Every Wednesday Mary Grace made the forty-five minute drive to Carlson’s office in Downtown Baltimore at one o’clock to meet her husband for lunch.  She was always greeted like a celebrity by the parking staff, security, elevator attendant, receptionist; everyone with whom she came in contact had a kind word and gleaming smile for Mrs. Carlson Hammond.
.        From there the couple made the three-block walk down to Supano’s on Water Street and sat at the same prearranged table where Mary Grace spent half her meal staring at an Ovechkin jersey hanging over a large table across the room, wishing they were the couple everyone imagined they were.  She and Carlson had been practicing this ritual for over a year now, ever since the first time they’d come, a little after returning from the trip to Hawaii where Carlson had asked her to be his wife.
.        They had been into their second night at the Moana Surfrider at Waikiki, dining on the deck of the Beachhouse at the Moana, Carlson picking around a plate of beach bim bop, Mary Grace opting for the squid ink pasta.  Never in her life did Mary Grace think she would eat anything even remotely referencing squid.  Squid was bait for other fish she refused to eat.  And black pasta?  She wouldn’t even eat whole grain or gluten free.  But with Carlson she felt open to try anything, and along with being adventurous with food, her newly found boldness had broadened to included bungee jumping, deep sea diving and ghost tours.  So far she hadn’t had an opportunity to test it out in the bedroom, but she was confident once their relationship moved on to the next level, they would commemorate it sans clothing or inhibitions.  She was so ready to be his wife she hoped she didn’t scream “Yes!” before he even uttered the question.
.        She was certain he was going to ask at dinner, the atmosphere and mood seemed so perfect, but after dessert–which revealed no diamond ring hiding beneath the sugary coating of the crème brulee–she sat still with a naked third finger.  But when they rose from the table at the end of their meal and he took her hand, entwined their fingers and suggested a walk along the beach, she sensed something life-altering was about to happen.  This was it!  She just knew it.
.        With her Jimmy Choo Lang 100 strappy patent leather sandals dangling on the fingers of one hand and his strong, firm grip in her other, Mary Grace and Carlson strolled along the sand in silence, admiring the moon over the water and the lights from the surrounding hotels.  The majesty of Diamond Head, which they’d hiked earlier that day, loomed with a spiritual solidarity in the distance.  There were several others on the beach, couples and families and singles, all enjoying the balmy night air, but Mary Grace felt as if it were only she and Carlson under the canopy of stars, the owners and rulers of paradise.
.        “If I’ve never told you before, Mary Grace, you mean a great deal to me,” he said.  “I really care for you.  Truly, I do.  What’s more important, I trust you.  That’s not something I can say about a lot of people.  Maybe not anyone.”
.        They stopped walking and she turned to face him, taking both his hands in hers, dropping her shoes with a soft thud onto the sand.  Her heart was pounding with such ferocity she thought it might just crest and spill onto the shore.
.        “I care for and trust you, too.”  She said.  She believed she even loved him, but there was no way she would say it first.
.        “I know,” he said, nodding.  His eyes had a touch of sadness in them and before she could read further into his emotions he averted his gaze.  Her heart dipped.  So he was not going to propose after all?  What then?  He spoke of caring and trust, yet his eyes said something else entirely.
.        “Carlson, before we came here, you said there was something important you needed to tell me, to ask me, something that could change both of our lives,” she prodded.  She could stand the waiting no longer.  She needed to know where she stood, where they stood, even if it was only on a Hawaiian beach.
.        He took a deep breath, and looked out over the water.  She felt his hands tightening around hers and she licked her lips, her mouth as dry as the powdery sand beneath their feet.
.        “Whatever you have to say,” she said, “it’s all right.”
.        And then it was happening, the moment she’d been waiting for since the plane touched down at Honolulu International, the question she’d been hoping he’d ask at every meal since, every quiet moment together.  Carlson was down on one knee before her, a tiny black velvet box in his hands, flipped open to reveal the clearest, shiniest, sparkliest, BIGGEST diamond ring she had ever seen.  Indeed she shouted “Yes!” before he had the entire question out of his mouth.
.        “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she reiterated after he’d finished, throwing herself into his arms.  He swept her up and spun her in a circle, several of the people who had witnessed the proposal whistling and cheering and clapping.  It was all so perfect, just like a Disney fairytale.  After all she’d gone through with Wyatt and their failed marriage, it seemed she was finally going to get her happily ever after.
.        Yet the rest of the evening, as well as their vacation, was not the celebration she envisioned.  Instead of spending the remainder of their time in Waikiki tangled in sex-saturated sheets, they moved along as they had in the beginning, sightseeing, shopping and lounging on the beach.  He was spending exorbitant amounts of money on her, which she absolutely sucked up like a pack of 1980’s yuppies snorting lines of coke, but the lack of physical intimacy was leaving her frustrated.
.        At first she’d found it sweet that he ended their evenings with a few kisses before turning his back to her in the king-sized bed.  She’d thought it romantically old fashioned, his trying to preserve the innocence and mystery of their relationship before they’d made things official.  The night before he proposed, he’d actually slept on the couch in the living area of their suite, an action she’d assumed he’d taken because he feared he wouldn’t be able to hold out any longer if he had to sleep in forced chastity beside her one more night.
.        But after returning to their room post-proposal, when she’d disappeared into the bathroom and emerged wearing only the four carat antique round diamond rock on her finger, he’d covered her with a robe.
.        “I’m sorry, honey.  You are so tempting right now, believe me, but I think I drank a little too much and I don’t want to disappoint you.”
.        “Carlson, the only thing that would disappoint me right now would be to not have the opportunity to be disappointed.”
.        He’d chuckled, silenced her with a few kisses, asking her forgiveness, which she reluctantly surrendered.  She finished herself off with the detachable shower head and when she climbed into bed beside him, still naked, he was asleep.
.        The evening before they were set to fly back into Philadelphia International Mary Grace was as disillusioned as Tom Cruise on Oscar night.  She couldn’t understand why Carlson was avoiding intimacy.  Was it due to some sort of religious belief?  Performance anxiety?  Superstition, gallantry, what?  Because all she knew was that they were in one of the most romantic places in the world, a young, vibrant, hot couple about to embark upon the most exciting time of their lives and yet still hadn’t coupled in the most basic sense.  She had no idea how their final evening in Hawaii was going to play out, but if it didn’t end with her riding his dick she was going to seriously explode.
*        Before their final dinner in Hawaii, which they were set to have at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse at nine pm, Mary Grace stepped from the shower and went directly out to the balcony, where Carlson was engrossed in his iPad and sipping a drink he’d prepared himself using ingredients from the mini bar.  She snatched it out of his hands, tossed it back–wincing at the octane level–and deftly straddled his lap.  She slid her bare muff directly over the lump in his swimming trunks, not caring that she was clean and he was still sandy from their afternoon spent at the beach.
*        “Carlson, I need you to fuck me right now,” she said, leaning in to nibble his neck and press her chest against his.  In response, his body stiffened everywhere but the place that mattered.
*        She brought herself upright, slapping his abdomen.
*        “What the fuck’s going on here, Carlson?” she demanded, depleted of patience.  “Are you gay or something?”
.        She didn’t know what she expected him to say.  It hadn’t even been a real question.  But when he stared her directly in the eye some unspoken confession passed between them.  It took her a moment to catch it, but when she did, the impact with which it landed caused her to literally cave in.
