So they’d moved to New Orleans. A fresh start for all of them. For Kingsley, who’d made enemies in New York. For Juliette, who wanted to raise her daughter in a warmer, more welcoming city. For Søren, who was ready to teach again after years pastoring in a small Connecticut church. And for Nora, who could use some space between her and the heartbreaks of her past, which were too many to count (but rounding out the top three were Kyrie, Lance, and Wes). Of course, she was up for anything, as long as she could be with Søren. New Orleans? Why not? An old, beautiful, strange, arcane city bursting with sex and sin and jazz. What was not to like about it?

And it didn’t hurt either that the cost of living was so much lower than New York City. Twice the house for the same price? Sign her up.

They called New Orleans The Big Easy. Her dream city. But that evening, it didn’t feel so easy anymore.

It felt hard. And cold. And sad.

Nora heard the floor creak with footsteps. She turned her head and saw Søren come into the room.

She didn’t smile at him though she wished she could. He said nothing, but walked over to her, then sat across from her on the window bench right next to the big stuffed ducky she’d put there for Céleste.

Nora pushed off the floor again, set the rocker rocking.

“How are you?” he asked. His tone was careful, like a single word might break her.

“Not good.”

He nodded. Waited. Then said, “Father Murran?”

“Turns out he was sexually obsessed with an eleven-year-old girl named Melody,” Nora said. “He was chaplain at her middle school. He gave her butterfly stuff as gifts and promised to take her to the Butterfly Dome on Grand Isle last Saturday. Her mother works two jobs and is gone from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays. He had a kidnap kit in the trunk of his car. He’d been looking for someone willing to castrate him—the chastity device wasn’t doing the trick—that’s why Doc pointed him to me.”

The room was silent for a minute or two, silent but for the squeak of the rocking chair on the floor.

“Not as bad as I’d feared,” Søren said at last.

“What did you think it was?”

“That he wanted you to kill him,” Søren said. “Or be with him while he did it. I have never been so glad in my life you changed your phone number.”

“You and me both,” she said. She pushed her foot against the floor, rocked once, then stopped. “There’s no way he was calling me to castrate him. Maybe if he’d called before he… I think he thought about it but changed his mind. I think he knew about you and me—Doc definitely knew all about us, that you’re a priest, I mean. Doc knew Isaac Murran was a priest. He told him about us, and that’s why he lied to me and Cyrus. Murran had already decided to kill himself when he called me. He had the gun, locked the doors. The only reason I can think of that he’d call me, of all people, right before committing suicide, is he wanted—”