announced St. Ursula’s Preparatory Academy and then they were climbing up a winding strip of blacktop between towering oaks and pines.
“There she is,” the cabbie said, pointing ahead out the windshield, and Lauren caught another glimpse of a stone building before it, too, vanished as the road curved around the hillside.
The same building appeared again between the trees and then another building near it and then they crested the hill and the campus was before them, a large complex of stone buildings, the most massive of which sat at the peak of a semicircle driveway. The other buildings surrounding it stretched out at different points on a mandala of concrete pathways.
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the main building. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” She paid him with money carefully counted and then he was gone and she was alone, making one last attempt to smooth the wrinkles out of her skirt.
Only she wasn’t alone. A girl dressed from head to toe in black was hunched in a corner of the wide stone steps under an overhang, tucked so close to the wall that Lauren almost missed her. The hair was what she noticed, an astonishing coppery red color. The girl was smoking, the acrid scent of tobacco unmistakable, but she had the cigarette cupped under the hand resting on the lower step, hiding it without putting it out.
“Hi,” she said without smiling and Lauren repeated the greeting, wondering if she should say something. The girl was obviously underage. Was this some kind of test for prospective teachers? Should she tell the girl to put out her cigarette?
The front door of the building suddenly opened and a tall, horse-faced woman with a gray suit that matched her iron gray hair stepped out.
“Morgan, you know smoking isn’t allowed. You don’t want me to report that to Sister Rose, do you?”
The girl stubbed out the cigarette with a hostile look and the woman suddenly seemed to notice Lauren.
“May I help you?” she said and her eyes flicked up and down like a laser, zeroing in on the wrinkled suit.
“I’m here for an interview.”
“The main office is inside and down the hall to the left.” The woman held the door for her and gave a faint sniff as Lauren passed.
The hall was dark and empty. Wood was her first impression, dark wood and lots of it. Front and center was a large wooden crucifix with a marble Christ figure hanging above an intricately carved wooden console table. On the center of the table was a foot-tall marble statue of the Virgin Mary; she stood on a wooden base with her arms extended, head bowed submissively, and lips curved in a slight, Mona Lisa smile.
Lauren’s heels clicked loudly on the ivory marble tile floor and she wished she’d thought to check her hair in the bathroom at the station. It had finally gotten long enough to pull back and she’d fastened the unruly mass of gold curls at the base of her neck with a silver clip, hoping it made her look more mature.
The headmistress’s office was marked with a discreet black-lettered sign. A young woman with sleek black hair, wearing a blue twinset and matinee-length pearls sat in the outer office at an old wooden desk, looking for all the world like someone out of the 1940s, except she was typing away on a state-of-the-art desktop that seemed to be giving her trouble. She looked up with a pleasant smile and adjusted the stylish tortoiseshell glasses slipping down her small nose.
“May I help you?”
Lauren introduced herself. “I’ve got an interview with Sister Rose Merton?”
The young woman consulted a spiral-bound black appointment book. “Yes, of course, you’re her nine o’clock.” She gave Lauren a broad smile and adjusted the glasses again. “The headmistress will be with you in just a moment. If you’d like to take a seat?”
She gestured behind Lauren, who suddenly noticed the brown velvet sofa near an arrangement of large potted ferns. The door to the inner sanctum was at the far end of the sofa. It was open a crack.
Lauren took a seat on the couch and placed her slim briefcase carefully beside her. She sat up straight and took several deep breaths, looking at the painting in a gilt frame hanging on the wall. It was a vaguely familiar scene, a cluster of whey-faced, robe-wearing young women with oil lamps. Something from the Bible, Lauren thought, and hoped that there wouldn’t be questions that tested her religious knowledge. Thank God she was being interviewed for a history position, not religion.
She realized she could hear voices through the door. Or one raised voice and the murmuring of another, clearly placating.
“—excuses being made for the way my daughter has been treated!”
Lauren glanced at the secretary but she was engrossed in her typing again, seemingly oblivious. She looked back at the door and jumped as the voice continued. “What I’m asking is that everything not be blamed on Morgan.”
So it was the mother of the smoker. Lauren tried not to listen, but the lower the voices got the greater her urge to hear what they were saying. She caught fragments about rule breaking, about suspension, about other girls.
All at once the door opened and a tall, elegantly dressed woman with the same striking coppery hair and a frown marring her patrician features strode out. She was followed by a shorter, rounder woman wearing a look of resigned patience.
Lauren stood up and the shorter woman smiled at her.
“I’ll be right with you,” she said. She followed Morgan’s mother out of the room. The secretary caught Lauren’s eyes and rolled her own with a slight smile. Who or what that referred to Lauren wasn’t sure, but she smiled back.
A few minutes passed while Lauren waited, flipping through the magazines on the coffee table, a strange combination of religious and secular. She was barely able to focus. The headmistress came back into the room and spoke quietly to the secretary for a moment before turning to Lauren.
“You must be Miss Kavanaugh,” she said, extending one deceptively soft-looking hand for a firm shake. “I’m Sister Rose Merton, the headmistress at St. Ursula’s.”
She ushered Lauren into her office and closed the door. This time, Lauren noticed, it really was closed.
“Please, have a seat,” Sister Rose gestured toward two upholstered chairs that sat in front of a large mahogany desk that dominated the room.
Lauren took a seat in one as Sister Rose moved silently behind the desk, noticing that unlike the headmistress’s own leather office chair, the chairs in front of the desk were rigidly upright as if not to lull any visitors to the office into a false sense of security.
The wall to the left of Sister Rose’s desk was lined, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves. The wall opposite was hung with tasteful, if somewhat bland, landscapes in gilt frames. Directly behind her desk, hung so it appeared to be looking over her shoulder, was a sepia-tinted photo of a grim-faced nun in full habit. Directly above her was a large gold crucifix.
“Sister Augustine Clement,” Sister Rose said, following Lauren’s gaze. “St. Ursula’s founding headmistress. A smart and tenacious woman.”
The two nuns were a study in contrasts. Unlike her predecessor, Sister Rose wore no habit. She was dressed simply in a plain navy blue suit with an unadorned white blouse. She wore earrings, small pearl studs, and