.        “Oh my God, no,” she said, clutching her stomach.  Her hands went next to her mouth and she shook her head, refusing to accept what he clearly couldn’t come right out and tell her.
.       “Maggy,” he said, placing his hands on her thighs and gently caressing them.
.        “Ew, no!” she said, slapping them away.  “What are you doing?  What are you doing?” she repeated, shouting.  She slapped him a few more times, his tablet slipping onto the ground.
.        “Maggy, stop.”
.        He seized her by the wrists, holding them  in a loose grip from which she easily broke free.  She slapped him across the face and he took it, looking off to the side.
.        Suddenly becoming aware of her nakedness, she climbed off him and went back inside, standing in the middle of the bedroom, completely at a loss as to what she should do.  She couldn’t even pull a thought together to dress herself, or cry, or .  .  .  break things.
.        She just stood there, gazing around the room at their open suitcases, the souvenir bags scattered about, the leis, the dress she had draped over a chair in preparation for dinner this evening.
.        She heard the balcony door open and close behind her, felt the warm air rushing in, briefly whispering against her skin before being sealed off behind the tempered glass exit once again.
.        “Maggy, if you’d like to be alone tonight I understand.  I’ll make other arrangements, but I really hope you’ll decide to let me stay and explain.”
.        Explain?  What in the world could he possibly explain?  What a liar he was?  Why he’d asked her to marry him when he wasn’t interested in women?  Truly, what explanation could he come up with that would make this fiasco he’d involved her in make any sense to her? At any rate, she supposed she could be grateful for the trip to Hawaii.
.           “My family won’t allow it, Maggy,” he said, and she realized she was going to get the explanation whether she wanted it or not.
.           “I’m expected to succeed my father in not just the family business, but in all things.  That means I have to have the biggest house, the most well-adjusted children, and the most beautiful, supportive wife.  I need a true partner to go with me to the next level.  Maggy, I want that partner to be you.  I still want so very much for you to be my wife.”
.           “Why?” she demanded.  She realized she was standing there in the middle of the room completely naked, a hot female Jason Segel unable to stop her world from imploding.  All she needed was a Dracula puppet to make the scene complete.
.           “Why me?  What is it about me that makes you think I’d make a suitable beard?  That makes you think I’d live a lie?  A miserable, sexless, loveless lie in exchange for what?  A few shopping sprees?  Vacations in Hawaii?  Just because I have no interest in having children doesn’t mean I don’t plan on fucking my husband.”
.           “I do have a plan.  A contract.”
.           “A contract?” she’d asked, her eyebrows and the pitch of her voice practically hitting the ceiling.
.           “This is all coming out so wrong,” he said, completely crestfallen.  “I didn’t want it to happen this way.  Things went so differently in my head.  It didn’t sound so crazy.  I had everything so meticulously planned.  I wasn’t even going to propose to you like that.  But I got caught up in the beach setting and your excitement.  I knew you wanted the perfect proposal.  You deserved that.  And I wanted to give it to you.  I’m sorry.  But please let me, well . . .”
.           He entered the room with trepidation, as if making his way to the exit door of a lion’s cage in which he’d awakened to find himself trapped.  He stepped into the bathroom and came out with a robe, which she allowed him to help her don.  She slipped her arms in, feeling like Marilyn Monroe’s Cherie when she slid into Don Murray’s leather jacket.  How much she wanted to tell him she’d go anywhere with him now, to hear him say he loved her and everything she’d done to become the woman standing before him now.  But he would never say those things to her.  He would never feel for her even a fraction of what she felt she could grow to feel for him.
.           “I don’t want you to say anything else,” she told him.  “Please.  I can’t hear any more.  Not tonight.”
.           “Does that mean you’ll be up to hearing it later?”
.           “Please, Carlson.  Just leave me alone.”
.           It turned out she wasn’t up for hearing it later.  Not during the next three months, anyway.  While she didn’t request he rent a separate room for their last night in Hawaii, she did banish him to the couch in the living area of their suite.  Conversation was nonexistent during checkout, as well as in the car on the way to the airport.  Once seated in first class, Mary Grace quickly downed three bloody Marys and fell asleep.  They took separate cabs home from Philadelphia International, Maggy’s only words spoken to him since landing being a request that he never speak to her again.
.           He didn’t heed her request, of course.  He called the next day and every other day after that for the next two weeks, leaving voice messages when she didn’t pick up.  He flooded her inbox daily with a string of emails.  While she didn’t open them, she didn’t delete them, either.  She created a folder where she dumped them, unread, the very action substantial proof that she wasn’t yet ready to let him go.
.           He sent flowers, Edible Arrangements and Shari’s Berries, Starbucks gift baskets, a Ferrer Rocher tree, lotions and body wash and fragrant sugar scrubs from Victoria’s Secret.  She had “first lunches” with her friends and family, telling them of her breakup.  She never gave details, her only offered explanation was that they wanted different things.  Which was a lie, of course.  They both wanted dick.
.           After two months of ignoring his various attempts at securing a face to face meeting, her resolve to extract him from her life began to weaken.  As the days without him began to rack up, it was getting harder and harder to keep pretending that she didn’t miss his presence.
.           Her breakup with Wyatt had left her feeling undesirable, lost, irrelevant.  Carlson had slipped right in, made her come to life again.  He listened to her, he shared with her, he valued her opinion.  They laughed together, worked out together, spent hours in each other’s kitchens experimenting with recipes.  They liked the same television shows, movies, vacation destinations.  More importantly, they hated the same sports teams.  Upon reflection, it did seem foolish to her that she hadn’t picked up on his homosexuality.  He was more of a girlfriend to her than he ever was a boyfriend.  But more than either of those, he was a friend.  Perhaps the best one she ever had.  What was that old adage about being friends before becoming lovers?  The most successful marriages being unions between partners who actually liked each other?
.           Although she wasn’t completely convinced she could enter into and maintain a sexless marriage, she had to admit it would be the only downside in becoming Carlson’s wife.   The new level of status she would achieve in being Mrs. Carlson Hammond would be nothing compared to the jet-setting life she would enjoy.  The financial security.  She would be able to continue on the path of unemployment, considering it not only her job but her duty to spend time with other rich women at spas and country clubs, chairing social and charity events and hosting gallery openings.  While it would be disappointing not sharing a bed with Carlson, as she was extremely attracted to him and had often fantasized about what his muscular chest would feel like pressed to hers, his manhood buried deep within her, she might be able to convince him to engage in a purely physical stress relieving session every now and again.
.           She believed she loved Carlson.  She wasn’t quite sure she was in love with him, but that hardly seemed necessary given the circumstances.  It worked more in her favor to not be in love with him.  She’d been in love with her first husband and look at how that had turned out.  Why had she been so hasty in rejecting Carlson’s proposal?  Shouldn’t she have at least heard him out?  Love hadn’t mattered much the first time around; why was she placing so much importance on it?  Believing it was a necessary component of a successful union?  Why not view marriage as a real investment in her future?  A brilliant business deal?
.           Exactly three months after the day they’d returned home from Hawaii, Mary Grace called Carlson at his office.  He picked up before the second ring.
.           “Maggy?”
.           “Meet me for dinner at Supano’s, eight o’clock Saturday night.  I think I may be ready to negotiate.”

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.”

“So can you?  Come to the shore Labor Day weekend?”
