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Finally, when he’d run through the list, plucky Paula dashed up on the stage with him, hugged him, and said she forgave him. At least he didn’t ask poor little Angel to forgive him. Rusty walked up to the stage, too, but she didn’t cry and she didn’t hug him and Marylou could tell she wasn’t anywhere close to forgiving him. Her mouth was all clenched like she was holding lots in.

Then people in the congregation went up and began hugging Buff and his family and praying with them and laying hands on them, and that’s when Marylou got up and walked out, wishing to God she’d done so earlier.

Buff. The Reverend Buffington Coffey.

Now, walking Buster, she kept replaying that ceremony in her mind, that maudlin, self-pitying display, making it all about him, not his victims, forcing people to “forgive” him just so he’d feel even less regret about what he’d done. He had stopped lying and confessed, and that, she guessed, was a good thing; but no doubt he’d hire some shyster lawyer who would get him off and he wouldn’t even lose his job and his family would come back to him and pretty soon he’d start doing it again, probably to Angel and Rusty along with other people’s daughters, because that kind of person never stopped, that was a proven fact, much as people wanted to believe otherwise. You can forgive them until the cows come home.

She and Buster were back on her street, and she found herself staring at Buff’s two-story house that, in the early morning light, looked like something from a magazine cover: Show Off Your Stunning Split-Level! His wife’s car wasn’t there, but his SUV was. He was in there, right this minute. What was he doing? Probably having a good dream about all the people he’d fooled at that so-called ceremony.

Marylou, with a surge of energy, began walking more briskly toward home, Buster trotting to keep up. She’d been trying to get revenge on the wrong person, that was the problem. Wilson had done something awful, monstrous even, had caused deaths and disfigurements, but in a way, he himself had been brainwashed by the cold war mentality. And he hadn’t kept on doing it. He hadn’t tried to seek forgiveness in a showy, public way. As she walked along, Marylou realized she was full of energy again, a scary, humming kind of energy. Gas. Go. Return of the Radioactive Lady. And this time she would not be deterred.

* * *

She rang Buff’s doorbell close to seven a.m.—a Friday morning, so if he wasn’t up he should be up. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t answer right away—she wouldn’t have wanted to talk to anyone if she were him. And she expected that, when he did, he’d be either under the influence of sleeping pills or unshaven and miserable looking, liquor on his breath, weak and pathetic, the way he’d looked at the ceremony of hoodoo.

She intended to lean on the doorbell until he answered, then give him the cake and leave. She had no desire to sit and watch him eat it. Didn’t think she could.

But she should’ve known! He answered the door right away, smiling, freshly shaven, with swim trunks, a T-shirt, and flip-flops on. “Well, good morning to you!” he said. “To what do I owe this honor?”

She thrust out her cake. “It’s two nice big slices of my fresh pineapple upside-down cake,” she said, trying to do a passable imitation of a kind smile. “Excellent for breakfast!”

He thanked her and asked her to come in and share the cake. She demurred.

“Aw, please come in for just a minute,” he said, standing back from the door. He took the cake from her—plastic-wrapped on a paper plate. She hadn’t wanted to give him the whole cake in case he decided to give some to someone else. He took her arm and pulled her inside. Was he suspicious of her?

She stood there, in his spotless kitchen, her mouth dry and her heart thudding in her chest. “It’s cold in here,” she said.

“I keep the air-conditioning up too high,” he said, setting the cake down on the counter. “Paula’s always turning it down. She’s not here now.”

Marylou nodded.

“Come. Come sit down.” He gestured at