“God has condoned killing throughout history, depending who you ask.”

“That is literally so Old Testament.”

He rolls onto his back. “I used to think about the story of Abraham, being told to kill his son. I spent so many nights wondering how he was willing to do it. And I didn’t know what God would hate more: me not fulfilling what I had always been taught to be some sacred obligation, or me killing myself. Because that’s what it was coming to. Either God would destroy me for failing, or I’d destroy myself.”

I don’t need to turn to study the painting behind us. The red-sneakered foot, laces tied, laughably neat, in a bow. Maybe I even see a little bit why Claudia called it comforting.

“I was in hell,” he says. “I quit eating. I couldn’t sleep. Worse, you knew something was wrong. You thought I was cheating on you at first, until you realized it was something wrong with me. I couldn’t keep it secret. You knew me too well.”

“Not as well as I thought, apparently.”

And even now I allow for the possibility that I have just made love to a man who will kill me. I can’t see it, but I have been wrong about him before.

“So what’d you do?” I ask.

“I laid my whole, messed-up heart on the table. And I knew you would leave. But honestly, I think I was more afraid of God abandoning me. For as much as I loved you . . . that thought was worse.”

I’m trying to reconcile the tortured person of his story with the urgently happy-go-lucky guy from the Food Mart. I never would have pegged him as spiritual. ’Course I never thought of him as very deep until recently, either.

“You don’t seem tortured anymore, though.”

He turns toward me, nuzzles my shoulder. “No. I finally decided God’s mercy is enough, or it isn’t. It’s the foundation of religion, isn’t it—forgiveness? But you never really think about what that means until you have no choice but to throw yourself on that altar and pray it’s enough. Forgiveness is enough, or it isn’t. That is the only thing I believe anymore.”

“I envy you,” I say, pulling his arm around me. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“After you came back to me, you said something about how we’ve both been slaves to a past we didn’t know how to leave behind. The day you had your procedure, a part of me was jealous. Because just like that, it was gone. You were free.”

“Maybe not as free as I thought.”

“For a time you were. And I felt envious and stupidly abandoned. I didn’t expect to feel the way I did.”

“Losing your identity is no picnic, either.”

“Your identity isn’t you, Audra.”