Susan Albert - Rueful Death

"But surely someone who writes such letters-"

"Don't you understand?" Anne's dark eyes were flashing, her body tense with the vitality of her argument. "It's not her fault! She's as much a victim as somebody who gets one of her letters. It's the Church that's poisoning people's hearts!"

Anne would have made a great trial attorney. She had just delivered the criminal-as-victim defense as passionately as I'd ever heard it. I paused for a moment, letting the energy of her words ring in the quiet room.

"If someone else hadn't hung the bloody swimsuit on the cross," I said at last, "would you have done it?"

She turned toward the window again. Half of her face was in shadow. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps you did," I said.

There was a long silence as she stood, not looking at me. "You're right," she said after a minute. "I hung it there. I wanted it to be part of our liturgy." She paused. "I don't know. Maybe the symbolism was too subtle. People didn't react the way I hoped."

"I take it, though, that the letter was genuine-that you didn't write it yourself?"

She was offended. "Of course the letter was genuine! Other people have gotten letters, too, haven't they?"

They had, and Anne might have written them, as easily as writing one to herself. But somehow I didn't think so. I answered with another question. "Since you received the letter, have any of your possessions been tampered with? I'm not talking about the swimsuit, of course."

She answered immediately. "Yes, actually. Somebody cut the strings on my tennis racket."

"When was this?"

"A few days after I got the letter-three or four, maybe.''

"Where do you keep your racket?"

"There." She pointed to a racket hanging on the bac' of her door. "I thought at the time there might be a con nection."

Dominica's guitar, Anne's racket. I wondered whether any of Perpetua's belongings had suffered a similar fate. Probably not. She had done her penance.

Anne went back to the bed and sat down. ' 'I suppose you know that my letter wasn't the first. But maybe you don't know that Mother had found out who wrote them. She was planning to put a stop to it"

"She knew?" I stared at her. "Did she tell you who it was?"

She shook her head. "She didn't say how she was plan ning to stop it, either. But it had to be something pretty drastic. Removal to another house, maybe, or even expulsion. Whatever it was, she said she had to talk it over with Reverend Mother General. She wouldn't do that unless it was really serious."

"And then she died," I said quietly.

She looked at me for a moment, started to speak and stopped, started again. "I wonder…"

"Wonder what?"

The words came slowly, almost reluctantly. "Do you suppose that the letter-writer… had something to do with Mother Hilaria's death?"

I watched her face. ' 'What makes you ask?''

She moved her hand over the plaid spread, smoothing it. "When it happened, I believed what Mother Winifred told us. About the hot plate and the puddle of milk and Mother Hilaria's bad heart. But now…" She paused and looked up at me. "The thing is, Mother Hilaria did know who was writing those letters, and she intended to do something about it. Then she died. Was it a coincidence, do you think, or something else?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'd like to find out." I pushed myself out of the chair. ' 'Thanks for your help,'' I added, and hesitated, thinking of another question. "Feeling the

way you do about the Church, Anne, how can you go on being a part of it?''

Anne raised her chin. "I don't intend to."

"What are you going to do?"

"A friend of mine has established an order in Chicago- a group of women who live together and work in a hospice. They have no connection with the Catholic Church. It's a big move for me, but I'm ready to make it. In fact, I'm anxious to leave. There's a limited amount of room in the Chicago house, and if I don't go soon, they'll give my space to someone else."

"Why are you staying?"

"Because I don't want to tip the balance. Actually, I "hink change would be good for St. T's. We're too insular, and there's a tendency to be fixed in our ideas. In my opinion, Reverend Mother General has the right idea, and I personally don't think she's the Wicked Witch of the West, die way some people do. But she's chosen the wrong person to make changes. Olivia is a despot."

I smiled a little. "No redeeming qualities?"

Anne considered. "She's determined, you've got to give her that. But she's made too many enemies. If you ask me, she'd better watch out. Somebody might slip something into her salad."

Rue has a reputation as an anaphrodisiac (reducing sexual excitement) and an abortifacient… Unfortunately, the active dose of various extracts of the plant… is at the same level as a toxic dose.

Steven Foster Herbal Renaissance

I was still thinking about what I had learned from both Anne and Dominica as I walked up the path to Jeremiah. The thoughts were driven out of my head by a deep voice.

"Hello, China."

Tom Rowan was lounging on the front step, blue-jeaned legs and boots stretched out in front of him, a brown Stetson tipped forward over his eyes. There was a blue nylon bp bag on the porch beside him. He sat up and thumbed his hat back.

"You look surprised. Didn't Mother Winifred tell you "d be stopping by?"

"Yes, she did. I guess I lost track of time."

"Nothing new about that. Remember?" He gave me a slow grin. "We'd have a lunch date and you'd work right iirough it. Dinner, too." He scooted over so I could sit iown next to him. The narrow wooden step made for a:3zy fit.

"I wasn't the only one," I said. "Remember the Satur- j day afternoon we were supposed to go out on Alex's boat? Yob got involved at the bank and forgot all about it. And the evening my mother was taking us to the Opera Guild dinner and you stood us both up?"

He held up his hands, laughing. "I confess, Counselor. I'm guilty, you're guilty, we're both guilty." He dropped his hands. ' 'I guess we both could have done a lot of things differently."

We sat quietly for a moment. I don't know what Tom was thinking, but I was wishing I could go back and do at least some of it differently-not for him, but for me. If I'd been willing to give a little more, maybe I could have learned something. Of course, there might not have been much to learn: Tom had been as arrogant as I, and we'd I pushed one another around rather badly. But I might have learned something that could have smoothed those rough | early days with McQuaid.

Tom looked up at the cliff on the other side of the Yucca "You've got a lovely spot for a retreat," he said. The sky I was blue now, no clouds. The sun, dropping toward the western horizon, spilled a golden light over the cliff. "Nothing ever happens here."

I grunted. Nothing much ever happens? How about a ' little arson, a few poison-pen letters, two questionable deaths, a power struggle between monastic factions, and a feminist revolt against the masculine authority of the. Church? But unless Tom spent a lot of time here or cultivated an inside informant, those were things he probably wouldn't hear about. "Do you come out here often?" 11 asked.

"Not often enough." He rested his crossed arms on bent knees. "Maybe I'll ask Mother Winifred if I can stay for a couple of weeks this spring. I'm glad I've had this time with my father, but I need to get away. Sometimes the old man…" He let the sentence slide away.

' 'Rough, huh?'' I asked. I remembered Tom Senior as a

man who liked to pull the strings, call the shots. When somebody like that is confronted by the Big C, the fallout can be tough on everybody.