The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  “I’m not sure I agree. But I like mysteries that are softer and less violent. I like Dorothy Sayers. And I like themed mysteries too, especially about dogs.” Alex smiled at what Sister Xavier said, and recognized them as “cozies.” She didn’t want to be disrespectful and say she’d outgrown them and had graduated to hard-boiled mysteries and crime thrillers, which were more violent and much tougher, and often written by men, as her father said.

  Alex had put some of the boxes of books under the narrow bed by then, and stacked others in the corners, and Sister Regina was helping her unpack her clothes. They barely managed to squeeze them into the closet. And Alex set up three photographs of her father on the desk and one of her mother with her when she was two.

  “Your mother was really beautiful,” Sister Regina said, looking at her picture. “And your father was very handsome too.” Alex stared at the photographs for a minute and nodded. She still couldn’t believe that he was gone. The last tragic months with him were already fading from memory, they had been so unlike him. What remained were the warm images of the years before, the adventures they shared, the baseball games they went to, the books they’d both enjoyed, the long nights talking about what they’d read and what they did and didn’t like about it, the fact that he was always there, and tucked her into bed every night. The memories of her mother were dim and had been for years. But those of her father stood out more sharply than ever.

  The nuns came by and helped her put everything away, and Sister Thomas came to check on them with a motherly air. She hadn’t admitted it, but there was something comforting and familiar about being responsible for a child again, even one Alex’s age.

  “Everything going smoothly here?” she asked with a smile. She had kitchen duty that day, so had been busy making lunch. But she came upstairs to see how Alex was settling in, and she saw that she looked sad as she glanced around the room. It was a big change from home, even if everyone was friendly here. It wasn’t the house she grew up in, and the father she adored was gone. Alex had said goodbye to Bill before he left, and thanked him for everything he’d done, and he had promised to stay in touch, and told her to call him if she had any problems. He encouraged Mother MaryMeg to do the same, but she was sure that everything would be fine, and had told him Alex seemed like a sweet kid.

  “I know this can’t be easy for you, Alex, but we’re glad that you’re here,” Sister Thomas said kindly. “God works things out strangely sometimes, better than you expect. I hope you’ll be happy with us. It’s different than what you’ve been used to, but we have fun here too. There’s something very warm and friendly about living with a lot of nice people, and sharing your life with them.” Alex was curious about her and nodded as she listened.

  “Do you miss your children?” she asked her cautiously, wondering why she had become a nun after being married and having kids. Mother MaryMeg had told her about Sister Thomas’s six children, and Alex was stunned.

  “I miss them like crazy,” Sister Thomas said honestly. “But I’d miss them if I were home. They’re all grown up, and live all over the place. They come to visit me, and I’d be a lot sadder home alone. This gives my life meaning, and I’m useful. I always wanted to be a nun before I got married.” She had gotten pregnant at eighteen and had to get married, which she didn’t tell Alex. “And now I can. I’ve had the best of both worlds.”

  “I don’t want to be a nun when I grow up,” Alex said quietly with a firm look in her eye, and Sister Thomas understood.

  “No one expects you to. We just want to give you a home, and help you get to the next stage of your life. You’ll be out of high school before you know it, and off to college. And then you’ll have a job, and get married and have kids one day, and then you can come back and visit us.” She made it sound very simple and nonthreatening to Alex.

  “It’s nice of the nuns to have me here,” she said gratefully. “I didn’t want to go away to school. And I want to be a writer one day.”

  “Then I’m sure you will, if you work hard at it. Is that your typewriter?” she asked with interest, and approached to look at it with admiration. “Where did you ever find it?” It was in perfect condition, and a vintage piece.

  “My dad gave it to me to write my stories.”

