Mostly, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to carry her pain for her, even if I stayed here. We’d each have to find our own ways of living with Lizzy’s ghost, and we’d have to find them in our own time. I felt like I’d already started, and maybe Mom had too.

“Now, go shave,” she ordered me now, brushing at my face with a dry towel and dropping a light kiss on my forehead. “Unless you’ve forgotten how.”

Moving wasn’t so hard. I found an inexpensive apartment not too far away from campus and used my dwindling savings to put in a deposit. I’d be a teaching assistant as well as a student, and the stipend was enough to cover room and board, even if I would have to take out a few loans for tuition. I didn’t have much to move, really, all of my furniture having belonged to the rectory and my weights being left in Kansas City. Clothes and books, and then a futon and a table I scrounged from Craigslist.

After settling in, I spent a long day or two trying to hunt down a new address for Poppy on the internet, even just a place of work, but there was nothing. She was either very careful or very quiet or both—the last mentions of her that I could find were around the time of her graduation from Dartmouth, and a handful of campus dance performances from her time at the University of Kansas a few years ago.

I could find no trace of her, and I even went as far as calling her parents, using numbers I found online for her father’s company and for her mother’s non-profit. But they were well-guarded by rings of assistants and receptionists, none of whom seemed inclined to give up any information about Poppy or forward me on to her parents. Not that I could blame them; I probably wouldn’t give out information to a strange man either, but it was still frustrating as hell.

Why did she have to leave Weston? Why did she have to leave the rosary? Maybe if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be consumed with the idea of giving it back…

There was one person who I knew would almost certainly be willing to talk to me about Poppy, and the thought of seeing him again filled me with immense distaste, but I was running out of options. The semester would start soon and I wouldn’t have time to gallivant about the eastern seaboard looking for my ex…girlfriend? Ex-lover? And I couldn’t imagine having this kind of idealistic, ultimately hopeless quest on my plate until Christmas.

After two hours on buses and trains in various states of over-crowdedness, I was in Manhattan’s Financial District, staring up at the large steel and glass structure that belonged to the Haverford family. I wandered inside, surrounded immediately by marble and busy-looking people and an overall air of industry, and this persisted even when an elevator took me to the central office sixty floors up. No wonder Poppy chose Sterling. I’d never be able to offer her anything like this. I didn’t have fleets of black cars and portfolios of investments, I didn’t have a marble-floored empire. All I’d had was a collar and a home that didn’t legally belong to me—and now I no longer even had those.

God, I’d been such a fool to think I could have kept Poppy Danforth for my own. This was the world she’d come from—of course this was where she would return.

The receptionist inside was a pretty blonde girl, and asshole that I was, I wondered if Sterling had slept with her too, if his life was just a parade of money and infidelity, a parade without any consequences, a parade without a single concern other than how to get what he wanted.

“Um, hi,” I said as I approached her desk. “I was wondering if I could see Mr. Haverford?”

She didn’t even look up from her computer screen. “Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said.

“No one without an appointment can get in…” her voice trailed off as she looked up at me and then her eyes widened. “Oh my God! You’re the guy from the Hot Priest meme!”

Sigh. “Yeah, that’s me.”

She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I follow a bunch of the Tylerette tumblrs. Is it true you went to go live in Africa? Were you hiding? Entertainment Tonight said you were hiding.”

“I was on a mission trip,” I said. “Digging wells.” Although the lack of internet in Pokot had definitely been its own perk.

She made a high-pitched aww noise, peering up at me with her big brown eyes, suddenly looking very young. “You went to go help people? That’s so sweet!”

She bit her lip and glanced around the empty waiting room. “You know, Mr. Haverford never keeps track of his own appointments. He wouldn’t know if you were on the books or not.” A few keystrokes. “And now you’re officially on the books.”

“Wow, thank you,” I said, feeling grateful—that is, until she handed me a business card with a number scrawled on the back.

“That’s my phone number,” she said a bit coyly. “In case you ever feel like breaking your vows again.”

Sigh. “Thank you,” I said as politely as I could manage. There didn’t seem to be much point in explaining my current non-clerical position to her, or that there was only one reason I’d ever broken my vows, and that reason was why I was here in my enemy’s stronghold in the first place.

“Can we take a selfie?” And before I could answer, she was up and on the other side of her desk, standing next to me with her phone extended in front of us.

“Smile,” she said, pressing herself against me, her blonde head against my shoulder, and I dutifully smiled, at the same time realizing how deep Poppy remained in my system. I had a slender blonde smashed against me, warm and willing, and all I wanted was to peel myself away. I’d rather be in the next room fighting with Sterling than enduring this girl’s flirtatious advances. Sean would be ashamed of me.

“You can go in now if you’d like—he’s between appointments,” the receptionist said, still conspiratorially, thumbs working fast and nimble over her screen as she posted her selfie everywhere on the internet.

Sterling’s office was as impressive as the rest of the building—dizzying views, a massive desk, a low bar filled with expensive Scotch. And then Sterling himself, sitting like a king on his throne, signing reams of paper covered with dense type.

He glanced up, clearly expecting one of his employees, and then seeing me instead, his mouth fell open. I expected him to be angry or triumphant—ask me to leave, maybe—but I didn’t expect him to stand up, walk over to me and then extend his hand for a shake, like we were old business partners.

I ignored the proffered hand. I may have been a priest, but even I have my limits.

However, my rudeness didn’t seem to bother him in the least. “Tyler Bell—sorry, Father Bell,” he exclaimed, pulling back to look me in the face. “How the fuck are you?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, uncomfortable. I’d prepared for every possible shade of Sterling’s assholery on the train ride here, but not once had I considered the possibility that he could be, well, friendly. “It’s actually not Father anymore. I left the clergy.”

Sterling grinned. “I hope it wasn’t because of those pictures. I did feel a bit bad after I released them, I’ll be honest. Do you want something to drink? I’ve got this amazing Lagavulin 21.”

Um… “Sure.”

Sterling went over to the bar, and I hated to admit it to myself, but right now, now that he no longer considered me his enemy, I could see what Poppy once saw in him. There was a specific kind of charisma in his manner, coupled with the kind of sophistication that made you feel like you were sophisticated too, just by being around it.

“So I imagine you came to gloat, which I deserve, I admit. I’ll be a man about it.” He unstoppered the Lagavulin and poured us both a healthy glass. He walked over and handed it to me. “I’m surprised you didn’t come sooner.”