“I know. You won’t—not with this Pope. Yours is exactly the situation that fits the phrase, ‘in sickness and in health.’ You get to bear the biggest cross and set the best example. Marriage is very important to His Holiness. I know you have trouble relating that to your real life, but if you were in his position, where would you start to restore decency and dignity to the world?”

She smiled, even as her eye was closing up. “It’s just that the human heart doesn’t play by his rules. I mean your wife. Maryellen. I’ve been accused of harboring a homewrecker. She loves married men, sees them as a challenge. Mother Superior calls her a bitch on wheels. Maryellen had another abortion in the seventies—we had her fixed then, by a Jewish doctor—and she blamed the mess on somebody else. For anybody studying it, her life is a bad dream. For her, life is a nightmare. Is she responsible for the pain she causes when she can’t control the pain she feels? She feels the pain over and over. It never goes away. She does what she needs to do and finds the justification afterward. If we don’t know what causes a personality like hers, how can we know how to deal with it? Don’t ask where the truth lies with her. She tells you. It’s all true, at the time she says it. Five minutes later, the truth is something else. We’re not supposed to notice when a story keeps changing. She’s given me fifteen reasons why she didn’t want children, even that her mother told her she wasn’t good enough.”

“Her mother may have said it. I’m looking at your eye. Tend to it instead of wasting time over her. You’re trying to make sense of life? So am I. And she has a date tonight.”

Ann Elizabeth smiled. “Nothing is going to keep her home. I made a note to that effect in my journal Tuesday afternoon.”

“While she’s on her date, her parents will be on a yacht, watching the fireworks.”

Ann Elizabeth winced. “I think I will tend to my eye. Thank you for coming. Good luck in your quest.”

2:58 P.M. …

2:58 P.M. …

You were primed for her.…