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Two icons flank the doorway to the nave, each set in a shrine of grapevines wrought from worn brass. The first, hammered from a sheet of tin, is a relief of Mary cradling an infant Jesus. The second is a painting of a woman, a cross held to her heart, her placid gaze fixed on a horizon miles behind Lily's back. The opulent robes and flawless skin of Saint Irene don't fit with the image Lily had in her head. When she asked Nick - he has been her boyfriend since shortly after they started grade twelve - to tell her about St. Irene, he had listed her credentials: a noblewoman turned bride of Christ, cleaner of abbey toilets, owner of nothing, survivor of burned flesh, denier of worldly pain.

Lily quietly enters the nave of St. Irene's Greek Orthodox Church - a service is in progress - and sits down in the last pew. Wall paintings of colonnades, semi-circular arches linking one column to the next, extend along the side walls. Portraits of long-nosed, sombre-eyed men with smooth faces and open palms that are pale even in lantern light fill the openings between the columns. Behind the altar shrines of every size, for every saint, enough to keep the devout rapt for hours, leave her feeling out of place, separate from a faith steeped in time, brought from such a faraway and enigmatic place.

Her eyes find Nick's back: a dark jacket smooth between shoulder seams, black hair like the saints. It's the first she has seen of him since the Christmas holidays began. For two weeks she'd had only the odd telephone call and the gift he left for her, as proof that he was real.

On the last day of school Lily and Nick stood facing each other, a shoulder each against the chain-link fence of the schoolyard, snow drifting at their feet. Nick held kourambiedes, melomakarona and diples saved from his lunch to her mouth while she took a bite. A trace of powdered sugar clinging to her lip, she repeated each of the unfamiliar names after Nick. She could hardly string together two syllables before they burst into laughter, Nick saying her pronunciation was awful, that the fair-skinned Lily O'Reilly could never be a Greek. She walked home from school in a sea of Christmas - ribbon-strung bells tinkling, coloured lights glowing red, green, blue, yellow from beneath a blanket of snow, boys shrieking laughter, ambushing their father with snowballs as he stepped onto the front walk. Chin lowered, feet barely lifted, she walked through newly fallen snow. Twice Nick had turned down her suggestions of when and where to meet. He said he needed to clear it with his father, that his father had lined up a whack of parties with his customers, that he would want Nick to be there.

Mr. Staikos's company supplied ranges, ovens, hoods, grills, griddles, fryers and rotisseries to restaurants, most owned by Greeks who seemed to count Mr. Staikos among their best friends. The restaurant openings, the baptisms, the namedays, the myriad Greek holidays Nick was expected to celebrate with his father's business associates were nothing new. But still she plodded home from school unhappy that she and Nick had parted with only a promise to work something out.

Nick's mother sits to his right in the pew, her spine straight, her slim shoulders square, her long neck draped with a string of pearls. Unlike most of the women she wears a hat, its broad brim blocking a fellow parishioner's view of his most beloved saint. Beside her sits Nick's father, a little stout, his black hair streaked with gray and sculpted into place. Alex, once voted Eastdale Collegiate's Most Likely to Succeed and the only Staikos, besides Nick, Lily has met, isn't there. Yesterday he went back to Cornell, back to a life that includes a football scholarship and a girlfriend whose father founded Meze Foods, back to a life that, according to Nick, is slipped into the conversation every chance his parents get.

The priest and congregation stand and chant, kneel and pray, the well-known words - half Greek, half English - easily rolling off their tongues. The priest steps from the pulpit, a cross in his hand, and moves to a vessel sitting on a pedestal in front of the pews.

Today, The Feast of Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation of Christ to the world. He was in the world but the world was unseeing.

The priest lowers the cross into the vessel.

Wishing to give light to those in darkness, Jesus descended into the River Jordan, His baptism. The heavens opened, the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus and the voice of the Father bore witness to Him: Thou art my beloved Son.

The cross is raised, gleaming in the lamplight, water snaking along its surface.

Thou appeared, O God, and enlightened the world.

