The convent chapel was open twenty fours hours, with services being conducted twice a day, one at seven in the morning, the other seven at night.  It was encouraged for each sister to attend at least one daily.  Although she tried her best to adhere to this suggested–if unenforced– policy, Madeleine couldn’t bring herself to enter the chapel on either Thursdays or Fridays.  The anticipation she felt the morning before Adam’s visits and the guilt surging throughout her body following their encounters usually kept her confined mainly to her room until dinner Friday evening.  Afterwards she returned immediately to her quarters, where she would continue reading the book he’d left her, inserting the two of them somewhere in the story, most likely as the romantic leads, performing all the acts of love and adventure on the page that they couldn’t share in reality.
.        But this Friday morning was different.  This Friday morning she needed guidance, strength, wisdom.  This Friday morning she needed to ask God if he would absolutely forsake her if she chose to leave the convent.  For she was so completely consumed by her love for Adam she couldn’t seem to devote herself to anything else but the intense feeling in her heart.  And if something could rip her so from the Lord–whether or not she ever explored those feelings–then wasn’t the path of devotion to the Church the wrong one?  She either needed some encouragement to keep traveling the route, or make a detour back to her life’s journey.
.        She hadn’t made her initial commitment to the Lord impulsively.  There were none of the stereotypical logical reasons for choosing a life of service.  She wasn’t, and never had been, a blind follower of the Church and its teachings.  She questioned many of its principles and tactics, especially when it came to their views on women and sexuality.  She didn’t believe ordained members needed to be celibate in order to serve God, or even take vows of poverty.  It was unrealistic, and quite barbaric to ask an animal of any kind to deny its innate procreative urges.  And who were they fooling, anyway?  The sisters in her convent ate better than most families supporting the parish, and the priests who weren’t secretly picking up women in bars were cornering altar boys in the sacristy.  Madeleine knew without a doubt it would be easier for her to focus on the Lord if she didn’t spend her time daydreaming about what it would feel like to make love with Adam, or even just kiss him or exchange intimate touches, go on a date, watch a movie, hold his hand while they ice skated around the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.  And when she wasn’t daydreaming about him, she was praying for the strength to push him from her thoughts, continue to resist the temptation to reach out one of these days and clutch his hand while they were transferring books.
.        God give her mercy and strength, she didn’t know how this could have happened to her.  In her almost fifteen years of service to the Church her Faith hadn’t been shaken so completely, so seemingly irreversibly.  She certainly was no stranger to temptation; she had come across many an attractive man, several of whom had found it his duty to relieve her of what they perceived as her foolish devotion to her calling.  One in particular, a young man she had tutored ten years ago under the guise of his wanting to enter the priesthood, had pursued her so doggedly she had to transfer to another parish in another state.  Although she found him extremely handsome and kind and witty and under other circumstances would have absolutely contemplated a relationship, she was committed to her life with the Church and had no plans on ever leaving.  He’d taken her out to one last dinner, even going so far as to dropping down on one knee and proposing marriage, declaring his undying love for her.  She’d dashed from the restaurant, unable to refuse outright this latest and grandest of gestures.  The following morning she’d reported the incident to her Mother Superior and requested an emergency transfer.  By that evening she was settling into her room and role as head of the afterschool reading program and substitute teacher at St. Agnes Elementary in Fairfax, Virginia.  She never had contact with the young man again.
.        Her time spent at St. Agnes since that incident had been relatively uneventful.  There had been one single father who had invited her out for coffee after a parent-teacher meeting to thank her for the patience Madeleine had shown with his ADD diagnosed daughter.  There had been schoolboy crushes, even a priest or two who offered clandestine arrangements, holy-order hook-ups that in lay terms would be labeled “friends with benefits.”  She politely but firmly deflected it all, reserving judgment, knowing that each person’s level of resolve and conviction lie on a varying spectrum.  Not everyone was going to honor their choices and commitments with the same determination as she, and that was all right.  She was strong, she was focused, she was in tune with her life’s path.  It wasn’t an easy one, but it was fulfilling and it was what she believed with her whole heart and spirit and soul the one she was meant to forge.  Then she met Adam.
.           It had been little over a year ago when he took over the route vacated by Harold Crowley after the seventy-eight-year-old had suffered a heart attack.  He made a full recovery but his family forced the fifty-year job veteran into retirement.  The route was re-assigned to thirty-two-year-old Adam Drechsler, and his first day on the job he’d come through the main door of the convent carrying a large corrugated box, a shock of black hair hanging over his right eye, his cheeks rosy from both the crisp early spring weather and the exertion of his burden.  Madeleine had been coming down the stairs leading into the grand hallway and inquired about his business.
