Sacred Sins (9 page)

She was supposed to be cool, a little aloof. He'd expected it. He hadn't expected the heat, the passion, or the sweetness that poured from her into him. He hadn't expected the immediate intimacy of longtime lovers. He knew women well—or thought he did. Tess was a mystery to him that demanded solving.

Desire was familiar to him, something else he'd thought he understood well. But he couldn't remember ever having it ram into him and take his breath away. He wanted her now, instantly, desperately. Ordinarily he'd have followed through. It was natural. For reasons he couldn't begin to understand, he backed away from her.

For a moment they just stared at each other.

“This could be a problem,” he managed to say after a few seconds.

“Yeah.” She swallowed and concentrated on the cool metal of the keys in her hand.

“Put on the security chain, okay? I'll see you tomorrow.”

She missed the keyhole by a quarter inch on the first try and swore as she stuck it in on the second. “Good night, Ben.”

“Good night.”

He waited until he heard the click of the lock and the rattle of chain before he turned and walked down the hall. A problem, he thought again. One hell of a problem.

H
E'D
been walking for hours. When he let himself into his apartment he was almost too tired to stand. In the past few months he found he slept dreamlessly only if he exhausted himself first.

It wasn't necessary to turn on a light; he knew the way. Ignoring the need to rest, he went past his bedroom. Sleep would come only after he'd completed this last duty. The room beyond was always locked. When he opened it he drew in the faint, feminine scent of the fresh flowers he put there daily. The priest's robe hung by the closet door. Draped over it, the amice was a slash of white.

Striking a match, he lit the first candle, then another and another, until the shadows waved on the pristine surface of the altar cloth.

There was a picture there in a silver frame of a young woman, blond and smiling. Forever she'd been captured, young, innocent, and happy. Pink roses had been her favorite, and it was their scent that mixed with the burning candles.

In smaller frames were the carefully clipped newspaper prints of three other women. Carla Johnson, Barbara Clayton, Francie Bowers. Folding his hands, he knelt before them.

There were so many others, he thought. So many. He'd only just begun.

T
HE BOY SAT
across from Tess, quiet and sullen. He didn't fidget or look out of the window. He rarely did. Instead, he sat in the chair and looked down at his own knees. His hands lay spread on his thighs, the fingers slender, the knuckles a bit enlarged from nervous cracking. The nails were bitten down below the quick. Signs of nerves, yet people often go through life well enough while cracking and snapping and chewing on themselves.

It was rare for him to look at the person he was speaking with, or more accurately in his case, the person speaking to him. Every time she managed to get him to make eye contact, she felt both a small victory and a small pang. There was so little she could see in his eyes, for he'd learned at a young age how to shield and conceal. What she did see—when she was given even that rare, quick chance to look—was not resentment, not fear, only a trace of boredom.

Life had not played fair with Joseph Higgins, Jr., and he wasn't taking any chances on being slipped another shot below the belt. At his age, when adults called
the plays, he chose isolation and noncommunication as defense against a lack of choice. Tess knew the symptoms. Lack of outward emotion, lack of motivation, lack of interest. A lack.

Somehow, some way, she had to find the trigger that would push him back to caring first about himself, then the world around him.

He was too old for her to play games with, too young for her to meet on the level of adult to adult. She had tried both, and he'd accepted neither. Joey Higgins had placed himself firmly in an in-between space. Adolescence wasn't simply awkward for him, it was miserable.

He was wearing jeans, good, solid jeans, with the button fly raved about in the slick commercials, and a gray sweatshirt with the Maryland terrapin grinning across his chest. His leather high-top Nike's were trendy and new. Light brown hair was cut into moderate spikes around a too thin face. Outwardly he looked like an average fourteen-year-old boy. All the trappings were there. Inside he was a maze of confusion, self-hate, and bitterness that Tess knew she hadn't even begun to touch.

It was unfortunate that instead of being a confidante, a wailing wall, or even a blank sheet of paper to him, she was only one more authority figure in his life. If just once he'd broken out and shouted or argued with her, she would have felt the sessions were progressing. Through them all, he remained polite and unresponsive.

“How are you feeling about school, Joey?”

He didn't shrug. It was as if even that movement might give away some of the feelings he kept locked so tightly inside. “Okay.”

“Okay? I'd guess it's always kind of tough to switch schools.” She'd fought against that, done everything in her power to persuade his parents not to make such a
dramatic move at this point in his therapy. Bad companions, they had said. They were going to get him away from the people influencing him, those who'd drawn him toward alcohol, a brief flirtation with drugs, and an equally quick but more uneasy courtship with the occult. His parents had only succeeded in alienating him, and hacking away a little more at his self-esteem.

It hadn't been companions, bad or otherwise, who had taken Joey on any of those journeys. It was his own spiraling depression and search for an answer, one he might believe was completely and uniquely his own.

Because they no longer found joints in his dresser drawers or smelled liquor on his breath, his parents were confident he was beginning to recover. They couldn't see, or wouldn't, that he was still spiraling down quickly. He'd simply learned how to internalize it.