.        Mercy licked the barbecue sauce from her fingers, then wiped them with her napkin.  She took a long sip of water, much to Bernadette Andresi’s agitation, who was waiting on an answer.
.        “Ummmm–”
.        “Ummmm, what?” Bernadette cut in.  “Like, what the fuck, Merce?  It’s bad enough we haven’t done anything all summer, but everytime I ask you to do something or go somewhere, it’s all like, “ummmm.”  What’s going on?”
.        “We’re doing something now, aren’t we?”  Mercy spread her arms out, referring to the Outback restaurant where they now sat, eating dinner.  “Look at this,” she said, gesturing towards the shopping bags overflowing the two unoccupied chairs at their table.  “A day spent doing.”
.        “Yeah,” Bernadette said, reaching into Mercy’s Victoria’s Secret bag and pulling out a clump of thong panties.  “Look at this.”  She tossed them back inside, then reached back in to produce a nightie.  “And this.  Who’s this for, Mercy?  The person you’ve been neglecting me to be with?”
.        “Bern,” Mercy said with a sigh.  She wished she could deny her friend’s accusatory words, but there was a ring of truth to them.  She had been neglecting her friendship with Bernadette since meeting Keene, along with every other thing in her life that didn’t involve rocking back and forth on his dick or swallowing it whole.
.        “Worse than being tossed aside for a guy is never even having met the competition.   What’s the big secret, Merce?  Are you ashamed?”
.        “No,” Mercy quickly defended her relationship.
.        “So you have been choosing back bend over best friend,” Bernadette smirked.
.        “Oh, Bern,” Mercy said, slumping against the back of her chair, shoulders hunched in defeat.  “I always detested those shallow, needy bitches who dropped their girlfriends the minute a guy came along.  And now I’m one of them.”
.        “God damn it, Mercy.”
.        “I know.  I’m such a cunt.”
.        “It’s not just that.  How could you have a boyfriend and not even tell me about him?”
.        Mercy shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I guess it all just . . . got away from me somehow.”
.        And indeed it had.  Ever since their week together spent at Maggy’s house, Mercy and Keene had been literally joined at the hips.  Any time that wasn’t spent in some sexual position was time spent apart.  Her summer activities consisted of work and fucking Keene in hotel rooms up and down the eastern coastline.  She’d been accompanying him to various cities where he was scheduled to be a speaker at writing seminars and workshops.  So far she’d been to Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, Mystic, Ocean City, up and down the Jersey shore, tanning and shopping by day, having dinner and sex with Keene after the sun set.
.        Not that she was complaining, or dissatisfied with any of it.  She was living a life most women only held in their fantasies.  To spend a summer touring seaside resorts with the man she loved, a man who was intelligent, good-looking, charismatic, attentive, scholarly and successful, not to mention made her come every single night, was akin to a plot ripped right from the pages of a Jayne Ann Krentz novel.  She hadn’t meant to neglect Bernadette, or even keep Keene a secret from her, but there just wasn’t enough time to keep anything else going.  On the rare occasion she was home, she was either working or packing for a her next getaway.  Even her own mother knew little about Keene, only that he was a published author and that her daughter was traveling with him.  They’d never met.  But Mercy was beginning to feel it was time to introduce him to the other people in her life.
.        “Does that Labor Day invitation include Keene?” she asked her friend over dessert, the bulk of the meal having been spent filling Bernadette in on her whirlwind summer love affair.
.        “After everything you’ve told me, I wouldn’t have you without him,” Bernadette said, a devilish gleam in her eye.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Two days after her outing with Bernadette, Mercy attended a reading circle at the house of one of Keene’s writing colleagues in Cherry Hill.  Asher Plattington was a fifty-six-year-old sociology professor at La Salle University who had recently completed a science fiction  novel that he was currently querying to New York agencies.
.        “If they’re not from New York, they don’t exist,” he boomingly declared to anyone tolerant enough to hold a one-on-one conversation with him.  Like Keene, he’d been published in various literary journals and fiction magazines.  Unlike Keene, as of yet he’d failed to secure himself a publishing deal.  The two men had met at La Salle two years ago, where Keene periodically taught a course on how to construct professional query letters and synopses.
.        “That’s not true,” Keene later said to Mercy, overhearing Asher’s latest denouncing of non-New York representation.  “There are plenty of good agencies right here in Pennsylvania, not to mention D.C., Florida, California.”
.        “Isn’t your agent in New York?”
.        “Yes,” he admitted, and she nudged him playfully.
.        “So modest.”
.        Mercy just knew this book of Keene’s, his debut novel,  was going to be a bestseller.  It took her just three days to read and critique the manuscript, offering little suggestion on how it could be improved.  It was engaging, crisp, hip, suspenseful, chock full of sexual longing and teenaged angst; it had all the elements of any successful Young Adult series.  Mercy wouldn’t be surprised if after a few volumes the CW didn’t snatch it up and turn it into a television series, a’la The Vampire Diaries or Gossip Girl.
.        Asher’s book, by contrast, was a plodding, self-indulgent journey, full of pretentious prose, inane sub-plots, and juvenile dialogue.  The excerpt he’d read aloud tonight,  a scene in which our heroic gang of space travelers is abducted, chained up and subsequently raped by a raven-haired, big-busted alien with five vaginas, was as offensive as it was pointless.
.        “He basically wrote a novel about his eleven-year-old wet dream fantasies,” Mercy griped in the car on the ride home.  “It’s one thing to write that misogynistic crap–super-intelligent men being repeatedly forced to fuck an insatiable dumb-as-shit big-boobed alien in her six devouring vaginas–but to then speak it aloud to a room full of women?”  she huffed.  “What a douchebag.”
.        “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call that misogynistic–”
.        “Well, it is crap,” she snapped, whipping her head to look at him.  “You do agree it’s crap.  And degrading.  And juvenile.”
.        He was facing ahead, keeping his eyes on traffic, but she saw a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips.  She slapped his thigh.
.        “Ow!” he said, jerking his leg.
.        “Ow?  Like that hurt.  Pussy.”
.        “Oh-ho-ho, so I’m a pussy, am I?”
.        “Mm-hmm, so that got your attention, huh?” she asked, smiling devilishly.  She leaned over the middle gear shift panel, tucking her face into his neck.  “Pussy,” she whispered.
.        He laughed, a silent one, deep in his throat, and she slipped a hand over his thigh.
.        “Is this where it hurts?” she purred, nibbling at his ear.  She moved her hand up towards his crotch.  “Or is it somewhere up here?”
.        “You’re getting closer,” he said, breaking out into a wide grin.
.        “You want me to kiss it–” she undid the button of his gray Dockers, sliding the zipper down, “–make it all better?”
.        “Maybe.  Maybe in a few min–”
.        His voice ended in a gasp as she reached her hand inside, nails lightly grazing his flesh.
.        “Wait, wait, wait,” he said, shifting his legs, his attempt at shrugging her away not very forceful.
.        “Why don’t we drive to your place?”
.        Suggesting such was a gamble, she knew; for some inexplicable reason she had yet to see where he lived.  She didn’t even have his address.  All she knew was he lived fifteen minutes away from her in neighboring town Shillington.
