When Lauren arrived at the Stewart house, a Chevy Suburban with Virginia plates was parked in her usual spot. She pulled in beside it, but before she could even get out, the front door opened, and Michele and Daisy ran outside.
“How’s my favorite goddaughter?” she asked, Michele’s arms wrapped tightly around her as Daisy danced around both of them.
“Good.” Michele spied the bag on the passenger seat. “What did you bring?”
“Homemade shortbread, but it’s for dessert.”
She followed Michele into the house—Daisy trotting along hopefully—where she was greeted by Jennifer’s parents.
“Edna, it’s so nice to see you.”
Edna Worthington gave Lauren a one-armed hug, her other arm filled with Chad, who reached his chubby arms out to her. She took him, but he immediately squirmed to get down and made a beeline for the coffee table.
“Charles, keep him away from the candy.”
“Oh, no you don’t, little man,” said his grandfather, scooping him up again. He also picked up the candy dish, filled with colorful M&Ms, and put it up on a high shelf. “You were right. Candy dish wasn’t a good idea.”
Edna rolled her eyes. “It’s been too long since we had to childproof a house. He’s forgotten.”
Lauren chuckled. “Where’s Jennifer?”
“Changing Chelsea. They just woke up from their naps a bit ago. Jamie’s out in the barn.”
“When did you get in?”
“Last night about eight. It’s a long ride, but so worth it to have a whole month with these little angels.” Edna, her child radar obviously turned up, glanced toward the kitchen. “Michele Alice, you get out of those cookies!”
Michele jumped, pushing the lid of the tin back in place.
“Come with me,” Lauren said. “Let’s go see what your father is working on.”
Michele, shortbread crumbs on her lips, took Lauren’s hand as they exited through the kitchen door.
“Daddy’s been out here a lot lately.”
“Has he? Is he working on a new sculpture?”
“Don’t know. Mommy says not to bother him when he’s working.”
“Oh.” Lauren pulled Michele to a halt. “Um, tell you what, just in case it’s not a good time, how about you go back to the house. Ask your grandma if you can have another cookie.”
“Okay.” Michele ran back inside, and Lauren continued to the barn.
Cautiously, she knocked and pushed the door open enough to peer inside. “Jamie? Okay to come in?”
“Why the hell not.”
He looked rough, hair mussed, clay smears all over his jeans and T-shirt. A couple days’ stubble of red whiskers covered his jaw. He stood at a table where a large lump of clay was taking shape.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“Can’t you tell?” He stepped back with a scowl on his face.
“Well, yes, I can see that it’s a child and dog,” Lauren said. She stepped closer and bent near to inspect it. “Michele and Daisy?”
She straightened, trying to figure out how to phrase her critique. “It’s…”
“It’s garbage.” Jamie punched the clay. Lauren jumped. He turned from her, running his hand through his hair. “It’s gone. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Jamie,” Lauren said, trying not to sound shocked, “I don’t sculpt, so I don’t know what your process is, but I produce my best work when I’m not thinking about technique. I look at it later, and I see all kinds of little mistakes—small slubs in the weave, missed stitches—but the whole is beautiful, because what I remember when I look at it is that I was thinking about Mickey or you and Jenn and the kids when I was making it. When I manage to make something technically perfect, I know my mind was focused on it and not on anyone I love. And I’ve realized, it doesn’t matter how perfect it is, it’ll never be as beautiful.”
She pointed to the now disfigured hunk of clay. “This was technically very good. Good proportions, nice composition.”
He glowered at her. “But?”
“But it was stiff, lifeless. I’ve seen some of your sculptures that almost look as if they’re breathing. That Christ hanging in the Chapel, I half expect to see it actually move. This…” she pointed again. “This wasn’t that.”
He tilted his head as he studied the misshapen clay, suddenly looking so much like Mickey that it made Lauren’s heart hurt.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I’ve been so focused on trying to make something perfect, trying to prove to myself I can still do this.”
He stepped to the clay, pushing on it to fold it in on itself, but more gently this time. “I’ll start over.”
Lauren turned to leave.
