Magdalene (56 page)

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? As in, you didn’t speak? At
all?”

“No.” He gestured in pure frustration. “What
am I supposed to say, Cassandra? They have explicit
written
statements from three women and a mountain of pictures— Private
moments between you and me, ones I cherish, are on display like a
pictorial. We’re dancing, snuggling, skating, whatever, fully
clothed, in public—some of the best moments of my life— They
reduced us to a disease-ridden junkie having a back-alley quickie
with a crack whore. And...I’m supposed to justify it to a room full
of men who don’t know a
coup d’état
when they see one? Sit
there like a five-year-old and say, ‘Nuh-uh, did not’? You can’t
prove a negative and I’m not even going to try.”

I was so angry I wanted to drive his Bugatti
right into a pilon just to hear metal crumple and glass shatter. If
I’d been at home, I would’ve thrown dishes.

“And so...you just sat there and waited for
the Lord
to come reveal the truth to all these men of God
who don’t know a
coup d’état
when they see one.”

He sighed, but I had lost all patience in
this Lord of his.

We arrived home in silence and prepared for
bed. I lay on my side, nude, to watch him undress then pause when
he came to his garments. He took them off reluctantly, as if
parting from a good friend. He threw the top and the bottoms on the
bed and stared at them, his jaw clenching.

He’d finally explained, in those hours
between the delivery of his summons and his hearing. He’d given me
details Giselle hadn’t wanted to confuse me with, but now I had the
whole thing from him, and what they represented to him: His virtue,
the sacrifice of his family in the name of the Lord to tend to four
hundred people who didn’t seem to know he existed until they needed
him, the belief that he would have his family in eternity.

Especially Mina, the love of his youth and
the mother of his children, whom he believed he would be with
forever.

I hated that.

I was jealous of her, I realized, and had
been since my lunch with Giselle.

I hated Mina for having first dibs on him
and it didn’t matter that I didn’t believe a word of that bullshit;
it only mattered that
he
believed.

He loved
me
in ways he had never
loved his first wife.

But...a part of me was empathetic: I now
knew how Mina had felt about Inez.

“Mitch?”

He looked up at me and I ached at the pain
in his face.

“This,” I said, feeling my voice kink up in
my throat. I waved a finger between us. “You and me. How does this
work for us in the— Well, the afterlife?”

Mitch’s eyes focused fully on me then and he
studied me, my body, lingering on my breasts and between my legs.
He licked his bottom lip.

“Are you making some sort of commitment
beyond the year I asked you for?” he asked, once he’d focused on my
face again.

“Maybe. I’d like to know the terms and
conditions first.”

He took a deep breath.

Turned.

Put his clothes on a nearby chair, then
returned to drop onto the bed naked, his beautiful body stretched
out. He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up at the
ceiling.

“Cassandra,” he said abruptly, startling me
a little, “Giselle explained this to you and I’ve spent the last
twenty-four hours telling you everything you wanted to know, so...
That’s not the question you want me to answer.”

Dammit, he’d done it
again
. The way
he could get to the heart of an issue made me half believe he had a
USB cord straight from God’s brain to his.

I draped myself over him and felt his arm
around me, pulling me even tighter. “I want to know,” I said,
swallowing my sudden panic because I really did not,
did not
want to know, “if you love me or Mina more?”

He sighed. “I was afraid you’d ask me
that.”

Why had I done such a stupid thing?

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I love Mina. I
always will. I couldn’t be with Mina and
not
love her. I
suspect that you and she were very much alike when you were
eighteen. Sweet, supportive, trained to be the perfect wives and
mothers, and eager to be that. I wouldn’t have been able to choose
between you then. Now you’re entirely different women, but I still
can’t choose between you.”

“Why not?” I asked, hating the catch in my
throat.

“Because I’m twenty-five years older and I’m
a completely different man. I grew and changed. Got a better handle
on the world and its shades of gray.”

“Gray? You think in black and white.”