.        “Why can’t I know where you live?” she’d asked him one day last month when their most recent conversation on the topic grew heated.  “I don’t even know if it’s a house, a condo, an apartment.  Under a bridge somewhere.  Are you married or something?  Have a girlfriend?  Little boys’ bodies in the crawlspace?  Or, worst of all, still live with mommy?”
.        “I don’t want you stalking me,” had been his flippant answer.  Then he’d crawled out of her bed–it was more than fine to screw at her house–and left, not bothering to call or show up at the café for over a week.  She’d actually been the one to call and apologize, and hadn’t brought up the topic since.  But now that she had him in this vulnerable state, perhaps he’d cave a little.
.        No such luck.  He shook her off, successfully this time, composing himself at the next red light.
.        The rest of the ride to her house was spent in silence.  He pulled into the vacant driveway, Trixie being out for the evening.  He put the car in park, staring straight ahead through the windshield, waiting for her to exit.
.        “Keene.”
.        “Good night, Mercy.”
.        “Seriously?” she sighed, exasperated.  “This is getting ridiculous, Keene.  What’s the big fucking deal?”
.        “What is the big fucking deal, Mercy?  Why are you so obsessed with going to my place?”
.        “Because you’re so obsessed with keeping it secret.”
.        “It’s not a secret,” he said, raising his voice.  “I just haven’t taken you there.  I’m not married, I don’t have a girlfriend.  I live alone.  No dead bodies, no Star Wars dolls on every shelf, no women’s panties in the drawers.  Sorry if that answer isn’t good enough for you.  But you’re not going to trick, guilt, manipulate or blow your way into my apartment.”
.        “Whoa.  An apartment.  You let that one slip.”
.        He shook his head, a smirk on his face.  “Just go, Mercy.”
.        When she didn’t move he said, “Would you like me to open the door for you?”
.        “Are you going to be a big baby and avoid me for a week again?”
.        Finally he turned to face her.  “Why are you giving me a hard time?”
.        She stared at him.  Is that what she was doing?  Had she started this argument?  The night had been fine.  She and Keene mingling with the guests at Asher’s house, getting frisky in the car afterwards.  Why had she gone and ruined all that?  Before she opened her bitch mouth the night had been heading towards an orgasm.  Now it seemed she’d be spending it alone in her bed, asking the empty room what went wrong.
.        “I’m sorry,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his face.  He tilted his head down and kissed her hand.
.        “It’s okay,” he whispered.  She leaned in for a kiss.  Soft, loving, no tongue.
.        “Please come in.”
.        “I can’t,” he said.
.        “Can’t?”  She gently cupped the bulge between his legs.  “Why not?”
.        He took her by the wrist, moving her hand back over to her side of the car.  “I just can’t.”
.        She nodded, backing away.  She wanted to get in the house, suddenly feeling a desperate urge to cry.  Her hand fumbled with the handle, and before she stepped out, his hand was on her arm.
.        “Hey.”
.        She paused, halfway out the door.  She did not turn back to look at him.  “Yes?”
.        “There’s nothing wrong here, okay?  I just don’t think it’s a good idea tonight.”
.        She nodded again.  “Yep.  I know.”
.        Up in her room, she threw her body across the bed and dissolved into tears.  She cried through changing into her pajamas, brushing her teeth, and two episodes of Dance Moms.
.        She hadn’t even asked him about Labor Day weekend.

At Brody’s request, and because it made her pussy feel as red, plump and juicy as a sweet, ripe strawberry floating in champagne, along with the no underwear edict, Trixie wore nothing but sundresses on the days he came to mow the lawn or clean the pool.  Knee length sundresses; minis; calf length; long and constrictively straight so that she could barely walk, let alone spread her legs; long and billowing so that they swept the floor, almost tripping her.  Strapless, spaghetti, halter.  Solids, polka dots, flowers, random patterns.  Only sundresses, with nothing underneath.  Nothing but his hands, his mouth, his cock.  Those were the things she wore on her pussy.
.        She was cutting up a variety of fruits she’d purchased at the farmer’s market earlier that day to toss into a fruit salad when she heard the lawnmower kick on.  Like Pavlov’s dog, her mouth–and her gash–began salivating at the sound.  Knowing it was his scheduled day to tend to the landscaping, she was already outfitted in today’s dress, a blue and purple multi with spaghetti straps that fell mid-thigh.  The following twenty minutes were excruciating as she completed making the salad, anticipating the silencing of the mower.  She was sitting on the couch, watching The Haves and The Have Nots when she noticed the quiet.  The doorbell rang, and she ran to answer it.
.        She’d been doing this the entire summer, throwing her door open to find Brody on the other side of it, sweaty and half-dressed, sun-tanned and gorgeous, smelling of the earth and eager perspiration.  He wore his pants low on his hips and her eyes went directly to the area where his abdomen met his groin, that delicious vee carved in muscle and vein, the arrow that pointed to the promise of hard, fat cock.  The moment she saw him she wanted him with such an intense hunger that if she had a dick it would be so erect it would be pointing at her forehead.
.        She grabbed his shirt, pulling him inside.  She immediately went for his pants, undoing the zipper.
.        “Wait wait wait,” he said, grasping her wrists just as she’d reached inside his underwear to wrap her hands around his prick.  The heat radiating from it almost sent her into a frenzy.
.        “I need a drink first,” he said, lifting his shirt and using it to wipe the sweat from his face.  “It’s hot as a bitch out there.”
.        She stared at his exposed six-pack, which she knew from experience felt as good as it looked.  Sometimes in the middle of fucking she’d ask him to stop and just lay on top of her, mashing their chests together.  The weight of his pecs mashing her breasts, the feel of his abs on her belly always made for an explosive orgasm once he got going again.
.        “You got any lemonade?”
.        Of course she did, freshly squeezed with lime and sugar, just the way he liked it.
.        Two minutes later they were in her kitchen, Brody drinking a glass of lemonade with Trixie on her knees in front of him, dipping his dick in another.  She lifted it out, lemonade dribbling down her chin as she sucked the liquid off his prick.  He put his empty glass on the counter, pressing his hands on her back, bringing her onto his shaft.  He slid down her throat and she bobbed on his cock, sucking and slurping.  He bent over slightly, bunching her dress up in his hands to reveal her bare ass.  He rubbed it, slapped it playfully, running his fingers in the crack.  When one of them slid down to her gash, she moaned, tilting her pelvis to encourage him further.  He stroked her a moment, slipped his finger in and pumped a few times before straightening up and pulling back.  He placed his hands on her arms and brought her to her feet, steering her into the family room and guiding her over to the couch.
.        Because he was still sweaty and smudged with grass and dirt Trixie paused a moment to retrieve an oversized beach towel and spread it over the sofa before they collapsed on it.  On her back, she spread her legs wide to accommodate his positioning and focused her gaze on his dick, slick with her saliva, fat and stiff as a baseball bat.
.        “Go slow,” she said, watching until the tip was no longer visible as it moved closer to her slit.  She kept her eyes fixed as inch after inch of him disappeared, gliding with aching slowness into her box.  When he was fully entrenched within her, he remained still as she tilted her torso up and down, back and forth, massaging her walls with the length of him.  She slid all the way back, until only the tip remained inside, then slammed into him until her velvety lips were touching his skin, their pubic hair mingling, feeling him as deep as he could possibly go.  She sat up, wrapping her legs around him, lifting herself up and down on his dick, mashing her clitty against him as she came, her plump breasts rasping against his sculpted pecs.  She would have screamed out for him to fuck her harder, but in actuality she was fucking herself, using him as something with which to impale herself, a rippled surface to grind against, and it felt so completely delicious.  Empowering and so incredibly erotic.
