Mother Gregoria had walked slowly back to her desk after she saw Gabriella walk away from him, and sat for a long time lost in thought, but she said nothing when she saw Gabriella that evening. She was so gentle and so loving, and so alive, and so happy with all her Sisters. It seemed foolish to worry about her. Yet there was something about what she had seen that day that struck fear in Mother Gregoria's heart, but she told herself she was being foolish.

Father Connors didn't come back to the convent again the next week. Another priest was covering for him. He was traveling again, and he didn't get back to St. Matthew's until Easter Saturday, when he heard confessions all afternoon. The nuns in the convent were happy to see him, he had a terrific sense of humor and he seemed to have a light touch when listening to confession. Sister Emanuel was talking about him to the Mistress of Novices, when he stopped and chatted with them on his way out.

“Are you joining us for lunch tomorrow, Father Connors?” Sister Immaculata, the Mistress of Novices, asked with a shy smile. She had been beautiful once, but she had been a nun for more than forty years now.

“I'd like that very much,” he said, smiling at both of them. He loved the old nuns, their bright eyes, their shy smiles, the sharp wit, which so often took him by surprise. Their faces were so free of the stresses of the world. They had escaped the horrors that he knew only too well plagued so many lives. Most of them looked younger than they were, the sheltered lives they lived spared them so much anguish.

“The postulants and novices are making Easter lunch for us this year. They've been hard at work on it since last night,” Sister Emanuel explained, proud of the group she was bringing along now. They were doing very well. And they'd been preparing turkeys and several hams. There was corn from the garden, mashed potatoes, fresh peas, and several of the older nuns had been in the kitchen, baking since early morning.

“I can't wait.” There were three other priests coming with him the next day, and some of the nuns’ families came to visit on holidays. And this year the weather had been so fine that Mother Gregoria had agreed to set up picnic tables outside. “Should I bring anything? One of our parishioners has given us several cases of very nice wine.”

“That would be wonderful,” Sister Immaculata beamed, knowing how pleased some of the visitors would be. It was rare for Mother Gregoria to allow any of the nuns to drink wine. It was understood that they drank wine when they went home to their families, or out to dinner with them, but in the convent itself they seldom, if ever, drank alcohol, even wine. The priests who visited them drank liberally, but it was a privilege Mother Gregoria preferred to extend only to them. ‘Thank you for the thought.” Both Sisters smiled at him, and the next day when he arrived for Easter Mass, he had several cases of very good California wine in the back of his car to give them.

He lifted them out easily, and brought them to the kitchen, where he entrusted them to the elderly Sister in charge. He could see the novices buzzing everywhere, and the smells of the food they had prepared were mouthwatering. He could hardly wait for the picnic they had promised him after Mass.

All four priests celebrated Mass together that day, and the chapel was filled with the nuns, and their families. There were little children everywhere, and the crucifix behind the altar and the stations of the cross had been unveiled after the long season of Lent. It was a time for rejoicing everywhere, and spirits were still high after the Mass, when everyone gathered in small, friendly groups outside in the garden.

Mother Gregoria was busy greeting everyone, and shaking hands with old friends, and the young nuns had already begun bringing food out on trays. Gabriella was one of them, and she and Sister Agatha were carefully carrying one of the hams out of the kitchen on an enormous platter when Father Connors spotted them and offered to help them. He took the platter from them with ease, and set it down on a long table, next to another ham and the four turkeys they had worked so diligently to prepare. There were biscuits and buns, corn bread, vegetables of every kind, mashed potatoes, several salads, and half a dozen different varieties of pie, and homemade ice cream.

“Wow!” he said, feeling like a kid again, as he looked at the vast array of food on the table with wide eyes and a broad smile. “You ladies certainly know how to make an Easter picnic unforgettable, don't you?” And as Sister Emanuel looked over at them, and saw the expression on the young priest's face, she was very proud of her students.

The guests stayed for most of the afternoon, and Gabriella was eating a piece of apple pie when Father Connors finally made his way back to her again. He had spent the afternoon chatting with Mother Gregoria and some of the older Sisters. They had introduced him to their families, and he was having a wonderful time talking to them. He had loved chatting with Mother Gregoria, she was so well informed, so intelligent, and so wise. And she had enjoyed getting to know him. He had only been at St. Stephen's for a short time. He had been in Germany before that, and had spent six months working at the Vatican in Rome, and he was very well versed in what was going on there.

“You should try some vanilla ice cream on that.” He gestured to Gabriella's apple pie, as he obviously enjoyed the huge dollop of homemade ice cream on his own piece. “Mmmm… fantastic lunch. You ladies should open a restaurant. We'd make a fortune for the church.”

Gabriella grinned at the look of ecstasy on his face, and laughed at what he had said. “We could call it Mother Gregoria's. I'm sure she'd love that.”

“Or maybe just call it something catchy like The Nuns. I hear there's a nightclub that just opened downtown somewhere, in an old church. They're using the altar as a bar.” Just talking about it seemed sacrilegious to both of them, but it still made them laugh. “I used to love to dance when I was a kid,” he admitted to her, starting in on the second piece of pie on his plate. It was blueberry, and reminded her of the story he'd told about picking blackberries when he was a child. “Did you like to dance, Sister Bernadette?” he asked, as though they were old friends, and she smiled and shook her head.

