more of their rendezvous than she did of her children. By their third session, Juno had gotten the distinct impression that Pattie didn’t want help from a therapist at all; what she really wanted was a girlfriend with whom to share her secrets. It was a bragging thing, her coming into Juno’s office and telling her every detail in that hush-hush little voice. Around their third session Juno came right out and asked the million-dollar question Pattie had been skirting around for the last two sessions.
“Are you here, Pattie, because you feel guilty on account of having sex with your minister, or do you feel guilty about cheating on your husband?”
Pattie Stoves had mulled over that one for a few minutes, her gold sandals and gold-painted toenails bopping along with her thoughts.
“The first one,” she said sadly. But Juno didn’t see any sadness in her eyes. Pattie was enjoying her affair. She described her minister in great detail, drawing a picture of a very fit golden boy who’d been pressured into marriage right out of college, and had nothing but Jesus in common with his wife. Pattie herself was nothing to write home about, but she had the sort of body that could pass for much younger, and Juno noticed that she dressed to emphasize it. After a year of biweekly counseling with Pattie Stoves, Juno felt like she’d been reading a particularly saucy romance novel, one in the taboo genre. One Sunday, when Pattie was visiting family out of state, and Kregger took the boys on a fishing trip, she’d put on a dress and gone to the church—Juno had learned its name from one of her sessions with Pattie. She arrived late and sat in the back pew, holding a Bible she’d stolen from a Motel Six a few years ago. Pattie’s minister was exactly as Juno pictured him. She wondered if Pattie was the only parishioner he was having an affair with.
When she’d looked around the church, every female eye was unblinking as they watched him deliver a sermon on... Juno couldn’t even remember what. After that, her obsession had taken a slight turn, veering away from Pattie and her high-schooler tits and toward Pastor Paul Blanchard himself. Pattie told her that Pastor Paul liked to go to Tip Top Donuts on Wednesday mornings to do his devotions and spend time in prayer. Tip Top was at least thirty miles away from the church, closer to Juno’s side of town.
Juno figured he’d probably told Pattie that to get some time to himself; affairs tended to be time-consuming. She stopped at the Tip Top on her way to the office one Wednesday morning, forgoing the drive-through to step inside. And there he was, Mr. Pastor Man himself, having coffee with a petite brunette. From then on Juno made it a point to always go inside on Wednesday mornings and was pleased to see that Pastor Paul was always drinking coffee with the same lady friend. It wasn’t his wife, either—she’d seen the pastor with his wife at the Sunday service.
She supposed that if anyone were to see them, Pastor Paul would say he was counseling the woman; after all, they met in a public place. And as far as Juno had seen there had never been so much as a pinkie touch between them, and no one even spared them a glance. She’d started thinking that maybe there was nothing going on between them, and then one day she’d waited in her car, waited long enough to see them leave. Instead of getting into his own car, Pastor Paul waited five minutes in front of Tip Top, leaning against the side of the building, his head bent over his phone. Then, with barely a glance around, he crossed the parking lot, hopping over a short hedge, and approached a dark blue minivan. The door opened as Juno imagined the brunette’s legs were ready to, and the good pastor would do his work in the back seat of the Honda. Juno waited thirty minutes before driving away. She had a session with Pattie in an hour and was fascinated to know if her own view of the woman had changed with this new development.
But it hadn’t stopped there. The next time had been by accident; Juno was going to the post office when she’d spotted Cayleigh Little through the window, heading for the Food Mart. Cayleigh, who went by Clee, was in her late twenties, one of Juno’s weekly