“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 patients. Juno avoided run-ins with her patients if she could; it was awkward for everyone involved. But she abandoned her place in line to get a better look.

Peering through the glass and into the street, she followed the woman’s progress across the parking lot. Clee Little was single, she lived by herself in the city, and she had no family in the area. She claimed to be a sex addict, often detailing her antics with pride in her voice. For a moment Juno wasn’t even sure it was her, but then, she spotted the hot pink key fob she often saw in their sessions. It was dangling from Clee’s free hand. Her other hand was attached to a child’s, and she had a baby strapped to her chest in a carrier. The whole scene upset Juno, made her leave the post office and walk faster to catch up. Clee was dressed differently, in blue jeans and a T-shirt. Had Juno ever seen her in anything but one of her high-powered work outfits? She was on the sidewalk now, following the mother and her two children through the sliding doors. They headed for the freezer section, Clee with the baby, no older than seven months, attached to her chest. Juno watched, fascinated, as she piled frozen dinners into her cart, calling out for the toddler to slow down as he darted ahead of her. She could be babysitting, Juno thought, eyeing the carrier on her chest.

“Mama!” the little boy called, running toward Clee. She’d not seen Juno standing nearby and was cooing to the toddler. Why would she lie and pretend to be single? Claim that she didn’t have children when she so clearly had two of them? For some people, the lie was the escape. Or perhaps she really was a sex addict and didn’t want Juno to know that she had a family. Clee never found out that Juno followed her around Food Mart. Neither did any of the others. For a while Juno was able to be as invisible as she felt and if anyone ever saw her—which they occasionally did (once at a restaurant)—she’d act like it was purely coincidental. She hadn’t needed to follow Chad; no. He’d pursued her from the start. Juno had his number and every other man who started their game with the same line: “I’m not like this, you’re the exception.”

Fourth degree criminal sexual conduct carried a minimum two-year prison sentence. The law frowned deeply on the abuse of power; for a therapist to have sex with a client was certainly that. And if that’s all she’d been charged with, perhaps there would have been something to fight for, but by the time Juno served a four-year sentence (two for the sexual misconduct and two for intentional affliction of emotional distress and sexual harassment by a professional) everyone from her life had moved on. She didn’t recognize them any more than they recognized her, those old friends. Her hands had touched things their hands would never touch; her eyes had witnessed things that would make them wet their practical high-waisted panties. Even as Juno scurried away from her former neighborhood, she’d realized that she didn’t want to be there anymore anyway. It felt soiled now; a white shirt you could never get the blood stains out of. Could a person change too much to go back? She used to say no, but now she lived the yes.

It was thirty-two degrees outside, according to the news, which Juno watched from Nigel’s den, wrapped in a thick fleece throw that smelled of Nigel. Juno knew the smell; she knew all their smells. Nigel smelled reedy, like grass and spices. Winnie didn’t have a smell of her own anymore; she coated herself with expensive perfumes and she smelled like a department store. And Sam, well, he smelled salty, like a kid. He left behind the faint scent of baloney.

She stared mindlessly at the TV, her hair still damp from the shower she’d taken. The shower had tired her out. On TV a reporter was standing in grass, wearing a thick puffer jacket. She looked uncomfortable in it, despite the resplendent Christmas tree behind her. Everyone was sick to death of winter, and it was only December. How long until Groundhog Day? she thought.