I literally had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I took a sip of the Scotch to hide my confusion.

Sterling leaned against the edge of his desk, swirling the Scotch with a practiced hand. “How is she?”

Was he talking about Poppy? He couldn’t be, he was with Poppy, but yet she was the only she that we both shared. “I came here to ask you the same question, actually.”

Sterling raised his eyebrows. “So you two…” he used his glass to gesture at me. “…You guys aren’t together?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you were together with her.”

A shot of pain—real pain, not disappointment or anger—flashed through his face. “No. We aren’t…we weren’t. We weren’t what I thought.”

I found myself—ridiculously—feeling sorry for him. And then his words began to really sink in, and a small flower of hope bloomed in my chest…

“But I saw you two kiss.”

His brow crinkled. “You did? Oh, that must have been in her house.”

“The day you released those pictures.”

“I am sorry about that, you know.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn’t water under the bridge exactly, but I was much more interested in how they’d gone from kissing in her bedroom to not being together. I should tamp down this hope now, before it truly blossomed, but I couldn’t bring myself to—although if she wasn’t with Sterling, then why hadn’t she tried to contact me?

One question at a time, I coached myself.

Sterling must have read the meaning behind my expression, because he took a sip and then set his glass down and explained. “That day, I had finally gotten tired of waiting, so I drove up to that craphole town—no offense—and told her I’d release those pictures if she didn’t promise to be with me. She was standing by the window, and then all of a sudden she shuffled me into her bedroom and tore my jacket off. I kissed her, thinking that’s what she wanted. But no. After one kiss, she shoved me away and kicked me out.” The way he rubbed his jaw just then made me wonder if kicked me out had involved a punch to his jaw. I really hoped it had. “I went ahead and released the pictures because I was pissed—understandably, I think, given the circumstances.”

I sat down in the nearest chair, staring at the whisky in my hand, trying to sort out what this all meant. “You only kissed that once? She didn’t leave Missouri to be with you?”

“Obviously not,” he said. “I assumed she’d gone running back to you.”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

“Oh, rough luck, old sport,” he said sympathetically.

I digested this. Poppy had kissed Sterling once and then demanded that he leave. Sterling was either a terrible kisser or she didn’t want to be with him at all—but if she didn’t want to be with him, then why hadn’t she stayed with me? And after those pictures, after I’d left the clergy, she hadn’t once reached out. I’d assumed it was because she was with Sterling, but now that I knew differently, that stung a bit more. She could have at least said goodbye or sorry or something, anything.

My heart twisted some more, a tired washcloth still being wrung out. Rosary, I reminded myself. This is about returning the rosary and giving her your forgiveness. And you can’t forgive her if you’re bitter about what happened.

Besides, at least she wasn’t with Sterling. And that was some small comfort.

“Do you know where she is now?” I asked. “I want to talk to her.”

Of course he did. He went back around his desk, found his phone, and within a few seconds, I was holding a scrap of paper with his neat block handwriting. An address.

“I stopped keeping track of her last year, but this was a property that the Danforth Foundation for the Arts purchased not long after I came back home. It’s a dance studio here in New York.”

I studied the address, then looked up at him. “Thank you.” I meant it.

He shrugged and then drained the last of his glass. “No problem.”

For some reason, I extended my hand, feeling a bit bad about ignoring his gesture earlier. He took it, and we had a brief but courteous handshake. Here was the man who’d ruined my career, who I thought had taken my Poppy away from me, but I was able to walk away without any hatred or ill will, and it wasn’t just because of the $1500 Scotch.

It was because I forgave him. And because I was going to walk out of this door and find Poppy and return this rosary and finally, finally move on with my life.

The dance studio was in Queens, in a colorful but rundown neighborhood, the kind of neighborhood that seemed like it was on the cusp of gentrification, but no developers had moved in yet, only scores of artists and hipsters.

The Little Flower Studio, from what I could tell from the internet search on my phone on the subway there, was a non-profit studio dedicated to giving free dance lessons to the youth in the community, and seemed particularly aimed at young women. There was nothing about Poppy on its website, but the studio had opened only two months after she’d left Weston, and the entire project was funded by her family’s foundation.

It was a tall brick building, three stories, and the front seemed very recently renovated, with tall windows looking into the main dance studio, a view of blond wood and gleaming mirrors.

Unfortunately, since it was the middle of the day, there didn’t seem to be anybody at the studio itself. The lights were off and the door was locked, and no one answered the bell when I rang it. I tried the studio’s phone number too, and then watched the phone on the front desk light up again and again. No one was here to answer it.

I could hang around until someone came back—someone who I hoped desperately would be Poppy—or I could go home, try again some other day. It was bakingly hot, the kind of hot where I worried my shoes might melt if I stood on the sidewalk too long, and there was no shade outside the studio. Was it really the best idea to stay here and turn into a sweaty sunstroke victim?

But the thought of leaving New York without seeing Poppy, without talking to her, was a thought I couldn’t stomach for longer than a few seconds. I’d spent the last ten months in this misery. I couldn’t spend another day more.

God must have heard me.

I turned back toward the subway station—I’d seen a bodega nearby, and I wanted a bottle of water—and I caught a glimpse of a spire between two rows of houses—a church. And my feet turned there without me even thinking about it; I suppose I was hoping there would be air-conditioning inside and maybe a place to pray until the dance studio reopened, but I was also wishing (hard) that I’d find something else inside.

I did.

The front doors opened into wide foyer studded with stoups full of holy water, and the doors to the sanctuary were propped open, wafting blessedly cool air into the entryway, but that’s not the first thing I noticed.

The first thing I noticed was the woman near the front of the sanctuary, kneeling with her head bowed. Her dark hair was spun up in a tight bun—a dancer’s bun—and her long neck and slender shoulders were exposed by the black camisole she wore. Dance clothes, I realized as I got closer, trying to be quiet, but it didn’t seem to matter. She was so absorbed in her prayer that she didn’t even move as I slid into the pew behind her row.

I could trace every inch of her back from memory, even after all these months. Each freckle, each line of muscle, each curve of her shoulder blade. And the shade of her hair—dark as coffee and just as rich—I’d remembered that perfectly too. And now that she was so close, all of my good intentions and pure thoughts were being subsumed by much, much darker ones. I wanted to unpin that bun and then wrap that silky hair around my hand. I wanted to pull down the front of her top and fondle her tits. I wanted to rub the softness between her legs through the fabric of her stretchy dance pants until it was soaking wet.