The Virgin. Tiffany Reisz

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       6

      Upstate New York

      IN THE LAST minutes before midnight, Elle arrived at the Abbey of the Sisters of Saint Monica. It stood before her, a two-hundred-year-old stone edifice rising up three stories from the deep green earth. Spotlights shone on it, illuminating the high gray walls and the cobblestone path that led from the winding driveway to its hulking wooden front door. She knew more about this abbey than any laywoman should. Briefly she’d lived with her mother after graduating college in the hopes of repairing their fractured relationship. Her mother had let her move in for reasons unknown. Perhaps she’d harbored the same hopes. Reconciliation was a sacrament to Catholics, after all.

      It was on the first day back under her mother’s roof that Elle found a white folder embossed with the initials SSM on the front. S and M Elle understood. But no, this was SSM—The Sisters of St. Monica. That place had been a foreign country to her. Soon she discovered her mother was in complete earnest about fulfilling her teenage dream to become a nun, a dream derailed when a one-night fling with a handsome older boy ended in a pregnancy, a shotgun wedding and a quickie divorce soon thereafter.

      Now William “Billy” Schreiber was dead and buried and no one mourned him. Elle was an adult. And now Margaret Kohl was Sister Mary John of The Sisters of Saint Monica, a small order that consisted of five abbeys around the world, less than five hundred women in total. Their charism, according to the literature Elle had read, was to serve Christ like true brides—with love and devotion, and to pray for His church unceasingly until it found salvation, as Saint. Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, had prayed unceasingly for her son’s salvation.

      The nighttime air was still warm with the day’s heat, but Elle had put on the black jacket she’d found in the duffel bag. She had no idea what to wear that would be appropriate for a convent, but she guessed the less skin she showed, the better. Under the jacket she wore a plain white T-shirt and dark jeans. At least in her black-and-white clothes she’d match the sisters in their black-and-white habits.

      She left the car parked at a gas station a mile away and had walked the rest of the way here. The car would sit and sit and sit until the owner called the police and reported it. The police would run the tags and call Daniel, who would likely say he’d lent it to a friend who forgot where he’d parked it. The police would be dubious, but would say no problem, hang up and Daniel would retrieve his car.

      For that moment when owner and car were reunited, Elle had left a little note in the glove compartment for him.

      Dear Daniel,

      I lied. I didn’t leave Søren because he asked me to marry him. I left because of what he did after I said no. If you’d been there, you would never have ratted me out to King. I hope you never have a daughter someday.

      Love, Elle.

      P.S. Fuck you.

      P.P.S. Nice car. I dented the fender on purpose. And the driver’s side door. And the passenger side.

      P.P.P.S. And the hood.

      * * *

      At midnight she crossed the threshold and entered the convent. Silence reigned inside the heavy stone structure. She could hear her own breathing, her own heart beating. She breathed like a wounded runner who’d had to crawl to the finish line. But she wasn’t done crawling yet. Not until she was behind the inner door. Only behind that door would she be safe. Only behind that door could she rest.

      Like every monastery, the convent employed a doorkeeper. Søren had told her about the original doorkeeper for the Jesuit order, Brother Alphonsus Rodríguez, who joined the Jesuits after the death of his wife and his three children. According to Søren, Brother Alphonsus treated every person who knocked on the door of the Jesuit school where he was stationed as if it were God Himself at the door. He worked as nothing more than a porter, a glorified doorman for forty years. In 1888, the world’s most devoted doorman became a saint.

      Elle didn’t feel like God as she walked to the porter’s window. She didn’t feel like the Devil, either. She felt tired and scared, and she wanted more than anything to wake up in her own bed at Kingsley’s to find the past week had been nothing but a dream, nothing but a nightmare. She’d wake up and find Søren next to her in bed, and she’d roll over and stretch out on his chest, press her ear to his heart and listen to it beating. He would stir and wake and stroke her hair and her bruised back until she fell asleep again. When she woke up for the day he would be long gone with only the stains on the sheets, the welts on her body and the scent of winter on his pillow to prove he’d been there.

      That was the Søren she knew and loved. She had no idea who this new Søren was, the one she’d met two nights ago. But she was relieved to know she’d put several hundred miles between them. And yet, several hundred miles wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough until she was behind that door in front of her, the door with a simple brass plaque that read, No Men Beyond This Point. No men allowed. Not even priests.

      She rang the bell and said a prayer to Saint Monica, praying her earthly daughters would take her in and shelter her.

      A wooden panel at a window that reminded her of an old-fashioned bank teller’s was pushed aside and a woman in large glasses peered out at her.

      “Welcome, child. Can we help you?” she asked, her tone kind and curious.

      “My mother is here. Sister Mary John,” Elle said, her voice wavering against her will. “I need to talk to her.”

      “Is it an emergency, or can it wait until morning? Now is the Great Silence and nearly everyone is sleeping.”

      That question utterly flummoxed her. Emergency? Nothing was burning down at the moment...except her entire life. Did that count as an emergency?

      Yes. Yes it did.

      “Someone’s trying to find me, and this is probably the first place he’ll look.”

      The sister’s eyes widened farther behind her glasses.

      “Is this person dangerous?”

      “Very,” Elle said.

      “I’ll find her for you.”

      “Thank you,” Elle said with profound gratitude.

      She closed the wooden panel at the window but she reappeared in seconds at the door.

      “Come inside here,” the sister said, ushering her in. “It’s against protocol, but if someone’s coming after you, you should wait here.”

      Elle could have kissed the woman for her compassion. The elderly nun trundled off down a long dimly lit hallway leaving Elle by the door. Even after the sister disappeared, Elle could hear the sound of her rosary beads and orthopedic shoes echoing off the stone floors СКАЧАТЬ