Nolan's Bed) (Temptation, Confession, Grace) Chapter One Leah thought there couldn’t be anything worse than the four weeks she’d spent in the nunnery, harbored in the sweltering heat of a room just under the attic with the smell of chipped beef or Salisbury steak wafting up from the kitchen below, making her even more nauseous than she already was, all of this set to the sound of the nuns chanting prayers at five in the morning, every morning. That was until she arrived at the Mary Magdalene Home for Moral Welfare. She rode in the back seat of her mother’s 1956 Plymouth Belvedere—last year’s model, her mother couldn’t afford to buy new—thinking about everything she was leaving behind. Her best friend, Erica, would be watching American Bandstand and critiquing hairstyles from the duck’s ass on the boys to beehives on the girls, and Leah wished she was with her—anywhere but here, ducked down out of sight in her mother’s backseat until they left the Detroit city limits. After that, Father Michael told her she was allowed to sit up, but by then, anything familiar was just a memory, the suburban signs blending together. Concrete gave way to gravel, and eventually, she couldn’t have told you exactly where she was to save her life. Not that it mattered. No one could save her now, not even God. “We’re here,”