.        “Oh, hi, excuse me,” he’d said, breathless, switching the heavy box resting on his left shoulder to the right one, peeking around the edge of it.  “Can you tell me where I can find the library?”
.        She didn’t know then, nor did she know now, looking back, or yesterday or last week or many of the other thousands of times she thought about that first encounter with Adam what it was about him that had caused her body to react as it had.  But the moment her blue eyes focused on his hazel ones she felt as if a small fist had punched her in the stomach.  Or kicked, like something inside her belly trying to break free.  A baby.  She felt pregnant, although she had no idea what that sensation could possibly feel like, but it was like a tiny foot inside her belly kicked out.  She immediately placed her hand on her abdomen like she had seen other pregnant women do, a protective, loving posture, only there was no baby, nothing within her to protect, and that realization filled her with such a sadness, such a vacuous emptiness that tears formed in her eyes.
.        She cleared her throat, shaking off the sensation as best she could.
.        “Certainly,” she answered him, focusing her gaze on the box weighing him down rather than his face, or anywhere else on his person.  If she just didn’t look at him, she thought, this unbearable longing to be everything she wasn’t would go away.  “It’s just down this hall,” she said, stepping in front of him to lead the way.
.        She remembered feeling him coming down the hall behind her, a heat radiating across the space between them, warming her back.  She had the urge to run, both from him and to a destination where they could be alone behind a closed door in a tiny space, locked away from everyone else.  It was the most awful, luscious pain she’d ever felt in all her life, and she wanted to fall to her knees and praise it while at the same time beg God to release her from it.
.        When they entered the library she went to the furthest point from the door and pointed to the table, looking away from him.
.         “There,” she said, biting her bottom lip, trying to hold back the overflow of emotions churning within her, threatening to spill out and drown them both.  Leave.  She needed him to leave.
.        Oblivious to her torment, he plunked the box down with a loud thud.
.        “Whew!  God.  I guess that wasn’t too smart of me, bringing that in here before I knew exactly where it was going.  I suppose there’s a door closer to the library?”
.        “It’s all right,” she said, looking down at the floor.
.        His tone was self-deprecating.  “If you haven’t guessed already, it’s my first day on the route.”
.        She realized he very well may be misinterpreting her internal struggle as some disdain for a misstep taken on his part.  It was wrong of her to visit her inappropriate reaction on him.  She slowly lifted her gaze and met his.  Again, the kick, and she winced.
.        “First days can be intimidating,” she said, her voice thin, reedy.
.        “So can beautiful women,” he said, his smile crooked, but deliberate.  Kick, kick, kick.
.        “Just my luck I get clobbered by both of them today.”
.        She returned his smile, her lips quivering with the strength required to keep them from forming a grimace.  His confusion concerning her position was as innocent as it was unfortunate.  That morning she’d been helping to set up next week’s spring bazaar in the elementary school’s assembly room and was dressed in jeans and a pale yellow long-sleeved Old Navy cotton v-necked tee.  The silver band she wore on her left ring finger could have easily been overlooked, what with her wringing and hiding her hands.  Even if he had noticed it and presumed her married, what was a harmless compliment to a married woman?  Many married women get complimented on a daily basis.  But nuns?  Who would ever tell a nun how pretty she was, even if it were true?  Along with sexuality and affluence, vanity went out the window.
.        “If I may impose upon you to save me one more time, could you please tell me where I can find–” he quickly consulted the paper on the clipboard he’d had tucked under his arm–“Sister Madeleine?”
.        “I can,” she answered.
.        He smiled, stepping slightly away from the door, expecting her to pass through.  When she didn’t move, his expression changed from one of anticipation, to confusion, to realization, to mortification.
.       “You’re her, aren’t you?”
.        She nodded and he began shaking his head.  He ran both hands through his hair, then over his face, trying to clear the proverbial egg from it.
.        “Wow,” he said.  “I am so sorry.  I hope I wasn’t inappropriate.”
.        “Of course not,” she said.  “How could you have known?  Anyway, every woman appreciates a sincere compliment.”
.        “Yes, well.”  He cleared his throat, gave a little shake and stretched his arm out to hand her the clipboard, maintaining his distance.  “The names of the remaining books are left unhighlighted.  I could wait in the hallway while you make your selections.”
.        As much as his presence unsettled her, she was reluctant to have him leave.
.        “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she said, gesturing towards the chairs pulled up to the long table upon which he’d set the box.  “You can have a seat.  Would you like a drink?  Coffee, or something cold . . . .”  She fished for his name with a rotation of her wrist.
