Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
No. Not a circle.
A rose. The segments make up the petals.
De La Rosa. Of the rose.
A light goes on in one of the upstairs windows in a separate part of the house. Through the cast iron I see movement. A woman’s figure. When she sees us, she draws the curtain wider and openly watches.
But in the next instant, I hear a heavy door creak on its hinges as its opened, the smell of church enveloping me again. I crane my neck to look around the small chapel as Santiago closes the door and sets me on my feet.
I take in the pews, six on each side. The wood simple. Kneelers in each without cushions and worn Bibles in two of the pews.
At the back left corner is the baptismal font. It’s large and ornate, made of the same material as the altar. In the opposite corner is a simple confessional. In the place of doors is a deep red velvet curtain to give the penitent the impression of privacy.
Santiago walks to the altar. He doesn’t stop to make the sign of the cross. Doesn’t bow like the nuns taught us to. I wonder about that. About his devotion. His belief. He has a fascination for religion, I think. I don’t know. But after what he did yesterday, how he did it bending me over the altar in the chapel, a sacred place, pouring wax from the altar candles onto my hips. A devout man would not do that, certainly. And then there’s the rosary. Why give me a rosary on our wedding night? Why become so angry when you find I’m not wearing it?
At the altar, he doesn’t raise his head to acknowledge the crucified Christ. Instead, he picks up a box of matches and lights several candles. I notice, though, that the red of the tabernacle lamp glows, and I wonder who maintains it. If there’s a priest or if it’s him.
I think about the woman at the window. “Does your sister live here? At the house I mean?”
He finishes lighting the candles and blows the match out.
I take in the two framed photographs on the altar. It’s a strange place to keep photos, but I wonder if it isn’t his father and brother. I step closer and think yes. I remember seeing them just a few times, and there is a resemblance. They died in that explosion that scarred him.
When I look at Santiago again, I find him watching me, and I take him in. His scars. The tattoo on his face. I glance at those photos again.
He walked away scarred but alive.
They died.
Something inside me feels a tenderness I can’t describe in that instant. I don’t know what it is. Why this matters. I don’t know if it’s the look in his eyes. The loneliness he wears like a coat. No, a second skin. Not something one can remove.
Is that why all this hardness?
But then he slips the rosary out of his pocket and sets it on the altar and bends to open a chest set beneath the altar.
“Strip, Ivy,” he says without bothering to look at me.
My heart does a double beat. “What?”
He glances behind him as he rummages through the chest. “Strip and kneel.”
“We’re in church.”
He pauses, turns to look at me and half-laughs then shakes his head and resumes his work.
“Strip and kneel. I won’t ask you again.”
I glance back at the door, but no one will come in. I turn to look up at the altar. At Christ. Apart from the wedding, I haven’t been to church since I left home. I told my father I went weekly but I never did. I haven’t been to confession since then, either. Do I even believe anymore? I don’t know.
“Ivy.”
I blink to look at Santiago’s back as he sets things on the altar. He’s not looking at me, but he’s warning me all the same.
I pull the nightie off, shudder at my nakedness as I lay it over the back of the nearest pew. He’s just turning to me when I slip off my panties and set them on top of the nightgown, and I watch his eyes as he takes me in. They’ve darkened. And when he meets mine, I see the hunger inside them. Something insatiable.
And it’s like my body feels it. Or maybe it’s that it remembers his touch. Remembers the orgasm because my nipples tighten, and there’s a dampness between my thighs.
I lower myself to my knees and look beyond him to the altar. To what he placed on it. And my stomach falls away. I know the long, innocuous-looking cane from my years at the nun’s school. And the wooden paddle, although thankfully I’ve never felt that. The cane, though. That was Sister Mary Anthony’s favorite.
There are other things too. A short leather strap. Another heavier cane. More paddles. They don’t look new. In fact, they look well-worn.