Chapter 28
NORA
After we thank the sisters for the phone, I remember what we came here for in the first place: to ask if they know anything about the baby at the cottage next door.
But they crowd around us, taking our coats and insisting we eat—and Jude comes away from the phone still looking slightly pale—I’m not sure this is the best time.
But what other time do we have?
I’m also increasingly concerned about the weather.
“Jude,” I say as Carolina sits us down at the big round table next to each other and the rest of them fuss around in the kitchen, chattering to each other in German. “I don’t think we have time to stay.”
Jude follows my gaze out the window, to where the sky is darkening fast, and the snow continuing to fall. It’s beginning to gather on the windowsills.
“Oh, you cannot go,” Carolina says. She’s wiping the table next to us with a damp rag. She says something to the woman still sitting in her rocking chair, and the woman responds with a gesture to the hallway.
“Yes, Sister Elke says you must stay here. It is too dangerous on the highway in this weather.”
“We couldn’t impose,” I say.
But Jude’s already nodding. “Thanks, that’d be awesome.”
He sees my raised eyebrows and frowns. “You seriously want to go out in that?”
“No,” I whisper. “But we could have offered to stay at a hotel or something.”
“Oh, there is no hotel here,” Carolina says, clutching the rag. “The closest is Diamant, and that is quite far.”
When I tell her that’s where we’re staying her eyes go wide. Then she leans in. “Is it very beautiful? I’ve always wanted to see it.”
I wonder what kind of life Carolina’s lived. She’s so young and already a sister. She speaks English and is entranced by the glamor of Diamant, but lives in a rural convent on a mountain in the Alps.
“It’s very nice,” Jude says. He seems to have perked up from how he looked on the phone a moment ago.
The worry about Cap receding maybe, knowing he’s in good hands.
“Though we haven’t seen all that much of it, have we?
” Jude asks me. He has the audacity then to give me a wink, and I feel my cheeks blushing furiously.
“Jude!” I squeak.
He laughs. “Sorry. You know how it is. Vacation time.”
Carolina looks confused. Because of course she doesn’t know how it is. She’s a nun. I want to slide down in my chair or at least change the subject, but just then the rest of the nuns come crowding around, bringing plates of steaming food they seem to have thrown together out of nowhere.
We eat our food—they even have wine—while the women pepper us with questions, translated through Carolina.
Where are you from? Where are your parents? What’s America like? Why is your son not here? They’re all very curious, and very clearly without many visitors.
“And how did your wife agree to let your son go on a trip on his own?” Carolina asks a moment after I’ve shoved a forkful of schnitzel in my mouth.
“Um…” I feel heat rise up my neck as I desperately try to swallow. Why did I take such a big bite?
“My wife?” Jude asks. “Oh, I don’t have a”—Jude sucks in a breath as I kick him under the table—“Ow!”
I cringe. Under my breath I remind Jude that this is a convent. “You know,” I whisper. “A religious convent?”
Someone says something in German, and Carolina clears her throat to translate. “You are married, yes?”
I can tell this question came from a prim, older sister who hasn’t said much, but looks slightly alarmed as her eyes dart between us and our naked fingers.
Jude looks slightly panicked, like he doesn’t know what to say.
My stomach drops. Is it because he’s truly confused? Or does he that badly not want to even pretend to be married to me? I know that thought is unreasonable, but I can’t help thinking it.
I lift my chin. Fine then. We can tell them the truth. My pulse picks up. “No—” I begin.
But at the same time, Jude says, “Of course.”
For a moment an awkward silence extends. Then, out of nowhere, the woman on the rocking chair, the oldest of them all, bursts out laughing.
It’s the strangest sound—a dry cackle—but it disarms me. It seems to relax everyone. Her face has completely transformed, smile lines spreading across her weathered place. “Lass die jungen leute in ruhe.”
Carolina smiles. “She says, ‘Let the young people be.’”
The rest of the group laughs then, all except that uptight nun who asked the question. She gets up, huffing and mumbling something under her breath. The sister next to her hands her her dish, which only makes the grumpy one pinch her lips together.
I offer to help, but Carolina insists we stay put. To my surprise, the woman in the rocking chair is ambling over to the table now.
She slides into a seat next to Carolina with the help of the younger woman and says something to her.
“Sister Ilsa asks if you’ve been to the cottage next door,” she says.
Jude and I exchange a glance. Do we admit it? Technically, we were trespassing. But we have questions, too. That’s why we came.
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Do you know it?” I direct my questions to the old woman, who takes a sip of tea another sister brings over for her. The rest of them are in the kitchen.
Carolina translates her next words. “I know some things. I was born in this convent; my aunt was a sister here before me. She knew more.”
“Do you know the people who lived there?” I add eagerly.
“No,” she says.
My heart sinks. Then again, it makes sense. She’s very elderly, but even if she were a hundred years old, she wouldn’t have known Eleanor Cleary. She still would have died before this woman was born.
“But I knew their daughter,” the old woman says.
My pulse jackhammers. Jude and I exchange a wide-eyed glance. “Their…daughter?” Jude asks. “What were their names? All of them?”
The old woman takes another sip of her tea. “It was my aunt who knew them. She brought the child to the orphanage. The child, she was called Clea.”
“Their parents…” She closes her eyes as if trying to remember.
“Eleanor?” I say, hopefully.
“Eleanor.” The woman nods. “And…”
She considers, while Jude, Carolina, and I look at her anxiously.
“James,” she says after a moment.
We don’t need that translated.
“James!” I exclaim.
JEQ is James.
