Pattie Stoves had mulled over that one for a few minutes, her gold sandals and gold-painted toenails bopping along with her thoughts.

“The first one,” she said sadly. But Juno didn’t see any sadness in her eyes. Pattie was enjoying her affair. She described her minister in great detail, drawing a picture of a very fit golden boy who’d been pressured into marriage right out of college, and had nothing but Jesus in common with his wife. Pattie herself was nothing to write home about, but she had the sort of body that could pass for much younger, and Juno noticed that she dressed to emphasize it. After a year of biweekly counseling with Pattie Stoves, Juno felt like she’d been reading a particularly saucy romance novel, one in the taboo genre. One Sunday, when Pattie was visiting family out of state, and Kregger took the boys on a fishing trip, she’d put on a dress and gone to the church—Juno had learned its name from one of her sessions with Pattie. She arrived late and sat in the back pew, holding a Bible she’d stolen from a Motel Six a few years ago. Pattie’s minister was exactly as Juno pictured him. She wondered if Pattie was the only parishioner he was having an affair with.

When she’d looked around the church, every female eye was unblinking as they watched him deliver a sermon on… Juno couldn’t even remember what. After that, her obsession had taken a slight turn, veering away from Pattie and her high-schooler tits and toward Pastor Paul Blanchard himself. Pattie told her that Pastor Paul liked to go to Tip Top Donuts on Wednesday mornings to do his devotions and spend time in prayer. Tip Top was at least thirty miles away from the church, closer to Juno’s side of town.

Juno figured he’d probably told Pattie that to get some time to himself; affairs tended to be time-consuming. She stopped at the Tip Top on her way to the office one Wednesday morning, forgoing the drive-through to step inside. And there he was, Mr. Pastor Man himself, having coffee with a petite brunette. From then on Juno made it a point to always go inside on Wednesday mornings and was pleased to see that Pastor Paul was always drinking coffee with the same lady friend. It wasn’t his wife, either—she’d seen the pastor with his wife at the Sunday service.