Free The Missing Madonna by Sister Carol Anne O’Marie

woman’s daughter.
    Eileen’s wrinkled face puckered with empathy. Perfect! Mary Helen thought as she put a little extra drama into the fact that the New York baggage tag was still attached to the woman’s suitcase. If the truth were known, her luggage was still tagged too.
    “What do you think we should do?” Eileen frowned.
    Mary Helen paused, adjusting her bifocals slowly asthough she hadn’t really thought about it. “Well, if you’re not afraid to get involved again . . .”
    Eileen pulled herself up to her full five feet, two inches. “An Irish coward is an uncommon character!” she said.
    “Is that an old saying from back home?” Mary Helen was suspicious.
    “No, Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria,” her friend admitted, rather reluctantly, Mary Helen thought.
    Before the two nuns parted, they agreed to attend the meeting with Erma’s daughter whenever and wherever the OWLs could arrange it.
    The moment she got back to the convent, Mary Helen called the alumnae office. “I’ll be in a little later this morning,” she told Lynda, her new secretary.
    “I hope you aren’t ill, Sister.”
    “No, not at all.” Mary Helen was touched by the young woman’s concern. “I have an important meeting, that’s all. But I am expecting a call,” she added, “from one of the OWLs, probably Mrs. Coughlin. Please just take the message.”
Carefully
, she wanted to add, but didn’t She knew Lynda was always careful.
    The old nun put on her wool coat and pulled a knitted scarf from her bottom drawer. It seemed silly to dress so warmly during the second week of May, but the moment she stepped outside she was glad she had.
    A strong gust of wind blew her coat open and twisted the ends of her scarf. Quickly, she began to walk down the hill toward the college entrance.
    I wonder what Lynda would think if she knew whom I was meeting, Mary Helen mused, turning her face to avoid the small specks of dust that whirled up from the road.
    Head down, she turned left on Parker Avenue. All along the street the west wind howled and bent the young, spindly eucalyptus trees planted near the curb.Even the older, sturdier evergreens bordering the University of San Francisco’s ball field swayed with its force.
    Fortunately, the wind was also pushing the heavy clouds aside. Vivid patches of blue began to peek among the gray.
    Mary Helen squinted. Up ahead on the corner, directly across the street from the massive St. Ignatius Church, was her destination, the adobe-pink Carmelite monastery.
    Eyes watering, Sister Mary Helen ducked into the side entrance of the imposing building. Pulling against the wind’s force, she opened the chapel door and stepped quickly into the silence. The heavy wooden door closed, leaving her in semidarkness.
    Genuflecting, she slipped into a back pew and closed her eyes. The delicate aroma of incense hung on the air. From somewhere behind the grille to the right of the main altar, she heard the soft, nearly imperceptible, chanting of the cloistered nuns at Divine Office. The peace and otherworldliness of the place was almost palpable.
    This was where she was having her meeting—the one she’d mentioned to Lynda. Her meeting was with God. It was one of her secrets. One she had never told anybody, not even Eileen. But for some time now, whenever Mary Helen wanted a serious meeting with God, she’d been coming here. She knew from years of experience that God heard and listened to her anytime and anywhere, but, of late, the Carmelite monastery had become like sacred ground.
    The reason might seem foolish to some people, but it made perfect sense to Mary Helen. It had all happened at breakfast one morning. Father Adams, the Jesuit from St. Ignatius who frequently said the early-morning Mass for the Sisters, had stayed for coffee. Someone had asked him if he knew how the poor cloistered Carmelites across the street from the church had managed tobuild a monastery that was two stories high and nearly half a