“Beatrice,” he said, a puff of breath, shocked by my presence. He blinked once in bewilderment, then seemed to consider the situation before reining in his emotions, all at once wiping his features clean.
“Bea,” my mother gasped, the pearl bracelet on her wrist clacking lightly as her hand flew to her mouth. Dramatic and elegant as Grace Kelly in a Hitchcock movie. “Oh darling, I’m so sorry.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked, struck dumb by the idea that my mother and Seth could be having some kind of affair.
They were both so devout, so entrenched in their beliefs that the sanctity of marriage was something I never believed they could break.
Seth laughed lightly, moving away from Phillipa to lean his narrow hips against the counter and cross his feet. “It’s good to see you shocked by the idea of adultery, Beatrice. I know you’re a true believer, but given the company you’ve been keeping lately, I wondered if you still upheld the strictures of God.”
“Do you?” I demanded, fisting my hands on my hips. “Explain, please.”
“Seth has been…” My mother sighed wearily, hands fluttering over her heart in affected distress. “He’s been helping me through these trying times since your father passed. I’ve been so confused lately about what is right for me, and he’s been invaluable…”
“Invaluable how?” I pressed, looking at Seth who seemed entirely unaffected by the proceedings, smiling a placid little grin as he watched us as if my outrage was only mildly amusing.
“It’s been hard staying true to God when I spend so much time with The Fallen,” Phillipa admitted softly. “I’ve been struggling for some time. I love my daughter, but the life she’s chosen gives me pause.”
“Okay…” My hackles shivered. I was ready to fight even my mother to her death in order to defend Loulou. Why was her lifestyle so flagrantly wrong? Yes, Zeus was the prez of a motorcycle gang that sometimes dealt in drugs and violence, but they protected the citizens of this town, and they stood for so many good values like love, loyalty, and family. I’d thought after all this time my mother understood that. “So you aren’t romantically involved.”
Phillipa blushed and laughed, but Seth merely shook his head, a tender look in his eyes as he addressed me. “Do you really think so little of me, Bea? After all this time, I thought you’d know that nothing matters to me so much as God and his teachings.”
I released a shaky sigh of relief and smiled at him even though Seth’s strict devotion to God always seemed slightly at odds with his practice as a doctor. “I wish you’d just come right out and said it. The way you were standing together was very…intimate.”
“Have you never seen your Grandpa tend to one of his flock like that before?” he questioned, knowing the answer already.
Grandpa was a priest and a pastor, the spiritual leader and tender of his flock. I’d seen him hold a widow in his arms while she cried, tend to the broken skin on the knee of a youth, and press a kiss to the forehead of those who received his blessing. Physical affection was not untoward in the name of God, or so people often said. I’d frequently wondered if that wasn’t what priests and bishops told themselves when they exploited young girls and boys. Once, I’d tried to bring up the scandal of pedophilia in the church with Seth, and he’d immediately shut me down.
That was the difference between people like Seth and myself. I didn’t believe anything existed only in black and white; a degree of grey was where most of life’s lessons lurked.
“Bea,” Seth murmured, stepping toward me to collect my hands. His were cool, long-fingered, and smooth from repeatedly washing before surgery. “I would not have you think so ill of me when I think so highly of you.”
I thought of the things I had done recently. Of the bruises on my knees from taking Priest’s cock in my mouth, of the blood that had spilled on my feet like an unholy baptism when my psychopath had killed Brett Walsh for me, of my morbid, eternal interest in all things violent and nonconformist.
I was just a dark heart wrapped in a pretty pink bow. It astonished me how many people chose to focus on the beautiful ribbon instead of what it harboured inside.
Seth and Tabitha had been my friends for years, but I wondered, as I said my goodbyes to Seth and promised my mother we’d speak later, how relevant our friendship was now. They didn’t know me well, and that was both their fault and my own. We were comfortable with the illusion of Beatrice Lafayette, good girl extraordinaire, the girl who accepted life in a box constructed by Bible verse and society’s judgments.