by J. A. Jance
“Of course,” Ali said. “We always have a spare bed for you. What’s going on?”
“I’m still here in Jerome dealing with construction issues,” Sister Anselm explained. “I have to be in Flagstaff for a meeting early tomorrow morning. With a storm blowing in, I don’t want to be driving back and forth to Payson in ice and snow.”
St. Bernadette’s had been built by the Sisters of Charity in conjunction with a parochial school in the early 1900s while Jerome was still a thriving mining community. When the mines shut down, so did the school. After lying dormant for a number of decades, the convent had been reopened by the Sisters of Providence as an R&R center and retreat house for nuns from any number of orders who needed a place of quiet contemplation and respite where they could recover their mental and spiritual equilibrium.
The programs offered at St. Bernadette’s, many of them facilitated by Sister Anselm, may have been up to the minute, but the physical plant itself, now over a hundred years old, was falling down around the sisters’ ears. Months earlier, a building inspector had threatened to red flag the convent and throw the resident nuns out into the street.
At the time, B. Simpson had been worried about a badly injured teenager who had come to his attention. The kid, Lance Tucker, was a talented hacker. He was hospitalized in Texas having already survived one failed homicide attempt. Fearing another, B. had negotiated a treaty with his friend Bishop Gillespie. In exchange for sending Sister Anselm to Texas to look after Lance, B. had agreed to tackle the daunting project of bringing St. Bernadette’s into the twenty-first century. Since Sister Anselm had already established a close working relationship with B., the mother superior, Sister Justine, had appointed Sister Anselm to serve as construction supervisor for the convent’s complex remodeling project.
Rehab work had been scheduled to begin in early January. The nuns from St. Bernadette’s had decamped to a diocese-operated retreat in Payson in order to be out of the way. The facility in Payson, usually open only during the summer months, was a camp of sorts where priests from Phoenix could go to escape the valley’s all-consuming heat.
The displaced sisters from St. Bernadette’s had anticipated that their stay in Payson would last for no more than a matter of weeks. But that time period had already stretched into months. Delays with obtaining building permits had postponed work for nearly a month, and construction had only now finally begun. In the meantime, the nuns were shivering their nights away in flimsy cabins never designed for wintertime occupancy.
Ali had driven the almost eighty-mile route from Jerome to Payson many times. The fifty miles on the far side of Camp Verde were dicey under the best of circumstances. Snow and ice could make those miles downright treacherous. And then to have to turn around and reverse course the next morning to drive all the way to Flagstaff? No wonder Sister Anselm wanted to stay over.
“You’re in luck,” Ali told her. “Mr. Brooks looked at the weather forecast last night and told me that if a winter storm was coming through, today would be a ‘cassoulet kind of day.’ ”
“Cassoulet, really?” Sister Anselm asked. “You know what a treat that is!”
Although Sister Anselm had been born in the United States, she had spent decades of her life living in a small convent in France. Ali already knew that Leland Brooks’s cassoulet was one of the good sister’s all-time favorite meals.
“I’ll go out to the kitchen right now and ask him to set another place,” Ali told her. “When will you be here?”
“In about an hour,” Sister Anselm answered. “The snow is due to start any minute. I want to be off the mountain before that happens.”
The mountain in question was Mingus Mountain, which marked the far western end of the Verde Valley.
Once off the phone, Ali headed straight to the kitchen. Leland Brooks greeted her news about their unexpected guest with a confident grin.
“In that case,” he said, “I’d best set about mixing up a batch of corn bread to go along with the cassoulet. As I recall, the last time Sister Anselm had some of that, she referred to it as ‘heavenly.’ ”
“That’s because it is,” Ali assured him.
“And I’ll set the dining room table for two, then,” he added.
When Ali and Leland were at home alone, she often joined Leland in the kitchen at mealtimes, but she knew his sense of decorum would preclude serving company there.
“I hope you’ll join us,” Ali said.
“No, thank you,” Leland replied. “Will you be having wine?”
“Sister Anselm is partial to Côtes du Rhône Villages,” Ali answered.
“Very well,” Leland nodded. “I’ve had my eye on a particular bottle of a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I’ll bring that one in from the wine cellar.”
With that settled, Ali ushered Bella outside for a walk. They had installed a fully fenced dog run outside the back door and a doggie door as well. The latter Bella stubbornly refused to use. She no longer had to be on a leash to do her duty outside, but she needed someone outside with her holding a leash even if it wasn’t attached to her. It was annoying to have to accompany her outside in the cold for no good reason.
Back in the house, Ali returned to the library and cleared her desk, then she went to her room and changed out of her sweats into something a little dressier. When the doorbell rang, Bella and Leland went to answer it. By the time Leland escorted Sister Anselm into the library, Ali was there as well, seated in front of the fire, with a copy of Pride and Prejudice open on her lap.
Sister Anselm entered the room wearing ordinary business attire—a dark blue knit pantsuit with a high-necked white blouse under the blazer. The only hint that she might be a nun was a crucifix suspended on a gold chain that she wore at the base of her throat. The nun was a tall spare woman without a hint of the widow’s hump one might have expected for someone in her early eighties. Her iron-gray hair, thinning a little now, was cut in a short bob. Behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, her bright blue eyes sparkled with intelligence and good humor.
