Melissa watched her sons ruin my little girl’s Easter dress and called it a joke—so I calmly told everyone to leave, and the look on her face said she had just remembered something important.

I didn't run for the vestry door. I bolted sideways, darting into the narrow corridor that ran behind the choir stalls toward the old confessional booth.

Julian fired.

The shot sounded like thunder inside the enclosed stone sanctuary. A chunk of ancient pine splintered off the altar rail three inches from my shoulder, showering my neck with sharp wood chips.

The smell of cordite tore through the damp air, instantly erasing the scent of lavender and rot.

I dove through the heavy velvet curtain of the priest’s side of the confessional, slamming the thin wooden door behind me and dropping onto the kneeling bench. My chest heaved, every breath burning in my throat. I clutched the green buckram ledger to my chest, my thumb sliding over the brittle pages.

Outside, Julian’s boots crunched slowly across the shattered plaster and wood shards.

"You can't hide in there, Nora," he said, his voice dropping into a conversational, chilling whisper. "There are no sins forgiven here. Not today. Do you know why Evelyn had that ribbon saved? The one from Lily’s Easter dress?"

He stopped right outside the confessional curtain. The barrel of the revolver poked through the fabric, lifting the heavy velvet hem.

"She kept it because Lily isn't yours, Nora," Julian whispered softly through the wooden lattice screen. "Check the baptismal roll on page forty-eight. Look who signed the register in Boston while you were in that clinic in Bangor."

My breath seized in my throat. My hands trembled violently as I flipped the brittle pages under the faint light leaking through the lattice.

Page forty-eight.

There, written in black fountain pen under the seal of the Commonwealth, was the record of birth for Lily Vance.