“Hey.”
She paused, her hand on the door.
“Thank you. For being honest with me.”
She smiled. “I always will be.”
Back inside, Jennifer was in the kitchen, chopping carrots to add to the pot of soup on the stove. “Hi.” She nodded toward the barn. “How is he?”
Lauren hesitated, but be honest here, too, she reminded herself. “Struggling.”
Jennifer nodded. “I haven’t gone out there, trying to give him time and space.”
Lauren leaned to peer into the living room where Charles and Edna had the twins occupied while Michele sat in a chair and read.
“What about you?” Lauren went to the sink to scrub the potatoes sitting there. “If he’s out there when he’s not teaching, that leaves you with the kids—”
“Almost all the time,” Jennifer cut in, her voice cold. She closed her eyes. “I don’t mean to complain. I know he gave up the most when we started a family.”
She scraped the carrots into the pot. “I asked the museum for a leave of absence.”
“Really?”
Jennifer’s pursed lips told Lauren how hard that had been. “Had to. Can’t keep trying to work remotely with the twins here all day. They’re into everything. I don’t want to put them in daycare yet, and I can’t ask him for more time. Not now.”
“I could—”
“No.” Jennifer slapped the knife down. “You have your own work, your own life. This is our problem—”
She paused, her eyes closed. “I didn’t mean it that way. The kids are not a problem.”
“I know that. But it’s a lot.” Lauren noticed the small quiver of Jennifer’s chin as she tried to control her emotions. “I’m the only family you have nearby. I wouldn’t mind watching the children more, say one day a week.”
“Thank you.” Jennifer turned back to the counter and reached for one of the scrubbed potatoes sitting in the drain board. “I’ll think about it.”
Lauren pulled another knife from the block and helped chop the potatoes. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of the two knives thwacking against the cutting boards.
“How’s Gail?”
Lauren nearly dropped her knife at the unexpected question. “Um, she’s fine. I suppose.”
“You suppose?” Jennifer glanced her way. “Haven’t you talked?”
“We did. A couple of weeks ago. As I expected, she had a lot of things waiting for her when she got back. She’s been busy.”
That, Lauren decided, was as good a way as any to put it.
“You should ask her to come back for a visit. We’d love to see her.”
“I’ll ask her.” Lauren kept her attention glued on what she was doing, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jennifer watching her. Inside, the sudden anticipation of having an excuse to call Gail again warred with a sense that she shouldn’t be so happy about it.
Mother Theodora pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to quell the headache pounding there. “I should have picked something other than coffee to give up for Lent,” she muttered, bending over the letters before her. Two were to sisters of other orders who had inquired about booking the retreat house, a third was to Natalie Stewart, thanking her for the two crates of oranges and grapefruit she’d had sent from Florida. She chuckled to herself, remembering Mickey’s contentious relationship with her mother. It had always been James who’d been the peacemaker between them. She glanced at her calendar and realized she hadn’t seen or spoken to James or Jennifer—or Lauren for that matter—since Christmas.
After jotting a quick note to herself to write them, she took her glasses off and gathered the letters to take to the next office. “Sister Anastasia—”
She stopped abruptly when she saw Sister Isadore leaning over Sister Anastasia’s shoulder, pointing to something on the desk. Their whispered conversation immediately ceased.
“Mother.” Sister Anastasia looked up with wide eyes.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Mother said.
“Oh, you’re not.” Sister Isadore came from behind the desk. “We were just finishing.”
She swept from the room, leaving a sheepish Sister Anastasia alone to face Mother Theodora’s questioning expression.
Clearing her throat, Sister Anastasia hurriedly stuffed some papers into a manila folder. “What can I do for you?”
Mother decided not to push. “Could you please mail these for me?”
“Of course.” Sister Anastasia held out her hand for the letters. She whipped a paper out of the typewriter. “Here’s the agenda for the Council meeting tomorrow. Let me know if you want to amend it.”
“Thank you.” Mother Theodora paused. “Oh, and Sister Anastasia, don’t ever play poker.”
