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Tany’s death and the hell she didn’t deserve. None of it made sense to me. So I’d stopped asking the questions. I’d absolved myself of those questions the only way I knew by refusing to believe in the answers that didn’t make sense.

In that dark, in the chaos in my head, at fifteen, I had realized God was something men made to excuse their own sins. It helped them. It healed them. It saved them. The sinners. While the… victims…

My fingers were frozen now. Cold. Clammy.

I felt like the statues were watching me.

“Doctor West? Doctor West? Are you alright?”

The vitrine was opened, and the Bible looked like it would crumble under my touch.

“Thank you.” I carefully, gently took it out and leafed through the pages until I found what I had come for.

The whole page was missing.

I didn’t tell the sister about it as I closed it and placed it back in. I didn’t want to spook her. I also didn’t want the detectives to know about any of it.

“Well? Did you find something?”

“It looks fine.” Forgive me for lying. I thought. But the lie was the lesser sin of the two I had committed in this chapel.

“The appraiser from the museum? Do you have contact information for her?”

“No.”

“What museum?”

“Detroit Historical Museum,” she said, her fingers going to the rosary on her neck. She rubbed it thrice. Probably the kind of ritual that eased her.

“Was it a woman, the one who came?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes. I don’t remember much.” She closed her eyes. Her fingers tightened. “She had blonde hair. She was wearing a yellow sundress. A child spilled water on her coat, and she was angry.

“She—she didn’t show it. When she slipped her jacket off, I noticed a scar on her right shoulder—and a tattoo… A bird pecking at it. It stayed with me because it was…” She trailed off. “Strange. Unsettling. Like she made something painful even more so. Like she wanted… wanted to remember whatever darkness that came with the wound.”

Sister Mary Elizabeth was shaking her head, like she was trying to erase the thought.

“Anything else?”

“No. No. She… she was smiling, but now that I think about it… she tensed when she stepped into the chapel. Like… she hated to be there.”

“Thank you.” I walked out of the chapel as she stood there, watching me, like she was seeing more than she should. Like she was trying to find the thread that connected this strange woman and me.

I gave a half-wave. She smiled then.

I was walking back to my car when I saw Kurt standing across the lot, staring at me, his lips tilted downward.

Displeased. The look in his eyes was displeasure.

I’d always been good at reading people. Knowing them with just a few words, a glance, the way they carried themselves. Some people wore their intentions openly. Others tried to hide them. But it always came out, eventually.

But I didn’t… I couldn’t exactly decipher this man. He was not evil, but he wasn’t entirely innocent either. He was hiding something. And he was doing it neatly.

I unlocked my door, and then turned.

“You know what, Kurt, there’s only so far one can run.” I gave him a nod. “Tell her I’m coming.”

He blinked. The watering can fell to the ground.