She decided to make her move in the produce aisle.  It was wide and  bright, a happy colorful square with center displays, abundant with wholesome, nourishing food.  Her entire future was riding on this one not-so-chance encounter.  Would he recognize her?  Would she be able to make sure he didn’t?
.        She’d been preparing all summer, dedicating most of her time to learning Adam’s schedule, his habits, his living situation.  Mary Grace had done the initial legwork, taking out the third Thursday in June–Adam’s final one until school resumed in the fall–to follow him from the St. Agnes parking lot through the subsequent stops on his book route to his final check-in at Today’s Classics.
.        Impressive wheels, she’d texted her twin, noting his car was a Grey Metallic Mercedes SUV.  Clearly there was money to be made in peddling books.  Or a rich dead relative somewhere in his family tree.
.        She followed him to a tree-lined, lush-lawned neighborhood where he pulled his Mercedes into the driveway of a single two story home, the walkway to the front door skirted with meticulously groomed shrubbery.  She got a glimpse into the crammed but tidy garage when he parked his car.
.        “It contained the normal man things,” Maggy reported back.  “A work bench along one wall, some hanging tools, a bicycle, some cardboard boxes.”
.        Once Adam’s vehicle and residence were established, Madeleine took over the surveillance, staking out his house every few days for four weeks, figuring out his routine.  There was the gym three times a week, a local place called All Around Fitness.  Saturday afternoons were reserved for grocery shopping, and Sundays were spent making home improvements; emptying rain gutters, mowing the lawn and other maintenance duties all houses required.
.        At least two evenings a week he traveled to a house in a quaint neighborhood some fifteen minutes away, the door always opened by the same woman with stylishly cut short brown hair in her late fifties, a lady Madeleine suspected was his mother.  He stayed about three hours before heading home, sometimes stopping at a Wawa for gas and light groceries or a coffee.
.        He did have a girl over, a petite blonde only slightly less attractive than Madeleine.  There were several Saturday nights where she didn’t leave until after nine pm on Sunday.  Always he walked her to the red Honda Accord she’d parked in his driveway, kissing her before helping her inside and watching her drive away before re-entering his house.  The first time Madeleine witnessed this ritual she broke down in tears.
.        “He has a girlfriend!” she sobbed to her sister, whom she’d immediately called the moment the diminutive blonde who’d just been in a lip-lock with Adam drove off down the street.
.        “Get a grip,”  Maggy snapped back at her.  “Of course he does.  Honestly, I’d be worried if he didn’t.  What normal man doesn’t have a steady piece?”
.        If Madeleine was looking for sympathy for her broken heart, she’d obviously called the wrong sibling.  What she got were verbal slaps to the face, buckets full of icy words poured over her head.
.        “Look, snagging a man isn’t for the weak; especially a good one. I’m going to give you a pass since you’re a nun and this obviously isn’t in your wheelhouse.  But trust that it is in mine, and I’m not going to put up with some crybaby or deal with half-assed commitment. If you want him you have to be strong.  I don’t want anymore phone calls like this, do you understand me?”
.        She’d called her back later, apologizing for being so harsh.
.        “At least he’s not living with her, right?  Not married.  Or gay, for God’s sake.  What a nightmare that would be.”
.        While Mary Grace’s words did indeed offer Madeleine comfort in dealing with Adam’s relationships with other women, there still lingered the guilt from her own betrayal against her relationship with God.  It was hard enough coming up with excuses to the other sisters and Mother Superior for why she was spending so much time away from the convent.  She felt terrible each time she lied about a sick relative or a volunteer commitment to the community or an individual in need.  What would they all think of her if they knew her late nights away from the Church were being spent in pursuing a man?  Would God forgive her deceit?  How could he bless a union that developed under such sinful circumstances?  And what would Adam think of her weeks spent stalking him?  Pretending to be her sister?  Would she never come clean?  If she was successful in capturing his heart, if she achieved her ultimate goal of becoming his wife, the mother of his children, would she ever divulge what she’d done to make it happen?  Would she ever feel secure enough in their bond to tell him the whole truth?
.        One thing she knew for certain:  she’d already invested in the stalking, the deception, the lying.  It would all be for nothing if she didn’t at the very least see this through to the end.  Hopefully that end included a flamboyantly gay wedding planner and a honeymoon on some exotic island.
.        On the sixth Saturday after she and her sister had first started trailing Adam, Madeleine left the convent at ten in the morning under the collective assumption that she was off to assist the family of one of St. Agnes’ students in a drug intervention.  Instead she drove to the Fair Oaks Mall, entering Lord & Taylor, where she had her makeup done at the MAC counter, and ended up purchasing a lip liner, lipstick and mascara.  Next she went to the Empire Hair Salon and showed them a picture of Maggy, requesting her hair style.  By the time the transformation was complete, Madeleine was stunned by her reflection.  She felt as if she were gazing at a portrait of Mary Grace, seen as only the eyes of an artist could interpret.  She had Maggy’s coloring, her icy blue eyes, her platinum blonde hair, her porcelain complexion.  Only her expression was softer, her blue eyes containing the innocence and wonder of a woman much younger than either of them, a woman not yet loved or hurt by a man, a woman not yet jaded by the perceived unfairness of an environment not in her control, nor of her own making.  She looked beautiful, magic, full of possibilities for both herself and anyone she chose to invite.  She looked almost too good to be making a casual trip to the supermarket.
