And as she finished her tea, she picked up a discarded newspaper. She needed to find a place to stay, and glanced down a list of small hotels and boarding-houses, and she noticed that there was a boarding-house not far away, on East Eighty-eighth Street, near the East River. She didn't know the neighborhood, but it was a start. But without a job, she wasn't even sure she could afford it.

She paid for her tea, and walked slowly back into the sunshine. She still felt dead inside, and the tea had only slightly warmed her. She had been icy cold for days, after all the blood she had lost, and even the hot drink hadn't really helped her. She was still deathly pale, and her whole body ached as she walked east down the long blocks toward the East River, wondering how much a room would cost her. She knew she couldn't survive long on five hundred dollars, or at least she didn't think so. She had never had to take care of her own needs. She didn't know what anything cost, not food or restaurants or rooms or clothes. She had no idea what she could do, or how to manage her money, but she was grateful for what Mother Gregoria had given her. Without it, she knew her situation would have been even more desperate.

She walked past it the first time, missing the small sign. It was a tired old brownstone with a chipping facade, and all the sign said was ROOMS FOR RENT in a dust-streaked window. Nothing about the place looked very inviting. And when she walked into the downstairs hall, it was clean but shabby and smelled of cooking. It was as far removed as anything could be from the stark, immaculate precision and order of St. Matthew's convent.

“Yes?” A woman with a heavy accent poked her head into the dark hallway when she heard Gabriella's footsteps. She had watched her come in, from her window, and wondered what she wanted. “What do you want?”

“I… ah… are there rooms to rent? I saw the sign… and the ad in the paper.”

“There might be.” Gabriella recognized the accent as Czechoslovak or Polish. She still remembered the accents of the people who had come to her parents’ parties, although this woman was very different. And she was looking Gabriella over. She didn't want any druggies or prostitutes, and Gabriella looked younger than she was. The woman didn't want any runaways or trouble with the police either. She ran a respectable house, and she liked old people a lot better. They got their social security checks and they paid their rent, and they didn't make a lot of noise, or give her a lot of trouble, except if they got sick, or died. She didn't want people cooking in their rooms either, and young people were always doing things they shouldn't. Smoking, eating, drinking, cooking in their rooms, bringing people in at all hours, making too much noise. They never followed the rules, or held down proper jobs. And the landlady didn't want any headaches.

“Do you have a job?” the mistress of the boarding-house asked, looking worried. Without a job, Gabriella couldn't pay her rent, and that would be a problem.

“No… not yet…” Gabriella said apologetically. “I'm looking for one.” She didn't want to lie to her and pretend she had one.

“Yeah, well, come back when you get one.” This was no rich girl with a trust fund, or parents on Park Avenue who were going to pay her rent for her. But then again, if she had been, she wouldn't have been there. “Where you from?” Gabriella could see the landlady was suspicious of her, and she didn't really blame her.

Gabriella hesitated for an instant, wondering how she could explain the fact that she didn't have a job and had nowhere to live. It sounded, even to her, as though she'd just gotten out of jail, and she could see that the woman wasn't impressed with her. And the ugly black dress with the stains down the front didn't exactly improve her image. “I'm from Boston,” she settled on, thinking of the father she'd been unable to find that day, “I just moved here.” The woman nodded. It was a believable story.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Anything I can get,” she said honestly. “I'm going to start looking tomorrow.”

“There's a lot of restaurants on Second Avenue, and all the German ones on Eighty-sixth Street. You might find something there.” She felt sorry for her. Gabriella looked tired and pale, and the landlady thought she didn't look healthy. But she didn't look like a druggie. She seemed very clean, and very proper. Mrs. Boslicki finally relented. “I got a small room on the top floor, if you want to take a look. Nothing fancy. You share a bathroom with three others.”

“How much is it?” Gabriella looked worried as she thought of her small budget.

“Three hundred a month, no food included. And you can't do no cooking. No hot plates, no double burners, no crock pots. You go out for dinner, or you bring home a sandwich or a pizza.”

It didn't look like a problem. Gabriella looked like she'd never eaten. She was rail thin, and her eyes were so huge in her thin face, it made the landlady think she was starving. “You want to see it?”

“Thank you, I'd like that.” She was extremely polite and well spoken, and Mrs. Boslicki liked that. She didn't want any smart-aleck kids in her house. She had been renting rooms for twenty years, ever since her husband died, and she'd never had any hippies either.

Gabriella followed her upstairs while Mrs. Boslicki asked her if she liked cats. She had nine of them, which explained the smell in the downstairs hall, but Gabriella assured her she loved them. There had been one who sat with her sometimes while she did her gardening in St. Matthew's garden. And by the time they reached the top floor, the slightly overweight Mrs. Boslicki was breathless, but it was Gabriella who looked as though she might not make it. The room was on the fourth floor, and Gabriella wasn't up to that yet. The doctor had particularly told her to avoid stairs and too much exercise, or carrying anything heavy, or she might start bleeding, and she couldn't afford to lose another drop of blood after all she'd been through.

“You all right?” She saw that Gabriella was even paler than she'd been downstairs, she was almost a luminous green, and she was moving very slowly.

“I haven't been well,” Gabriella explained wanly as the old woman in the flowered housedress nodded. She was wearing carpet slippers, and her hair was neatly done in a small knot. And there was something comfortable and cozy about her, like a grandma.