He smiled then. “Gotcha.”

I growled.

“I can’t afford to think in black and white,
Cassandra,” he murmured, caressing me. “Part of my job is to judge
people worthy or not worthy and you know, there’s a whole world of
mitigating circumstances in every person’s life to make the idea of
worth, well, worthless. I learned that with Inez when she chose her
lover over me.

“We’re here to do the best we can with what
we’re given, to learn. Hopefully we learn some compassion and
service. I try to weigh a person’s circumstance with their progress
because there is no such thing as perfect. But there’s a time you
turn the other cheek and there’s a time when you have to pick up a
bullwhip and clean the moneychangers out of the temple. The hard
part is knowing when to do which.”

And that was it. That was where he differed
from his wolf pack. He wasn’t as quick to pick up the bullwhip; he
would wait until he had no choice.

“Mina and I had a good marriage. Strong,
faithful. I got her away from her father and a forced marriage,
taught her how to have fun, gave her the love and family she
wanted. She believed in me and supported me without complaint,
always cheerful, optimistic. Pushing me to see more of my own
potential and arranging our life to clear my path, make sure
nothing got in my way.”

“But she wasn’t your equal. Even she knew
that. You said so.”

“If she hadn’t been sick, she would’ve been.
She never had a chance to grow with me; she barely had the energy
to get all our children to adolescence. As the bishop’s wife, she
would’ve seen the heartbreak I’ve seen, dealt with the people I’ve
dealt with, and she would’ve done it with grace and love. As the
wife of a CEO, she would’ve been on my arm for all the events and
conferences, hosted dinners and parties. I would’ve showered her in
designer clothes and jewelry and cars, given her anything she
wanted. She could’ve shared in the wealth she had an equal hand in
creating.”

God,
why
had I asked that stupid
fucking question?

He paused for long moments. “So...what does
that mean for you and me if we go the distance?” he said slowly. “I
don’t know. Not really. The Church teaches that I’ll be reunited
with Mina and that you’ll be separated from me. I don’t want that,
but I also... Mina wouldn’t be any happier about it than you
are.”

I stared at him. “And so you don’t want to
believe that anymore.”

“No. The last thing I want is to hurt either
one of you.”

I sniffled. “I
have
corrupted
you.”

“No. Love isn’t corrupt.”

Too.
“So then I should—”

“Not if you don’t believe, Cassandra. I fell
in love with you as you are and I have no interest in changing you.
In any case,” he continued, “we have the here and now and I am not
going to waste it thinking about what-ifs. Not many men are so
blessed as to love two such wonderful women in their lifetimes.” He
looked at me, his face worn and tired. “How would I choose between
the most perfect diamond and the most perfect metal?”

* * * * *

Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani?

April 22, 2011

At one o’clock Friday afternoon, Mitch
walked slowly out of the church building toward me, hunched over,
his hands buried in his pockets, his head bowed.

My chest felt like it had been kicked in and
I walked, then ran, to meet him. He grabbed me and pulled me to him
tight, buried his face in the crook of my neck.

“Let’s go home, Mitch,” I whispered. “Let me
take care of you.”

He didn’t say a word all the way, just
stared out the window at the passing scenery. Once we got home, he
went into the library and shut the door behind him.

I jumped when I heard a tortured roar and
the crash of breaking glass.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered.

“They didn’t,” Trevor breathed from above
me, on the staircase. I turned to see him staring at the closed
library doors, horrified.

“They did.”

“Mother
fuckers
,” Trevor snarled and
clipped the rest of the way down the stairs, grabbed his truck
keys, and—

“Don’t,” I said, catching his wrist.

“Cassie—”

“Don’t,” I repeated in my boardroom voice.
“You’ll make it worse.”

He glared at me, then jerked away. “Fine.
I’m calling Sebastian.”

“He knows.”

That got his attention. “Did you call him on
the way home?”

“No.”

“Then—” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve got
something up your sleeve.”

I looked away.