Sister Anselm settled into the chair opposite Ali. Bella immediately darted into her lap to give her an appropriate greeting, after which she decamped to Ali’s. At that point, Sister Anselm caught sight of a vivid white mark marring the outside of one of her pant legs. She tried dusting it off but with little effect.
“It’s only plaster dust,” she said resignedly. “It’s everywhere. I guess I’m lucky this is the only place it ended up. I can see now that B. was right. Reverend Mother thought we should be able to stay in the convent during construction. B. insisted otherwise, and it’s a good thing he did.”
“How’s it going?” Ali asked.
Sister Anselm shook her head. “Naturally there’s a problem with the foundation. I suspected as much since we’d had so much cracking at one end of the house. They’re bringing in a soil engineer to find a way to shore up the foundation. That has to happen before any other repairs can be undertaken.”
Leland turned up just then with a rosewood tray that contained two wineglasses and an already opened bottle of the Grand Cru he had selected. A glance at the label told Ali it was one of the rarer bottles that had come from her philandering second husband’s extensive wine collection. Because her divorce from Paul Grayson hadn’t been finalized at the time of his death, she had inherited the wine collection along with everything else. She never sipped any of what she thought of as “Fang’s wine” without remembering that it was, in a very real way, the spoils of war.
Leland poured two glasses and handed them out. Ali raised hers first. “Here’s to remodeling!”
Sister Anselm laughed. “I had a long talk with the electrician today. He’s a young guy who had never before seen what they call ‘knob and tube’ electrical wiring. Now that the place is stripped down to studs, it’s all painfully visible. From the looks of it, the wiring situation constituted a very real fire hazard
. The electrician told me it’s a miracle we weren’t all burned to death in our sleep.”
“How old is St. Bernadette’s again?” Ali asked.
“It was built in 1910,” Sister Anselm explained. “They remodeled it once in the twenties. That’s when they installed both electricity and running water. Very little has been done since, other than necessary repairs, painting, and the occasional plasterwork. For years Sister Evangeline, the cook, kept a list on the fridge saying what appliances could and couldn’t run at the same time. For instance, starting the microwave at the same time the coffeepot was going was a definite no-no. Ditto the toaster. Making toast at the same time as anything else was turned on meant we’d blow a fuse for sure. And since there was seldom more than one or two plug-ins in every room, we had little multi-outlet extension cords everywhere.”
“Fire hazard indeed,” Ali observed. She had been deeply involved in the remodel of this house, so she had some idea of the complex issues involved. Even though hers was half the age of the convent, upgrading and redesigning the electrical service had been a costly but important process.
“By the way,” Sister Anselm added, “I called Bishop Gillespie earlier this afternoon to tell him about the problem with the foundation. My understanding is that rectifying the situation will be expensive and raise the cost of the remodel considerably. I know B. agreed to do this for us, but I’m not sure his generosity will stretch that far. The bishop said the two of them would discuss it.”
“Don’t worry,” Ali said. “After what you did for all of us in Texas? I can promise you that there’s enough give in the remodeling budget to cover whatever is needed. If B. can’t pony it up, I certainly can.”
Leland appeared in the doorway. “Dinner is served,” he announced.
Taking their wineglasses with them, the two women followed him into the dining room. Once they were seated, he served generous helpings of thick stew into their dishes. Then, setting the soup tureen down on the sideboard, he brought a platter heaped with slabs of corn bread still steaming from the oven.
After serving, Leland coaxed Bella into the kitchen with him. The two women ate a companionable meal while falling snowflakes drifted past the dining room window. They spent most of the time comparing the hazards of remodeling projects and some of it discussing Ali’s scholarship responsibilities.
They finished eating a little past eight. When Ali invited her guest back into the library, Sister Anselm declined. “In the convent, we go to bed with the birds and rise with the chickens. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a rain check.”
While Leland cleaned up, Ali took the last of her wine and returned to the library with her dog, her comfy chair, her fireplace, and her book.
Yes, remodeling took time, money, and effort, but from where she was sitting right now, it was definitely worth it. She hoped that when the nuns from St. Bernadette’s returned home from Payson to their newly rehabbed digs, they’d be able to say the same.
7
As the pickup moved steadily southward, they began to drive through flurries of snow. It was starting to stick on the sides of the road but not on the pavement itself. Enid knew that her lightweight jacket would be no match for the weather once she left the crowded warmth of the pickup. And what would happen when she did?
Just thinking of it was enough to fill her heart with dread. What should Enid do? What if she spoke up and asked the man to stop and let her out right now? What if she went back to The Encampment on her own before The Family had a chance to send someone out searching for her? Maybe she’d be able to beg Gordon’s forgiveness. If she was lucky, perhaps he’d let her off with nothing worse than a beating. Then again . . .
Eventually the strain of the day was too much for her. Not intending to, she nodded off, allowing her head to loll over onto the Navajo woman’s broad shoulder. She awakened and straightened up, seemingly much later, when the pickup began to slow.
