I shrug. “Haven’t seen him lately.”

“Rich and I were just heading over to St. Luke’s for some dinner,” Lisa says. “You want to join us? They start serving at five.”

Gatsby hands Corrine back to Lisa, and we make our way up the street, past shuttered storefronts and darkened windows, heading for the church in the distance. When we get to St. Luke’s, the line of people waiting on the sidewalk is already starting to move inside, and I can smell hot food and fresh coffee. Gatsby and I step in line, and she leans over to whisper in my ear.

“Will, isn’t this the church that you said . . .”

I nod. At this point I have no idea what I’m doing here but it’s too late to turn back now. Walking into the sanctuary, we each grab a styrofoam plate and join the long, slow shuffle of people, most of them men, most of them silent, heading for the long tables, where a mismatched group of college kids and suburban families are serving hot sausages, fresh fruit, coffee and bottled water, granola bars and yogurt. There are stacks of clean blankets, coats, and hats in boxes by the doors. It’s about as far from the dining hall at Connaughton as I can imagine, but the familiarity of it cuts deep, like the smell of the river or the sirens on State Street.

Sitting down with Rich and Lisa, Gatsby and I find ourselves looking across the open room to the back, where a bald priest whom I recognize from a long time ago is talking to a couple guys wearing shirts from the local food bank. Lisa starts feeding Corrine, who’s already got yogurt smeared across her face, while Rich looks over at Gatsby.

“So, what school you go to?”

Gatsby glances at me. “It’s, ah, not around here.”

“Billy?”

I turn around and see the priest standing behind me, and just like that, his name pops into my head.

“Father Tom.”

“You’re Billy Humbert, aren’t you? You and your dad used to live up on Congress Avenue.” It’s not really a question, because I already know he knows me and remembers the twenty-five hundred dollars that the parish handed over, eight years earlier, for the hymnals that never arrived. I stare at him. His craggy face is creased with deep wrinkles, but his blue eyes are clear and sharp. “How’s your old man doing, anyway?”

“I don’t—” I swallow hard. “I don’t really see him that much anymore,” I say. Father Tom just keeps staring. It occurs to me that, in a really uncomfortable way, everything I’ve done up until now has led me to this moment.

Behind me, Gatsby is holding Richie and Lisa’s little girl on her knee while she chats with another woman and her teenage son. From the corner of my eye, I see her stop what she’s doing and turn her eyes toward me.

I look up at Father Tom.

“I just wanted to say”—I clear my throat—“I’m sorry. About what we did.”

Father Tom just regards me. We have stolen money from this man’s church, a lot of money, and there are plenty of things he could say at this moment—he’d be well within his rights to call the police and hold me here till they arrive—but in the end he just puts a hand on my shoulder. It’s a heavy hand, but the weight of it feels reassuring somehow.

“It’s good to see you again, Billy,” he says. “Don’t be a stranger.”

Then he turns and walks away.

“What was that about?” Gatsby asks as we make our way back up State Street. Rich and Lisa have said their goodbyes at the corner, turning left and vanishing into the night, leaving the two of us alone.

“I’m not sure,” I say.

“The priest just let you walk away. Even after what you did.”

I nod. And then it occurs to me that Father Tom let me go because he knew what I did, even though I’m not exactly sure what that means or how I’d explain it to Gatsby—or even to myself. It seems to me that the things that we most need to be forgiven for are the offenses that are inarguably all our fault, the crimes that we can’t possibly atone for. And I wonder if that’s what people mean when they use the word grace. I open my mouth to try to put this into words, but then I stop.

Instead I just ask: “Are you cold?”

“I’m okay.” Gatsby glances up into the darkness to the top of a building. “This is us,” she says.

“Yeah.”

We go inside and start up the stairs toward the roof.

As we fly home, Gatsby falls asleep beside me, her head resting on my shoulder as I stare out the window at the glassy black expanse of the Atlantic coastline. I’m tired—exhausted, really—but my mind refuses to slow down. Something’s changed, and it all has to do with that moment when Father Tom let me walk away, forgiven and clean, for no good reason at all, except that I needed it. I just wish I knew what it meant.

As we land, I feel Gatsby stirring, lifting her head and sitting up, rubbing her eyes. “Mm,” she says sleepily, and looks at me. “Are we back?”

Nodding, I help her to her feet and we step down out of the helicopter, then make our way across the darkened grounds as I walk her back to her room. The night smells like the ocean and dry leaves. The next snowstorm we get won’t melt away so quickly. There’s a sadness to it, a sense that fall is coming to an end, once and for all.

“Gatsby?”

She looks up at me sleepily.

“I almost forgot—I brought you something. I picked it up before Homecoming.”

I reach deep into my coat pocket and hand her the package. It’s still wrapped in the faded old map of the Pacific. “You can just ignore the wrapping paper.”

She peels off the map and pulls out the copy of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, turning it over slowly in her hands. “It’s lovely,” she says, and then passes it back to me. “But I can’t accept this.”

“Why not? It’s the real deal.”

“That’s not why.”

“Gatsby—”

“I need time, Will.”

I nod, and she just gazes up at me for a moment before stepping inside her room. I turn around, heading back toward my dorm, when a car swerves up in front of me, so close I have to jump backwards to avoid being hit. That’s when I realize that time is the one thing I don’t have.

“Get in,” Dad says.

The car smells like a distillery mixed with cigarette smoke. Rhonda’s in the passenger seat, chuffing a Camel Light while playing Candy Crush on her phone, so I climb into the back, which still isn’t far enough away from either of them. “What are you doing back here?”

“Shut up.” From the driver’s seat, Dad looks back, his face twisted with anger. The car is idling, and Dad is showing no signs of putting it into drive. “What happened to Andrea?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I got back to the motel room and she was gone.”

Shaking my head, I give him my best blank look. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

Dad’s right eyelid flutters and his lower lip droops down just slightly on that side, and for a second he looks like a man suffering a mild stroke. Then he manages to thrust his arm back over the seat, grabbing ahold of my collar. Since we’re in a compact car, there’s nowhere for me to go, and frankly, at this point I’m too tired to stop him. “The maid said she let you into my room. I know you were there. You cut her loose.”

“Dad, seriously—”

“I warned you about this. If you queer this deal for me, you’ll be sucking your turkey and cranberry sauce through a tube this year, you understand?”

“A lovely holiday sentiment,” I tell him. “Can I go to bed now?”

Dad reaches out toward Rhonda with his right palm up, and she puts something in his hand. In the light from the dashboard, I see that it’s a gun—a small black automatic. Dad looks down at it for a moment, and then his eyes flick back up to me. His voice has become very low now, almost inaudible, and there’s something about his quiet tone that scares me more than any amount of yelling and screaming.