With a bewildered frown, Sister Anastasia said, “Yes, Mother.”
Mother took the agenda back to her office, scanning it. The postulants were scheduled to begin their retreats next week. The agenda had the list of which nuns had been paired as spiritual advisors to which of the postulants. Soon thereafter it would be time for the vote on admitting the postulants to the Novitiate and letting the second-year novices take their simple vows. She smiled. Their nerves never lessened. She remembered as if it were yesterday, how it felt. The waiting, the pacing, the panicked thoughts of “what will I do if they ask me to leave?”
Her smile faded. Those votes. She’d lobbied hard as abbess to get rid of the vote altogether, but the Council had insisted that the community needed to maintain the right to refuse a woman who wasn’t fit for religious life. In all her years in the community, there had only been a little more than a dozen times the vote had gone against a candidate, “but there is no need to tell anyone how many ‘no’ votes she got,” she’d argued. “The process is nerve-wracking enough without forever wondering which one or two may have voted against you.”
I never had to wonder, she mused. Both of the votes for her progression into religious life had included one “no” vote, and she’d been left in no doubt as to who had cast it. She’d still been in her second year of the Novitiate when Sister Beatrice got elected to the Council. For a time, her pessimism and negativity had spread, like a toxic spill, corrupting the contemplative atmosphere of the entire abbey for a few years.
She glanced at her agenda. The next Council elections were due this summer. She hoped the community would give her helpful members to take Sister Christina and Sister Rachel’s places. She would miss them.
Adjusting her glasses, she quickly made notes on the talk she was due to give the community after Easter. The abbey’s prayer board was covered with more requests than ever for prayers for people who were suffering, for those who were struggling or ill. It might be a good time to remind the nuns that they weren’t immune from the negative influences of the outside world, and needed to remain vigilant in looking for the good—in one another and in the world beyond.
“We find what we seek,” she murmured as she wrote.
Gail unplugged her laptop to pack it and the charging cord in her bag. “I’ll keep an eye on my email and—” She paused. “On second thought, I might have to hunt for internet, so call or text me if you need anything.”
Habte glanced up from her desk. “There’s no internet? Where are you going? The middle of nowhere?”
Gail grinned. “It feels like it sometimes. The person I’ll be staying with doesn’t have a computer, so… no internet.”
“And when are you going to tell me more about this person?” Habte set her pen down.
“There’s nothing to tell, really.” Gail had never directly discussed her personal life with Habte or Scott. He was in his own world most of the time, an affable, absent-minded man, whose wife kept him on track as rector of the parish. Habte was the opposite—highly organized and observant, she rode herd on her husband and kids, and she noticed everything. Just like she tilted her head now at the telltale burn in Gail’s cheeks. Gail caved.
“Oh, Habte. I might be getting myself into a mess. Lauren is the one who guided my retreat. She’s an ex-nun, so the Mother Abbess was the one who recommended her. When I wasn’t ready to come back to my real life yet after the holidays, but the retreat house was booked, Lauren invited me to stay with her.”
“Was it awkward?”
Gail dropped back into her desk chair. “It was wonderful.”
“I’m confused.” Habte frowned. “If it was wonderful—and we’ll come back to that in a minute—why is it a mess you’re getting into?”
“The whole ex-nun thing,” Gail began. She ran her hand through her hair. “I think it was a complicated process. She’d been in a long time, but at least part of her decision to leave was that she’d fallen in love with someone else in the community.”
“Oooooh.” Habte nodded knowingly.
“No. I don’t think it was like that. I don’t think anything but feelings happened while they were under vows. But Mickey—that was the other nun—got seriously injured. Lauren made the decision to leave, but Mickey didn’t leave until later. They were able to be together, only for a couple of months. I’m fuzzy on some of the details.”
Habte leaned forward, clearly intrigued. “What happened?”
“Mickey died.” Gail shook her head. “Lauren still isn’t over it. I’ve met Mickey’s twin brother and his wife, who is the youngest sister of Mickey’s first partner, who died of cancer…”
“Whoa.” Habte held up her hands, her eyes flitting back and forth as she tried to make the connections. “Yanhar iswid.”
