Page 2 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

I tried pitching something else, but all they wanted was Connor. With his blue eyes and charming smile—“like Captain America with a smirk,” I’d written, because I was twenty-five and an idiot.

And now it’s ten years later, and I feel like I’m stuck with him forever, like Agatha Christie was with Poirot or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was with Sherlock. They eventually killed off their main characters, and that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to kill him.

I just need to find a way to get away with it.

“… Ma’am? This is all very interesting, but I can’t absolve you of a crime you haven’t committed.”

Oh, shit. Did I say all of that out loud? To an actual priest? Looks like it.

I lean back in the confession box, resting my back against the worn wooden frame. Though my thick, dark hair is up in a topknot, the tendrils that have escaped are hot against my neck, and this seat is murder on my back.

“So,” I say to the small screen in the wall, “if I ask for forgiveness after the fact, you can give it, but not before?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘signorina’?”

“I’m visiting the parish from America, ma’am.”

The one church I visit in Rome, and I get an American priest?

“Oh, yeah? Where from?”

“We’re not supposed to talk about ourselves.”

“It’s Texas, right?”

“… I’m from Dallas.”

I smile in satisfaction. I’ve always been good at accents. “I knew it.”

“Ma’am?”

“It’s Eleanor, I told you.”

“Do you want to pray on your thoughts about…”

“Connor Smith?”

“I’ve found it helpful to pray on my anger. It soothes the soul.”

Praying isn’t going to help me get rid of Connor, though, which I knew when I came in here. But it was very hot out, and the worn marble church sitting on the corner of the piazza looked so cool and inviting, I couldn’t help myself.

Once I was inside, I gazed around the incense-infused space and the mahogany-paneled walls. I was drawn to the small booth tucked into a corner. The confessional, I realized when I stepped past the bloodred velvet curtain. I’d always wondered what they were like. Turns out: small and stuffy. But before I could leave, there was a cough through the wall and a soothing voice suggested I unburden myself. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I don’t know how to get out of this conversation.

“Eleanor? Are you in here?”

Oh, thank God.

Oh, um, I mean, thank you, God.

I pull back the curtain. My younger sister,5 Harper, is scuttling down the aisle with a worried expression on her beautiful face. She’s wearing a white poplin dress that shows off her long, tanned limbs and complements her chestnut hair, which, like so many things, is one shade better than mine.6 She’s wearing it braided and wound around her head, a look that suits her but would make me look like Princess Leia’s less attractive sister.7, 8

“I’m here!” I wave my hand so she sees me.

Her face relaxes. Her eyes are a shade better than mine, too—a perfect cornflower blue framed with heavy, dark lashes. Mine are washed out, and my lashes are almost invisible without mascara.

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