grinned. “And you know this for a fact.”
He surprised her by giving her a serious answer. “You don’t talk down to them,” he told her. “That’s what I liked about you.” One of many, many things, but he didn’t add that. The thoughts of a preadolescent boy belonged in the past. “You didn’t make me feel like some dumb little kid you could boss around.”
Never once did she lord it over him, even though he knew that he would have willingly submitted to her authority, just to have her there.
“That’s because you weren’t some dumb little kid,” she pointed out. “You were very smart—even if you pretended not to be.” His eyebrows narrowed in a quizzical glance he sent her way. “All those homework problems you used to ask me to help you with,” she recalled for his benefit. “I knew you could do them on your own.”
He’d forgotten about that. Forgotten a lot about his earlier life, the way things were when he was growing up and believed the world held so much promise. “What gave me away?”
“You ‘caught on’ much too quickly when I helped you with your math homework. You would have had to have understood the principle to some extent for that to have happened.” She smiled at him fondly, remembering evenings in the kitchen with books spread out, his and hers. She’d thought of him as the little brother she hadn’t been allowed to have. Michael, who had died long before he was a year old. “I think you were trapped between wanting me to spend time with you, helping you with your homework, and struggling to keep from trying to impress me with how bright you really were.”
He laughed quietly to himself. She’d hit the nail dead on its head. “You shouldn’t have become a nun, you should have become a detective.”
“I’ll keep that in mind as a backup career if teaching and nursing don’t pan out.”
He took a left turn at the end of the next long block, passing by a newly constructed strip mall. “You’re a nurse, too?”
She nodded. The order she’d joined had specifically encouraged her educational pursuits. “I thought getting a nursing degree would come in handy in the places that the order kept sending me to.”
“And that was?”
She rattled off the names of several small countries, some of which had already changed their name again. “Africa, for the most part,” she added, since that was the easiest way to keep track.
He could have easily made the yellow light up ahead before it turned red, but instead, he eased his foot off the gas pedal, switching to the brake. The vehicle slowly came to a stop.
The moment that it did, Caleb turned to look at her in sheer awe, her words playing themselves over in his head. Try as he might, he couldn’t picture her braving the elements, going from village to village, dispensing hope and medicine. It was difficult enough picturing her in the traditional garb of a Dominican Sister, swaddled from head to foot in black with white contrasts and roasting beneath the hot, merciless sun.
He couldn’t have explained why, but he was suddenly glad that was all behind her.
Very little really surprised him. Somewhere along the line, between his work and Jane’s death, he’d lost the ability to be amazed. But this came close.
“You went to Africa?” he finally asked. “On your own?”
Being in Africa for all those long periods of time had a great deal to do with who she’d been and who she had become. “Yes, why?”
He shrugged. The light turned green and they continued on their way. “I just thought you were in some cloistered place, far away from everyone.” Like Rapunzel in the tower, he remembered thinking. He’d been baptized Catholic at birth, but neither he nor his parents before him had ever really taken an active part in any organized religion. And Jane had been a free spirit, embracing everything, singling out nothing. His image of what nuns actually did was very limited. “Fingering your beads and praying.”
Someone else might have taken offense at the near flippant way he regarded those who had dedicated themselves to the religious life, but she knew he didn’t mean to sound belittling. Something else was going on, something he tried to keep buried. Maybe it had to do with his line of work. She’d known more than one burned-out police officer.
“Praying was a large part of it,” she acknowledged, “but God helps those who help themselves. In my case, I was the one doing the helping.”
“In Africa,” he repeated, the slightest trace of wonder creeping into his voice.
“That’s right.”
Caleb thought about some of the articles he’d read in the newspaper and heard on the news over the years. Stories about wars between African factions and atrocities that were committed. “Were you ever in any danger?”
She inclined her head. “At times.” Her tone made light of the admission. She’d never been the type to seek the spotlight for its own sake, only as a necessary evil when focusing on raising funds to buy the simplest of supplies for the villages she went to. “One of the biggest dangers I faced was finding someplace to wash that didn’t have a hippo in it. They’re not the docile creatures everyone thinks they are. They can get pretty nasty. Makes you see the world in a different light and makes you truly grateful for the simplest modern convenience.” She grinned. “Like toilet paper.”
He listened quietly. When she paused, he commented, “I can see why you’d want to leave that.”
He’d misunderstood her meaning, she thought. “I never minded the harsh conditions. It was a small price to pay for being able to help people, to do some good for those less fortunate. Some of the things I’ve seen could break your heart,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. “I might even opt to go back someday.”
He frowned. Was she having a change of heart? “Then you think you’ll reenlist?”
“Reenlist?” she echoed, amused by the term.
He made a sharp left. She caught herself leaning into him. “As a nun.”
“Anything’s possible,” she allowed. “But at this point, I don’t really think I’m going to ‘reenlist’ in the order. Besides, my being part of a religious order was neither a plus nor a minus when it came to the work I was doing in Africa. I can just as easily go back there as a civilian.”
In some ways, she added silently, it might even be easier that way. They wouldn’t be turning to her, expecting answers to the questions that troubled their souls. Because she didn’t feel as if she had the answers any longer. If anything, she shared their questions.
“Do you want to?” he asked bluntly.
Claire pressed her lips together, suppressing a sigh as Caleb drove down the street that led to the far-side entrance to her development.
“I’m not sure what I want right now,” Claire told him honestly. “Other than doing whatever’s necessary to make sure my mother gets well.”
“What does she have?”
The word all but burned on her tongue as she said it. “She has acute leukemia. It seems that she’s had it for a while now, but I just found out recently.”