.        In the salon bathroom she changed into the outfit she’d purchased in Lord & Taylor, Michael Kors denim capris with side criss-cross cutouts at the bottom, paired with a pink One World knit elbow sleeve tassled front poncho top.  A matching necklace had been featured in the display, a colorfully beaded circular piece hanging on a 24″ brown leather rope, which she slipped over her head.  She eased the floral-patterned Steve Madden Carrson ankle-strap dress sandals onto her feet, placing her old clothes and shoes into the shopping bag.  She went back out to her car and placed the bag in the trunk, slipping behind the steering wheel and taking a pause to breathe before starting the car.  She was really going to do this.
.        She sat in the Giant (“Giant?” Mary Grace had scoffed.  “There’s a Whole Foods less than fifteen minutes away.”) parking lot keeping vigil, twenty minutes into reading a book on her iPhone Nook app when his grey Mercedes pulled into the lot.  She remained in her car until he entered the store, then she followed, keeping a safe distance between them as she tracked him up and down the various aisles.  It was when he was inspecting the many varieties of tomatoes–Tasti-Lees, ripe-on-the-vine, Roma, Beefsteak, organic, hydroponic–that she sidled up next to him, reaching across his torso to select a vine-ripened off to his left.
.        “Excuse me,” she said, keeping her voice light, a hint of a giggle on it, just like Maggy had taught her.
.        “Men like it when a woman sounds like she’s laughing for no apparent reason,” she’d said.  “To him it means she’s happy, empty-headed.  Read:  easy.”
.        “Oh, sure,” Adam said, backing out of her way.
.        “Sorry,” she said, moving directly into his line of vision.  In case he wasn’t watching as she chose three tomatoes and bagged them, she paused to smile up at him as she made a small knot in the bag.  “Thanks.”
.        “No problem,” he said, smiling back, and for an agonizing  moment she thought he wasn’t going to make the connection.   That the past several weeks had all been for nothing.  But then recognition flickered in his eyes, followed swiftly by confusion, and he slowly murmured, “Sister Madeleine?” knowing all the while it wasn’t her, but someone he’d seen before in a photo, someone with her face, someone whose likeness was uncannily similar to her own.
.        “Mary Grace,” Madeleine said, releasing another giggle.  “Maddy is my twin,” she added, purposely shortening her name to the less formal “Maddy” and dropping the “sister.”  She needed him to stop painting her with such a virginal and biblical paintbrush.
.        Adam nodded, his appreciation for the stunning woman before him evident in his expression.  Even though he wasn’t aware that it was indeed Madeleine his eyes were feasting on, he was feasting in a way that he very well might had circumstances allowed it.  In that moment she had the answer to the question that had haunted her every day since they’d first met:  he found her beautiful.  He appreciated her as a woman in the same way she appreciated him as a man.  Oh, but how she wished she could tell him it was she, his Madeleine, the woman with whom he shared books and lemonade and cucumber sandwiches every Thursday afternoon.
.        “Wow.  Madeleine told me she had a twin, but . . . .”  He shook his head, unable–or unwilling–to complete the thought.  What was he about to say?  What she wouldn’t give to know.
.        “Your eyes,” he marveled.  “They’re exactly like hers.”
.        Madeleine felt a flush running up her neck to her cheeks and she looked away from him, her heart beginning to pound.  She felt guilty enough spying on his house, his daily routine, but now she was having an unauthorized peek into his feelings.  If he knew her eyes so well, surely he would be able to read in them her affection for him, the same fondness he read in her eyes when they fell upon him in the tiny convent library.
.        He picked up on her uneasiness, even as he remained ignorant to its origins.
.        “I know I’m staring, but it’s just so incredible.  I’m sorry.  I’m probably creeping you out.”
.        “Not at all,” she said quickly.  A little too quickly, she thought, internally chiding herself.  “So how do you know my sister?” she asked, picking up another tomato and pretending to inspect it, anything to avoid looking directly into his eyes.
.        “I drive a truck for a book distributor that supplies the St. Agnes convent.”
.        “Small world,” she tossed off casually, trying to stay on script.  “I’m on my way to see her now.  Thought I’d make a stop for some goodies; cookies, chips, things she can hide in her room and not share with the other nuns.”
.        He took a cursory glance into her empty cart.  “I hate to tell you, but those tomatoes in your hands aren’t made of chocolate.”
.        She served him with a sheepish grin.  “Guilty as charged.  I thought I’d pick up some salad ingredients for myself before hitting the junk aisles.  I thought it might act as a shield to protect me from dropping a few snacks into the cart for myself.”
.        “And if some just happen to make their way in . . . ”
.        “I can say I bought salad ingredients.  Exactly.”
.        They laughed easily, enough that she felt comfortable to plant the first seed into the conversation.
.        “At least I won’t have to buy a lot.  Just enough to last a few more weeks.”
.        It took a moment for him to catch her meaning.  “Oh?  Why is that?”
.        “Oh,” she reflected, widening her eyes.  “Oh.  Wow.  I shouldn’t have–my big mouth.  It’s nothing bad or anything,” she said quickly when a look of concern darkened his eyes.  Perfect.  It was time.
.        “It’s just, well, I think she’s leaving the convent.”