.        “Adam,” he supplied.  “And no thank you.”
.        Madeleine had taken charge of the situation, diffused it she liked to say whenever having to redirect a man’s natural tendency to flirt with her.  After all, she was blonde and pretty with an affable temperament; it was a more rare occasion when a man didn’t find her pleasing.  She was used to backing them off graciously, with both her vows and their egos still intact.  But as the two of them went through the fifty or so hardcovers and paperbacks in the box, only ten of which were within her quota to select, Madeleine felt as if she were the one who needed to be reminded of her vows.  Each time he softly commented on her selections, with an appreciative, “Oh, excellent choice,” “One of my favorites,” “A must-read for school,” she glanced at the curve of his mouth shaping the words, felt the warmth of his breath filling the space between them.  Even when she pulled a title he had no firsthand knowledge of, he asked what it was about, if she’d ever read it and when, did she recommend that he do the same.  She wasn’t the type of woman who’d ever needed reassurance of her position in the world, or in anyone’s life other than God’s, but now that she had Adam’s attention, she drank it in like a cool glass of lemonade on a hot summer day’s picnic.  His words, his engagement of her company was filling a need she hadn’t known was there, but now felt so completely vast she couldn’t fathom how she’d never noticed it before.  How had she been walking around with this black hole inside of her for so long?
.        His face wasn’t classically handsome, but classic, with a Grecian nose and square jaw.  He looked strong, masculine, like he was ready for battle on the fields of Troy or straddling a horse in preparation for a round of jousting.
.        Oh, Madeleine, but how you do read too much, she chided herself, but with the lifepath she’d chosen, what did she have if not books and fantasy?  When he wasn’t looking in her direction, preoccupied with the books, she stole long, lingering glances.  During one of them he happened to look up and their eyes locked.  Neither one looked away for what seemed the equivalent of reading fifteen pages and in that moment she knew she had betrayed her feelings.  Never again could he unknow what he had read in her gaze, and she simultaneously feared as well as hoped he would never return.
.        But the following week he was back, greeting her with the same cheerful demeanor and megawatt smile, the same distracting shock of hair falling over his eye, taunting her to swipe it back, her fingertips aching to brush his forehead.  While he acted with a respectful friendliness, she struggled to maintain a cordial business persona.  She didn’t know which practice of hers she was beginning to find more disturbing: avoiding making any contact at all or deliberately cupping his hand whenever she had to remove a book from it.  He followed her lead, keeping a reasonable distance when her posturing dictated, and acknowledging her subtle lingering touch on his hand with a small smile.  They were attracted to each other, it seemed to say, but circumstances made it so that their admiration would have to stay in this room and be contained within the half hour or so they had to spend together.
.        After two months had passed, that time changed to twelve-thirty and extended into ninety minutes as Adam chose to spend his lunch hour in her company.   They sat in the library, discussing the books they read, movies, television programs.  They avoided politics and religion, but sometimes ventured carefully into more personal topics, such as early childhood memories and anecdotes, what brought each of them joy.  For Adam it was nature; activities performed outside, such as hiking, skiing and swimming.  For Madeleine it was arts and culture, museums and old houses, intricate pottery and sculptures. Both of them understood the time they spent together, while might be seen by some as inappropriate, was completely enriching to the two of them, with no boundaries being crossed, no irreversible course being charted.  Until today.
.        For some time Madeleine knew she was in love with Adam.  She couldn’t remember the precise moment or day, although had she believed in love at first sight she would have labeled it as the moment she initially saw him.  But what she truly knew in her heart, believed with all her soul, was that God would never have filled her with this love if it was not to be the focus of her life.  Just as she had some twenty years ago when she felt God calling her to a life in His service, she now felt God calling her to a life shared with Adam.  It was too strong, too beautiful and life-affirming to be considered temptation.  Temptation is dirty, temptation is the wrong path, temptation is a sin of ignoble desires.  What she felt for Adam was nourishing, fulfilling, a series of heavenly ripples that radiated from the core of her being to every action she performed, every person with whom she came in contact.  Adam was her destiny.
.        In her present connection with the Lord, she felt different this morning as she stepped into the chapel.  She paused in the threshold, not needing to advance any further.  He already knew what question was on her lips and she’d merely needed to take the first steps in her resolve to gain her answer.  Several other sisters in the chapel turned to look at her as she lingered, seemingly uncertain, but filled with a surety that only someone assigned a mission can feel.  She backed out of the chapel, softly sealing the doors shut in front of her.
.        It was time for her to change direction, to begin setting the wheels in motion that would lead Sister Madeleine to her new life as Mrs. Adam Drechsler.