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parents were oblivious.”
    “I don’t know. But I do know her parents thank God you were.”
    Moments passed with just the thrum of her heart against his chest. He broke the silence. “Maybe you being there wasn’t even about you. Have you considered that?”
    “How so?”
    “Maybe it was about that little girl?”
    She rolled onto her side, facing him. She placed her hands on his chest. “Thank you,” she whispered, voice thick.
    “For what?”
    “For being here. For loving me.”
    He pulled her closer to him, all the things he wanted to say bottling up in his chest. Things about being unable to breathe without her, about loving her with an intensity that terrified him.
    Since he couldn’t say them, he simply held her.

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Friday, August 12
    8:35 A.M.
    Mira sat across from her therapist, exhausted to the bone yet strangely energized. The words tumbled one over the other as she told the doctor how, for the past two days, she, Deni and Chris had worked around the clock to save the Sisters of Mercy windows.
    Dr. Jasper had heard about the vandalism and murder. Everyone in New Orleans had—it had been splashed from every news outlet. Father Girod had been very popular. The community was outraged; his funeral had taken on the quality of a rock concert. Because of the vandalism, the service had been held at St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square in the French Quarter. The church had been filled to overflowing, mourners spilling out onto the square.
    “The detective I spoke to thought my urgency over the windows was weird,” Mira said.
    “Did he?”
    “Yes.” She rubbed her palms on her thighs, the summer-weight denim rough against them. “But Father Girod loved those windows. To him, they were sacred. He would have wanted me to react that way.”
    “You’re certain of that?”
    “Yes.” She nodded for emphasis. “One hundred percent.” Mira fell silent a moment, then went on. “The detective even asked where I was the night it happened and if I thought someone could have done it to get back at me.”
    “Do you think that might be a possibility?”
    “There’s only one person who hates me that much, and I hardly think he would stoop so low.”
    “Your ex–father-in-law.”
    Mira agreed. “I just can’t picture the high and mighty Anton Gallier breaking into a church, spray cans in tow. Though he could have hired it done.”
    The last she had actually considered a possibility. But that wasn’t his style either. Hands-on cruelty was what he preferred. His own peculiar brand.
    “What would be the fun in that?” she said sarcastically. “He’d want to see my reaction. Know for sure how badly he hurt me.”
    “You stayed sober through this?”
    “Yes.” Mira caught herself looking guiltily away, as it all came crashing back: awaking in the middle of the night to the river of grief pouring over her, swallowing her. Her desperate search for pharmacological relief.
    Mira clasped her hands in her lap, feeling the steep drop from hero to zero. Just the week before, she and Dr. Jasper had spoken of ending their weekly sessions. Mira was ready, they had both thought so.
    Now she had to tell her she had fallen from grace.
    Even as the familiar urge to dodge the truth tugged at her, she met the therapist’s eyes directly. “I relapsed. Monday night. Before all this happened.”
    Dr. Jasper’s expression registered neither surprise nor disappointment. The therapist knew her better than anyone since Jeff and wouldn’t make excuses for her. But she wouldn’t condemn her either.
    “Where did you get the Xanax, Mira?”
    “Not on the street, if that’s what you’re thinking. And I didn’t steal it from a friend.” She had resorted to both before—as well as doctor hopping and visits to so-called pill factories. “I tore the house apart. I found one in a piece of my carry-on luggage.”
    “And if you hadn’t? What would you have done?”
    Mira hesitated. Would she have hooked up