Gail did a double take. “That’s the bad one, right?”
Habte chuckled. “Yes. It’s a black day, a bad day. Yanhar abyad is a white day, a good thing.”
“Anyway. The bottom line is, Mickey’s a saint. Lauren is surrounded by people who are all connected to the saint. There’s no room in her life for someone else.”
“But you’d like to be the someone else.”
Gail scoffed. “I haven’t met anyone I want to be with since my breakup—that was before I came here—and when I finally do, she’s beyond my grasp.”
“But you’re going to visit her.”
“Yeah. She called a couple of evenings ago. Jennifer, the younger sister I mentioned, her parents are visiting from Virginia, and Lauren invited me to come.”
“This doesn’t sound like someone who’s beyond your grasp. She sounds like someone who might be lonely, someone who might be ready for another relationship.”
“You think?”
“Does she know how you feel?”
“Good Lord, no!”
Habte rose from her chair and came over to drag Gail to her feet. “If you don’t reach out to her, you’ll never know if she was beyond your grasp or not. And you’ll always wonder.”
Habte’s words played round and round in Gail’s head as she drove to Millvale. The closer she got, the faster her heart pounded. She braked to a stop in the drive to try and get her breathing under control.
“You are so pathetic,” she lectured herself. “She invited you to be friendly. Just be with her.”
Nevertheless, that same heart stopped for a moment when Lauren stepped outside as Gail parked. She was just as Gail had pictured her, a willowy figure in faded jeans and a deeper indigo sweater, her blonde hair pulled back into its usual loose braid. When her face broke into a smile, Gail thought she was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“How was the drive?”
“Fine. Not much traffic. Thanks so much for inviting me back up here. I guess I didn’t wear out my welcome?”
Gail retrieved her suitcase and backpack from the back seat and carried them to the porch.
“Breakfast hasn’t been the same without you.”
Lauren leaned close, startling Gail for a second, but she only reached for one of the bags in Gail’s hands. Kyrie trotted over, meowing loudly and trying to trip Gail as they stepped inside. Lauren led the way up the stairs to the same room Gail had used previously.
“Do you need a few minutes?” Lauren asked, setting the backpack at the foot of the bed.
“Just a few.”
“I’ll put the kettle on. We’re not going over for dinner until five.”
“Be right down.”
Gail waited until she heard Lauren’s footsteps descending the stairs before going into the bathroom, where she leaned on the vanity. Looking at her own reflection in the mirror, she saw only the silver hair, the wrinkles creasing the corners of her eyes and mouth, the start of jowls.
“What in the world is she going to see in you?”
She quickly washed up and ran her hands over her hair to smooth it before going down to the kitchen.
The kettle was just beginning to whistle.
“Could you pour for us?” Lauren asked, busying herself at the counter.
By the time Gail had chai tea brewed for each of them, Lauren had a plate heaped with shortbread.
“Your favorite, I recall?”
Gail blushed. “I guess I wasn’t very gracious, was I?”
Lauren laughed. “I think you were just ready to be mad at the world, and my showing up with shortbread made that a little more difficult.”
“You have no idea,” Gail muttered under her breath, following Lauren to the living room where a fire warmed the room.
A log snapped with a hiss of steam as Gail kicked off her shoes and shoved back into her armchair to sit cross-legged.
“Is your back bothering you?”
“Just stiff after the drive.” Gail wiggled her bottom until her spine was pressed firmly against the back of the chair.
She reached for a cookie just as Lauren did the same. For an instant, their fingers touched, and the connection sent shockwaves through Gail. She withdrew her hand as if she’d been burned.
She cradled her cup in both hands to control the slight tremor. “Fill me in on how everyone is. Jennifer and Jamie and the kids.”
When it was safe, she took a cookie and nibbled on it while Lauren talked about Jamie’s return to sculpting and Jennifer’s leave from the museum.
“She’s really going to give up her job?”
“The museum agreed to a year, she said. When the twins are a little older, they’ll try daycare, and then she can hopefully resume.”
