She pulls herself together like a soldier, fixing the veil with shaking fingers, sliding the habit back into place, smoothing where the fabric creased against my wrists and hips. She won’t meet my eyes for a beat, then she does—clear, intent.
“Don’t follow,” she reminds me, soft but iron.
“I won’t,” I say, and in the space between our bodies, I mean it.
Liar.
Her fingers touch my jaw once—barely there, quick as a benediction—and she slips out of the booth. I listen to her steps down the aisle, the hinges, the breath of October that gets in and then is gone when the door hushes shut.
I stay where I’m seated, hands flat to the wood, and count my breaths until the shaking in my arms stops. I told her I wouldn’t follow. I won’t.
But I didn’t promise no one else wouldn’t.
I take out my phone, thumb open the thread, and type out a message to Tiernan.
Follow the nun.
5
CATERINA
I waketo the smell of lemon oil and candle smoke that isn’t there. Sun sneaks through the blinds, striping my sheets just like light does through slats in the confessional.
My body remembers before my mind catches up—it’s tender where a new awareness is, warm where his touch taught me a map. I can still feel the mesh pressed into my palm, the veil sliding crooked, the rosary tapping against our arms.
Sanctuaryon my tongue like a key I learned to turn.
I gave that little bit of flesh away because I wanted to—because I wanted the choice more than I wanted the myth. He asked, and he waited. I said yes and meant it.
The first give of my body against the press of his was a sting, then the tolling of a bell—shock breaking into heat, the sound I made when his thumb circled that place between my legs, and I learned what pleasure feels like with someone else.
I stretch lazily, reveling in every twinge and tender ache.
And maybe it’s a sin, but I don’t regret it. Regret is for accidents. Last night was not an accident. It was deliberate. It was mine.
I touch my mouth and it’s there—the ghost of wintergreen and smoke, the steady weight of a man who didn’t take, who stayed. I close my eyes and hold the memory until it stops burning and starts warming, the way good coffee does when you drink it too fast and survive.
I text Pru a white heart I should have sent hours ago, shower, dress, pin my hair without the veil. The church is quiet inside me now, but the rules I made still hum under my skin.
Today I’ll be good in the ways that count on paper. Last night, I was good in the way that counts to me.
The car is idling at the curb when I’m finally dressed and step out of the dorm to make my way to class. It’s a black sedan—but of course it is. That’s all thefamigliadrives.
My cousin Nico leans against the rear door like a gargoyle somebody dressed in designer.
“You have class, I know,” he says, opening the door anyway. “It can wait.”
“Because I have a father?” I ask, resigned. I slide in. “What does he want now?”
“Breakfast.”
The Moretti townhouse smells like espresso, lemon oil, and something I can’t name that always makes me think of Sunday mornings when I was small and everything felt inevitable. The housekeeper takes my coat. Nico walks half a step behind me down the hall like I might bolt if he blinks.
My father is at the dining table with the paper in front of him and an empty cup that he hasn’t filled yet. He looks up and smiles that soft, careful smile he saves for me and funerals.
“Bambina,” he says. “Sit. Eat.”
Before anything else, I make sure that he has a plate. The carafe of coffee sits between us on the table. I pick it up and make sure that his cup is full. His plate has all of his favorites.
