And at that brief suggestion, the impure thoughts came and Anne couldn’t help but dwell there.

On Palm Sunday, she sensed Father Sacramoni’s move coming when she was turned around in that dark, cool sacristy. He was supposed to be getting dressed, but there was his hand on her back, the other at her hip.

“Listen,” he said softly.

Anne went blank. She moved away from him, but not so fast. A nervous smile became a kiss.

The soccer fields were empty as Anne drove over the drainage creek that connected this neighborhood with her own. Almost six thirty, and she’d be walking in on two hungry Malones. She sped down Cox Lane, determined not to stop at Tom Thumb for dinner. Something quick. Hot dogs for Dan and what for Pat? Pulling onto Crown Shore, she was overcome with déjà vu. Whether it was Timmerman’s droning hocus-pocus or the repeated pattern of ranch houses, Anne wasn’t sure, but she came up the driveway in a shimmer of recall. This is your house, now turn off the car. So very familiar, like every thought and movement prescribed. This is where you are the mother and the wife. And that’s all that you have to say for yourself. That’s not going to change. She got out of the car. Even if you got a new house, you would still just be in a driveway somewhere, looking at a house that is yours and not yours. You don’t own this. Pat’s name is on the mortgage.

And then the déjà vu, bland as it was, slipped away. She went inside. My house. My living room. My dining room, where I put down my purse and my keys. She looked around. My cabinet, my hutch, my glassware. It was like her ruminations were trying to reconcile how the past had brought her here, and the more she thought about these things, the more alien she felt. It all seemed so unnecessary now. Just the accretion of a thousand pieces of crap that didn’t matter but nonetheless clung to Anne’s static ball of unresolvable self-doubt, worry, and regret. Forget it. Stop. Stop rehashing it.

She couldn’t help but recall then the stern, beady expression on the face of her mother superior, Sister Angeline, when Anne came clean about Father Sacramoni. In the past year, the community had lost one novice to pregnancy, another for breaking curfew, smoking grass, and Lord knew what other kinds of carrying on. Sister Angeline was not about to lose a third. She had to come down hard. So she nodded impatiently and stretched her fat fingers across the desk as Anne tried to couch things in such a way that no one would get upset or hurt.

“Father Sacramoni is a handsome man, is he not?” Sister Angeline interrupted.

Anne took a panicked breath.

“And you are attracted to Father Sacramoni, correct?”