“Reverend Mother, this is Lucia. Lucia Costa. I want you to know I’m fine. I left the order this morning, and I’m on my way to a new life. I realize you might not trust this message, that you might think I’m being coerced into leaving it, but please, trust me, I’m safe. May the Holy Mother’s grace be with you.”

Click.

The message was over.

Sister Charity sank into her chair and replayed the message twice, telling herself she didn’t hear a sound of distress in the girl’s voice, that Sister Lucia wasn’t lying.

Where had she gone?

Why didn’t she say?

Because she’s tired of your meddling.

Because she’s afraid.

Because she doesn’t want to be found.

Sister Charity bowed her head, felt all of her sixty-seven years, not old by any means, she’d told herself, but this morning she was weary. Her joints ached and she felt ancient, the relic she’d heard more than one novitiate call her. Not yet the dinosaur that Sister Irene thought she was.

She placed her elbows on the top of the desk, cast one quick glance at the picture of the Pope, and prayed to the Holy Father for guidance, for help. She was humbled. Afraid. Didn’t know what to do.

In her mind, she heard the voice of God.

Follow your heart, Charity, my child. You know the truth. You know what you must do. Be obedient yet vigilant, firm yet kind. Trust yourself and those around you. Believe in me and in my Son and in the Holy Spirit. Trust the Holy Trinity.

When she whispered a soft “amen,” she realized her eyes were filled with tears and that she’d been weeping in both sorrow and joy. Her cheeks were damp, salty drops falling onto the top of her desk.

She tried to pull herself together. Her grief would not overshadow her faith; her fear would not thwart her courage. She, as the handmaiden of God, would prevail.

Yet her hand was shaking when she reached for the phone and dialed St. Elsinore’s parish. Though it was barely seven, someone answered, probably due to the fact that tonight was the auction for which the parish of St. Elsinore’s had been planning for over a year.

When she was finally connected to Sister Georgia, Charity forced herself to murmur a few pleasantries she didn’t feel and imagined the mother superior at the orphanage without her wimple, veil, and habit. A modern woman was Sister Georgia, a nun with both feet securely set on the sod of the two-thousands, and yet, deep in her heart, she was as staid in her ways, as structured in her beliefs as was Charity.

She had to be.