“Nice try.” I gazed at the small indie bookstore across the street not far from us and had an idea. “Do you have any homework?”

“None that I really need to do. Most of my classes are mind-numbingly easy anyway.”

I rarely saw her studying—reading, yes. Just not doing homework per se.

“Then how about I make it up to you by buying you a book.”

“A book?”

“Sure. You like to read, don’t you? Let’s get you something you normally wouldn’t buy. Most of the books you buy are used. We’ll get you something new so you don’t have to sit around with nothing to do the next time I bring you to the Field Office.”

“You’ll bring me again?”

“Someday. So, do you want one?”

She thought about it. “Well . . . you know that bookstore I’m always hanging out in?”

“The Mystorium?”

“Yeah. There’s this author who’s doing a signing there tomorrow night. I normally never go to book signings because the people I read are usually way dead by the time I read their books, but this guy is actually still alive.”

“Okay, great.” I led her toward the bookstore. “You know his name?”

“Timothy Sabian. He’s good. A little out there, but good.”

26

Christie tried attending the afternoon prayer time with the monks, but the service was in Latin and she didn’t understand any of it. Tessa had studied Latin last year in school, so at least she would’ve had some idea what the monks were saying, but Christie was lost—she hadn’t picked up any of it, even while her daughter was taking the class.

Thinking of Tessa made Christie worry again about how to tell her and Pat about the cancer.

Quietly, she slipped out of the church and went to her room to work on the letters she was hoping to give to the two of them. When she’d started writing them, she’d thought that by doing it this way she could really get the words right, but it just wasn’t happening.

No.

Words on a page would never be enough. She finally had to acknowledge that.

This was something a note couldn’t handle. Not to people this close to her. She needed to tell them in person, even though she had no idea how to actually pull that off.

The Bible says that in marriage the two shall become one, so even though she was close to Tessa, it felt right to tell her soul mate first before telling her daughter.

Tomorrow’s schedule: breakfast, Mass, and then—and she could hardly believe she was going to do this—confession.