The playground, too, was a place she remembered feeling left out and awkward. The other kids had their own cliques, a caste system where she, as the newest member, was ignored or made to feel alien.

Today, as clouds gathered overhead, blocking the sun, she glanced at the slide, a corkscrew of twisted metal, and remembered one bossy girl barely older than she was who had blocked the ladder. “This is mine,” the girl had said with a sneer; then, once Valerie had backed down, she’d climbed up awkwardly, dragging a foot in a cast signed by most of the older kids.

Even Val’s infant sister had been separated from her, and it had been Valerie’s worst nightmare that she would never see little Camille again. Thankfully, the Renards had adopted them both.

And now, even that was under suspicion.

Lucia dropped the small package into the postal slot and automatically made the sign of the cross over her chest.

There. It was done.

She almost heard Sister Camille’s low laughter. “I knew you couldn’t keep a promise,” she would have said, her eyes glinting with a quick intelligence. “Some friend you turned out to be.”

Oh, dear God.

Lucia was such a failure!

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, nearly running into a boy of about three who had strayed too far from his mother, a woman holding another baby while juggling a diaper bag and three boxes. The boy slid behind his mother’s legs, staring up at Lucia with round eyes. She offered the child a faint smile. “God be with you,” she said to his mother, and hurried out of the door feeling like the fraud she was.

The glare and heat hit her full in the face. Though clouds threatened the sun, the humidity was high, and she was sweating. From the weather, or her own case of tangled nerves?

“You know what your problem is?” Camille had asked her one day while they’d been walking from the chapel, through the cool dark halls.

“My problem?”

“You don’t have any real sense of conviction.” Camille’s sky-blue eyes had darkened like an angry sea. “You’re afraid, Lucia. If I had to guess, I’d say you were running from something . . . or someone.”

“No, I—”

“Sure you are,” Camille had insisted, leaning closer, whispering into Lucia’s ear. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. We all are.” She’d straightened and grinned then, her lips twisting into that little, knowing smile. “Anyway, I trust you to keep this,” and she’d dropped her prized possession into Lucia’s hands. “Don’t lose it.”

Now, Lucia’s stomach twisted. She’d been lying to herself, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t a coward. But Camille had been right.