“I've never tried. I've been here since I was ten,” but he already knew that. “I used to love to watch people dance at my parents’ parties when I was a little girl, but I never got to go downstairs. I used to sit at the top of the stairs, and peek at them. They all looked so beautiful, like fairy queens and princes. I always thought I'd be one of them when I grew up.” She had no idea what had happened to their house, or the furnishings that had been in it. She didn't know if her mother had taken them, or if everything had been sold. It had all been gone for a long time, and she had no way of knowing.

“Where did you live when you were a child?” he asked with interest as he looked at her, putting a small dollop of the delicious ice cream on what remained of her pie.

“Thanks…” She closed her eyes as she tasted it, and then grinned up at him. “That is good… yum… We lived in New York, about twenty blocks from here. I don't know what happened to the house.”

“You've never gone back to look?” That seemed odd to him. He would have gone back, just out of curiosity, and found it strange that she hadn't.

“I thought about it when I was going to Columbia, but…” she shrugged, looking up at him with her enormous blue eyes that were so similar to his own… “too many memories… I'm not sure I want to see it again. It's been a long time.” And her life was very different.

“I'll drive by it sometime for you, if you want, just to see if it's still there. Give me the address, and I'll take a look.”

“That would be nice.” He could face the demons for her, and report back to her. She was almost sure Mother Gregoria wouldn't mind. “Do you ever go back to St. Mark's?”

“Once in a while,” he said, with a warm look at her as he finished his second piece of pie. “My parents’ house has been turned into a parking lot. I don't have any relatives. All I have left of my childhood is St. Mark's.” They were both people with troubled histories, and very little left of their past. Painful memories, and broken dreams that could no longer be repaired, but they were both grateful for the fact that they had survived. They had sought refuge in the church, and were comfortable where they were, just as they were comfortable sitting side by side now in the garden of St. Matthew's. The sun was warm as she looked up at him again, and was struck by how handsome he was. It still seemed hard to believe that he preferred being a priest to being out in the world, but as he looked at the young postulant he was coming to know well, he had the same feelings about her.

They sat and chatted for a while, watching the other nuns talk animatedly to their guests, and it struck both of them at the same time, that neither of them had another soul in the world except the nuns and priests they lived with.

“It's odd, isn't it?” he said quietly. “Not having a family. I used to miss it terribly on holidays, for the first few years at least, and then I got used to it. The Brothers at St. Mark's were so good to me. I always felt like a hero coming home from the Seminary to visit. Brother Joseph, the director of St. Mark's, was like a father to me.” It was a common experience they shared, which went beyond the Masses he said for them, or his kindness to her in the confessional. It was something each of them understood perfectly, and which no one else seemed to share. It was a kind of solitude and loneliness which formed a silent bond between them.

“I was just glad to be away from the beatings when I first came here,” she said softly. He couldn't even imagine it, except that he had seen that and worse when he worked as a chaplain in the hospital as a young priest. It used to make him cry to see the damage people did to their children.

“Did they hurt you very badly?” he asked gently. She thought about it silently, then nodded and looked into the distance.

“Sometimes,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “I wound up in the hospital once. I loved it there, people were so kind to me. I hated to go home, but I was afraid to tell them. I never told anyone. I always lied about it to everyone. I thought I had to protect them, and I was afraid that if I didn't, my mother would kill me. If she had stuck around for a few more years, she probably would have. She hated me,” she said as she looked up at the young priest who had become her friend now. They had shared a multitude of confidences about their childhoods, and it suddenly seemed like a kind of glue between them.

“She was probably jealous of you,” Father Connors said reasonably. He had asked her to call him Father Joe by then, and she had told him that her name was Gabriella, even though all the other postulants, and some of the old nuns, now called her Sister Bernie,

But his suggestion didn't make sense to Gabriella. “Why would she be jealous of a child?” She looked at him with eyes filled with memories and questions.

“People just are sometimes. There must have been something very wrong with her.” Gabriella knew better than anyone that it was an overwhelming understatement. “What was your father like?”

“I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I never really knew him. He looked a lot like you,” she smiled up at him again, “or at least I think he did, from what I can remember. He was scared of her. He never stood up to her, he just let her do it.”

“He must feel terribly guilty about it. Maybe that was why he ran away from her. He probably just couldn't face it. People do strange things sometimes, when they feel helpless.” It reminded them both of his mother's suicide, but Gabriella didn't want to bring up painful memories for him and ask him about it. It was a nightmare she couldn't even begin to imagine. “Maybe you should try to find him one day, and talk to him about it.” She had fantasies about that sometimes, and it was odd that he should mention it. But she didn't know where to begin looking for him. All she knew was that twelve years before, he had moved to Boston.

“I don't suppose he ever knew that I came here. I don't think she would have bothered to tell him. I was going to talk to Mother Gregoria about it once, but she always says that I have to let go of the past, and leave it far behind me. She's right, I guess. He never called or wrote after he left.” She said it with a sad look in her eyes. Talking about them still pained her greatly.