.        When her orgasm subsided, she wiggled on his lap for a moment, coming down from the intensity of her climax.  They kissed, and he tugged at her nipples with his teeth, sending ripples of electricity through her.  Finally she lay back, being careful to not un-join from him.  She gestured to the cell phone on the coffee table with her chin.
.        “Take a picture of your dick inside me.”
.        He laughed.  “Seriously?”
.        She smiled languidly, beyond satiated.  “Seriously.”
.        When he began to lift from the sofa, she held her arms out.  “Don’t pull out.”
.        Somehow he managed to stretch to the iPhone without breaking contact and she luxuriated in his subtle movements, purring like a cat.
.        “It just looks like a pussy with hair on it,” he said, looking through the camera.
.        “Take it anyway.  Then pull out a little so I can see your bare skin.”
.        He obliged, taking a few more at her request, in various stages of entering, the final being his head resting just inside her lips.
.        “Mmmm,” she cooed when he’d replaced the phone on the table and stretched his body atop hers.  His penis rested flaccid against her thigh.  “Thank you, baby.”
.        They ate the fruit salad and halved a mozzarella and heirloom tomato sandwich drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Afterwards she walked him to the door, kissing him deeply before releasing him to the outside.
.        “See you next week,” she said.  She almost leaned in for another kiss, or a grab at his crotch, but just then she noticed the elder Broderick Daniels coming down his driveway on the way to his mailbox.  He noticed her at the same time and lifted his hand in greeting.  She waved back, prompting Brody to turn around.  He also waved at his father, then turned back to Trixie with a guilty–but devilish–smile.
.        She went back inside and watched from the bay window as Brody walked the mower back over to his house and his father, who remained on the lawn, waiting for him.  When Ricky put his arm around his son and pulled him in for a half hug that ended in a playful hair rumple, Trixie wondered if he could smell the sex on him.  Had he noticed a change in his son’s behavior?  Was there a change?  Trixie thought there must be a change in her; she felt it.  If indeed there was, no one seemed to be noticing it.  Even Maggy, who could sniff out when the squirrels in her backyard had just mated, seemed oblivious to her older sister’s mattress workouts with a teenaged jackhammer.
.        To think at one time not so long ago she had actually thought of Brody as a possible love interest for Mercy!  Now that she had had him herself, she thought he was much too fast for her daughter.  She couldn’t imagine Mercy doing with Brody all the dirty things she herself had done with him.  Her young body being pummeled relentlessly, her sweet little mouth swallowing that fat prick.  Trixie had no idea whether or not her daughter was a virgin.  She knew it was naïve of her to think so, but then again Mercy had never brought anyone significant home to meet her.  There were high school prom dates and study partners and a boy or two she had introduced as “friends,” but she’d never dated anyone longer than two or three dates.  If she’d ever had sex it would have been a one night stand, or with someone she kept secret from Trixie.  She sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case.
.        Trixie liked to think she and Mercy were the kind of mother and daughter who held no secrets between them.

As promised Trixie organized a lunch for the three sisters the Saturday after Mary Grace arrived home from Bermuda.  The two of them made the three hour drive to Virginia in Mary Grace’s red Mercedes, picking up Madeleine at the convent.  She waved happily to her sisters as the car pulled up and was barely inside the vehicle when Mary Grace blurted, “It’s about fucking time you decided to unlock the chastity belt.  I don’t know what possessed you to sign up for that prison of a lifestyle in the first place.”
.        Dressed in a Prada cream sleeveless silk blouse and tailored slacks, lips stained her signature cherry red, black RayBans covering her eyes and a chunky three carat marquis diamond ring and band set in platinum on her finger, Mary Grace could have been wearing a roll of hundred dollar bills as a bangle bracelet for as much as her appearance smacked of money and upscale style.
.        “I see you filled her in,” Madeleine directed the comment to Trixie, sliding into the back seat and closing the door behind her.  Trixie returned a fading look of apology, shrugging her shoulders.
.        “I want to hear all about this prince charming,” Mary Grace continued, peeling out of the parking lot, spinning the wheels unnecessarily, kicking up gravel and a thick gray dust.
.        Madeleine began to catch her sister up on the story of Adam Drechsler, how they spent their weekly afternoons together and how she’d fallen in love.  Halfway through she was interrupted with a dramatic flourish of Mary Grace’s hand.
.        “Yeah yeah yeah, he sounds so fascinating.  What does he look like?”
.        Madeleine was happy to accommodate this request as well.  “Oh, he’s so beautiful,” she swooned.  “Jet black hair, smoldering hazel eyes, over six feet tall.”
.        “Darling, hazel eyes don’t smolder.”
.        “His do.  They smolder and crackle and pop.”
.        “He sounds like he has all the appeal of a kiddie cereal.  I want to know if he has the goods to make your clitty crackle and pop.”
.        Trixie tossed a disgusted face her.  “Must you?”
.        Maggy grinned lasciviously, running her tongue along her lower lip.  Indeed such talk did make Madeleine a tad uncomfortable as well, which is why she’d chosen to first tell Trixie about Adam rather than her twin.
.        “Is he broad?” Mary Grace was asking.  “Bulging muscles?  Bulging bulge?”
.        Madeleine wouldn’t be rattled by her sister’s crassness.  She was a little extreme, but maybe Madeleine could use a little of her sexual confidence.  Mary Grace was definitely motivated by people’s reactions to her bawdiness; Madeleine didn’t think it wise to send her completely into a spiral of vulgarity by acting too much of a prude.  She chose her words carefully, wanting to use the best description that did him justice to Maggy’s requirements, while also paying respect.
.        “He’s . . . sturdy.  And appears quite . . . capable.”
.        This answer seemed to appease Mary Grace.  “Ooh,” she cooed, shivering slightly and rolling her shoulders.
.        The sisters had barely taken their seats at an area Ruby Tuesday before Mary Grace was laying out her plan for Madeleine’s defection from the Church.
.        “Don’t wait on this Adam character to make his move before you jump the nunnery.  He’s never going to see you as girlfriend or wife or even fuckable material until you get Jesus firmly out of the picture.  Trixie filled me in on the important details, and I’ve been formulating a plan ever since.  So after lunch, you go back and talk to whoever it is you’ve got to talk to to get the ball rolling.  That’s number one.  And don’t worry about where you’ll live or work or feed yourself.  I can support you for as long as it takes to transfer your daily maintenance to Prince Charming.  Although, I must say, you could have picked someone with a little more financial substance to swing your thighs over.  Maybe once you sleep with him he’ll be out of your system and I can introduce you to someone whose house is built on at least four acres.”
.        Madeleine knew her sister meant well, and she may know more about how to beguile a man than she did, but Madeleine also believed knowing how to get into a man’s bed wasn’t the same–or as important–as getting into his heart.
.        “I don’t want to get him out of my system, Maggy.  I want to find a way to get into his.”

