We couldn’t believe it. Standing together for a Christmas Eve prayer service, mutterings were slowly working their way down the pews like a row of finches telling each other where the good seeds are.

Uncle Walter blew his nose noisily into a handkerchief, as Aunt Patty silently rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Sleep, or disgrace, I can’t really figure out which. Not that it mattered.

My cousin, once a fledgling nun candidate, has been caught working part-time for a London escort agency. In an instant, all the hopes the family had for Emma seemed to vanish just about as fast as she did once she discovered the secret was out. The last any of us had heard from her, she was on her way to Manchester with a man twice her age who worked as a part-time Santa down at the mall.