Free Back in the Habit by Alice Loweecey Page B

Falcone. Ugh. That word. It governed my old, Regina the model Sister, life.”
    She began the second circuit.
    Model Sisters didn’t wake up one morning with a big fat nothing where certainty used to be. That clue-stick had been whacking her in the head for quite a while. She’d chosen to ignore it until the emptiness consumed her.
    The sidewalk by the west wall was blessedly free of civilians. She turned the corner, walking faster.
    What if Sister Bridget woke up empty one morning? What if the shift from Maryland to Pittsburgh aggravated it? Canonical year might be cloistered, but knowing your family was at least in the same city as you mitigated the loneliness a bit.
    Giulia itched to jog out this stress and feed her ideas with endorphins.
    Since Sister Vivian was a hot mess, Giulia needed to find out if she was from Maryland or Indiana too. There was a chance Sister Bridget had been messed up as well, from distance or false abandonment or … but that would mean Fabian’s analysis had been correct.
    Sister Bartholomew wasn’t a mess, but her family lived in Bethel Park. Ten miles from Pittsburgh. Her situation might be the opposite—never far enough away from the Motherhouse.
    Giulia turned the last corner and began the long walk up the Motherhouse driveway. Lunch. Then … telling Sister Bartholomew the truth?
    â€œHow do I say it? ‘Sister Bart. I’m really a private investigator hired by Sister Fabian to find out why Sister Bridget killed herself. Does it have anything to do with Vivian’s crying jags and why you’re afraid of the cellars?’ Heh. That’d make her vanish down a rabbit hole. Maybe a partial truth. And a quick co-opt of the Driscoll charm.”

Eleven
    Except that every time Giulia saw Sister Bartholomew that afternoon, she was escorting another new arrival. Or fetching a clean towel. Or disappearing into a bedroom, sheets in hand, to make up a fresh bed. Sister Vivian and the two Postulants ran the same treadmill.
    The weather shifted to cold, steady rain around two, and Giulia wandered the floors like the Ghost of Sisters Past. On her second circuit of the main floor she recognized one of her entrance group in the doorway and dodged into the back stairwell just in time.
    She evaded all human contact on a roundabout path through the Community Room and three small parlors until she reached the refectory. Several Sisters manned the stoves and counters, none of whom Giulia knew. No one even glanced at her when she walked past them to the stairs to the cellars.
    When the heavy door closed behind her, she breathed easier. “Better fighting spiders than being polite to Mary Stephen. I should forgive her—no, I did forgive her a bunch of years ago. I remember that Confession with its protracted discussion about what specific kind of sin that was.” She squashed a daddy longlegs with the side of her fist. “Forgetting is something else. I’m not stupid enough to pretend her backstabbing and rumor-mongering never happened.”
    She stopped herself from indulging in foul language. Frank Driscoll she was not. She wouldn’t cheat by using Italian, either.
    gurgle
    Giulia froze.
    gurgle, clank
    â€œWait …” She followed the noise into the seldom-used half-bath shoehorned between an empty fruit cellar and a bricked-up coal chute. “It’s the hot water pipe.” She crouched next to the chipped sink, worked her hand between the pipe and the wall, and snugged the joint a half-turn tighter.
    hiss, clank … gurgle … Silence.
    She stood and brushed her habit straight.
    I am remembering way too many obscure details. Like the best way to tuck my hair into my veil and the trick to stop that gurgling pipe. Why did my brain cells bother to retain such obscure information? She backed out of the closet-sized room and paced the hall. Falcone, you’re going to forget what life is like outside these walls. That might