I stare at my phone for a minute before I slide it back into my pocket. The property owner is ahead of me, talking in over-bright tones to the Reverend Mother and Zenny, gesturing around to windows and load-bearing beams. I should be up there with them, and I will be.

In just a moment.

It’s another bowel obstruction, Dad had explained. They don’t know if it’s the old site flaring up or something new—new mets in her intestines, maybe. Adhesions from the last surgery. They did a suction on her stomach to relieve the pressure; she’s about to go in for a scan now.

It’s funny how quickly everything can fall apart. Only last week she was putting away dishes and arguing about God…and now we’re back in the hospital, possibly facing another surgery.

I glance at my watch. It’s 4:13 now, and Dad thinks Mom will be done with her scan and back in her room before six. That should give me plenty of time to finish the tour and drop Zenny off at the shelter and the Reverend Mother back at the monastery.

Maintain, you idiot, I chastise myself. Because my hands are shaking, and for a dumb, terrible minute, all I can feel is this kind of stale fear and even staler exhaustion. Because I know once I get to the hospital, it will be the triple duty of comforting Dad and handling the doctors and keeping Mom company. I love my father, but he can barely be strong enough for her—he can’t be strong for himself. Or be counted on to ask hard questions and to chase down nurses and to demand every next step Mom needs.

It has to be me.

I take a breath and catch up with the group.

“And here, we can easily build in an office for you,” the owner is saying.

The prioress is nodding thoughtfully. “And the expense?” she asks.

“Well, ideally…” the owner trails off as the prioress studies him. She’s in her mid-seventies, black, short and stout, with massive glasses and wrinkled, expressive hands. They’re folded over her belly now as she waits for him to finish saying whatever stupid thing he’s going to say.

He wisely reconsiders. “I’d be happy to do the renovations myself.”

“Oh, how kind,” the Reverend Mother says. “That would be a lovely gift.”

She says it in a way that’s genuine, that even I feel, and I think she is warmly grateful. But I also recognize as a businessman that she’s getting exactly what she needs from him, and all it took was a silent look. I wonder if she gives lessons.

And then it’s done. The prioress approves the site, both parties sign a provisional contract I drew up, and then I’m driving the women away from the property. I can’t kiss Zenny goodbye at the shelter with the Reverend Mother waiting in my car by the curb, but I do get out and walk her to the front door and tell her things that have her lashes fluttering until she disappears inside. And then I climb back into the car, preparing to drive the Reverend Mother back to the monastery, which is a sprawling old house in Midtown.

“So you’re the man having sex with Zenobia,” the Reverend Mother says before I can even get my seat belt buckled.

My hand fumbles for a minute on the belt; a thousand awful, awkward scenarios roll through my mind, the worst ones featuring Zenny exiled from this vocation she holds so dear and the least worst involving unwelcome lectures about chastity and propriety.

It occurs to me, in a racing shadow of desperate expediency, that I could lie to her. I could say that I’m simply helping with this shelter move and trying to make up for my part in the Keegan deal. I could say that Zenny’s an old friend, that what I feel for her is nothing more than older-brotherly, and I’m merely looking out for her for Elijah’s sake.

But right after the shadow comes a quick slant of light.

I can’t lie.

Not only would lying to the Reverend Mother be—I suspect—quite futile, as she’d see through it immediately and be understandably unimpressed with my deceit, but I can’t help but feel that Zenny wouldn’t want me to lie. That she’d want me to be honest no matter what the consequences were, because she would do the same in my place. Because she has lived honestly, even when it came at the cost of her identity as the model Iverson daughter, even when it brought her parents’ disapproval down around her ears. Here I am, a thirty-six-year-old millionaire taking courage from a college student, but there you are. When the college student is Zenny, you’d be foolish not to use her as an example.

And—cheeringly—I realize that any lecture can only last as long as the drive to Midtown, which is about fifteen minutes in the afternoon traffic.

I finish buckling, start the car, and glance over at the prioress. She’s staring serenely back at me, knobbled hands folded in her lap, the stark framing of her wimple around her head making her eyes behind their glasses look even bigger, inescapable.

“Yes,” I say. I don’t know what else to say after that, though, so I turn back to the road and shift into gear and we pull away.

“And?”

Well, that was definitely not what I was expecting. Does she want some kind of report? Or am I due for a lecture and she wants to start with me accounting for my actions like a schoolboy?