  “I’d like to read them sometime,” the nun said gently, suddenly pleased that Mother MaryMeg had assigned her to help care for Alex. She reminded her of her own children not so long ago. It seemed warm and touching now to have her there, even though she had resisted it at first, but Alex seemed like a sensible, well-brought-up girl. She had good manners, and appeared to be considerate and intelligent, although inevitably at fourteen, there would be some bumps and battles ahead in the next few years. But Sister Thomas had lived through it before and knew she could again, and this time she would have twenty-five partners to help her, not just one who thought the kids were her job and never his. She had loved her husband, but her marriage had not been easy. “Lunch is in a few minutes,” she reminded Alex before she went back to the kitchen, and Sister Regina came to get her when it was time.

  “Do you want to help me buy groceries today?” she asked as they walked downstairs, both of them in jeans and tee shirts, like two kids. “I’m on shopping duty. We buy out the supermarket once a week. They give us a discount.”

  “Sure, that would be fun,” Alex said as she followed her into the dining hall in the basement and sat down next to her. Sister Xavier Francis was at the other end of the table, and Sister Thomas was sitting with the mother superior as she often did, but waved when she saw Alex come in, and Alex waved back. Overnight, she had twenty-six new friends, or adopted aunts and godmothers. It was totally different from anything she could ever have imagined, and she and Sister Regina chatted all through lunch, about movies and books and the Pilates class Sister Regina taught. She invited Alex to try it and she said she would. They wanted to add a yoga class too.

  They went grocery shopping together afterward, and Alex helped her with an art class for mothers and children after that, and she peeked in at the babies in the parenting class, with young panicked-looking couples. The hours flew by, and after dinner, she went up to her room and lay down on her bed and thought about the day. She wanted to do some writing, but she was too tired, and still feeling overwhelmed by all she’d seen and done that day. It was all so new to her, and so were the nuns. She was starting her new school the next day.

  She was surprised when no one came to tell her when to go to bed or turn off the light. They treated her like an adult, as her father had, and they seemed to assume she could regulate herself. She liked that. They respected her, and expected her to live up to it. She got undressed, brushed her teeth, said good night to the photo of her father, and turned off her lamp with the little blue lambs. The bed was hard, but the pillow she’d brought with her was familiar, and she slept with her father’s sweater next to her, so she could feel him near her, and smell his cologne. It was a brave new world, but not a bad one, just very different.

  And as she fell asleep, she had an idea for a story that she wanted to write the next day. It would be the first one she had written in months, since her father started failing dramatically, and the fact that she had an idea for a new story seemed like a good sign. As odd as it was to be here, she was home, and she drifted off, feeling peaceful and safe.

  Chapter 6

  Alex’s new school was much bigger than what she was used to. The classes had more students, conditions were crowded, and the kids were rougher. They had to go to mass before their first class every day. The teachers were both secular and nuns, but since none of the nuns wore habits, it was hard to tell which was which. And she was shocked by how little homework they were given. It was a good school, but much less demanding than her exclusive private school. But here she knew she would get even better grades. When she got back to the convent at the end of the day, she went straight to her room and finished her homework in less than an hour, and then got to work on the story
she had thought of the night before. It was particularly violent, and the crime itself even more disturbing than usual, and the surprise ending she conjured up even surprised her. She sat back looking pleased when she took the last page out of the typewriter, and was smiling to herself when Sister Xavier knocked and walked in.

  “Need any help with homework?” She noticed that Alex was smiling, and hoped she’d had a good first day at her new school. “How was it?”

  “It was okay, and the homework was easy. I just finished a story. I think it’s really good.” She grinned and Sister Xavier smiled.

  “Can I read it?” Alex nodded and handed the ten pages to Sister Xavier, who sat down on the bed, and looked up several times with a startled expression as she read. She was dazed when she finished and glanced back at Alex.

  “What do you think?” Alex asked her, anxious for her opinion, since she liked mysteries and had read a lot of them.

  “Do you always write like this?” She wondered if she was even more disturbed by her father’s death than they thought, and was reacting with violence.

