Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery


 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Chapter 1
 Acknowledgments
 Start to Contents
 
 
 
 Pagebreaks of the Print Version
 
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 ALSO BY MARGOT DOUAIHY
 POETRY
 
 Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr
 Scranton Lace
 Girls Like You
 I Would Ruby If I Could
 
 
 
 SCORCHED GRACE
 A SISTER HOLIDAY MYSTERY
 
 MARGOT DOUAIHY
 GILLIAN FLYNN BOOKS
 A zando IMPRINT
 NEW YORK
 
 
 
 The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
 Copyright © 2023 by Margot Douaihy
 Zando supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, uploading, or distributing this book or any part of it without permission. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for brief quotations embodied in reviews), please contact [email protected].
 Gillian Flynn Books is an imprint of Zando
 zandoprojects.com
 First Edition: February 2023
 Text design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates
 Cover design and illustration by Will Staehle
 The publisher does not have control over and is not responsible for author or other third-party websites (or their content).
 LCCN: 2022939804
 ISBN 978-1-63893-024-2
 eISBN 978-1-63893-025-9
 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Manufactured in the United States of America
 
 
 
 1
 
 THE DEVIL ISN’T IN the details. Evil thrives in blind spots. In absence, negative space, like the haze of a sleight-of-hand trick. The details are God’s work. My job is keeping those details in order.
 It took me four and a half hours to do the laundry and clean the stained glass, and my whole body felt wrecked. Every tendon strained. Even swallowing hurt. So, when my Sisters glided into the staff lounge for the meeting, folders and papers pressed against their black tunics, I slipped into the alley for some divine reflection—a smoke break. It was Sunday, dusk.
 Vice on the Sabbath, I know. Not my finest moment. But carpe diem.
 An hour to myself was all I needed. An aura of menace taunted me all day. The air was thick and gritty, like it wanted to bare-knuckle fight. Sticky heat, typical in New Orleans, but worse that day. The sun, the swollen red of a mosquito bite. Slow simmer belying the violence of the boil. I couldn’t sit through another reprimand.
 Fall term was a week in, and two kids had already filed grievances about me. She’s always on us—a student scrawled—I can’t feel my fingertips! Another (anonymous, I might add): Music class is TORTURE!!! I worried that Sister Augustine—our principal and Mother Superior, sturdy and sure as a sailor’s knot—would interrogate me in front of everyone during Sunday’s meeting. Which would inevitably lead to Sister Honor’s weaponizing of minor infractions for her crusade against me. That woman’s bullshit was so skillfully honed it was almost holy. And sure, my expectations were high. The highest. Saint Sebastian’s School was one of the few private Catholic schools left, far from fancy but definitely elite. I made my classes practice for an hour at a time, five days a week. Like they were real ensembles. How else would they learn? Day in, day out, you must commit. I’d be doing the students—and God—a disservice otherwise. To suffer is a privilege.
 Pain is evidence of growth.
 The ache means we’re