the handcuffs, twirled them once, just to show her who was boss. He was. Of course he was. Now. Always.

“Wait. I forgot the last present. Stay here.” Nora grabbed her panties off the floor and her tank top, pulled them on. “Hope it’s still warm.”

“Warm? Eleanor, what’s warm?” he called after her.

She ignored him, went into his kitchen, returned with two mugs. He’d put on his clothes again and sat in the armchair, the cat still on the bed, cat-napping. She sat on the floor at his feet and offered him one of the mugs.

“Drink,” she said. He stared at her. “Please?”

He drank. At the first sip, his eyes widened. Though he was fifty-one years old, it was a wounded eleven-year-old boy’s eyes that met hers.

“Sometimes you need hot cocoa, even in New Orleans in September.”

He held the cup in his hands, cradling it as tenderly and carefully as he’d ever carried a communion chalice.

“You’re nothing like your father,” she said, “and you’re full of shit if you think that.”

He smiled behind his mug and said softly, “Thank you.”

She held out her mug. “To Father Henry,” she said, “a very good priest.”

They clinked glasses and drank.