“It was not a crime,” I say. “It was a choice.”
Her grin breaks across her face like sun off glass. “You had sex,” she says, giddy with joy. “In a church. Oh happy Halloween ghosts and ghoulies. I love this for you.”
“In a confessional.”
“Even better,” she crows, clapping once. Then she drops her voice like I’m a spooked deer. “Was it…good?”
I close my eyes and for a second the mesh presses into my palm again. The veil slips crooked. A rosary taps his wrist like a heartbeat.Sanctuary.The first sting. The slow give. The way he went still when I flinched and waited for my word. The way I saidnowand he listened like the syllable could save him. The metal in his… I didn’t even know such things existed.It was perfection.
“It was amazing.” I say those simple words instead.
Pru beams like she did the work herself. “My baby bird flew. I’m so proud I could steal a cop car.”
I can’t help it—I laugh. It hitches on the way out. “The adults are…not grateful,” I say, surprised to hear it out loud. “Do you know how many good days I’ve given them? How many clean answers? And they can’t even let me have one night. Even the Amish?—”
“Give you rumspringa,” she finishes, wicked. “Noted. Next year we’ll get you a buggy.”
I smile into my Coke until the bubbles punch my sinuses. It fades quick. “Now there’s this sit-down,” I remind her. “I don’t think it had anything to do with me. But I have this feeling that now they’re going to make nice and cut me into pieces until the plate looks empty, because I’mdamaged goods. So there’s nothing to plan. This is the plan.”
She chews her dog and considers me like a general considering a coastline. “Okay,” she says brightly. “New plan.”
“Pru.”
“I’m not letting you get cloistered like a tax write-off. And I’m definitely not letting you walk into a room with men who thinkopticsis a sacrament without a parachute.”
I shake my head. “I can’t just leave. My family is the mob, for Pete’s sake.”
She rolls her eyes so hard they should creak. “We have to work on that sentence.”
“What sentence?”
“Babe, you’re straight Boston, and you can’t even cuss.” She leans in, elbows on the paper tablecloth, chin in her hands like she’s about to teach me long division. “Repeat after me:My family’s the fucking mob.” She pinches her fingers for effect.
“Pru.”
“Say it.”
I look at the steam rising from our fries. The grease glistens like confession. “My family’s the…” I glance around. No nuns. No cousins. No crucifixes. No one’s paying me any attention.
“Out loud,” she urges.
“—fucking mob,” I whisper, and it lands hot and terrible and perfect on my tongue.
“There she is,” Pru says, way too pleased. “Again, louder this time.”
“My family’s the fucking mob.”
“Now:Those cunts.”
I choke on air. “Absolutely not.”
She pats my hand. “It’s a tool, like a wrench. You don’t have to love it. You just have to know how to pick it up when the bolts won’t move.” She rummages in her tote bag like Mary Poppins’ delinquent sister and produces a small velvet pouch. “Speaking of tools.”
I stare at it warily. “If that’s a grenade, I’m going back to the convent.”
She snorts. “Close.” She tips the pouch and a rosary spills into her palm. It isn’t the delicate, grandmother kind. The beads are matte black, not glossy; the cross is unadorned, simple lines; the links look…sturdy.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, because it is. Stark and serious and less like a piece of someone else’s piety.
