If I began to talk about aluf shel halakha and babies born into this world without a father and with no DNA from their mothers, if I spoke of creatures from the first universe, I would lose her just when I needed her the most.
I said, “Trust me, Sister. All that will be made clear when we’re able to sit here with Sister Margaret and question her.”
“Sister Margaret? What would you need to question her about?”
“She’s the obvious connection. She encouraged Annie in her writing and guided her to a particular college where she was provided with a scholarship perhaps funded by Bodie Emmerich.”
“Who? Emmerich who? I’ve never heard of such a person.”
“You will. Sister Margaret developed close relationships with both girls, the better to stay in touch with them after they left here and spot them for Emmerich when he needed new . . . talent. She chose Annie and Keiko to care for Rafael. She took Litton Ormond to Bellini’s on the day his father was waiting there for him.”
“Have you forgotten that she took other children as well? Not just Litton. Quinn, dear Quinn, this makes no sense.”
“The other kids are lucky to be alive.”
“No, no, no. Corbett was going to shoot Sister Margaret.”
“I think she arranged with him to make a pretense of meaning to shoot her and then to relent and flee. Neither of them suspected Michael Bellini would pull a gun from under the checkout counter.”
Sister Theresa shook her head. “Margaret is shy, quiet, the most devout among us. How can you know these things?” She looked again at my companions. “You can’t know these things.”
I reached out with both hands.
She hesitated to take them. “If this crazy thing were even half-possible, if there could be any truth in it, why aren’t the police here to question her? Why you and your friends, not the police?”
Continuing to offer her my hands, I said, “If you’ll just help us, you’ll see. Everything will be clear. Dear Sister, when I was so depressed that I didn’t want to live, you saved me from suicide.”
She objected strenuously. “You never would’ve killed yourself!”
“Children do. More every year. These days, they’re taught to fear the future for a hundred reasons, and they do. Back then, eight years ago, I considered it quite seriously, more than I ever let on to you. I was in an abyss of despair. You gave me hope. More than that, you taught me to be in awe of our free will, showed me that it’s nothing less than a miracle. Please help me again. Please help me now. If I’m able to show you a miracle, at least something that seems like a miracle to me, will you help us?”
“Show me what? What will you show me?”
Intuiting my intention, Bridget said, “Are you sure you can do this, Quinn?”
I smiled at her and sounded more confident than I felt. “The talent matures, just as it does with you. Besides, what do we have to lose? We’re coming to a rejection here.” I leaned forward in my chair, beseeching the nun with both hands. “You have nothing to fear from me, Sister. You know that’s true. I don’t think you’ve ever feared anyone in your life, so it makes no sense that the first would be me. Just take my hands for a moment, and then help us if you feel you can. At the end of all this, we’ll get éclairs from Bellini’s—two each!—and never give a thought to the calories.”
The bleak evils with which I’d charged Sister Margaret both offended and anguished Sister Theresa, but the reference to the éclairs, harking back to the day when she’d at last fished me from the dark sea of depression, spoke to her heart. Her clenched face softened, and after a hesitation she took my hands in hers.
Together, we saw ourselves through the eyes of Winston, and the tableau we formed together was more striking than I could have hoped for: the warm light from the desk lamp and the silty softness of the silken shadows, my dark clothes contrasting with her white habit, I the former student who had once bent forward to receive her wisdom, now she the student bent forward to learn something from me. Then Winston came closer, between us, and put his head on her lap. He looked up at her, and together Sister and I were gazing into her eyes from the dog’s perspective. I could feel how the experience rocked her. For the first time in her life, she saw herself now as someone else saw her, in this case a loving dog. She peered deeper into her eyes than she could ever do when looking in a depthless mirror. As her irises widened and her pupils grew large, she might have felt as if she were staring into her own soul, into all the strangeness—the potential and the mystery—that is a human being.