“Cassie, what’s going on?”

“Go to work, Trevor,” I murmured over my
shoulder, though I couldn’t bear to look at him. His anger mirrored
mine and we both winced with the next crash of glass. “I’ll deal
with it.”

* * * * *

INRI

Mitch felt a rage well up in him so great
that he had no choice but to let it out in one long, racking howl.
He picked up the poker by the fireplace, hefted it in one hand,
then clutched it with the other and swung, shattering the glass in
the barrister cases.

Not good enough.

Another swing, another pane of glass.

A third.

Fourth.

Fifth.

He dropped the poker and dug his hands into
the cases, past the jagged edges left in the mullions, and grabbed
the books—

—church books of all types: biographies,
doctrine, fiction, self-help.

He pulled out an armful, vaguely aware of
ripping his sleeve, and threw the books in the fireplace, snarling
because there was no fire. He turned back for more, his shoes
crunching the glass and grinding the shards into the rug.

Another armful, cast into the fireplace with
a thud.

“Matches,” he growled, and snatched them off
the mantel. He ripped a couple of pages from yet another book and
crushed them in one hand, then set the ball afire, threw it in and
waited, his chest heaving, until the first book had caught.

He wished he had gasoline.

He threw the poker, heedless where it went,
but satisfied when it crashed through the window and sailed over
the lawn before dropping with a dull thud.

He turned away, digging his hands into his
hair and howled again, lifting his face to the ceiling, that animal
inside him rising, rising within him and taking over, the animal
that had always been there and he had kept leashed for the last
twenty-five years.

Now he knew.

Betrayal.

“Where did you go?!” he roared. “I have
given my life to serving you! I sacrificed my family for you—
Another man raised my son because of you—and YOU LEFT ME!”

He dropped to his knees and hunkered down,
dug the heels of his palms in his eyes.

“Where were you?” he gritted low, his chest
caving with every breath. “Why did you leave me? You left me on my
mission! You left me TODAY! WHY?!
WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE
DONE?!
”

He felt his body quake but nothing came out
of his eyes.

The bitterness of the utter humiliation he
had suffered in that room still coated his mouth and his tongue.
Sorrow and grief soaked him like ice water in winter.

“Mitch.” He heard the whisper. Felt the hand
soft on his back.

My wife.

“Come with me. Your arm and hands are
bleeding.”

He couldn’t speak. His vocal cords wouldn’t
move.

He trembled in impotent rage, unable to do
anything except to calculate revenge he wouldn’t take although it
would be only too easy to do so. He could afford to wage war on the
Church and once Sebastian got involved—because he
would
—

“Mitch,” she said again. Soft. Soothing.
Calm and loving. “You’ve cut yourself.”

The evidence of Cassandra’s love for him
shone from those pictures, strewn about the table amongst the high
councilmen who’d adopted a mien of compassion to judge him guilty
of...

...exactly what he had struggled so
not
to do, and had succeeded in that.

Mitch, don’t you have anything to say for
yourself?

Mitch, talk, please. If you don’t speak, we
have to treat it like you’re guilty.

And even if you are, this is an opportunity
to repent. Start over. Clean slate. You’re married to her now, so
that won’t be an issue.

He’d sat silent, meeting their looks one by
one until each one of them had looked away. Except Greg, who,
sensing an imminent victory, had smirked.

Mitch, tell us you didn’t do it. Please!

Petersen had never looked at him at all.

We put our trust in you, Mitch, and you
broke that trust.

Did they really believe that?

He didn’t know.

And no sign of any dawning comprehension
initiated by the god he’d served so faithfully for so many
years—

—not even to the General Authorities, who
had sat silent throughout.

That was the greatest betrayal of all.

I love you, Mitch.

“Come with me,” she whispered, catching the
lapel of his coat and gently tugging.

He could do nothing but let her struggle to
remove it.

“We can’t stay here. There’s too much glass.
Come with me, my love. Let me take care of you.”