  “Yeah. Sometimes they’re bloodier than that, but this is about right.”

  “You write some brutal stuff!” she commented, but she had to admit that it was seamless, the pace relentless, the characters haunting, and the story very tight. She wrote like an adult, and she had talent. But definitely a quirky mind, or a lot of experience reading crime thrillers. She had written a detective into it inspired by some of the thrillers she’d read, she told Sister Xavier, and she was pleased. It struck the nun that her story was much tougher than anything she normally read, and she would have guessed it was written by a man, and surely not a fourteen-year-old girl. The writing was brilliant. “I like it,” Sister Xavier said once she recovered from the shocking crime and surprise ending. “I just didn’t expect you to write something like that. Have you ever tried publishing your stories?” she asked with interest.

  “My father was going to do it for me, but then he got sick, and he never got around to it. I’ve got three binders full of my stories, I brought them with me.” They were under her bed with his books.

  “You should try publishing them,” she encouraged her. And then she laughed. “I can see why you don’t read Agatha Christie anymore and loved Silence of the Lambs, given what you write. I couldn’t sleep after a story like that.” Alex laughed too, pleased with the effect on her new friend.

  “I’ll give you some of the other stories in my binder,” Alex promised. She loved having someone to show her stories to, although Sister Xavier readily admitted she preferred a different type of mystery.

  “Not at bedtime, please,” Sister Xavier said, and mentioned the story to the superior later. She was still worried about it, even if it was flawlessly written, and Mother MaryMeg looked intrigued.

  “It’s shocking for a child that age to have thoughts like that,” Sister Xavier whispered to her. She liked crime fiction herself, but Alex’s story had been extreme.

  “Is it lewd or inappropriately sexual?” the mother superior asked, mildly concerned.

  “Not at all, but it’s the most violent thing I’ve ever read. Brilliant, though. There’s everything from murder to dismemberment to cannibalism in it, and the crime is committed by the man’s wife. The story is complicated, and she kept me turning the pages, but it was still very upsetting, all in all. I thought about it for hours afterward, it haunted me.”

  “Maybe that’s a skill, and not an aberration. Apparently her father encouraged her and shared his favorite books with her. According to my cousin’s husband, who knew him, her father thought she had real talent.”

  “She does, unquestionably,” Sister Xavier agreed. “It’s just disturbing to think that comes out of her head. She looks so innocent.”

  “Are you afraid she’ll kill us all in our sleep, and chop us up and eat us?” Mother MaryMeg teased her.

  “No…but it’s very scary stuff, if that’s what’s on her mind.”

  “I’ll have a look,” the mother superior reassured her, and said to Alex later that Sister Xavier had been impressed by her story, and she’d love to read one.

  Alex looked serious at the mention of it. “I think I upset her. I’ve been working on that kind of story for a long time. I was inspired by some of the writers my father liked. He always passed his books on to me after he read them.” She gave the story to Mother MaryMeg to read after dinner, and the older nun was stunned. It was even more powerful than Sister Xavier had said, and the mother superior thought it was brilliant. She had an incredible way of telling the story. Her timing was flawless, and her character descriptions and development showed great insight into the criminal mind. Mother MaryMeg handed it back to Alex with a look of profound respect.

  “You are a very, very talented writer, Alex. That’s a gift. Don’t waste it.” Alex thought that she was going to tell her to write gentler stories about saner people, but Mother MaryMeg seemed to approve wholeheartedly. “I’m sure you’d win an award with it, if you publish it one day. Keep working at it, to develop your gift.” She walked away duly impressed and saw Sister Xavier again later. “I think we’re living with one of the future great writers of the era. She really has an extraordinary mind.”

  “You don’t think it’s a little twisted?” The younger nun looked surprised. She had read high school essays for years and had never seen one like that.