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

.        Madeleine was a virgin.  Unlike her outgoing, different date every Saturday night twin Mary Grace, Madeleine had a few dates with a boy named Fitz Lemming throughout her high school career.   Although he didn’t share her religious calling, he tolerated it even if at times he tried to get her to change her mind.  She never hid from him her intention to join the nunnery, yet he was still stunned when she announced she entered her candidacy upon graduation.  He’d been so distressed she somehow found herself in the ridiculous position of administering a clumsy hand job on her parents’ living room couch.  Washing the semen off her hands with the fervor of Lady Macbeth outing a damned spot, she took comfort in the realization that her penis pleasing days were over before they’d began.  She was curious, sure, had even had that stirring in her belly and crackling between her legs, but her heart had a greater calling, one that the desires of her flesh would simply have to capitulate to.  Now, at thirty-seven, it seemed that capitulation was over.  Now she’d be stepping into the life of her sister.  Or, at least, she’d be bringing Mary Grace into hers.
.        The first step was to introduce her to Adam.  He already knew Madeleine had a twin, but now he would see for himself just how identical they were via a photo she had tucked into the latest book she was reading, Beatriz Williams’ A Hundred Summers.  The second step would be a tad more difficult:  create the lie.  The third, to cultivate it and the fourth, reinforce it.  In order to get inside Adam’s world, Mary Grace said, Madeleine would have to lie.  And lie again.  And lie harder.  The thought of it all turned her inside out.  How in the world was she supposed to build a life with Adam based on deception?  It went against everything she believed in, everything that composed her, everything she’d ever based her hopes and dreams and faith on.  Truth.  Truth was salvation.  Truth was love.  Truth was life.  Without truth, there was nothing.  How could she have faith in nothing?  How could she build a foundation with Adam on nothing?  And yet . . .
.        If Adam was the man she believed him to be, it was the only way.  Better to burden herself with the lie than place the onus on him for being the thing that would separate her from God.  For surely that would be the way he would see it.  And if he were a man of substance, he would not allow that to happen.  He would never look upon her with lustful eyes as long as she wore the habit.
.        As Mary Grace had begun unfolding the plan, Madeleine’s heart began to pound a crescending rhythm against her breast bone, her mouth growing as dry as her palms were sweaty.  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  There was no way she could do it, no way she could pull it off.  Her life had trained her for quite the opposite.
.        Trixie left no room for interpretation on where she stood with it all.  She thought the plan ridiculous, underhanded, and impossible to pull off.
.        “This is Maddy’s life, not a reality show concept.  You are out of your mind to even suggest it, and you–” she turned her incredulous eyes onto Madeleine “–are beyond all retention of sanity if you seriously think this can yield anything other than disaster.”
.        Mary Grace ignored her.  She grabbed Madeleine by the hands, commanding her attention.
.        “Where has the concept of sanity ever fit into your world?  A man rising from the dead?  Eating a piece of stale bread and calling it human flesh?  Blind men seeing again, cripples walking, men living to be two hundred?  Are you kidding me with this horseshit?  What sort of real world do you live in?  You can believe when you confess to a priest you’re speaking directly to God but it’s ridiculous to think Adam could be fooled–temporarily–into thinking you’re me?”
.        During the past few days via email the twins fleshed out the plan conceived by Mary Grace over Saturday’s lunch.
.        Is this really smart? Madeleine had typed in her last correspondence.  A paper trail?
.        A paper trail?  Madeleine could hear Mary Grace’s biting tone in her typed words.  What is this, an episode of Scandal?  Who even says paper trail any more?  Yes, I’m going to print this out and blackmail you.  Sheltered retard.  There.  Now you can blackmail me someday for my socially unacceptable use of the word retard.
.        Madeleine was thinking of the future.  She had jumped to a day when she and Adam would be sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee after a night of wild passion and declarations of love.  By the way, I’m really Madeleine.  You remember; the ex-nun?  You’d never guess from my mad blow-job skills, would you?
.        How could this ever end well?
.        Was she really thinking of the end before the beginning even had a chance?
.        The deception didn’t have to last long.  She just needed enough time to discover whether or not he could ever be attracted to her, could be open to a serious relationship.  Once that was established, she would leave the Church and introduce herself into Adam’s world as a potential life partner.
.        “Phase one,” she said under her breath, setting down a pickle and olive tray in the center of the table beside the pitcher of Tang, which she’d mixed with fresh orange slices.  She also had a variety of cheeses and Triscuit crackers, hard salami and Hormel turkey pepperoni.  The book was on the table, too, the most important prop of all.
.        It was put to the test minutes later when Adam arrived, carrying a heavy corrugated box with the top flaps cut off, several dozen books popping out in a series of uneven spines.  She quickly cleared a place on the table for him, moving aside the pitcher of Tang and snatching up the book.  She grabbed it by the cover, letting the pages flap as she flicked her wrist for good measure.  Her heart quickened as she saw something wafting through the air from the corner of her eye, accompanied by the telltale fluttering of the photo in a spiral of flight.
.        “Oh, my,” she prompted in the event he’d missed the errant picture, but she needn’t have.  As expected, he bent down and retrieved it, holding it out to her.  She let it linger in his grasp, giving him time to catch sight of the image.
.        “Oh, now I’ve lost my place,” she said, flipping through the copy of A Hundred Summers for the chapter once marked by the photo.
.        Once again, she was not to be disappointed.
.        “Oh, wow.  Is this . . .”
.        She looked up to find him staring at her, his eyes wide with wonder.  He turned the image toward her, his mouth formed in a slack oval shape.
.        “Is this your twin?”  he asked once he’d found his voice again.
.        Madeleine looked at the picture, taken during a trip to Disneyworld some three years ago, right around the time Maggy’s marriage to Wyatt was dissolving.  Despite the fact that her marriage was crumbling, in the photo Maggy was luminescent.  Her eyes sparkled, her alabaster skin glowed, her ruby lips shone like a fresh paint job on a cherry red convertible and her platinum Monroe-esque ‘do looked more like a halo than hair.  The pair of Mickey Mouse ears perched on her head only lent to the magic of her appearance.  While pleasantly pretty on her own, dewy-skinned, wholesome Madeleine paled in comparison to her mega-watt twin.  She’d selected this specific photo for that very reason.  She needed Adam’s first impression of Maggy to be a lasting one, one that lingered until he met her in the flesh.
.        “Maggy.  Yes.”
.        “Wow.”  He studied their images, his eyes lit with wonder.  He glanced up at her, smiling.  “She looks exactly like you.”
.        She smiled back pleasantly, trying to contain her excitement.  “Yes, she does.  That was about three years ago,” she said as he turned his attention back to the picture.  “It’s one of my favorites.”
.        “Mine, too,” he said, handing it back to her.  His eyes fastened onto hers as she slowly slipped the picture from his fingers.  She felt heat rising in her cheeks and she quickly turned her back to him, tucking the photo back in the book.
.        “She’s so glamorous,” she said.  “Maybe that’s why I felt the need to be so plain.  To have my own identity.”
.        “Joining the convent’s a little drastic, don’t you think?  Just so people can tell you apart from your twin?”
.        She turned to face him again, letting out a small laugh.  “Of course that’s not why.”
.        He returned her smile, pouring a glass of Tang.  He handed it to her, and she accepted it with a “thank you.”  He poured himself a glass, selected a piece of pepperoni from the tray and popped it into his mouth.
.        “So why did you?”  he asked.
