Free The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett Page A

crazy," Angie said. "Everybody washes their hands before they go to dinner."
    "Hey, she ate there, not you," Beatrice said, helping herself to another slice of bread.
    "Well, I like to think about what I'd wear, you know, if this was still a fancy hotel. Something low-cut with little pink beads on it. Something that kinda caught the light when I walked through the room."
    "I'd wear black," Beatrice said. Her hair was thick and black and her eyes were nearly black. It would look nice on her. "I wanted to make myself a black dress once, and my mother nearly threw a fit. 'Why do you want your one nice dress to be something you can only wear to a funeral?' she said."
    "Black is very stylish," Angie said. Then all at once all three of the women looked at me. "How about you, Rose. What would you wear?"
    But somehow I just couldn't get into the spirit of things. The idea of a pretty dress in a beautiful restaurant made me want to cry. We were all through with pretty things. We were all through turning heads, being young. "I don't know," I said. "I wouldn't care. I'd just wish it was a little darker in here."
    "Candlelight," Angie said softly. "We forgot about the candles."
    Then there was a commotion in the front of the room, and Lolly stood up and then sat back down again. Then other girls stood up and came to her table, and then the sisters came out, taking quick steps, their habits sailing out behind them, telling everyone to sit down and be quiet. A girl from the table in front of ours leaned over and whispered to us. "Water broke."
    "I can't believe this is happening on your first night here," Angie said. "I've been here eight days and nothing like this has happened to me before."
    In fact, it was happening to everyone. My throat closed up in such a panic I thought it was me they were coming to take away. As we watched Sister Bernadette and Sister Serena guide Lolly out of the dining room, we knew what was ahead of us. Lolly passed right by me, so close I could have touched her. She was younger than I was. She had a wide pink satin ribbon in her hair. Her hands were shaking. The back of her dress was soaked through.
    "They'll take her to Owensboro," Regina said in a dreamy voice. It was the first time she'd said a word all evening. "I used to live in Owensboro."
     
     
    "What will happen?" I asked Angie that night when we were both in our beds. The room was dark, as dark as anything I had ever seen before in my life. The town was too far away for the lights to come to us, no streetlights, very little moon.
    "They'll take her to the hospital, that's almost an hour away, and she'll have the baby. The sisters stay with you the whole time. They'll even go in the room with you and hold your hand if you want them to. Then after, they give you something to make you sleep, and in the morning you wake up and the baby is gone."
    "Doesn't anybody ever keep it?"
    "Hardly ever. Lots of girls say they're going to, right before their time, they say they're going to get married and all sorts of crazy stuff. Everybody always says they're going to have their baby without making any sound, get through their whole labor right here at Saint Elizabeth's without any of the sisters finding out. That way they'd have to call for an ambulance and you could ride all the way up to Owensboro holding your baby. But no one's ever pulled it off. They get scared about something going wrong or they can't keep from calling out, and so they wind up going and having the baby in the hospital."
    "Then what?"
    "What do you mean, then what? Then you go home."
    "I don't understand, if you had to come to a place like this, I'd think you wouldn't have a home to go back to."
    Angie sighed, like she was tired of girls from California being so stupid. "When you leave you tell everyone a lie. You tell them you're going to take care of your sick aunt, or you won a trip to Europe or something, then you come back six months later and get back your job and have dinner at your