The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [134]
They went into the rectory, which looked like the house of an old man—apparently Father Cooke had not taken much with him when he went to Arizona, and Aidan hadn’t bothered with redecorating. Aidan disappeared into the kitchen, and emerged with a glass of ice water and a bag of frozen peas for her foot—she wondered if he actually intended to eat them ever or if these vegetables were designated for sports injuries only—and they sat in the living room.
“What’s going on, Bianca?” he asked, when she had downed the glass of water and was holding the bag awkwardly against her ankle, which was already swelling nicely.
Bean started crying again. He reached out and took her hand, and when she quieted, he stood. “I’ll be right back,” he said, taking her empty glass. He returned with it filled, a box of tissues in his other hand. He put both down beside her, and she plucked a tissue from the box and blew her nose inelegantly.
“Take your time,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.” He moved his chair closer to Bean’s, so they sat face-to-face, and nodded at her.
She took a moment, struggling to breathe through the aftermath of the tears, trying to compose herself. “I’m a thief,” Bean blurted out finally. “I’m a thief and a liar and a whore and I don’t deserve anything good.”
“Bean,” he said. She was crying hard now, she couldn’t look at him. “Bean,” he said again. He rested his hand on her arm. “You’re none of those things. You’re human. You’re fallible. You make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, we repent. And when we repent, we can be forgiven anything.”
“Anything,” she whispered, and it was an echo, not a question. Her voice caught, she breathed as though she were laughing, four long, shuddering breaths. “I got fired,” she said. “I got fired because I stole money from my job.”
She told him the whole story. She cried, she looked away, she cried again. She held the glass of water in her lap, drinking from it when her mouth went dry from talking. He said nothing, listened, leaning forward, elbows resting on his thighs, not pulling his eyes from her. She couldn’t meet his gaze for longer than a few seconds. She told more than she had told us, she talked about the men she had seduced, the lies she had told, to herself and to others, and how she saw the lights of her future winking out in front of her like candles being extinguished at the end of the service. She told him about Dr. Manning, about the way she had fallen into his arms because it made the pain of remembering so much duller, and the ways in which she had so conveniently forgotten his wife and his children and ignored the fact that what should have been pleasurable felt more and more like pain each time. She even told him that she’d wanted Aidan to fall in love with her, certain that the good in him would cancel out the darkness in her, and he did not judge her for any of this. She did not care anymore about impressing him; she only wanted to be free of the weight aching in her chest.
“And what now?” he asked. She had finished, leaned back in her chair. The bag of peas lay sweating on the table, and her voice had grown hoarse from talking.
Bean stared off into the middle distance, barely watching the ticking arms of a clock on the mantel. “Now, I don’t know. Now, I’m just trying to keep from dragging myself down into this swamp.”
“The financial debt?”
“I’m paying it back. Little by little, sure, but I don’t think they cared about the money. I just think they wanted me gone.” She picked up a tissue and blew her nose hard.
“And the men?”
“What men? I’ve slept with one man since I’ve been home, and that’s over. It was over