That afternoon, Leah called the mayor to tell him she was in town. He said, “That’s great, Leah. Do you think you could come to a closed-door session of the city council on Wednesday night? It would help keep the council happy if you could tell them something soothing about your sabbatical. Phil and I would also like to hear anything you can tell us about how things are actually going.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“What time?”

“Whatever time you hold it.”

“We like to do these things at eight. That way everybody has time to get something to eat before we start. I’ve found it makes them less peckish. More business gets done with fewer questions and arguments.”

“I’m for that,” she said. “I’ll see you at eight on Wednesday.”

“Good.”

Leah went to bed early that night. It was because she wanted to get used to the mountain standard time, since she might be in Weldonville for a while. She had also spent some of the previous night thinking about revenge and the taking of lives.

Leah Hawkins was not a religious person. Among the big old buildings surrounding the city park were Weldonville’s half dozen churches. The church she had walked out of one Sunday morning and seldom visited again was the Presbyterian one. It had happened the summer when she was about to turn thirteen. As she had gone down the sidewalk that Sunday morning, she had suddenly understood that if there was a God, He would look down on her next Sunday with the same love if she was in her family’s pew or swimming at the lake.

Lately she had noticed a subtle and unwelcome change. She had begun to feel a memory of her buried religious life. If childhood piety was like having chicken pox, its resurgence was like shingles—the itching had come back decades later as pain. She caught herself many nights silently mouthing the words “Thank you,” leaving out what she was thankful for, which was “today,” the one she’d just had. Sometimes she would catch herself asking, “Please take care of” somebody.

Lately she had caught herself forming the words “Please forgive.” She would stop in the middle if she could do it in time. The rule for forgiveness between man and God, as she had grown up understanding it, was that you couldn’t be forgiven if you didn’t sincerely regret what you’d done and intend to quit doing it. She was not interested in repenting. She wouldn’t have begun killing people if she hadn’t considered it carefully and decided she should go out and get them. Her crimes were not accidents or mistakes. Anyway, the version of Christianity she knew was not the kind in which anybody was willing to waste his time listening to your regrets, least of all God. And innocence wasn’t something that could be restored.