“And what, ma’am?”

She makes a noise—it’s the noise old people make when they think young people are being deliberately obtuse. “How is she? How is she feeling? Where does her heart wander? I might be her mentor but you are her lover—surely you know these things.”

My hand opens and closes on the gearshift as I search for words. Trying to describe Zenny in some kind of bizarre moral report—and within such a short time as the drive allows—is an impossibility. Zenny defies simple observations, simple explanations. It’s part of why I love her so much.

“Try,” the old nun says, seeing my struggle.

I don’t like talking about Zenny like this—when she’s not here—so I decide to talk about her only in the most abstract and broad strokes, so as not to accidentally betray any confidence.

“She’s magnificent and fierce and smart,” I say. I think of the roller-skating rink, of our nights together at the shelter, and then say, “She cares more than I can tell you about the people in the shelter and becoming a midwife for the needy; she speaks about God with reverence and balance. She told me she wanted to take this month to make certain of her path and her upcoming vows, and all I see from her is ironclad certainty.” I give a smile that I mean to be lighthearted but it twists bitterly on my mouth instead. “She’s more committed than ever.”

“Ah. You love her.”

What’s the point of denying it? “Yes,” I say, helplessly. “Yes, I love her.”

“And you don’t understand why she chooses this path.”

I shrug with one shoulder as I shift gears. “I understand it better than I did two weeks ago, but…you’re right. I still don’t understand. Not all the way.”

The nun is silent for a moment, and I get the impression she’s more comfortable in silence than she is in words, and it’s not as awkward as I would have thought it might be, sharing a car with someone who prefers quiet.

It’s actually quite soothing, the silence not heavy or demanding or smothering. It’s restful, and everything takes a kind of bluing, quieting hue like this. Zenny and my unrequited love for her, my mother in a hospital bed right now, getting scans and tubes and medicines.

Images of empty sanctuaries flit through my mind, the kind of reverent hush that comes with a sacred space. The calming way candles flicker and dance along the edges of the room.

“Zenny told me about your sister. It was a terrible thing that was done to her. A terrible, evil thing.”

And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, I trust this woman. I trust her because she didn’t give me some blandishment about God’s will or how Lizzy is “in a better place” (although even the last phrase was only sparingly handed out following Lizzy’s suicide, given the uneasy Catholic attitude toward self-destruction and its implications for the immortal soul). The Reverend Mother didn’t offer up an empty apology or murmur something about praying for our family or Lizzy’s soul.

She simply said the truth. And having the truth acknowledged feels like an embrace and comfort all on its own. I thought of the night last week when I prayed; when I decided to believe in God just long enough to accuse and censure Him, when I realized I wanted Him to sit and listen to me roar and scream until my voice was hoarse. Because having God listen to the truth, to really hear it, to really see it, was the only thing that could heal the sister-shaped gouge in my soul.

I’d tried disbelief, I’d tried scorn, I’d tried every kind of nonbeliever’s stance and sinner’s trick, and I tried them for a decade and a half, and still there was this ragged, infected wound somewhere inside me. The only thing left to try was going back to God and informing Him of the mess He’d made.

“It was terrible,” I echo. My voice is barely there when I say it.

“And so you wonder how anyone can believe in God after that? After what She let happen?”

That catches my notice. “She?” I taunt, gently. “That’s not very devout.”

The prioress smiles. “Biblical metaphors for God include a laboring woman, a breastfeeding mother, even a mother hen. And man and woman were both created in God’s image, were they not? Why use Him and not Her? In fact, why even say God instead of Goddess? Both Him and Her are not enough to contain the fullness of God, who is outside the construct of gender, who is so much more than the human mind can conceive.”

I smile too, because if this is a sample of the Reverend Mother’s mentoring style, I can see why Zenny is at home in her order.

“I don’t know what to think about God,” I say, going back to our earlier thread. “I used to know exactly what I thought, I used to know exactly how I felt. But I’m more confused than ever. It feels like going backwards, going from being sure to not sure at all. Going from all the answers to none.”

The nun nods, as if I’ve said something wise and not just confessed to my own muddle-headed stupidity.

“Isn’t that bad?” I follow up. “Not to know anything? And then I look at Zenny and how she is so comfortable with what she doesn’t know, and that scares me too. I’m worried getting comfortable with not knowing means surrendering something crucial.”