“New schools can be an adventure,” Tess went on when she received no response. “But it's tough being the new kid.”

“It's no big deal,” he murmured, and continued to look at his knees.

“I'm glad to hear that,” she said, though she knew it was a lie. “I had to switch schools when I was about your age and I was scared to death.”

He glanced up then, not believing, but interested. He had dark brown eyes that should have been eloquently expressive. Instead they were guarded and wary. “Nothing to be scared of, it's just a school.”

“Why don't you tell me about it?”

“It's just a school.”

“How about the other kids? Anyone interesting?”

“They're mostly jerks.”

“Oh? How's that?”

“They sort of stand around together. There's nobody I want to know.”

No one he did know, Tess corrected. The last thing
he'd needed at this point was to feel rejected by the school after losing the classmates he'd been used to. “It takes time to make friends, friends who count. It's harder to be alone, Joey, than it is to try to find them.”

“I didn't want to transfer.”

“I know.” She was with him there. Someone had to be. “And I know it's hard to feel as though you can be yanked around whenever the people who make the rules feel like changing them. It's not all that way, Joey. Your parents chose the school because they wanted the best for you.”

“You didn't want them to pull me out.” He glanced up again, but so quickly, she hardly caught the color of his eyes. “I heard Mom talking.”

“As your doctor I felt you might be more comfortable in your old school. Your mother loves you, Joey. Transferring you wasn't a punishment, but her way of trying to make things better for you.”

“She didn't want me to be with my friends.” But it wasn't said with bitterness, simply flat acceptance. No choice.

“How do you feel about that?”

“She was afraid if I was around them, I'd start drinking again. I'm not drinking.” It was said not resentfully, again not bitterly, but wearily.

“I know,” Tess said, and laid a hand on his arm. “You can be proud of yourself for pulling out, for making the right choice. I know how hard you have to work every day not to.”

“Mom's always blaming things that happen on somebody else.”

“What things?”

“Just things.”

“Like the divorce?” As usual, a mention of it brought no response at all. Tess backtracked. “How do you feel about not riding the bus anymore?”

“Buses stink.”

“Your mother's taking you to school now.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you talked to your father?”

“He's busy.” He looked at Tess with a touch of resentment mixed with a plea. “He's got a new job with this computer place, but I'm going to be spending the weekend with him probably next month. For Thanksgiving.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It's going to be good.” The little boy was there briefly, shining with hope. “We're going to go to the Redskins game. He's going to get tickets on the fifty-yard line. It's going to be like it used to be.”

“Like it used to be, Joey?”

He looked down at his knees again, but his brows had drawn together in anger.

“It's important to understand that things won't be like they used to. Different doesn't have to be bad. Sometimes change, even when it's hard, can be the best for everyone. I know you love your father. You don't have to stop because you're not living with him.”

“He doesn't have a house anymore. Just a room. He said if he didn't have to pay child support, he could have a house.”

She could have damned Joseph Higgins, Sr., to hell, but kept her voice firm and soft. “You understand that your father has a problem, Joey. You are not the problem. Alcohol is.”

“We have a house,” he muttered.

“If you didn't, do you think your father would be happier?”

No response. He was staring at his shoes now.

“I'm glad you're going to spend some time with your father. I know you've missed him.”

“He's been busy.”

“Yes.” Too busy to see his son, too busy to return the
calls of the psychiatrist who was trying to heal the hurts. “Sometimes adults can get pretty wrapped up in their lives. You must know how difficult things are for your father now, in a new job, because you're in a new school.”

“I'm going to spend a weekend with him next month. Mom says not to depend on it, but I'm going to.”

“Your mother doesn't want you to be disappointed if something comes up.”

“He's going to come get me.”

“I hope so, Joey. But if he doesn't… Joey…” She touched his arm again and through sheer force of will drew his gaze to hers. “If he doesn't, you have to know that it isn't because of you, but because of his illness.”

“Yeah.”

He agreed because agreeing was the quickest way to avoid a hassle. Tess knew it, and wished not for the first time that she could convince his parents he needed more intensive therapy.

“Did your mother bring you today?”

He continued to look down, but the anger, at least outwardly, was gone. “My stepfather.”

“Are you still getting along with him?”

“He's okay.”

“You know, caring for him doesn't mean you care less for your father.”

“I said he's okay.”

“Any pretty girls at your new school?” She wanted a smile from him, any size, any kind.

“I guess.”

“Guess?” Maybe it was the smile in Tess's voice that had him looking up again. “You look like you have good eyes to me.”

“Maybe there's a couple.” And his lips did curve a little. “I don't pay much attention.”

“Well, there's time for that. Will you come back and see me next week?”

“I guess.”

“Will you do me a favor in the meantime? I said you had good eyes. Look at your mother and your step-father.” He turned his head, but she took his hand and held it. “Joey…” She waited until those dark, unreadable eyes were on hers again. “Look at them. They're trying to help. They may make mistakes, but they're trying because they care about you. A lot of people do. You still have my number, don't you?”