“Sorry to bother you,” Jeanette began. “My car broke down out there on the street, and I was wondering—”

“Of course,” the woman said. Her voice was strange, like nothing Jeanette had ever heard, like there were notes of music caught and ringing inside the words. “Come in, come in, both of you.”

The woman stepped back from the door to let Jeanette and Amy into the front hall. Somewhere in the building, Jeanette knew, there were other nuns—maybe they were black, too—sleeping or cooking or reading or praying, which she guessed nuns did a lot of, maybe most of the day. It was quiet enough, so she supposed that was probably right. What she had to do now was get the woman to leave her and Amy alone. She knew that as a fact, the way she knew she’d killed a boy last night, and all the rest of it. What she was about to do hurt more, but it wasn’t any different otherwise, just more pain on the same spot.

“Miss—?”

“Oh, you can just call me Lacey,” the woman said. “We’re pretty informal around here. Is this your little girl?” She knelt in front of Amy. “Hello there, what’s your name? I have a little niece about your age, almost as pretty as you.” She looked up at Jeanette. “Your daughter is very shy. Perhaps it is my accent. You see, I am from Sierra Leone, west Africa.” She turned to Amy again and took her hand. “Do you know where that is? It is very far away.”

“All these nuns from there?” Jeanette asked.

Standing, the woman laughed, showing her bright teeth. “Oh, goodness no! I’m afraid I am the only one.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Jeanette liked this woman, liked listening to her voice. She liked how she was with Amy, the way she looked at her eyes when she talked to her.

“I was racing to get her to school, you see,” Jeanette said, “when that old car of mine? The thing just kind of gave out.”

The woman nodded. “Please. This way.”

She led Jeanette and Amy through the hallway to the kitchen, a big room with a huge oak dining table and cabinets with labels on them: CHINA, CANNED GOODS, PASTA AND RICE. Jeanette had never thought about nuns eating before. She guessed that with all the nuns living in the building, it helped to know what was where in the kitchen. The woman pointed to the phone, an old brown one with a long cord, hanging on the wall. Jeanette had planned the next part well enough. She dialed a number while the woman got a plate of cookies for Amy—not store-bought, but something somebody had actually baked—then, as the recorded voice on the other end told her that it would be cloudy today with a high temperature of fifty-five degrees and a chance of showers moving in toward evening, she pretended to talk to AAA, nodding along.