She doesn’t speak much English and I don’t speak French, but she gives me a conspiratorial smile in the mirror like she thinks my night was much more fun than it actually was.

She dresses me in a gauzy white tea gown that has me feeling like a ghost haunting the halls of this house.

Finn is already at the breakfast table when Lena, Maxine, and I walk in arm in arm not looking at all like we committed several crimes last night.

“How was the gala?” Maxine’s mother asks.

“I can’t believe you didn’t take me,” Nina adds with a pout.

“Lovely,” Maxine says after a sip of orange juice.

From the head of the table, her stepfather swears behind his morning paper.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est, chéri?” Maxine’s mother asks in her lilting voice.

“There’s been another murder. The body of a young boy has been found in Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Mutilated. What sort of monster is roaming Paris?”

Finn pushes back from the table in a sudden rush. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

He glances up at the grandfather clock in the corner of the fine dining room. “To church.”

He must be speaking in some kind of code, wanting me to follow him out the door. “I’ll come too,” I say, but Finn doesn’t look relieved. He just looks confused.

I rush out the door behind him before Lena and Maxine have a chance to formulate their own lies and follow.

The elevator dings shut behind us. “What did you need?” I ask him.

He looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What do you mean?”

“You asked me to follow you.”

“No, I did not. I said I was going to church.”

“Yes, exactly, I thought that was code for something.”

He chuckles. “What would it be code for? I’m truly going to church.”

“I—” Words escape me. “But… why?”

He runs a hand through his curls and looks at the ground. “Because I used to go with my mam and it reminds me of home. And because I’m a sinner in need of redemption.” He gestures between the two of us, to the invisible ties that bind us. “Isn’t that the whole thing here? Redemption?”

The elevator dings as we reach the first floor. We step out onto the quiet street.

Maxine and Lena burst out from a side door. “Sorry! Had to take the stairs!” Maxine huffs.

“Oh Christ, not you, too,” Finn mutters.

“Took us slightly longer to get away from the table,” Maxine breathlessly explains. “I haven’t been to church since I was nine and spit in the communion wine.”

“And despite the Thomas School’s best efforts, I am very pointedly uninterested in the Catholic Church,” Lena says.