.        She wasn’t prepared for the question.  They’d never discussed her reasons for joining the Church.  To do so would be the equivalent of asking a woman why she had married her husband, or chosen not to have children.  Sure, she’d heard the question many times before, from rude gossips looking to use her story as a means to justify their own choices.  She came prepared with a stock answer.  But the question coming from Adam was sincere.  He really wanted to know.  And there was no better time to introduce the truth; something he wouldn’t be getting from her for quite a while.
.        “If you had asked me that ten years ago, or even one, I would have had an answer for you.  But now I . . . I’m not so sure.  Now I look at that picture of Mary Grace and I and I see  more of who I am in her image than my own.”
.        She held her breath, awaiting his reaction.  His expression was neutral as he regarded her, contemplative at best.  He ate a few pickles, some olives and cheese slivers.  She was about to expound when he finally  spoke.
.        “I think that’s only natural,” he said.  “I think everyone questions their decisions at some point in their lives.  You know, would my life be different if I had done this instead.  Would I be happier.  But we work it out.  We find our purpose again.”
.        “You speak as if you have some firsthand knowledge.”
.        “Yeah, well.”  He paused a moment, then shrugged.  “That’s a story better left to a priest, Sister.”
.        He clapped his hands once, shifting back into his amiable work persona.  “Let’s get down to some books.”

“There’s something different about you,” Trixie observed, setting down her latte to take inventory of her sister.  “And I don’t just mean the cute little dress.”
.        “I don’t have to wear my habit everywhere I go,” Madeleine said.
.        “No, but the last time I saw you you were wearing a turtleneck and wool pants.”
.        “The last time you saw me dressed like that was Christmas.”
.        “Still.  Isn’t that dress a little . . . scandalous?”
.        “Scandalous?”  Madeleine looked down, assessing herself in the relatively modest yet colorful v-necked flower-patterned dress.  “It’s completely appropriate for spring.”
.        Trixie laughed.  “Yes, it is.  I was referring to you and your spiteful wardrobe.  If you hang this in your closet with the rest of your clothing don’t be surprised to find it stoned to death.”
.        Madeleine laughed, taking her sister’s criticism in stride.  “Oh, stop now.  It’s just a dress.”
.        At first Trixie had just been teasing, but now witnessing her sister’s blush and the uncomfortable shifting of her body in her seat, she wondered if there was more behind the choice of the dress than just celebrating springtime.  With recent developments concerning her own reasons for feeling extra pretty at today’s bookstore outing to meet her sister, if she didn’t know better, Trixie would swear there was a man behind Maddy’s disposition.  Considering her own scandalous behavior, Trixie thought it prudent to avoid that area of conversation.  Not that she wasn’t just bursting to tell someone about her new hot young lover, but telling Maddy would have felt more like confession than conversation.  Sex was a topic best dished with Maggy.  Besides, her daughter was working the cafe today, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about getting screwed up against a wall by a nineteen-year-old with Mercy in such close proximity.
.       The sisters chatted a bit, mainly about Mercy, and their sister Maggy off on her honeymoon in Bermuda.  Both agreed Carlson was a wonderful, as well as extremely good-looking man, and perfectly suited for their jet-setting, fabulous Mary Grace.
.        “I hope he makes her happier than her last husband,” Madeleine said.
.        “Yes.  It seems we Tarminsson women aren’t very lucky in love.  Well, present company excluded.”
.        Madeleine widened her eyes, a strange look coming over her face.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”
.        “Well you’re married to God, for Pete’s sake.  That’s a lot for the rest of us to live up to.  I mean, I’m sure He provides His moments of disappointment, but at least you know He’s always got your back.”
.        “Right.”  Madeleine looked down at the table, her expression troubled.
.        “Okay, Mads,” Trixie said, setting down her latte mug with purpose.  “All joking aside; what’s going on?”
.        Madeleine shook her head, avoiding making direct eye contact with her sister.  Still Trixie noticed the tears brimming in her eyes.  Now she was growing concerned.
.        “My God, Mads, what is it?”
.        “I can’t,” she whispered, still shaking her head.
.        “Can’t?  I would say we’ve reached the realm of ‘have to.'”
.        “It’s bad, Beatrice, it’s bad.”
.        The worst thing Trixie could think of was murder.  She doubted Madeleine was capable of that.  So she went with the number two worst transgression of a nun’s existence.
.        “Did you sleep with someone?”
.        Although she didn’t think this a possibility either, judging from the guilty look on Madeleine’s face, apparently she’d hit the nail on the head.  Or at least dented the wall next to it.
.        “No,” Madeleine said.  Then, with more conviction, “No.  But there is someone in whom I’ve taken interest.”
.        “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Maddy, stop talking like a school teacher.  This is serious.”  She arched an eyebrow as if to ask for confirmation.  Madeleine nodded.
.        “Yes.  I fear it is.”
.        She took her sister’s hand across the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  Wrong as it may be, inside she was grateful for the news.  A nun breaking her vows was far more scandalous than a forty-year-old divorcee sleeping with her teenaged neighbor.  Wasn’t it?
.        “It’s serious enough that I’ve been thinking about leaving the convent.”
.        Trixie sat back in her chair, digesting the information.  “What?  How?  I mean, when did you meet this guy?  When?  Where?”
.        Suddenly a thought occurred to her.  Madeleine had said she was contemplating leaving the convent for someone.  Had she fallen for one of her fellow sisters?
.        “It is a man we’re talking about here, isn’t it?”
.        Madeleine giggled.  “Yes.  A wonderful man.”  She sighed.  “Oh, Beatrice, I don’t know how this could have happened to me.  That’s what makes it feel so right.  I know God would never have put these feelings in me, would never have made this man cross my path if it wasn’t meant for a very important reason.”
.        “Maybe it’s just about resisting temptation.  God’s big on that testing thing, you know.”
.        “It goes beyond that.  It’s not just about being tested.  I know what that feels like.  This is strong, Bea.  It’s a deeper feeling.  In here.”  She lightly pounded a fist to her abdomen.  “And in here.”  Gentle placing of her hands over her heart.
.        Trixie softened.  She rose from her seat, rubbing her sister’s back.  “I’m going to grab us some chocolate chip cookies.  How many do you think I’ll need?”
.        “A dozen.”
.        “Their cookies are large,” Trixie reminded her.  “Triple the size of a regular cookie.”
.        “Right.”
.        They both waited a beat before declaring simultaneously, “Two dozen.”

*           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *           *

Sometimes Trixie wondered how it happened that Madeleine and Mary Grace had been born the twins and not she and Madeleine.  Not in the sense that they were so much alike, but in the vein that they were in tune with each other, understood each other, much more so than were the actual twins.  Maggy and Maddy were complete opposites.  Mary Grace was materialistic and flashy, aloof and egocentric.  Madeleine was sensitive, compassionate.  She was soft-spoken and nurturing, inquisitive and analytical.  Trixie could sit and talk with her for hours, on a wide range of topics.  Whenever Trixie and Mary Grace met for lunch, the topic of conversation was almost always Mary Grace, unless she wanted her sister to join in on criticizing someone.  Then the conversation revolved around those unfortunate souls, those not as pretty or savvy or deserving as Mary Grace, who was just waiting for the karma train to come thundering in and run over all of them.  As if Mary Grace hadn’t done it already.
.        “God knew exactly what He was doing when He made you my big sister,” Maddy once said to her during one of Trixie’s I-should-have-been-your-twin-instead rants.  “You comfort me, offer advice, look after me.  Maggy needs that, too, more than I.  Who else could guide us through life the way that you do?”
