“Yes, Sister.”
“Come in.”
Neila finally made up her mind and came in. She looked even more tired than Alice Marie had, and a good deal more worried. Scholastica thought she was still grieving for Brigit and had a right to a few sleepless nights. Now she probably wants to talk it all out, Scholastica thought, and that made sense, too. Scholastica had been expecting Neila to show up at her office door to have it out for days now.
“Sit down,” Scholastica said.
Neila had made it halfway across the office from the door. Now she scurried the rest of the way to the chair and sat. She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. She crossed her feet at the ankles and hunched her shoulders. She looked thoroughly miserable.
“Sister,” she said, “do you know all that stuff you were telling us the other day, about religious obedience? And how Christ was obedient to God unto death?”
“Yes, Neila, but I think I also said that none of you were likely to be called on to be obedient unto death. This order doesn’t send Sisters into Communist China.”
“I know. What I want to know is, how can you tell if God’s asking you to do something?”
Oh, no, Scholastica thought. Not this. Not from Neila. Neila was her best hope in the whole postulant class. It wasn’t that Scholastica didn’t think it was a sensible question. It was a much better question than that. It was just that she knew what it usually meant when it was asked by postulants, and that wasn’t sensible at all.
“Neila,” she said carefully, “if you think God has been talking to you—”
Neila’s head shot up. “It’s not me,” she said desperately. “I went to confession and I tried to explain it to Father Fitzsimmons and he just didn’t understand. Nobody understands. It’s not me I’m talking about.”
“Who are you talking about?” Scholastica was bewildered.
“Brigit, of course. Brigit said that it was all right, doing what she did, because she went to God and he told her—I don’t remember how it worked. It was crazy. But she said it was God and I didn’t like to tattle and then she was dead and I didn’t know what—”
“Stop,” Scholastica said. “Go back to the beginning. What did Brigit do?”
Neila stared at her hands. “She stole one of the postulants’ dresses, the extra ones we keep for emergencies—I guess I don’t mean stole it. She took it.”
“But why? If she needed a new dress we’d just—”
“It wasn’t for her,” Neila said. “It was a different size. I don’t know what size but bigger than hers because she was saying she couldn’t use one of her own because it would never fit. And she took it with her the day she died wrapped up under her own clothes and she was supposed to deliver it to somebody down on Diamond Place or Clare Avenue and when I heard that on the news about Sam Harrigan saying he’d seen her there I thought it was right and then I was sure, I really am sure, that that was why she ended up being killed and now there’s been another one and where’s the extra postulant’s dress? Where is it?”
“Calm down,” Scholastica said. “Calm down.”
“I can’t calm down.”
“You have to calm down,” Scholastica told her. “I’m going to call Mr. Demarkian back here and you’re going to tell him everything you told me. Everything.”
As far as Scholastica was concerned, Neila was going to tell Demarkian a good deal more than that. She was going to tell everybody a good deal more than that. It was vital.
For the first time since the day Brigit Ann Reilly died, Scholastica felt she was finally doing something.
Six
[1]
“I CALLED YOU,” BENNIS Hannaford said, after Gregor had managed to detach himself from the clutches of the woman at the desk, get up to his room, and get through to Cavanaugh Street on AT&T, “because Lida called old George Tekamanian, and old George Tekamanian called Father Tibor, and Father Tibor called me. And even then I would have left you alone, except that Father Tibor said he was going to call me back.”
Gregor’s room was on the second floor and large, a big square wood-paneled space with a fireplace. There was an oversize closet and a bathroom with too much equipment in it. The tub was some kind of a whirlpool and the stall shower had knobs and hoses and spouts for functions Gregor couldn’t begin to imagine. The phone was a Princess, which always made Gregor feel as if he were being asked to talk into a child’s toy version of a boomerang. He shrugged off his jacket and tucked the receiver between his ear and his shirt. Then he went to work on his tie.