Lauren shifted in her chair, tucking her legs under her as she faced Gail. “What about you? Don’t think I don’t know when you’re redirecting the conversation.”
Gail gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m doing okay.” When Lauren only waited, Gail sighed. “It’s been weird. I told you, I’d forgotten how needy people are. Some days, there’s hardly a minute to myself for sixteen hours. Those are the good days. I go home and fall into bed. Other days, there’s too much time to think.”
She waited, staring at the fire, refusing to look at Lauren. She’ll see. She’ll know exactly what you’ve been thinking about.
“May I ask you a question?” she countered before Lauren could ask another.
“Of course.”
“What was it like when you left the abbey? The process of deciding that that was what you needed to do. The bureaucratic side of it. Everything.”
This time, it was Lauren’s turn to stall by sipping her tea and staring into the fire for a moment. “It was the most difficult period of my life. My mother had died a few years before that, and the stipulations in her will complicated everything.”
Gail had the opportunity to study her face as she paused. The firelight highlighted the delicate contours of her face, and Gail found herself wishing she could run her fingers over those fine planes. Kyrie jumped up to curl in Gail’s lap.
“I told you Mickey had been injured saving me. The fire at the abbey started in the vestment wing. I foolishly went back in to try and save some museum tapestries we were preserving, but the smoke… I would have died in there, had she not come back for me. She dragged me to safety, but a burning roof timber crushed her. Between the burns and the spine injury, it was several months before she could return to the abbey. But before then, we’d acknowledged how we felt about each other.
“While she was gone, I had the time and the opportunity to do some real soul-searching. I insisted she do the same. It killed me to leave her there at the rehab hospital, but I had to let her make her own decisions without any influence from me. I went on a retreat at a sister abbey, and it was there I realized I could no longer live under vows I didn’t believe in anymore.”
Lauren paused again, her brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry,” Gail said. “I didn’t mean to drag up so many painful memories.”
Lauren forced a smile. “Only partially painful. I was gone by the time Mickey returned to St. Bridget’s. Mother kept me apprised of her progress, so I knew how she was doing, but… I didn’t dare communicate with her directly at that point. The process of getting a dispensation from my vows took several months.”
“What did you do? Where’d you go?”
“To San Francisco. It’s where I’m from.” Lauren closed her eyes for a moment. “My family is a mess. My mother was incredibly controlling. When she died, she’d arranged her will to continue trying to keep everyone dancing on her marionette strings. I’d planned, when I was still under vows, to ignore the will and just let the time run itself out, but once I’d decided to leave… well, she never wanted me to be at St. Bridget’s. I claimed my share of the inheritance, set up trusts for my father and brother, and arranged to donate almost all of the remainder.”
“Donate? Where to?”
Lauren’s eyes reflected her surprise. “Mother didn’t tell you?”
Gail wracked her brain, trying to remember if she’d forgotten some important detail.
“I donated it to St. Bridget’s. That’s how they built the retreat house.”
“You’re kidding.” Gail chortled. “That’s great. No, I didn’t know.”
Lauren focused on Gail again. “Why were you asking? Are you thinking of leaving the priesthood?”
Gail ran a finger along Kyrie’s velvety stripes. “I don’t know. I know that’s not a real answer, but it’s the best I have for now.”
“Why would you consider leaving something you felt called to do? What’s changed?”
“Like you, I suppose, it’s me that has changed. Obviously, I don’t have to think about whether I can live under the vows you had taken, so I have a lot more freedom in that way, but…” She closed her eyes and let her head drop back against the chair. “Ministering to people feels like work now. It shouldn’t be like that. If it doesn’t bring me joy, how can I bring God’s love to others?”
“What would make you happy?”
Almost against her will, Gail’s eyes opened and she lifted her head to meet Lauren’s gaze. For what felt like an eon, they stared into each other’s eyes until Gail broke away, blinking down at the cat.
“My back is kind of sore. I think I will go lie down for a while before we head out to dinner.”
She gently shifted Kyrie to give her the warm cushion and went upstairs without looking back again.