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Tarant groaned as his lips found Lexi’s. He wrapped his arms around her waist and tugged her into his lap. The ten second timer in Lexi’s mind extended to twenty and then thirty. She lost herself in his arms and in his kisses.
Tarant slipped his fingers beneath her tee shirt. He edged the fabric higher until his palms closed over her lower back. Warmth blossomed from them like a sunburst. His tongue danced with hers in a frenzy of remembered ecstasy. Muscle memory. Better than good. They were fireworks and dynamite. Tarant’s grip tightened around her waist and his thighs flexed. The bulge in his jeans pressed against her groin as he pushed himself to standing. Her legs closed around his hips like a vice. He buried his nose against her neck, her curls tumbling over his face as they escaped the ponytail. Lexi groaned, desperate for him to carry her to the bedroom and repeat their previous exploits there.
“It’s only me! A deacon gave my car a jump start.” Garima’s shout from the hallway caused Tarant to freeze. Lexi inhaled but didn’t release the held breath. Garima’s shoes clunked against the floorboards as he removed them.
The common sense she’d held at bay returned like a tsunami. Lexi released her legs and slid down Tarant’s body with aching slowness. He moaned from low in his chest and agony flickered through his eyes. But he didn’t release his grip around her waist, forcing her to tug herself free.
By the time Garima entered the kitchen, Tarant had slumped into his seat. He’d pulled the laptop over his thighs to cover his discomfort. With avid concentration, he glared at the pixelated photograph as though viewing it for the first time. Lexi flicked on the kettle to boil and pulled her hair from the useless ponytail. She tied it lower on her head. “Hey Gari.” She kept her tone light, praying her brother didn’t pick up on Tarant’s frustration. “Who’s hungry? I can make sandwiches.”
Tarant grunted something from the table. But Garima crossed the room in his socks and wrapped his arms around Lexi. “Sorry about before,” he whispered into her ear. Frankincense clung to his jacket like a haze. It filled Lexi’s heart with peace as she borrowed his faith and certainty just for a moment. She linked her fingers behind his back and held on, turning her cheek against his powerful chest and closing her eyes. Sometimes, their roles reversed, and she soaked up the rare seconds like a loaded sponge. Garima kissed the top of her head and released her.
The familiar mask settled over his features as he became the priest again. He leaned down to Tarant and offered his hand to shake. “Garima Allen,” he said as though they’d never met.
“Tarant Leon.” Tarant shot Lexi a glance of confusion. Though they’d connected only a handful of times, Garima should have remembered her employer.
Lexi pursed her lips against the reverend slight. She’d confessed a little too much to her brother in a moment of extreme weakness over two years earlier. She turned back to the kettle with a smirk. Garima worked hard to temper his emotions and become more Christlike. But the sibling bond remained very much alive in his heart. The realisation brought a flood of joy to run rampant through her veins. The sensation trickled into her stomach and banished the lust.
Lexi shoved cheese and pickle sandwiches together on a plate while Garima shed his jacket and dog collar. He remained standing throughout his activity, overshadowing Tarant in a deliberate power play. Lexi made coffee and herbal tea, biding her time until both men settled. She delivered the plates and food to the table. An ethereal switch flicked and the animosity ceased. Peace reigned for as long as the sandwiches lasted. Garima dug in without reserve. He cast slant-eyed glances at Tarant.
“Give that here.” Lexi took the laptop from Tarant’s thighs, ignoring his scrabble to keep hold of it. She took it with her to the other side of the table. Tarant tucked his chair in and reached for a plate and a sandwich.
“Don’t you say prayers?” His snarky comment betrayed his struggle with unspent adrenaline.
Garima frowned at him. He placed his sandwich back on his plate. “I already said mine in my head. Should I ask a blessing for you?” He didn’t wait for Tarant’s reply. Lowering his head and pressing his fingers together, he said, “For what we’re about to receive, and also for what we’re not, may the Lord make us truly grateful.”
Lexi slouched in the chair between the men. She smothered a snort of laughter with a fake cough. Garima returned to his food, having just smashed Tarant in the face with both judgement and wit. Tarant seemed more lost than Lexi had ever seen him. A flush of sympathy escaped like a banned substance eking through her bones. “Eat,” she told him, jerking her chin towards the sandwiches. “Garima’s a pig. He’ll eat the lot.”
Her brother’s lips twitched, but he didn’t contradict her. Lexi placed the laptop on the table and adjusted the screen’s angle. Then she spun it towards Garima. “We’re still mucking around with this,” she said. He didn’t even glance towards it, but his face darkened. “Please?” Lexi implored him. “It’s important. A woman died around the time of this camp. There’s something in this photograph that shouldn’t be there.”
“Dad said to leave it alone.” Garima licked a crumb from his index finger and sighed.
“No. He asked me not to investigate Father Donald’s face-plant in the skip. He doesn’t know about this.” Her features folded into a knot of disparagement until a penny dropped somewhere in the back of her brain.
She silenced. Opening a Chrome browser, she sent frantic queries to Google. A press release from the New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ Conference popped onto her screen. An image of a smiling priest announced Father Donald Douglas’ premature passing in the suffragan diocese of Hamilton. He grinned into the camera lens while alive, a man of around sixty. His hair had thinned, and he’d shaved it close to his head. A mousey shadow stained his scalp where the hair still grew. Just that fact alone painted a picture of a man without extreme vanity. He hadn’t invested in complicated comb overs or mitigated his loss in any way. He’d just let it go as though immune to the constant tug-of-war with age. Lexi saw why Garima had liked him so much. Steady brown eyes gazed from a lined and tanned complexion. His unremarkable face held an openness which encouraged honesty. Lexi snatched the photograph and downloaded a copy. The action felt ghoulish somehow. Capturing a dead man’s picture. Especially when he’d died in pain and without dignity.
Tarant and Garima ate the food. Their quiet munching added to the doom laden silence. Lexi loaded the image of Father Donald into her software and changed the resolution to match the pixelated square containing the photographer’s reflection.
After a while, she spun the screen to face Garima. He ignored it at first, but his fingers stilled over his sandwich. Lexi imagined the litany of swear words coursing through his brain. She also knew he wouldn’t utter them.
“Let’s see.” Tarant tapped her forearm and jerked his chin towards the screen. “What did you find?”
“Father Donald Douglas,” she replied. She edged the laptop across the table to show Tarant her discovery. “Younger and fitter in 1995. But very much alive. And helping to run a summer camp for kids despite living in the South Island.”
“How do you know it’s the same person?” Tarant leaned forward to peer at the photos side by side.
“Because of this.” Lexi used the mouse to scroll to another pixelated square near the centre of the original camp photograph. The window’s grainy reflection revealed a splash of colour poking from the bottom of the blurry red chausible.
“Purple?” Tarant’s lips turned downward. “That’s it?”
“It’s significant.” She switched her gaze to her brother. “Isn’t it Gari?”
He set his sandwich on his plate with extreme care. A square of brown pickle rolled from between the loaded slices. “Yes,” he admitted. “The photographer you’re looking for is Father Donald Douglas.”