“We’re almost there,” the woman said as Enid sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Our turnoff is coming up in a mile or two. Do you have someone who will come get you?”
“I’ll be all right,” Enid said.
Shaking her head, the woman twisted around and retrieved a blanket from the narrow space behind the seat. “It’s cold out there,” she said. “You’ll need something besides that jacket to keep you warm.”
Enid fingered the rough wool. In the pale light from the dashboard, she glimpsed the colorful hues and complex designs and recognized them for what they were. She had seen Navajo rugs and blankets before. There was a special counter inside the general store where tourists could buy them, cheerfully paying amounts of money that seemed, to Enid, to be princely sums.
“I can’t take this,” Enid protested.
“You have to,” the woman insisted. Her voice was gentler than Aunt Edith’s, but it brooked no nonsense.
“But I don’t have any money,” Enid objected.
“What you have is a need for a blanket,” the woman said firmly. “I can always weave another. Please take it.”
Reluctantly, Enid accepted. “Thank you,” she said.
The pickup pulled off onto the dirt shoulder and came to a slow stop. The snow had let up, although a few flakes still skittered here and there. They had stopped at a junction of sorts, under a single streetlight and next to a flock of mailboxes. On either side of the paved highway dirt roads led off to the east and west and disappeared into the distance. Directly across the road was a lonely gas station.
The woman pointed toward the road that went off to the right. “Our daughter’s RV park is that way,” she said.
Nodding, Enid fumbled for the door handle.
“Are you sure we can’t call someone to come for you?” the woman asked as Enid climbed out.
“No,” she said, stepping onto a dirt shoulder that was partially covered by a thin coating of snow. “Someone will give me a ride.”
She looked back the way they had come. Far in the distance she spotted a pinprick of light, which meant that another vehicle was coming this way. As the wind bit through her jacket, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and was amazed at how well the tightly woven wool shielded her from the cold.
She stood for a moment longer, holding the door open. “Thank you for the ride,” she said, “and for the blanket, too.”
Moving to reclaim her part of the bench seat, the woman nodded. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Take care.”
When the pickup drove off, Enid stood in the cold and dark, staring longingly at the gas station across the road. It would be warm inside. She’d be able to use the bathroom. Maybe whoever ran the place would let her stay there long enough to find another ride. The problem was, people stopping there might well be going in the other direction, back the way she’d come.
Fishing the squashed sandwich out of her pocket, Enid unfolded the waxed paper, shoved that back into her pocket, and then wolfed down the sandwich while trying to make up her mind. This was the moment of decision, the time when she either had to move forward toward the unknown or turn back and face whatever punishment The Family meted out. Convinced now of her kinship to Bishop Lowell, she knew he would want to make an example of her. He’d want to be sure the other girls saw her suffer.
No, Enid decided at last, whatever future the Outside held couldn’t be worse than what awaited her back home at The Encampment. Polishing off the rest of the sandwich, she turned to look at the approaching vehicle whose headlights she had glimpsed when she first stepped out of the pickup. It was much closer now, speeding toward her. Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, she faced north and stuck out her thumb. The vehicle turned out to be another pickup. It sped past without slowing, traveling so fast that she caught not the smallest glimpse of the occupants.
Resolutely, Enid turned back to the road, squinting through the darkness in hopes of seeing yet another southbound travel
er. As a consequence, she didn’t notice that, after the pickup sped past her, it slowed a quarter mile or so away, stopped, and made a quick U-turn. With the wind whistling in her ears, she didn’t hear the returning vehicle as it approached from the opposite direction, although she did catch a glimmer from the headlights out of the corner of her eyes. When she turned to look, that’s all she could see—a pair of bright headlights that belonged to a vehicle that had pulled over and stopped on the shoulder on the far side of the highway. It sat at an odd angle so the high beams were pointed directly at her.
A moment later, the headlights went out. There was another brief flash of light as a car door opened and closed. Then she heard something else—first the crunch of boots on snow-glazed gravel and then a singsong voice saying, “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy. Don’t you think it’s time you came home?”
Terrified, Enid stood her ground. The approaching man’s voice seemed oddly familiar. Obviously he knew all about what awaited her back home. In the dim light from the overhead streetlight, she saw him striding forward, walking along the shoulder on the far side of the road. The glow of the streetlight was enough that she caught a flash of something on the man’s jacket. Was it a badge she was seeing? Suddenly he tripped on something, or perhaps his shoe slipped on a bit of icy gravel. He staggered for a moment before catching his balance.
“Dressed up like an Indian, are you, Enid?” he said, righting himself. “Come along now. Time to go home.”
She knew who he was now. He spoke with the authority of one of the Elders, issuing commands that he fully expected her to follow. Because that’s how things worked in The Family—men issued orders; women obeyed.
When the dim figure started toward her again, he was little more than a looming shadow. Focused completely on him, she failed to realize that what had made the difference was another set of bright headlights from yet another vehicle. This one, approaching from the south, overwhelmed the insubstantial glow of the streetlight.
