“How did we, as a nation, come to this?”

Màma’s green gaze sweeps the room, touching every single person in the congregation with a mixture of fondness and authority only this woman is capable of.

She drinks from the tall glass on her pulpit and lets her question sink in and foment in our minds. Whenever my mother pauses her sermons to do this, I have the impression everyone can feel her firm hand on their shoulder.

I, for one, always do.

When I manage to get to Estheim early enough, or stay long enough, I do my best to attend Màma’s Sunday sermon. “You know you don’t have to,” she always says to Pàpa, Eva, and me. But we insist. Pàpa, because he’s a devout Christian who supports his pastor wife in everything she does. Eva, because she actually enjoys Màma’s sermons. And me… To be honest, I’m not sure why I come along.

I’m not really a Protestant, like the rest of the family.

I’m not a Catholic, either, or any other denomination, for that matter.

I’m a Darwinist.

Considering how close humans are to monkeys—especially on the métro during rush hour—how can anyone believe in anything other than survival of the fittest?

“What twisted path,” Màma continues, “led us to believe we must use images of naked women to sell chocolate ice cream? And why has it become our new normal to have sexual relationships and even babies out of sacred matrimony?”

Today’s sermon is called On Purity. It’s a recurrent theme with my mother.

Eva and I have debated hundreds of times if Màma thinks her grown daughters—I’m twenty-six and Eva twenty-eight—are still virgins. Our conclusion is that she does. Because that’s what she expects of us. And because we have yet to muster the courage to tell her the truth.

“For this is the will of God, that ye should abstain from fornication,” Màma reads from her Bible.

Pàpa nods.

Eva and I focus on our feet.

Màma ends the sermon with Jesus’s forgiving a fallen woman, followed by a passionate appeal to all lost souls to repent and keep their bodies clean of immoral sex.

It’s all very sweet of her to promise Jesus will forgive me, but the question is will she forgive me? Will Pàpa forgive me? Not just for fornicating with Raphael, but for the bigger, dirtier sin I committed six years ago?

Judging by what I know of their past actions, I’d wager they won’t. Because actions, as my parents like to say, speak louder than words.

“If you could miraculously have your virginity back, hymen and all,” I whisper in Eva’s ear as we leave the church, “would you do it?”

“No way.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I thought you were a believer.”

“I am. But not in physical abstinence.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d assume you were getting laid.”

Eva lets out a sigh. “I wish.”

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I give her a tiny squeeze. I know about her hopeless crush on Adam.

“And you?” she asks. “A new boyfriend, maybe?”

I look away.

Eva puts her hand over mine and gives me a gentle pat. She knows about my doomed affair with Raphael.

Last time she came over to Paris to spend a weekend with me, I swore to her I’d pull myself out of it. I promised myself the same thing at least three times already since January.

It’s April.

I stopped promising.

Eva nudges me with her elbow. “Did you at least try to break up?”

I shake my head.

“Has he changed?” she asks hopefully. “Is there a chance he has feelings for you? Would it help if you quit your job?”

“I don’t want to talk about Raphael,” I say, still avoiding Eva’s eyes.

He hasn’t changed.

And I very much doubt sacrificing my job would help.

Eva shrugs and catches up with our parents.

“I loved your sermon,” she says to Màma.

She always tells her that, and most of the time, she means it. But this time, her fingers are crossed behind her back. I guess the disconnect between this sermon’s high standards and the reality of our lives was too big even for Eva’s indulgent heart.

At home, Pàpa sets out to cook lunch while Màma takes care of administrative stuff. Pàpa is a retired policeman with a passion for cooking, which is fortunate, seeing as Màma couldn’t fry an egg to save her life.

Neither can I, by the way. My single culinary competence is pasta, which is not so bad since I happen to love it, as I do all Italian food. To vary my dinners, I stock up on Bolognese, pesto and whatever pasta sauce I find at my local supermarket, and then I rotate them.

Works fine for me.

When Eva visits me in Paris, she arrives with a huge tub of homemade pesto sauce, which she then portions out into small containers and sticks them in my freezer. My sister has inherited Pàpa’s talent. Man, she can cook. The dinners she used to whip up for us as teenagers were better than the three or four Michelin-starred restaurant meals my parents offered us on special occasions.

Eva studied at Le Cordon Bleu, one of the best culinary schools in the country, and worked as an undercook with some hotshot chef whose name I forget.

Two years later she quit, trained as a secretary, and after a year of temping, landed a “well-paying and stable” admin assistant job at the European Space Agency.

Màma was very proud of her.

Pàpa was very upset.

I was both, but mostly perplexed. Eva didn’t comment on her radical change of career except for a casual remark that cooking wasn’t her thing, after all. Màma took it at face value. With no love lost between her and the stove, she could easily relate to that justification. My theory is that Eva was pushed a little too hard by her celebrity boss or bullied by her fellow undercooks. A less sensitive person would’ve grown a thicker skin and carried on. But Eva, as usual, took the path of least resistance and convinced herself the career of a chef wasn’t for her.

All of this goes through my mind as Eva and I stretch out in our favorite hammocks under Pàpa’s gorgeous apple trees. My life may be screwed up beyond redemption, but Eva has options.

It’s a crime to turn her back on them.

“Remind me again how a promising chef ends up as admin assistant?” I ask.

She fake-yawns. “Please, not again!”

“Humor me. I just want to understand.”

“Your fixation with what I do for a living is unhealthy. Do you realize that?”

“You’re skirting my question,” I say.

“What’s wrong with being an admin assistant?”

“Nothing.” I hesitate and then shake my head. “Everything.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“My current job is just a temporary means to an end, while you seem bent on ignoring your true vocation.”

She shrugs. “I’m perfectly happy where I am.”

“That’s because you’re crazy about Adam.”

She glares at me.

I glare back. “You’ve been pining for him for how long? A year?”

Eva says nothing.

“He’s never asked you out.”

Silence.

“Has he ever done anything to suggest he likes you?”

She shakes her head.

“He’s had a girlfriend during this time, right?”

She nods.

“You haven’t.”

“I’m not into women.”

“Very funny.” I give her a sympathetic look. “Let me rephrase my question: Have you had a boyfriend or even a one-night stand ever since you laid eyes on Adam?”

She sighs and shakes her head.

“On top of it all, he’s your boss,” I say. “Don’t repeat my mistakes, Evie.”

She pushes her glasses up to the bridge of her nose. “Adam is my hierarchical superior, but he’s not my direct boss.”

“To-may-to, to-mah-to.”

“And he isn’t a womanizer like yours.”

I feel a sharp pang somewhere in the upper left quadrant of my chest. Must be the truth hurting.

“Let’s change the topic,” Eva says, giving me an apologetic look.

“Good idea.”

I stare at the delicate blooms over my head, then shut my eyes, and spend the next half hour pretending to nap before Pàpa summons us inside.