  “Of course I do. That’s the whole point. It’s supposed to be, and she works hard at it. She certainly doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. We should encourage her, not hold her back,” Mother MaryMeg admonished, and Sister Xavier walked away after saying that Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot were more her cup of tea. But definitely not Alex’s, or not in many years. Her writing was razor sharp and wielded like a scalpel. Both nuns thought about her again that night. The elder of the two was in awe of her ability, and the younger shaken by the horrors she created in her mind. But both of them were haunted by the story.

  Alex went to bed with another idea for a story that night. She just wished she could show them to her father, who understood her style and knew how to comment on where it needed work to improve it. His editing had been a big help to her. She didn’t feel her writing was as strong without him, and it made her miss him even more. But it pleased her that the mother superior had liked her story, and that Sister Xavier was terrified by it. It made Alex smile as she thought of it and fell asleep.

  —

  Alex’s first month at St. Dominic’s flew by. They celebrated her fifteenth birthday three weeks after she moved in, and baked her a cake. It was her first birthday without her father, but they helped her get through it. She found her new school unexciting and uneventful. She made a few friends between classes, but no one she wanted to spend time with. She didn’t want to have to explain to them why she was living at the convent. Elena came to visit her on her birthday and cried the whole time, but Alex told her that she was fine and the nuns were good to her. She had told Bill Buchanan the same when he called. Mother MaryMeg had corroborated that she was doing well.

  Alex was pleased that she could be alone in her room to work on her writing, but she was also helpful to the nuns when they needed her to be. She was no trouble at all. She was closest to Sister Regina, and despite the thirteen-year difference in their ages, they had become friends, and they confided in each other. Alex was very fond of Sister Xavier too, who had helped her prepare for a math test, on which she got an A. She was getting perfect grades in school.

  At the end of the semester, the teachers handed out slips at school for the students’ parents to sign up for parent-teacher conferences, and Alex didn’t know what to do with hers so she threw them away. She had no parents to attend. Two of her teachers kept her after class to remind her that her parents hadn’t signed up yet. They didn’t know her story or where she lived, as her records were confidential. Only the principal knew that she was living at the convent.

  She told
Mother MaryMeg about the problem that night. “Can’t they just skip it? Why does someone have to go to their dumb conferences? My grades are fine.” Mother MaryMeg thought about it for a minute. She didn’t want to put the spotlight on Alex as different.

  “What about if Sister Xavier goes for you, or Sister Thomas? Or both of them if you want. How does that sound to you?” She was trying to be creative, so the school didn’t feel that Alex’s family was disinterested in her, or disrespectful of her teachers or the school. Faculty didn’t respond well to that.

  “Okay, I guess. My father hated those conferences too, and he didn’t always go. I never had a problem at school, my grades were good, and he didn’t think it was necessary. And once my English teacher called him in to complain about my stories.” Mother MaryMeg had read several more and that didn’t surprise her at all. She could clearly see Alex’s gift, and also why a teacher would find it disturbing, just as Sister Xavier had at first, although she was used to Alex’s stories now.

  “I’ll see if Sister Xavier can make time to go, or Sister Tommy,” which was their nickname for Sister Thomas. When she asked them, they both said they wanted to go, since they had grown attached to their young ward. Alex got new slips for them, and they signed up and went together. They were very satisfied with what they heard, except that all of her teachers found her introverted and withdrawn and said that she needed to socialize more with her peers. But the nuns she lived with knew another side of her now, since they saw more of her, and at times they found her gregarious and funny, and she loved to tease and play tricks on them. But outside of her home environment, which the convent was now, she was quiet and shy, and she seemed to have trouble making friends with young people her age. Both nuns mentioned it to her when they told her about the teacher conferences. At school, one of her teachers said she had met her aunts and Alex wondered if that was who they had said they were. But another teacher said she had met her mother and aunt. No one seemed to be clear about who the two nuns were, nor cared, which was fine with her. She didn’t correct them either, and didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her that both of her parents were dead. It would have made her seem like a freak to the other students, and in her own eyes.