Angelique dropped her cig in her empty glass. The smoke curled up in a dying gasp before fizzling out. "Yeah? Well, I guess you're right about that."

They sat in silence for a minute.

“I suppose I should thank you for not killing me yet," Eugene said finally.

"You ask me, putting a bullet in your head would be the kindest thing I could do. But I’m not going to kill you, dollface. Johnny likes you.”

X.

They ruled it an accident. The funeral was closed-casket, flowers crowded in around the wooden box like sacrificing their lives could bring back Mary Beth’s. The perfume was so thick it was cloying, and Eugene had to bite his cheek to keep from screaming.

Sometimes these things happen, they said. The bayou was an unforgiving place, meant more for the dead than the living. It only took one misstep to drown in there. A miracle they found her body at all, and even then, they never did get all of it back. The gators made short work of things like that.

“It wasn’t an accident,” he told his mother for the hundredth time. She stroked his head in a nervous gesture like she was trying to calm a skittish animal that was as likely to take her hand off as it was to curl up and hide. “She didn’t slip and fall.”

“Sweetheart," she said gently, "sometimes terrible things happen for no reason at all.”

There was no evidence of foul play, but that meant nothing. There was so little evidence at all, and the town was eager to wrap the case up as neatly as they had done the body. Father Latimer read psalms, his voice steady again, standing over her open grave. His eyes bored holes through Eugene like he was daring him to stand up in the middle of the service and accuse him of something terrible.

But Eugene had no proof. He had nothing but the memory of Mary Beth's eyes, wide and frightened as Father Latimer spat exorcisms over her, making the sign of the cross again and again in short, jerking movements. The torn seam of her dress, his hand on her head and the way he said her name.

“You can't accuse a priest of something like that just because you've had nightmares,” his mother hissed the first time he tried to tell her, the day they found the body. “People are mourning, Eugene. Leave them be.”

The Byrnes left Chanlarivyè not long after the funeral, dressed all in black, the curtains of their house drawn shut like a lace veil. No one could blame them. Eugene dug his nails into his palms until they left bloody crescents in the flesh, and it still wasn’t enough to calm his thoughts.

Next Sunday, he sat in church and stared at the great stained-glass paintings of the saints and angels. The pulpit where Father Latimer stood with his head bowed and hands clasped was still cracked, split clean down the middle like a bolt from heaven has lashed out to deliver judgment. Eugene hadn’t imagined it. After the service, he sat silent in his pew until the rest of the church was empty before walking to the confessional. Father Latimer was a shadow on the other side of the latticework. Eugene stared at him and tried to read his guilt in what features he could see.