As the service ends the congregation stirs in their seats. Nick stands, as does a girl of about Lily's age who was sitting on his left. Beside her a woman who seems to be her mother wears a large hat much like the one Mrs. Staikos wears. Nick and the girl join the line of parishioners waiting for a ladleful of water to be poured into the urns, empty coffee jars and Tupperware containers they have brought to St. Irene's.

Nick had told Lily about the water, how the old people sprinkle it in their homes muttering ancient words, how the killantzaroi flee looking for an unholy place to live. She laughed, said they knew about Dorothy's Wicked Witch of the West, soggy and melted on the floor. He folded his arms across his chest, said that in other households, those too modern to believe in goblins, the water is spread to arouse God's favour, to show a devoted home.

Her eyes still on Nick's back, she imagines droplets of the blessed water rolling from the fingertips of parishioners to the floor, prayers for a thriving baby, a winning lottery ticket, a quickly mended hip floating heavenward. And Mr. and Mrs. Staikos, she sees them - glistening fingers, eyes pressed closed - petitioning hard for a second enviable son, a son just like their first.

Next in line Nick sets his urn on a pew, takes the girl's from her and hands it to the priest. Urns filled, Nick and the girl walk toward their families, now waiting in the aisle. In unison the mothers kiss each other's cheeks. The fathers embrace, clap each other's backs. Throughout the farewell Nick's open hand has hovered an inch below the girl's bent elbow, as though he anticipates guiding her but thinks her too precious, too golden, too delicate to touch.

Lily thinks of his hands all over her, between her legs, in her hair, his mouth wandering over her breasts. And today she doesn't get that fleeting feeling that makes her shut her eyes, sigh and slowly inhale. She feels his unshaven face rough on her cheek, his full weight on her ribs making it difficult for her to breathe, the hardness between his legs pushing on a tender place, his arm wrapping her thigh and pressing down until it hurts.

From wet eyes he and the girl seem a tangle of flat colour, their individual bodies difficult to make out. Lily breathes deeply, slowly. Wanting the clear, cold air of a winter's day to dry her eyes, to fill her lungs, she rushes from the nave.

In the empty vestibule St. Irene, serene and luminous, waits in flickering candle light. Lily hurriedly whispers what she wants - devotion, reverence, awe - and leans to kiss Irene's feet before leaving the church.

But in her haste Lily has forgotten that chaste Irene doesn't know a thing about love, that it was straight to the convent for her, a place she never left, on learning that her intended had married someone else. Nick said it was there that Irene acquired the lofty talent for which she is known. With a twinkle of her eye or a prayer whispered to what some might think just a wispy cloud in the sky, she can fill a woman's womb with a tiny perfect child.

Christmas trees stripped of red silk balls, gilded pinecones and coloured lights lie curbside on beds of needles atop mounds of dirty ice. Shadows are long and thin, dull blue against snow more gray than white. There's no need to squint today, no need to curb the sometimes-bedazzling light of winter. A thickening layer of cloud blocks the sun, attempts to snuff it out as Lily walks to school. But she won't let the wiped-clean slate of a new year give in to dark days that blacken to night at four in the afternoon. She has waited for the holidays to end, for Nick to stand facing her, his hands hesitant, hovering an inch from her skin.

As she crouches to lift her biology text from her locker, he walks toward her. She stands, lowers her chin and, bolstered by the thought of the few extra minutes she had spent that morning - rearranging her hair, thickening her lashes, lightly rimming her eyes in smoky gray, trying on three pairs of jeans before settling on the first - she smiles her most beguiling smile. His hand reaches for the spot where her shoulder meets her throat, stills for a moment, almost brushes her arm as it slips though the air before coming to rest at his side. As the bell announcing the first period rings, he asks her to come over that evening. His parents will be out.

I'd kind of like to meet them, she says.

Not tonight.

When?

As Nick takes a step away from her, he answers a question other than what she meant. No earlier than eight, he says.

Before climbing the steps of the porch, Lily, standing just down the street from Nick's house, just beyond the fringes of glittering lamp-lit snow, watches his parents leave. Nick opens the door and ushers her inside as he looks down the street.

They're gone, she says.

She hands him a parcel wrapped in shiny red paper, a sprig of plastic holly taken from the wreath her mother hangs on the door taped onto its surface. Inside the parcel are a blue scarf and pair of mittens that she knit by herself.