.         She didn’t feel much like a leader now, however.  How in the world was she supposed to offer advice to a nun seeking her approval to exit the Church?
.        “You divorced your husband,” Madeleine had pointed out during their lunch at the bookstore.  “It’s the same thing.  How did you know the choice was the right one?”
.        “As I recall, you were very much against that choice,” Trixie gently reminded her.
.        “I wasn’t,” Madeleine said.  “My teachings were.  My beliefs, my vows.  That’s the problem with religious faith.  It thinks for you.  Once you choose a life of service, it becomes you.  You are your faith, and you act accordingly.  It’s amazing how a belief system based on free will removes all traces of it from your life the moment you sign up.  ‘What would Jesus do?’ is so much easier to answer than, “What would I do?  What should I do?”  I envy your ability to make choices by yourself, for yourself.  I want to make them now.  Follow my heart.  I know what the Church would tell me to do, and I’ve done it.  Pray.  Ask God for guidance.  Be strong, and honor my vows.  And I have.  And now I believe He’s led me to this choice.  Now I’m asking for your opinion.  Your true guidance.  What would you do, in my shoes?”
.        “So now you’re swapping what would Jesus do for what would Trixie do?”
.        “That’s not fair.  I’m not trading your judgment over the Church’s.  I’m simply asking your advice.  As a sister.  As someone who loves me and wants me to be happy.”
.        Trixie relented with a heavy sigh.  “I think you know what I would do, honey.  I am divorced.  But our situations are different, completely different.  I mean, are you leaving the Church for this man?  Or because the lifestyle doesn’t suit you anymore?  What I’m asking is, if not for this man, would you still want to leave the Church?”
.        “I think I can honestly say, if not for this man, I would not be contemplating leaving the Church.”
.        Trixie nodded.  “I see.”
.        This information troubled her.  In listening to Madeleine’s story of how she’d come to meet Adam Drechsler and how her feelings had developed and grown stronger over time, Trixie couldn’t see one logical reason for her sister’s leaving a party for him, let alone years of service to God.  By her own account she barely even knew this man.  How could a year’s worth of lunches and conversations centered around characters in books qualify as a relationship?  Trixie knew these were the times of people getting engaged who had met over the Internet, but it all seemed so ridiculous to her.  Made her scandalous sexual dalliances with Brody seem normal and quite acceptable in comparison.  And she thought she was the one living in a fantasy world!  But Maddy had been looking for advice, and although the best advice Trixie could think to give was to abandon this foolish notion of ever having anything with Adam, her sister deserved better.  How would she feel if she came looking for advice and Maddy would shoot back at her that she should leave her neighbor alone to find someone her own age?  Advice is never about the obvious; by its very nature it’s the right thing to do.  People looking for advice are never looking for the right thing to do.  They’re looking for permission to do the wrong thing.  And although Trixie certainly couldn’t bring herself to grant that permission, she wasn’t such a hypocrite that she couldn’t straddle the line.
.        So, even though she wasn’t totally convicted in her words, she’d advised her sister to get a handle on where Adam was in all of this, what his feelings may be for her before she uprooted her entire life.
.        “But that’s the problem,” Madeleine had said.  “How can I pursue a man, try to draw him out and be honest with his feelings, while I’m still a nun?  He won’t think of me as a potential life mate unless he can think of me as a potential life mate.  Do you understand that?  I mean, do you get that?”
.        Indeed, Trixie did.  Although she always thought Brody was a cute kid, she’d seen him more as someone Mercy would date than she would.  It wasn’t until he let her know he was available to her that she began to seriously consider him as someone she might be interested in.  Same with his father.  For years she’d been attracted to Ricky, but hadn’t engaged in any kind of serious flirtation due to both their marriages.  Now she was divorced, but he was still with his wife.  Her relationship with his son notwithstanding, she could never think of him as a potential mate while he was still involved with someone else.  In that sense, she could understand Maddy’s wanting to leave the Church before revealing her feelings to Adam.
.        “Well then, my true advice, since he is the reason you may leave the Church, protect yourself.  Your heart.  Go slow.  Maybe guide your conversations to more personal areas.  Find out his background, if he’s ever been in love.  You don’t even know whether he has a girlfriend, or his eye on someone.  He has a whole life outside your Thursday afternoons.  Maybe suggest a lunch together outside the convent.  Hopefully he’ll say yes and you can grow from there.”
.        “What if he says no?”
.        Madeleine had looked so fragile, like even the thought of entertaining that possibility would be enough to shatter her completely.  Trixie had given her a reassuring smile.
.        “Now why would he say that?”
.        Trixie left the bookstore, and her sister, feeling as if she hadn’t helped at all.  Giving her sister, a nun, advice on men?  That was way out of her league.  This was definitely one for Mary Grace to decipher.  She’d set up a dinner date for the three of them once their sister returned from Bermuda.
.        As Trixie slowly made her way down the street toward her house, watching for children riding bikes or rollerblading, unleashed dogs darting out from between parked cars, her mind drifted to Brody and the visit he’d paid her last night.  Mercy was away, house-sitting for Mary Grace, and Trixie had had no second thoughts of leading Brody upstairs to her bedroom after opening her door at two in the morning and finding him on her front patio.  Once again he was fresh from a night out with his friends and more than ready to enjoy the benefits of a warm female body.  He was hard in seconds and they’d barely made it to the bed when he was out of his jeans and inside her.  He spread apart her legs, pressing her knees back and up so far they practically rested on either side of her head, pulled aside the crotch of her underwear and slipped right in.  After a few hard fast jabs that penetrated so deep she practically felt them touch her abdominal wall he was pulling out, collapsing beside her with a loud sigh.
.        “God, that was so hot.”
.        She couldn’t disagree, but it could have lasted at least long enough for her to try for an orgasm.  She was about to roll on top of him to make a go at achieving just that, but he sprang from her bed, quickly pulling his jeans back on.
.        “Some other bed you have to visit tonight?” she asked, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.
.        “Naw,” he said, completely missing it.  He zipped up.  “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.  Otherwise I’d stay and fuck your hair back to its natural color.”
.        Then he’d leaned over and kissed her so sensually, so lustfully that she almost reached the very orgasm she felt robbed of just seconds earlier.
.        “I don’t think you should wear underwear anymore.  You know; just in case I need to pop in quickly.”
.        He kissed the tip of her nose and was gone, leaving her to finish herself off with the vibrator she kept in the top drawer of her nightstand, imagining it was his dick beating against her clit instead of a silver bullet.
.        The appearance of his father coming down the lawn to his mailbox shook her from her erotic memories.  Was it five o’clock already?  She’d had no idea her lunch with Maddy had lasted so long.  But of course it had.  The digital display on her dashboard read 5:01.  Trixie could, and sometimes did, set her clock to Ricky’s daily excursions down to his mailbox.  Unless it was a Sunday or a holiday, unless he was away or gravely ill, at five o’clock without fail, Broderick was collecting the mail from his mailbox.
.        It had been about four years ago when she first caught on to the pattern.  That had been back when her marriage to Tony was starting to come apart and she began to notice not only Broderick’s comings and goings, but how handsome he was.  An older, more confident and accomplished version of his son, Broderick Daniels was the kind of man Trixie had always dreamed she’d end up with.
.        And now I’m fucking his son.
.        Funny how things turned out.

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.