“The Basilica of Saint Mary Major,” the young priest assented, nodding grimly. This would go nowhere, I was thinking. I took hold of Em’s other arm, pointing across Yonge Street to the Boxcar Social—a coffeehouse she liked.

“You didn’t eat your breakfast—would you like a croissant?” I asked Em. She nodded—in the fierce way she used to nod when she wasn’t speaking. When Em nodded this way, it made me afraid she could revert to nonspeaking without warning or explanation.

“Croissants are sinful!” the young priest cried; he came with us. The walk light takes forever when you’re trying to cross Yonge Street there, but the light seemed to change for us as soon as the young priest pressed the button. “Mind you, croissants are not as sinful as Cardinal Law,” the priest was saying. “Cardinal Law isn’t in Rome anymore. ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ Hebrews 10:31, I think,” he told us. Em and I just looked at each other. This might go somewhere after all, we thought.

Each of us had a croissant. We were drinking our tea or coffee when Em got up the nerve to ask the young priest if he meant that Cardinal Law would face “harsher judgment”—where the evil cardinal was going.

“Romans 12:19, maybe. ‘Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath’—this is where the ‘Vengeance is Mine’ bit comes in,” the young priest told us. Em had unzipped her parka, but she’d kept it on; this was when I noticed she was wearing her pajamas and her fleece-lined slippers.

“The ‘Vengeance is Mine’ bit,” Em repeated, in the deadpan way Nora would have said it at the Gallows.

“Deuteronomy, definitely—32:35. It’s more of the ‘says the Lord’ bit—the good old ‘heap coals of fire on his head’ bit,” the young priest explained to us, making us almost feel sorry for Cardinal Law, given everything that was in store for him. “Proverbs 25:22, if I’m not mistaken,” the young priest modestly added. I liked him. He was doing his best to make Em feel better—with the “coals of fire on his head” part, and all the rest of it.

When I got up from our table to pay the bill, Em was telling the young priest we were writers. I could see him writing down our names and the titles of our books. The priest was writing on the GOOD RIDDANCE sign. When I found out the priest had paid for everything, I went back to our table. Our heaven-sent priest had departed. Em told me he’d left the way he came—a young man in a hurry. “It’s a heap of the ‘says the Lord’ bit, if you ask me,” was all Em would say about it. At least she was still speaking.