Tilly leaned forward as Kate rounded the bend, passing the dirt road that diverged to the other side of the island—the pioneer village, the causeway and the tiny town that included just seventy homes, a seafood restaurant and a general store. “Has much changed since January, Reverend Mother?”

As Sister Ruth began to explain Sister Tessie’s suspected dementia, Kate approached the break in the trees. The giant clearing stretched out before them—the convent, cottage, and boarding house on one side of the dirt road, the two-storey school, the sports field and chapel on the other. Kate headed for the driveway between the boarding house and the cottage. Both sandstone buildings had been built in the late nineteenth century by English convicts, the cottage once a teacher’s residence, the boarding house an orphanage. Now, girls came from all over the Mornington Peninsula Shire to lodge in the warm, refurbished rooms of the four-storey fortress with its high and wide windows and dormitory wings denoted by all four points of the compass.

As always after eight a.m. mass with Father Rodney, who drove across the causeway from Portarlington each morning, three of the four sisters of St. Joan’s were hard at work in the convent garden, bent over tomato bushes and raised lettuce beds. It impressed Kate how self-sufficient they were. It was easier now that the maintenance man turned up more often to work odd jobs—checking the water levels of the eight enormous rainwater tanks, cleaning the gutters, delivering firewood—but for the most part, the sisters managed for themselves. They were competent women with lifetimes of experience and were deeply admired.

Sister Ruth had worked as a maths teacher for ten years before joining the order. In her early twenties, Sister Mary Monica had worked as a trained nurse in the Vietnam War. When St. Joan’s had hosted a winter craft market on Lords the month before, Sister Mary Monica had refused to let her Saturday work routine be interrupted by their hundred guests. Cloaked in her long blue habit, she’d climbed onto the ride-on mower and taken off, her veil soaring behind her. A reporter from the Mornington Sun had come to the markets to write a small article for the events section, but by Tuesday, a picture of Sister Mary Monica zipping across the sports field had graced the front page of the local paper instead. The title? “The Flying Nun.”

Kate drew to a stop. Lockie’s head whipped around, hopeful for the return of the girls who showered him with affection. Much to Sister Mary Monica’s chagrin he came bounding through the veggie patch to the van.

Tilly laughed as she stepped out, crouching in her long skirt to greet the golden retriever. “Who’s this?”

“This is Lockie,” Kate explained. “He belongs to one of the girls—Emma—but he lives here with us. Emma’s parents divorced last year—that’s why she boards here—and her mother moved into a rental in Mornington that wouldn’t allow dogs. So Lockie moved here with Em, didn’t you Lockie?” As Tilly scratched her nails over his head, his eyes slipped closed in pleasure, tail dusting the gravel. “I really don’t know what the sisters will do when he leaves with Em next year,” Kate added. “He’s everybody’s now.”