“Bridget.” She swallowed. “I am so sorry.” She hugged me. “I can’t imagine how you are suffering.”
“But you won’t say, will you? To anyone? About anything?”
“Not if you don’t wish—”
“I don’t wish.”
Sister Teresa nodded. Her eyes roved over my face, her own eyelashes wet. “I will pray for your sister,” she said, grasping my hand. “Shall we pray together now?”
“And you especially can’t tell Isabella. You have to promise.”
“I promise.”
“On the Holy Bible. A holy promise.”
Her pupils flickered in a strange way. But dutifully she crossed herself, slowly. “A holy promise.”
22.
December
That evening I sat alone in my room instead of going down for dinner. I felt like a cushion that has had its stuffing pulled out. Every time I thought of my conversation with Sister Teresa, my body rattled. I sat on the tiles, put my fists to my face, and rocked back and forth. I pressed my forehead into the coverlet and prayed for Rhona in earnest. What if my lie was a jinx—and God would now punish me by making it true? I whimpered into the bedclothes. I began with prayers for Rhona, and then for Mama, and Granny and Dad. Reluctantly, I included Isabella.
There was a knock at the door and Sally stuck her head around. “Bridge? Oh—” She saw me on my knees. “Sorry,” she whispered, closing the door.
I crawled into bed and lay awake, jittering and fretful. I heard the girls come back from dinner, smelled the wood smoke of the common room grate. I tossed and turned and quailed until the girls retired, the bathrooms gurgled water, owls began to call from the orchard. Finally, long after midnight, I slept.
The next day, white clouds rolled over the lake, threatening snow. I joined the girls in the common room with a heavy ache in my muscles. Isabella wasn’t there. Joan, Barbie, and I bundled around the fire in sweaters and blankets, drinking cocoa made with Nancy’s heating coil, listening to the draft surging through the floorboards. Katherine, Sylvia, and Isabella kept to Sylvia’s room all weekend, and occasionally I caught the muffled sound of Isabella’s voice from outside the door. I set my nerves. It was only a matter of time until Isabella realized how much she had hurt me. How wrong she had been to betray me. And until then I had to be alert to rumors. And to focus, carefully, on protecting my reputation.
A strange listlessness spread over the academy with the change in weather. The wind was sharp and sought out vulnerable skin to slice, slamming unseen doors, whistling frosty arias in the courtyard. Apart from Nancy, the rest of us barely left the upper corridor. Instead, we entertained ourselves by watching from the common room windows as the sisters shoveled grit on the pathways around the building. Growing contemptuous of each other’s opinions, we stopped setting our hair or wearing lipstick and dressed in old shirts and boyfriends’ sweaters and went about with holes in our socks. If I happened to come across Isabella in the queue for the telephone I turned pointedly and went back to my bedroom.
Over the next week, I nodded obediently as Nancy delivered tedious lectures about regional dialects while her dirty hiking boots dried out by the fire. I painted Patricia’s nails. I held Greta’s yarn as she knitted and unpicked a sweater for Bobby, never tutting when she dropped a stitch, never complaining when she made me count for her. When Sally wanted to compare dress sizes, I let her try on my skirts and provided deferential compliments about the slack material of my gowns around her waist. I helped Joan paste the photos from her sister’s wedding into a scrapbook, supplied her with tissues as she mourned not being a bridesmaid. I loaned homework assignments and searched for lost earrings. I rescued spiders and shared cigarettes. I was the perfect companion.
Sometimes I caught Isabella looking over at me in the refectory and felt a sting of bitter victory. It was only a matter of time before she apologized, begged for my forgiveness. It was clear she missed me. Of course she missed me. She had said it herself—I was her favorite.
The meals grew heavier and heartier: quail with polenta, tiny ravioli filled with pumpkin and sage, slippery saffron risotto. And hazelnut cake with fresh cream, and trembling egg yolks whipped with sweet wine. I retreated straight to my bedroom after supper and lay on my bed, gratefully stunned with food and clumsy with cider.
One evening for dessert we were served cups of crispy fried pastry filled with semisweet ricotta. I ate two, one after the other, showering myself with powdered sugar.
Sally poked one of the shells suspiciously with her fork. “Is it Bridge-approved?” She’d never quite recovered from the treachery of a seemingly chocolate bun that turned out to be marzipan.
I lifted my third pastry and contemplated it. “It’s so good I want to salt it with my tears,” I said.
The table fell silent. A row of faces was staring at me. I reeled with shame. Where had that sentiment come from? It had flown from somewhere uncensored inside me. I was mortified. It had eased out so quickly I hadn’t had time to catch it.
“Bridge,” Sally gasped. “You’re like a poet.”
“So passionate,” Greta said to Sally.
“Is that from the Bible?” Bunny squinted at Barbie, who shrugged, staring at me wide-eyed.
I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “It’s nice, is all I mean,” I said, and took a long sip of cider.
“Well, we figured that,” Sally said, laughing. The girls were smiling at me, at each other. Sally picked up her pastry and tapped it against Greta’s. “Cheers.”
I felt almost giggly with relief. “Cheers,” I said.
Although I searched for her, Sister Teresa was no longer working in the yard. Instead she was often down in the spa, where the sisters took turns chasing out roosting birds and lighting the ancient furnace to keep the pipes from freezing and shattering. I watched her and Sister Luisa walking back and forth between the cypress trees with a flounce of shallow triumph. I didn’t see her and Isabella together anymore.
* * *
On Friday night after dinner, I returned to my room to find Isabella sitting on the right-hand bed. She was turning a soft pack of Lucky Strikes over and over in her hands.
“Oh,” I said, almost tripping over the threshold.
“Will you shut the door?” Her voice was hoarse.
I closed the door and took an awkward seat on my own bed. I slipped my hands under my thighs.
She put the cigarette pack down on the coverlet. “I feel like everyone hates me,” she said.
I said nothing. Her face was drawn, exhausted.
Isabella cleared her throat. “Even Rosie—Sister Teresa is hardly speaking to me.”