Cold Betrayal

Sister Anselm entered the room wearing ordinary business attire—a dark blue knit pantsuit with a high-necked white blouse under the blazer. The only hint that she might be a nun was a crucifix suspended on a gold chain that she wore at the base of her throat. The nun was a tall spare woman without a hint of the widow’s hump one might have expected for someone in her early eighties. Her iron-gray hair, thi

Sister Anselm settled into the chair opposite Ali. Bella immediately darted into her lap to give her an appropriate greeting, after which she decamped to Ali’s. At that point, Sister Anselm caught sight of a vivid white mark marring the outside of one of her pant legs. She tried dusting it off but with little effect.

“It’s only plaster dust,” she said resignedly. “It’s everywhere. I guess I’m lucky this is the only place it ended up. I can see now that B. was right. Reverend Mother thought we should be able to stay in the convent during construction. B. insisted otherwise, and it’s a good thing he did.”

“How’s it going?” Ali asked.

Sister Anselm shook her head. “Naturally there’s a problem with the foundation. I suspected as much since we’d had so much cracking at one end of the house. They’re bringing in a soil engineer to find a way to shore up the foundation. That has to happen before any other repairs can be undertaken.”

Leland turned up just then with a rosewood tray that contained two wineglasses and an already opened bottle of the Grand Cru he had selected. A glance at the label told Ali it was one of the rarer bottles that had come from her philandering second husband’s extensive wine collection. Because her divorce from Paul Grayson hadn’t been finalized at the time of his death, she had inherited the wine collection along with everything else. She never sipped any of what she thought of as “Fang’s wine” without remembering that it was, in a very real way, the spoils of war.

Leland poured two glasses and handed them out. Ali raised hers first. “Here’s to remodeling!”

Sister Anselm laughed. “I had a long talk with the electrician today. He’s a young guy who had never before seen what they call ‘knob and tube’ electrical wiring. Now that the place is stripped down to studs, it’s all painfully visible. From the looks of it, the wiring situation constituted a very real fire hazard. The electrician told me it’s a miracle we weren’t all burned to death in our sleep.”

“How old is St. Bernadette’s again?” Ali asked.

“It was built in 1910,” Sister Anselm explained. “They remodeled it once in the twenties. That’s when they installed both electricity and ru

“Fire hazard indeed,” Ali observed. She had been deeply involved in the remodel of this house, so she had some idea of the complex issues involved. Even though hers was half the age of the convent, upgrading and redesigning the electrical service had been a costly but important process.

“By the way,” Sister Anselm added, “I called Bishop Gillespie earlier this afternoon to tell him about the problem with the foundation. My understanding is that rectifying the situation will be expensive and raise the cost of the remodel considerably. I know B. agreed to do this for us, but I’m not sure his generosity will stretch that far. The bishop said the two of them would discuss it.”

“Don’t worry,” Ali said. “After what you did for all of us in Texas? I can promise you that there’s enough give in the remodeling budget to cover whatever is needed. If B. can’t pony it up, I certainly can.”

Leland appeared in the doorway. “Di

Taking their wineglasses with them, the two women followed him into the dining room. Once they were seated, he served generous helpings of thick stew into their dishes. Then, setting the soup tureen down on the sideboard, he brought a platter heaped with slabs of corn bread still steaming from the oven.

After serving, Leland coaxed Bella into the kitchen with him. The two women ate a companionable meal while falling snowflakes drifted past the dining room window. They spent most of the time comparing the hazards of remodeling projects and some of it discussing Ali’s scholarship responsibilities.

They finished eating a little past eight. When Ali invited her guest back into the library, Sister Anselm declined. “In the convent, we go to bed with the birds and rise with the chickens. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a rain check.”

While Leland cleaned up, Ali took the last of her wine and returned to the library with her dog, her comfy chair, her fireplace, and her book.

Yes, remodeling took time, money, and effort, but from where she was sitting right now, it was definitely worth it. She hoped that when the nuns from St. Bernadette’s returned home from Payson to their newly rehabbed digs, they’d be able to say the same.

7

As the pickup moved steadily southward, they began to drive through flurries of snow. It was starting to stick on the sides of the road but not on the pavement itself. Enid knew that her lightweight jacket would be no match for the weather once she left the crowded warmth of the pickup. And what would happen when she did?

Just thinking of it was enough to fill her heart with dread. What should Enid do? What if she spoke up and asked the man to stop and let her out right now? What if she went back to The Encampment on her own before The Family had a chance to send someone out searching for her? Maybe she’d be able to beg Gordon’s forgiveness. If she was lucky, perhaps he’d let her off with nothing worse than a beating. Then again . . .

Eventually the strain of the day was too much for her. Not intending to, she nodded off, allowing her head to loll over onto the Navajo woman’s broad shoulder. She awakened and straightened up, seemingly much later, when the pickup began to slow.

“We’re almost there,” the woman said as Enid sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Our turnoff is coming up in a mile or two. Do you have someone who will come get you?”

“I’ll be all right,” Enid said.

Shaking her head, the woman twisted around and retrieved a blanket from the narrow space behind the seat. “It’s cold out there,” she said. “You’ll need something besides that jacket to keep you warm.”

Enid fingered the rough wool. In the pale light from the dashboard, she glimpsed the colorful hues and complex designs and recognized them for what they were. She had seen Navajo rugs and blankets before. There was a special counter inside the general store where tourists could buy them, cheerfully paying amounts of money that seemed, to Enid, to be princely sums.

“I can’t take this,” Enid protested.

“You have to,” the woman insisted. Her voice was gentler than Aunt Edith’s, but it brooked no nonsense.

“But I don’t have any money,” Enid objected.

“What you have is a need for a blanket,” the woman said firmly. “I can always weave another. Please take it.”