“Sean, faith and belief are the practices of committing a life in the face of no answers. God is and always will be outside of human comprehension. And loving Her is an act, it’s not stubbornly repeating creeds and trying to force Her into modern expectations or rational paradigms. She’ll never fit in the same boxes we apply to science and reason; She’s not meant to. And to try to force it only breeds spiritual violence in the end.”

“Okay,” I concede, although the things she just said are all things I’ll have to think about later. “That’s God. But what about the Church then? Can’t Zenny—or you or any of the sisters—do these same good works without pledging away your free will?”

“Our free will?”

“Obedience is one of the vows, isn’t it? Obedience to the Church? Obedience to the men who run it?”

The old woman snorts, and I look over in surprise. “I’ll be obedient to those bishops the day I die and not a day sooner.” At my expression, she huffs again. “I’m obedient to God and to my conscience and to the poor. I’m obedient to my fellow sisters.”

And then under her breath, she mutters, “Obedient to men. Hmph.”

“But they’re the entire administrative structure of the Church.”

“For now. But the Church belongs to us as much as it belongs to them.” And then she nods her head at her own words.

I want to protest this—there’s still so much I can complain about, ways that the Church hasn’t changed since the abuse scandals for example—but then she adds, “We make a place for people to meet God and for God to meet Her people. A place that is safe and free of corruption.”

And I can’t argue with that. In fact, it’s the perfect counterargument to my complaining about the evil hierarchy of the Church—the nuns have carved out a place separate from the bishops and the bullshit and the bureaucracy, a place where they can put their heads down and get on with the work of serving the sick and the poor.

Of course, I understand that it’s not that simple—I’ve heard Tyler talk enough about the troubles between the nuns and the Vatican to know that the men still frequently try to take the women in hand. But the sisters, as the saying goes, persist.

I notice the Reverend Mother shivering the slightest bit and turn down the AC. “So that sorts obedience,” I concede. “But what about chastity?”

“I’ll admit, I’m less strict about it than many Reverend Mothers—as you well know. But we ask chastity of our vowed nuns not only as a trust and sacrifice to God, but also so that they live lives free of other obligations. Our sisters are free to serve the poor completely because they don’t have children and families of their own. Because they don’t have needy men taking up their time.”

Well. Fair.

“It just seems like so much to give up,” I say.

“It is.” The prioress doesn’t argue with me. “It is.”

We turn onto a street of large old houses; the monastery sprawls over a shady corner, marked only with a hand-painted wooden sign by the porch stairs and a Virgin Mary statue in the semi-neglected flower bed.

When I park the car in the driveway, the Reverend Mother turns to me once more. “So you love Zenobia. Are you certain she does not love you back?”

I think of her confession on the day she asked me to do this with her. That she’d always wanted me. And then I think of her laughter at the skating rink when I mentioned marrying her, of her troubled face when I told her she would be the only woman I cared about, of my messy and imperfect reaction the night those people were shitty to her at the gala.

It’s only for a month. It’s not like we have to figure out how to raise children together.

“I’m certain,” I say tiredly.

“Have you told her?”

I shake my head.

“Tell her,” the old nun commands, unwinding her fingers from one another so that she can poke one in my direction. “She deserves to know.”

“Isn’t it…kind of cheap to fling that at her now? She has so much to think about already, and it feels like I’m trying to sabotage her moment.”

“I like your awareness, but in this case, you’re using it as an excuse.” She nods to herself again, the starched fabric of her wimple brushing roughly along her shoulders. “Are all those muscles just for show or are you actually strong, my son?”

And with that, she unbuckles her seat belt. I scramble to help her out of the car, and we don’t say anything else as I walk her to the door, but the look she gives me before she goes inside is very loud with all the things she doesn’t say.

Tell her, the look says above all else, and my heart gives a hopeful and ugly lurch at the very thought.

* * *

Mom has a NG tube coming out of her nose, and she hates it. She can be patient about IVs and ports, but the moment there’s something on her face, she gets irritable—and in this case, the thing is in her face, not just on it.

I do my Sean Bell thing when I get there, the Oldest Child thing, all the rituals and little sacrifices made to the Church of Cancer. I see first to Mom, then to Dad, who is, as always, a fraying shell of himself in these circumstances. After Mom is asleep, exhausted from the pain and the procedures, I manage to find the charge nurse and doctor on rotation, and avail myself of every detail of the day.

