At the moment, she wasn’t clear about much of anything, so she got up from her chair and went out into the hall. Her office was in a long single-story annex that connected the church and the rectory, along with the offices of all the other people who held administrative posts of any kind in the parish. Sister Scholastica had an office in the parochial-school building, but she also had one here, because she was not only the school principal but the parish’s delegate to the Archdiocesan Office of Education. Sister Thomasetta had her office here, too. She was the new comptroller, brought in by Father Healy only a year ago, to replace the nun of Sister Harriet’s own order who had held that position for fifteen years. Sister Thomasetta, needless to say, was a Sister of Divine Grace and wore a habit. All the other people who worked in the offices were laywomen, of the type Harriet thought of as Daily Communicants, and most of them did go to Mass every day at seven o’clock before they checked in for work. Harriet had only begun to realize how much change Father Healy had brought with him. Her own office was now the only one that did not have a picture of the Madonna on the wall, or a holy water font just inside the door. In the old days, Harriet couldn’t remember a single time when the women in these offices had prayed the rosary together, or spent their lunch hours studying Catholic doctrine. Now it happened every noon, and there were copies of The Catechism of the Catholic Church on every desk top. Copies of The New American Bible had disappeared. Copies of The Ignatius Bible, which boasted that it was the only translation in English that had not given way to inclusive language at all, were everywhere. It was as if a sea change had happened in this parish while Harriet wasn’t looking. The waters that surrounded her were cold as ice, and the air was darker than any ordinary darkness could be. She had said a lot of things about the way the Church was marching back into the Dark Ages, but she had never really believed them. In the back of her mind, she had always been sure that progress was inevitable. Now it frightened her to realize that she might have been wrong. It might really be possible for the Church to go back, and it was going back, returning to a time when it would have ground a woman like her into powder. In a world of devotional rosaries and First Friday Devotions and weekly confessions in a dark curtained box, she would be invisible.
She stopped in front of Sister Scholastica’s office door and saw through the window that the office was empty. She went down the hall to Sister Thomasetta’s and found the door open and Thomasetta pecking away at a computer keyboard. Harriet didn’t think anything looked as odd as nuns in full habit pecking away at computers.
“Can I help you?” Thomasetta asked, not bothering to look up.
“I was hoping Scholastica was over here, that’s all,” Harriet said. “I was hoping not to have to go all the way over to the school.”
“Well, you don’t have to. Sister isn’t there, either. She’s been out all morning.”
“Out? Where?”
“The chancery.”
“Why would she go to the chancery?”
Thomasetta shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? The Cardinal Archbishop calls, and Sister goes. Oh, and I think she was stopping to see friends afterward. At any rate, she took Peter Rose to the chancery with her and Peter Rose is back, but Scholastica isn’t, and she isn’t likely to be until after lunch. Would you like me to leave a message?”
“No,” Harriet said. “No, that’s all right. It’s about the First Communion breakfast. I can get to her later, or Father Healy would know. What time is it exactly?”
“Ten-thirty-two-oh-six.”
“Thank you.” It figured, somehow, that Thomasetta would know the time down to the fraction of the second. Harriet left Thomasetta’s office door and went down the hall again. She passed Scholastica’s office and tried the door. It opened easily. Like many traditionalist nuns, Scholastica almost never locked any personal space, because she didn’t think of herself as having personal space. Harriet went down the hall to her own office and sat.
The difficulty was this: Harriet had no idea why Scholastica had gone to the chancery, but she was sure it had to be about something important, because the Cardinal Archbishop did not waste time on trivialities. She was equally sure that it was going to be something important that concerned her, because at the moment she was the biggest problem the Cardinal Archbishop had. She had to be, because Father Healy was making waves, and the Cardinal Archbishop knew she wouldn’t take being bullied lying down. She might even be in a fairly strong position, if only because this Cardinal Archbishop hated publicity more than he hated any other thing. That was entirely natural, considering the damage the child sex abuse scandal had done to this archdiocese when it had finally broken in the papers and been spotlighted on CNN. And 60 Minutes. And The CBS Evening News. Even so, if she didn’t know what was coming, she might easily make mistakes. This man was not the fool the old cardinal had been. He was more like Cardinal Richelieu.