It was Father Thomas who discovered my pregnancy and sounded the alarm when I was seven months along. I’d managed to hide it from myself for five of them, refusing to believe that my period drying up and my stomach and breasts swelling could mean I was carrying a child. Instead, I saw the symptoms as a physical manifestation of my guilt.

Hiding it from the rest of the nuns wasn’t easy, but also not as difficult as it should have been; a convent, after all, is more focused on the soul than the body. We wore loose habits and were encouraged to always keep our eyes directed at the floor so that nothing could distract us from our communion with God. No one ever saw me naked except for the novice, Sister Marguerite, who helped me change from my street clothes into my convent garb on the day I arrived. While her eyes had lingered on my body, and it looked like she wanted to say something, she kept quiet about whatever suspicions she may have had.

The day my secret was discovered, I was in Father Thomas’s office because it was a visiting Sunday and my parents, so busy on the farm, were unable to come out and see me. Since he was the priest who’d recruited me to the faith, the one who’d overseen my conversion to Catholicism, the Reverend Mother considered him a friend of the family.

“Ah, Sister Mary Teresa,” he said as I entered his office, calling me by my new name, the one I’d chosen for myself when I’d been received as a novice. “It’s good to see you.” He held his arms out to me as he walked around his desk, but I pretended not to see the gesture, just as I had the past three months, as I hurried to sit down before he could embrace me.

“Good evening, Father.” I sank into the chair a moment before he reached me. Another close call.

He dropped his hands to the sides of the chair and swooped down to give me a chaste peck on the temple instead. Even that, I recoiled from. “How are you, my child?”

“I’m well, Father.”

As he returned to his spot behind the desk, I chattered nervously about my week, what I was learning in Latin class, and the general goings-on in the convent. Where I’d once felt safe in his presence, I no longer did. It was just a matter of time before my true nature was discovered and I was kicked out, which was exactly what I deserved.