Søren gave her a wilting glare.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who put your fingers in my shoe,” she said. The previous weekend she’d gone to Søren’s father’s funeral with him and things had happened.

“Are you planning on mentioning that fact every day?”

“Until it happens again.”

“Eleanor—”

“Better than thinking about Dad, right?” she asked. Her own father had been dead for a week. She still didn’t know how to feel about it so she tried not to feel anything.

Søren’s expression softened. He walked to her where she stood in the doorway of his office and faced her across the threshold.

“You and I seem to have the same coping mechanism,” he said.

“What? You’ve been thinking about that night, too? Our night?”

“Better than thinking about my father.”

Søren touched her face, and she looked up and into his eyes. She sensed him struggling to hold back, to stop himself from kissing her, touching her, doing everything they’d done together that night at his family’s home and more.

“Penis,” Søren said.

“Well, if you’re offering...”

Søren ignored her. “Many biblical scholars believe the phrase ‘uncover his feet’ in the Book of Ruth is a euphemism for male genitals,” Søren said. He chucked her lightly under the chin and took a small step back—breathing room for both of them.

“So Naomi told Ruth to sneak into the threshing room while Boaz was asleep and uncover his dick and wait for him to wake up and bone her?” Eleanor asked.

“A fair synopsis.”

“And that worked?”

“When a man wakes up in the middle of the night with an erection and a beautiful woman lying beside him, things of a biblical nature can occur.”

“Søren?”

“Yes, Eleanor?”

“Your threshing floor or mine?”

Søren put his mouth at her ear. Eleanor closed her eyes and braced for a kiss.

“Out of my office,” he whispered. “Now.”

The conversation was still fresh in her mind, so when Father Jones told them to spend the class period writing a story with Bible characters, she knew just what to write.

* * *

“I got it,” Naomi said. “I know exactly how we can get you a meal ticket. I mean, a husband. That guy, Boaz. He’s cute, right?”

“I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating wheat crackers.”

“Good. This is what I want you to do. Take a bath. Put on your best dress. Boaz is working late tonight so he’ll be sleeping on the threshing floor. You sneak in after dark and uncover his feet. When he wakes up, tell him who you are and that he should marry you. Also, pick up some extra wheat while you’re there. How’s that for a plan?”

“Uncover his feet? Why would I uncover his feet?”

“You know, uncover his feet.” Naomi winked at her.

“Am I trying to make his toes cold or something so he’ll wake up?”

“No. His FEET. Uncover his FEET.”

“I still don’t know—”

“His penis, Ruth. I’m talking about his penis. His dick. His cock. His shaft. His lovestick. His staff of manliness.”

“You could have just said that.”

“Uncover his dick and cozy up to it while he’s sleeping. Then when he wakes up hard as a rock and you’re right next to him, he’ll want you. Let him have you. Poor guy probably hasn’t gotten laid in a while and he’ll want it again so much that by tomorrow evening, you’ll have him for a husband.”

“Good plan. Great plan. But can we go back over the part where I take his dick out of his clothes while he’s unconscious?”

* * *

Eleanor had so much fun with her story she’d forgotten it was a school assignment until Father Jones, called Father Bones because of his near skeletal frame, asked everyone to turn in their papers. As he was a substitute, Eleanor doubted he’d even read their stories. Typical busy work, right?

Wrong.

The next day Eleanor found herself hauled before the principal, vice principal and the school’s elderly guidance counselor, Mrs. Oates. Apparently Eleanor’s intimate descriptions of sexual intercourse—including a threshing-floor blow job—between a young widow and an older man had convinced the administration she was, in fact, sexually active herself. As she was an underage, unmarried Catholic high school student who’d signed the school’s honor code, this didn’t go over well. When they’d threatened to call her mother, Eleanor had begged them to instead call her priest.

She’d never heard a more welcome sound in her life than the roar of a Ducati motorcycle engine outside her school principal’s office.

“What did she do this time?” Søren asked as he stepped into the office.

“I—” Eleanor began, but it was as far as she got.

“Not you,” Søren said. “Anyone but Eleanor, please.”

The principal explained the situation—the graphic story, the sexual content, the specificity of intimate detail. Søren had taken the story from the principal and sat in a chair reading it while everyone watched and waited for his verdict. Apart from her, Søren was the youngest person in the room by twenty years at least and yet he had an aura of authority about him. Everyone deferred to him. If he couldn’t get her out of this, no one could.

“You didn’t finish the story, Eleanor,” he said at last.

“It’s a good thing she didn’t,” Father Jones said. “It’s bad enough as it is.”

“Bad? I thought it was quite good.”

“Good?” Father Jones nearly choked on the word. “It’s sexually explicit. It’s a Bible assignment, not Penthouse Letters.”

“Did you tell students they couldn’t put sexual content into their stories?” Søren had asked them.

“It’s not the content so much as the implication,” the guidance counselor said in her most placating voice. “No one could write sex that descriptively if they weren’t having it. Miss Schreiber, like all students, signed an honor code. Sex outside of marriage is a violation of the code.”

“I suppose Ruth wouldn’t be welcome at this school, then. Neither would Queen Esther, Tamar or King David.”

“Father Stearns,” Mrs. Oates, the guidance counselor, said, “we all know that Eleanor’s father died recently, and we were disturbed by certain elements in the story. Ruth referring to Boaz as her father during intercourse, for one.”

Eleanor started to open her mouth to defend herself. Søren raised his hand to silence her.

“I believe you’re referring to the dialogue exchange wherein Boaz says, ‘Who’s your Daddy?’ and Ruth responds, ‘You are, Bobo’?”

“Well...yes,” Mrs. Oates said, blushing.

Søren turned to Eleanor. “Sorry,” she mouthed at him and resisted the urge to call him “Bobo.” Søren sighed, and looked at her guidance counselor.

“‘Who’s your Daddy?’” Søren repeated. “That is Eleanor’s supposed cry for help?”

The guidance counselor attempted an answer but the principal interrupted.

“Writing such a story seems like odd behavior for a young woman whose father was killed last week. Our condolences, of course, but you understand our concern?”

“My father died recently, and given the chance I might have danced an Irish jig on his grave so I can hardly judge Eleanor for being relieved her criminal of a father has gone to whatever circle of hell is reserved for men who force their children to commit felonies for them. And if Eleanor were sexually abused by her father in any way, she would have told me. Correct, Eleanor?”

“Correct. He never touched me like that. I’d still be puking if he had.”

“There we have it,” Søren said. “Are we done?”

“Not quite,” the principal said. “We still—”

“May I see the other stories the students wrote?”

Father Jones and the principal looked at each other before passing Søren a sheaf of papers. For the next hour, Søren read all twenty-one stories while everyone waited. Eleanor took her homework out and pretended to do something to it. On either side of him, Søren made two piles. When he finished reading them he held up the pile on the left.