Camille had looked away then, gazing across a fragrant clump of rosemary to a place only she could see. “Well, now, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t think I belong anywhere. . . .” She’d pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slipped the dark lenses over her eyes.

Val had felt her heart rip. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said, her throat thick as she recognized her own culpability, how she’d played a part in her sister’s decision. “I shouldn’t have thrown you out that night. I should have talked to you, listened to you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Camille had scoffed at the thought. “I was with your husband. And that’s something that the mother superior probably shouldn’t know. I’ve confessed my sins to the priest, but . . .”

“You lied to Sister Charity.”

“Omitted some information is all.” Camille had sniffed loudly, as if fighting tears, though when Val had checked to see if she were crying, her eyes were hidden by sunglasses.

“It was all a mistake.”

“The story of my life,” Camille had said before hurrying out the garden gate.

Now, nearly a year later, Valerie’s heart squeezed painfully at the thought of how she might have saved her sister’s life. If she had responded differently that day, would it have changed what happened to Camille?

Probably not. But the guilt stayed with her, hanging close, never completely disappearing.

Val wrote a few notes to herself about Camille’s comments on everyone at St. Marguerite’s and added her own impressions of the people she’d met earlier in the day. Then she skimmed the other names she’d previously jotted down: Father Paul Neland, Regina St. James, Terri Sue Something-or-Other, people Camille had mentioned at one time or another. Laypeople who worked at the parish. There were other people on staff, as well as volunteers, but she didn’t know their names. While making a mental note to obtain a complete roster, she caught a glimpse of Frank O’Toole’s name on the legal pad where she’d scrawled it earlier.

Conjuring him up, she decided Father Francis O’Toole was an enigma. He was too handsome not to attract notice, too strong to forget. She wondered what it was like to make a confession to him, and the thought was unsettling.

She circled his name with her pen, around and around, dark lines of ink, as if she were physically zeroing in on him.

Well, she was, wasn’t she?

Who else would want her sister dead?

Who else had so much passion?

Valerie didn’t know.

But as she stared at his name on the legal pad, she vowed that she’d find out. And soon.

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 21