“You gotta be careful with some of the flus around these days. They turn into pneumonia before you know it. You been coughing?” She didn't want any boarders with TB, either.

“No, I'm fine now,” Gabriella reassured her, as Mrs. Boslicki opened the door to the room she was willing to show her. It was small and dreary and barely big enough for the narrow single bed, the straight-back chair, and the single dresser with the hand-crocheted doily on it. She had rented it for years to an old woman from Warsaw, who had died the previous summer, and she hadn't been able to rent it since then. And even she knew that three hundred a month was a stiff price for it. The window shades were worn and the curtains were old and a little tattered, and the carpet was nearly threadbare. She saw Gabriella's face, who had been used to the spartan cells at St. Matthew's, but somehow they hadn't been quite this depressing. And for the first time, Mrs. Boslicki looked a little worried.

“I could let you have it for two-fifty,” she said, proud of her generosity. But she wanted the room rented, she needed the money.

“I'll take it,” Gabriella said without hesitation. It was grim, but she had nowhere else to go, and she was afraid to lose this one. And she was so exhausted just from coming up the stairs that she wanted it just so she could lie down for a while. She needed a place to sleep tonight, but thinking of this as her new home almost reduced her to tears as she handed the woman half of Mother Gregoria's money.

“I'll give you sheets and a set of towels. You do your own laundry. There's a Laundromat down the street, and a lot of restaurants. Most people eat in the coffee shop on the corner.” Gabriella remembered walking by it and she hoped it wasn't too expensive. She only had two hundred and fifty dollars left now, but at least she had a roof over her head for the next month.

They walked down the hall then, and Mrs. Boslicki showed her the small bathroom. It had a tub with a shower over it, and a pink plastic shower curtain. There was a small sink, and a toilet, and a mirror hanging from a nail. It wasn't pretty, but it was all she needed. “Keep it clean for the others. I clean it once a week, the rest of the time you do it yourselves. There's a living room downstairs. You can sit there anytime. It's got a TV,” and then she smiled a little grandly, “and a piano. You play?”

“No, I'm sorry,” Gabriella apologized. She remembered that her mother did, but they had never wasted lessons on her, and at the convent she did other things, like work in the garden. She had never had any talent for music, and some of the nuns had teased her about her singing. She loved it, but she sang too loud and a little off-key.

“You get yourself a job now, so you can stay here. You're a nice girl, and I like you,” Mrs. Boslicki said warmly. She had decided that Gabriella was all right after all. She had good manners and was very polite, and she didn't look like she was going to be a lot of trouble. “You gotta take care of yourself though. You look like you been sick. You gotta eat right and get healthy.” She bustled down the stairs then, and promised to come back later with some towels, and Gabriella said she'd stop in to pick them up herself to spare her the stairs and the trouble. Mrs. Boslicki waved as she disappeared, still clutching Gabriella's money.

Gabriella walked into the small room again, and looked around. She sat on the uncomfortable chair, and wondered if there was anything she could do to cheer the place up. She could buy a few things when she made some money, but not for the moment. A new bedspread, some prints on the wall, some fresh flowers would work wonders.

With a small sigh, Gabriella set her small suitcase down in the closet, and hung up her other dress. There was something else in her valise, her journal to Joe, which she left in the suitcase without looking at it. And it made her sadder now to realize that he had never seen it. She took it out, finally, unable to resist it, and sat down on the bed and opened the little book. It was filled with her notes about their meetings, and her love for him. It was brimming with all the excitement of first love, and the exquisite terror of their first clandestine meetings… and then further on, the passion she had found in his arms in the apartment. It was all there, right up to the end, talking about the life they would share, and at the very end it talked about the hopes that she had for their baby. And as she read the last entry, a letter fell out on the bed next to her, and she realized that she had never seen it. The envelope said “Sister Bernadette” in an unfamiliar hand, and then she realized with a start it was Joes writing, and she trembled as she opened it. It took a minute to understand what it was. It was his suicide note, the last thing he had written to her before he died by his own hand. Father O'Brian had left it with Mother Gregoria and she had slipped it quietly into the journal before she gave it to Gabbie. But Mother Gregoria hadn't warned Gabriella that it was there, and she touched it now with tears in her eyes as she read it. It was so strange that he had touched this paper only days before, that he had held it in his hand, that it was the only thing she had left of him. Just these words, carefully written on two sheets of white paper.

“Gabbie,” he began, the “Sister Bernadette” on the envelope had only been so that the letter would find her, and ultimately expose all their secrets. Without that, they might never have known, and she might still be at St. Matthew's. But that was done now, and there was nothing left to do but live with it. She couldn't go back now.

“I don't know what to say, or where to begin. You are so much better and more wonderful, and stronger than I am. All my life I have known how weak I am, what my failings are, how many people I have disappointed… my parents when Jimmy died, because I could not save him.” No matter that his brother had been two years older and far stronger, it was the younger brother who blamed himself for the heroic miracle he had been unable to accomplish, and perhaps they had silently blamed him, and if they had, she hated them for it. “I have disappointed everyone, people who knew me and loved me and counted on me. It is, ultimately, why I came to the priesthood. If I had not been such a disappointment to them.” He was talking about his parents again, and knowing him as she did, she understood that. Reading the letter was like listening to him, and it tore her at the heart now. She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, to convince him to stay… If only she had been there that night… if he had told her what he was thinking when she last saw him…