“Lila, listen—”

“Get out of my house. Get out of my house! You’ve taken life. You are foul in the eyes of the Lord, Luther. And He will punish you.”

Luther stepped back from her.

She stayed where she was and felt their child kick inside her womb. It wasn’t much of a kick. It was soft, hesitant.

“I have to change these clothes and pack some things.”

“Then pack,” she said and turned her back on him.

As he tied his belongings to the back of Jessie’s car, she stayed inside, listening to him out there, and thinking how a love like theirs couldn’t possibly end no other way because it had always burned too bright. And she apologized to the Lord for what she now saw so clearly was their greatest sin: They had searched for heaven in this world. A search of that kind was steeped in pride, the worst of the seven deadly sins. Worse than greed, worse than wrath.

When Luther came back, she remained sitting on her side of the room.

“This is it?” he said softly.

“I guess it is.”

“This is how we end?”

“I believe so.”

“I…” He held out his hand.

“What?”

“I love you, woman.”

She nodded.

“I said I love you.”

She nodded again. “I know that. But you love other things more.”

He shook his head, his hand still hanging in the air, waiting for her to take it.

“Oh, yes, you do. You’re a child, Luther. And now all your playing brought this bloodshed home to roost. That was you, Luther. It wasn’t Jessie and it wasn’t the Deacon. It was you. All you. You. You, with your child in my womb.”

He lowered his hand. He stood in the doorway a long time. Several times he opened his mouth, as if to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I love you,” he said again, and his voice was hoarse.

“I love you, too,” she said, though she did not feel it in her heart at that moment. “But you need to go before someone comes here looking for you.”

He walked out the door so fast she’d never be able to say she’d seen him move. One moment he was there, the next his shoes were hard against the wooden planks and then she heard the engine turn over and the car idled for a short time.

When he depressed the clutch and shifted into first the car made a loud clanking and she stood but didn’t move toward the door.

When she finally stepped out on the porch, he was gone. She looked up the road for his taillights, and she could just make them out, far off down the road in the dust the tires raised in the night.

Luther left Arthur Smalley’s car keys on his front porch on top of a note that said “Club Almighty alley.” He left another note saying the same thing to let the Irvines know where to find their hope chest, and he deposited jewelry and cash and most everything else they’d taken on the porches of the sick. When he got to Owen Tice’s house, he could see the man through his screen door, sitting dead at the table. After he’d pulled the trigger, the shotgun had bounced back in his hands. It stood straight up between his thighs, his hands still gripping it.