“So you’re Cammie’s sister,” Sister Simone said to Val in the playground. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks and nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “She said you two were close.”

Until Slade Houston came between us. “We were.”

“So sad that she’s gone,” Simone said. “And I mean it. I loved Sister Camille. She was blessed with a thoroughly wicked sense of humor. I didn’t understand why she stayed at St. Marguerite’s.” Her gaze caught Val’s for a second before she looked away. “I wouldn’t have thought she would fit in there.”

“Why?”

Sister Simone lifted a shoulder, noncommital as she watched a paper wasp work on a tiny nest under the eaves. “Camille didn’t strike me as the traditional, by-the-rules-at-all-costs kind of nun. She seemed more . . . independent than that. A woman with her own mind.”

Amen.

Simone seemed to be the first one who actually understood Cammie. Val thought about keeping Camille’s secret, then realized that was ridiculous. The truth would soon be spread through the press and run through the parochial community like wildfire. Val decided she’d more likely find out the truth if she was forthright.

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

Sister Simone’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh, Holy Mother,” she said, shaking her head. “I . . . I was afraid . . . No, I didn’t know.”

“But you knew she was involved with Father Frank O’Toole.”

“I’d heard she was . . . taken with a priest.” Simone’s dark eyes glanced to the ground. “I don’t think I really wanted to know. Once, Camille tried to talk to me but changed her mind, and I saw her leaving with a priest.”

“Father O’Toole?” Val asked, making certain.

Simone shrugged, seemed uncomfortable. Biting her lip, she looked up at the bell tower where swallows were flying erratically, backdropped by gathering clouds. “I don’t know. It was dark, and he was turned away from me, but he was tall, built like Father O’Toole.”

“Did he, Frank O’Toole, come here often? Meet with her?”

“I’m not sure. He’s . . . he’s been here, with Father Thomas for Mass, of course, and he’s visited the orphanage and the clinic, just as many others have. St. Elsinore’s is unique, you know, a real community.”

Valerie’s gut twisted. She did know. She did remember. She’d lived here, if only briefly.

“Sister Camille said that you were her only living relative,” Simone said as they walked across the empty playground where a solitary swing, its hinges creaking mournfully, moved with the breeze.

“Yes, our parents are dead and there are no other siblings or close cousins. However, Camille was looking for our birth parents.”

Simone blinked and her expression tightened. “You knew that? I thought she was keeping it to herself.”