“Thank you for driving down with me to pick Tilly up,” Sister Ruth said.

Kate shifted stiffly in the driver’s seat. “No problem at all.” What choice did she have? With Sister Caroline away visiting her terminally ill sister in Tasmania for the rest of the year, Kate was the only one left on the island who could drive a manual car. She couldn’t very well expect Tilly to wait an eternity on the unreliable island shuttle, or heave her suitcase up the hill. Like her own, Tilly’s fair skin had never taken well to the sun.

“I remember you two together,” Sister Ruth said absentmindedly. Kate watched the corners of the Reverend Mother’s lips quirk. “You were so hard to wake up in the morning. Tilly was always up and at breakfast, and she’d have to go back to your room to drag you down just before the bells rang. And your hair each morning in homeroom, my goodness! Like a charcoal bird’s nest, Katherine…”

Chuckling, Kate rubbed her sweaty palms across her shorts. “Reverend Mother, I think you’ll find that you’re exaggerating.” She’d never been an early riser, true, but in the later years, when they’d been two of the oldest students, she’d been up early each morning to help prepare the breakfast for the convent, desperate to steal as much time alone with Tilly as possible. Not even sharing a dorm room had been enough to satisfy her.

“Exaggerating?” Sister Ruth hummed. “Am I?”

Kate wanted to smile, but the closer the boat came to the cove, the harder her heart began to hammer. “I haven’t seen her in almost twelve years,” she murmured.

Sister Ruth looked over. She hesitated before she spoke, and when she did, her words were soft, as though she could comprehend the ache in Kate’s heart beginning to catch like dry tinder to a blue flame. “You just missed her by weeks earlier this year,” she started. “She always visits in January, what with how busy she is at St. Matthew’s the rest of the year—you know how demanding the parishes in Melbourne get, with the feast days, and Easter of course…”

She hummed her acknowledgment.

“She visited just before you arrived, before she had to return to teach in the city. It was the first time she’d been here since we lost Sister Hattie—God rest her soul—and I think our Tilly was quite shocked to find that there are only five of us here now, that over two-thirds of the teachers aren’t sisters, that so many of the rooms in the convent are…vacant.” She paused for a moment, staring out at Port Phillip Bay, at the ferry that carried Tilly home. “I always thought she’d join us here, make one of those rooms her own. I truly did think it was the Lord’s plan for Tilly. Really, I did.”

She swallowed. “To join the order, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Overlooking the secret she’d rather keep locked away for all eternity, Kate had to agree. She’d been shocked to learn from the sisters that Tilly had never taken her vows. She couldn’t recall a time when Tilly hadn’t had her heart set on becoming a nun. “I’ve already been called to it,” Tilly had said each time she’d fallen to her knees between their beds to pray. And each time, the hole in Kate’s heart had grown larger because she had been called to something else—a fantasy world where they shared a love deeper than friendship. Tilly had longed for a simple life and devoting herself to God. Kate had longed for a simple life and devoting herself to Tilly.