She takes off her coat and boots, puts them in the closet while he unwraps his gift. He puts on the mittens, wraps the scarf around the back of her neck, pulls her toward him. They're great, he says. My mother would be impressed.

As he leads her through the kitchen, she glimpses a small wooden crucifix hung on the wall. The placid face of Jesus, his faraway gaze remind her of Saint Irene, of the reverence with which Nick's hand waited beneath the elbow of the girl.

Nick drops onto the couch in the rec room of the finished basement, pulls her on top of him, says, I missed you a lot.

Not that much.

I did.

She pushes herself to sitting, says, I haven't seen you in two weeks. You haven't asked about the rest of my holiday. Which sucked, in case you care.

It's not like I was having fun, he says. Alex and I were paraded all over Toronto. And we had to go to church about a hundred times.

Silence hangs in the room, until he finally says, My parents did their best to make sure there wasn't time for you. I called. I did the best I could.

As he strokes her hair, her cheek, smoothes his thumb over her brow, she thinks that yes, he had called often, each time speaking in a hurried, hushed voice. Once he told her his parents were waiting in the car, that he had told them he forgot his gloves. And Christmas morning she found a present lying on the threshold between the storm and inner doors. On the telephone he told her he had sneaked out of the house while his parents were asleep, walked the mile or so to her house in the dark and left the gift - a bottle of Chanel No. 5 - for her to find.

He presses the corners of her mouth upward until she smiles on her own. He tells her she smells nice.

It's the Chanel, she says. I wanted to wear it tonight.

He leans toward her. She closes her eyes, anticipates his warmth. But upstairs a key turns in the front door lock. They both hear the click, the door opening, and feet stamping as snow is sloughed from boots.

The stamping belongs to a man, a man with a key, a man who cannot be Alex. Terrified that the man who doesn't want her spending time with his son is about to appear, she holds her breath. Footsteps move toward the kitchen, toward the staircase leading to the rec room.

Without losing another moment Nick takes her wrists and pulls her up from the couch. Finger to her lips he guides her to a set of low double doors at the far end of the rec room.

Nick? Mr. Staikos calls from the kitchen.

Yes, Nick says, opening the double doors and motioning with his chin for her to join the bushel baskets of eggplant and potatoes, and creepy crawly things of the low-ceilinged cold cellar.

She steps inside. He leaves the doors open just a crack.

I forgot the melomakarona, she hears Mr. Staikos's voice say. Any more of your mother's melomakarona and I'll be as fat as a pig.

Crouched in the darkness, goose pimpled arms wrapped around shivering knees, she cries not because she's fearful of a spider becoming tangled in her hair but because she knows for certain that the girl who sat beside Nick at church wouldn't have been shoved out of sight, hidden from the man he wants to please.

As the footsteps leave the kitchen and head back toward the front door, Nick calls up, See you later, Dad!

Call Voula, Mr. Staikos calls back down to him. No later than nine. Stavros is a hothead and she's his only girl.

The sound of the front door closing echoes in the entranceway, in the rec room, in Lily's sinking head.

But after a few minutes in the bathroom, telling herself that Voula is plain and dull and mopey, and won't be able to stay out past ten, the red-eyed Lily who stepped from the cold cellar is clear-eyed once again. She'll walk over to Nick, seated on the couch. She'll put her arms around his neck, climb onto his lap. Should she straddle him, a knee on either side of his thighs? Yes, she thinks. I must.

On the couch she hears reverence in the whispered words You're beautiful, in his pounding heart. And soon she's on her back, panties looped around an ankle. Yes, the playing field's uneven. Nick's devotion to his parents is on the other side. And a girl like Voula will prompt Mr. Staikos to hand over the car keys, no questions asked. So until she knows with certainty that Nick can't give her up, he'll have his cake and eat it too. That's her plan. And so half-naked Lily moans and writhes, self consciously at first, and then more easily when it becomes clear just how much he approves. She tugs his hair, does whatever it takes, whatever she imagines Voula would never do. She tastes his open hand. And eyes pressed closed, she pushes bitterness away from her lips, to the back of her throat.