All that sorted, I send Dad out to get us some real dinner—not cafeteria dinner—and sit in Mom’s room and try to work from my laptop.

Aiden shows up a few minutes later, his suit and hair rumpled, like he spent the day sleeping (which I know for a fact he didn’t because he emailed me no less than three times this morning about a puppy he wants to adopt). He flings himself on the small, hard couch next to me.

“She doing okay?” he asks, running his hand through his messy hair. He’s breathing hard too.

“Yeah. I mean, for now. We don’t know yet what’s causing the blockage, and I guess the suction got messy and difficult, so that’s not great.”

“Oh,” he says.

“I texted like three hours ago. Where were you?”

“I just got your message,” he says vaguely. “I was almost out to the farmhouse. Had to turn back.”

Hmm.

I give him a more careful once-over. His tie has been hastily re-knotted, the laces on his dress shoes are untied, and there’s something about his face, all flushed and swollen-mouthed.

“You were having sex!” I accuse, sitting up.

“Shh!” he hushes me frantically, glancing over at Mom, who’s still deep in a morphine nap.

“Don’t shh me,” I say irritably. “You think Mom doesn’t know you’re a total fuckboy?”

Aiden looks very annoyed at my lack of quiet. “That’s not true.”

I roll my eyes. If Aiden were a Wakefield Saga character, there would be all kinds of words for him. Rakehell, scoundrel, cyprian, cad, libertine, lothario. He’s barely better than Double Condom Mike, and I know a lot of the trouble he’s gotten in because I was right there next to him. In fact, until he started acting weird last month, I would have put good money on him having more sex and with more women than me.

“I don’t care that you were having sex, dummy,” I say. “Mom wouldn’t either. It’s just a dumb reason not to be here.”

He sighs. “I know. I honestly didn’t look at my phone until after though. I came as soon as I saw your text.”

“Fine. Was she good?”

Aiden looks puzzled for a minute, like he can’t quite track this turn in conversation.

“The fuck, Aiden,” I clarify, exasperated. “Was she good?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. And before he can ever make the words come out, Dad is walking in with Indian carryout, and we all fall on the plastic bags like a pack of starving wolves.

* * *

The next five or six days pass in a blur. Between Zenny’s life and mine, all we get together are nights and mornings. Sometimes a phone call during the day if we’re lucky.

I never do work up the courage to say what the Reverend Mother wants me to say, but also, it’s so hard to do when our quiet moments of snuggle and talk have been robbed from us, and all we have are stolen, sweaty hours in the dark and the ensuing bleary-eyed mornings.

I’ll vow to do it tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and I vow to do it the next day, and on and on it goes, until I almost feel like telling her is an impossible task, a Holy Grail-style quest that God has set before me and I’ll never be pure and brave enough to complete.

It’s maddening.

Towards the end of the week, Mom starts developing pneumonia. It makes a godawful wheezing when she breathes, and things start to change in the predictable comings and goings of the nurses and doctors. There’s more bustle around the bed, more bags being hung, more tests and X-rays. Conversations start taking a more somber tone. Mom is given a cannula and antibiotics. I finish reading In the Arms of the Disgraced Duke, and we speculate about the next Wakefield novel, which comes out next week. We watch HGTV on the hospital television and make fun of the tiny house people.

I tell Valdman I’ll be working remotely for the week. It doesn’t go badly, but it doesn’t go well. He’s annoyed with me, annoyed with how much I’m willing to let my family interfere with making him money. His displeasure is the kind of thing I would have cared about before, but now…

Now, I couldn’t fucking care less.

And then somehow this week is gone, this precious week, one of the two I have with Zenny, and I have nothing to show for it. Not a healthy mom, not a confession of love, not even a boss who likes me as much as he did at the beginning of the week. It’s hard not to feel like something is slipping away from me, time or something as vital as time, and the harder I try to grab onto it, the more elusive it gets. A quick fish in the water, a ribbon in the wind.

At night, my dreams are of empty arms and white flowers propped against fresh dirt.

I will myself to pray again, even if it’s just to scream obscenities at the ceiling, but nothing comes. Even my anger has ribboned away in the wind.