I hook my hands in Jude’s collar, my eyes growing wet. “He was a real person. James.”
We knew he was real, but George never mentioned him.
There were no records of him. Only his own diaries proved his existence.
By all accounts, he’d been a ghost. But learning his name has somehow changed everything.
“Jude,” I say, my voice tight. “Eleanor and James fought for their love against all odds. They were brave. They even had a child and had to do the hardest thing in giving her up because of their circumstances.”
Jude grins almost dopily. “I like it when you get like this.”
I tip my face up for a kiss, and Jude obliges, pressing his beautiful lips to mine.
They were certain about each other and their lives. Just like I am about Jude, I realize.
When I pull apart, my heart thumps in my chest. I can’t let him go, can I? Not to go back to how we were? This is too good. Too perfect.
Across from us, Sister Ilsa is giving us her beautiful, toothless smile. She says something in German, and at first, Sister Carolina doesn’t translate, just asks her a question as if she didn’t hear her right.
But Sister Ilsa nods.
“She says,” Carolina says tentatively, “that a man came by looking for information on Clea years ago.”
Both of us are stunned. “Who?” I ask.
But when they exchange words, Ilsa shakes her head.
“He only spoke to her aunt when she was alive. We don’t know who he was. But he asked after the baby.”
“When was this?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
She confers with the older sister.
“About thirty years ago.”
My shoulders drop. Not all that helpful. “He could have been a descendent of Eleanor’s baby, following up on the adoption,” I say, trying to sound hopeful.
“Or of George Cleary,” Carolina says. She’s as caught up on this as we are.
I shudder. “We never followed up on his lineage—maybe we should.”
Jude brushes hair from my cheek. “Don’t worry. There’s still lots of mystery to solve. With Griff’s help we jumped way ahead on our timelines.”
I nod, hope coming back. He’s right. We still have hopefully enough evidence to at least get the police to open up the case again.
Just then, Sister Ilsa puts a fist to her mouth as she yawns widely.
“Oh, we should let her get to bed,” I tell Carolina, who’s looking at Jude and me with an almost dreamy expression.
She clears her throat. “Yes.”
Out the window, the light’s falling as quickly as the snow.
Carolina speaks briefly to Sister Ilsa in German and then nods. “Right. If you’ll follow us, we’ll show you to your room.”
The woman who answered the door goes to the wall, where our coats are hung, and picks them up, struggling to bring them over to us.
“Oh, let me help,” Jude says. He crosses the room to take them from her and hugs them under his arm. When he grins at her, she flutters her eyelashes.
I shoot Jude a look. Seriously? Even nuns, Jude?
He knows what he’s doing.
To my utter surprise, and Jude’s great delight, we discover every single one of the nuns—with the exception of Sister Ilsa, who kisses us both on the cheeks and murmurs good night—are accompanying us to the room they’re giving us.
So we travel down the hallway in the middle of the pack of them, giggling and chattering to themselves. Near the end of the hall, the one in front opens a door and we all file into a spartan room with two twin beds on opposite sides of a single bedside table, a crucifix hung over top.
“Here you are,” says Sister Carolina.
Jude’s looking around like he might find something else in here, but there’s nothing except a plain desk and chair on the other walls. The rest is bare walls and floors.
“Thank you so much, again,” I say. “Jude?” He’s still eyeing the beds and himself, as if wondering if he might fit. It’s fair, I don’t think he will, totally. But they’re all waiting on him to say something.
“Jude!” I whisper again, elbowing him. Only I don’t elbow him, I elbow the pile of our coats under his arm, and the moment I do, a loud buzzing emanates from his.
My stomach jolts. He didn’t.
All the sisters are looking around, confused. One of them points to the jacket.
My face heats up like a furnace. “Jude!”
Jude grins. “Whoops!” then pats around in his coat. But he has to juggle both of our coats, and they’re all over the place.
“Jude, we have to make it stop!” I hiss, my heart pounding in my ears. There could not be a worse place for a vibrator to go off. Not in the whole world.
I grab my coat from him trying to help, but in doing so I jostle his upside down, and just then a purple silicone lump drops to the floor, bouncing as it buzzes at a seemingly deafening volume.
I think I’m going to barf. The only saving grace is it’s one of those rosebud-looking things, and not a giant dildo. Because I would not put accidentally bringing a giant dildo into a house of God past Jude Kelly.
I go to grab it, but it bounces under one of the beds.
“Let me,” Jude says, dropping to his knee and reaching under the bed. Several of the nuns skip sideways, giggling to get out of his way.
I’m standing there, mortified, my hands over my mouth, but realize none of them know what the thing is.
Except that one nun…the uptight-looking one who asked if we were married. Her face is aghast, her jaw tight and eyes wide. I meet her eye and she quickly looks away.
I’m almost doubly embarrassed by this, not just for me but for her, too.
“Got it!” Jude proclaims finally, holding the thing up like a trophy, still buzzing wildly.
I grab it from him, switching it off. “Okay! Well, thank you so much again!” I say. I feign a big yawn, and thankfully, Sister Carolina takes the hint, smiling innocently. She speaks in German to the rest of them and they all titter and wave and shuffle out of the room.
Carolina lets us know where the bathroom is before closing the door behind us, leaving Jude and me alone in the room.
“I am going to kill you!” I exclaim, letting out a pressure-relieving laugh.
Jude grins, flopping down on the bed behind him. “Will you fuck me first?”
I gasp, my eyes going to the crucifix. “Jude!” I whisper.
He grins wickedly. “It’s fine. I’m a priest, remember?”