The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(11)

He had enrolled us in a convent school. We would be going to a school run by nuns.

School was the last place I wanted to be. Do you know the feeling? And a religious school? That hadn’t even been a blip on my radar.

I guess our uncle was offsetting our expulsion from the International Academy, maybe trying to score points with Gram Hilda’s board of lawyers and bankers. Or maybe this was the only school in Paris, France, that would take the three Angel kids, who’d been accused of killing their parents.

Either way, the lesson for the day was “Don’t mess with Jacob.”

Monsieur Morel opened the rear passenger door for me while Hugo kicked the other one open and spilled out onto the street with Harry. Our Yoda-like driver smiled and said, “I’ll be here at three, Mademoiselle Tandy.”

I said, “Okay,” but I was wasting none of my charm on Morel. I wanted to get back to the boxes of my sister’s stuff in the basement, but I couldn’t buck Uncle Jacob. Not today.

The three of us were buzzed through the gates and then entered the convent school of the Sisters of Charity. It was a bare-stone building inside and out. A nun, who didn’t introduce herself, took us to the office of the school administrator, Sister Marie Claire.

Sister Marie Claire was nothing like the glossy fashion mag she shared her name with. She was about fifty, maybe older, wearing the full nun habit from starched cap to sturdy black shoes. She gave us papers to fill out, then spent an hour explaining the rules of the school. No jewelry, no shouting, no cursing, no phones—it went on and on.

“Your first class every day will be advanced French, and I will meet with you every afternoon at last period for theology. I am to report any… how do you say?” She searched her memory, and we waited to hear what she had to report.

“I am to report any ‘shenanigans’ to Monsieur Perlman,” Sister Marie Claire said. “But I am also here as your adviser. You may always come to me.”

Hugo said, “Yeah, right.”

The sister walked behind him and slapped the back of his head, hard.

“Yow! That hurt!” Hugo bellowed.

I stood up and grabbed Hugo in a protective hug. Sister Marie Claire clutched my biceps with a talon grip and told me, “Take your seat, Mademoiselle Angel. Immediately.”

I did what she said, shooting glances at Harry and Hugo as I did so. The three of us were flustered and frightened. The sister had only reinforced the fears I’d had from the moment I saw the forbidding walls around this convent.

Our real life in Paris had just begun.

Hugo, Harry, and I went to class. We paid attention, and speaking for myself, I did my best to make Jacob proud. Actually, I thought my brothers also got the message, but in the afternoon, when I was aching for a dismissal bell to ring, Sister Marie Claire tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go to the chapel.

“Father Jean-Jacques is waiting to hear your confession,” said the nun.





Picture a chapel not much bigger than the parlor in Gram Hilda’s house. An agonized Jesus Christ was nailed to a huge crucifix behind the altar. The gray stone walls and floor chilled the air inside.

And there was a confessional off to one side. It even had a shaft of prismatic light hitting it from above. Oh, man, I didn’t like the looks of it at all. I was baptized, but our family had never been the kind who went to church or confessed our sins. I’m pretty sure Malcolm and Maud refused to believe they had any to confess.

I slouched over to the confessional and opened the door, took a seat, and crossed myself. I knew I was supposed to have examined my heart and my sins and experienced genuine remorse, but my conscience, such as it is, had never been cleaner.

I spoke in French, saying, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” because I knew I was supposed to say that, and then I added, “It’s been about a hundred years since my last confession.”

A deep voice with a bit of a laugh in it said, “I’ve got all day to hear your century of sins. I am also available tomorrow.”

Nuts.

Now I was committed to blowing Father Jean-Jacques’s cassock off, and I was not going to censor myself. I closed my eyes, held my nose, and jumped off the board into the deep end.

“Well, Father, in the last century, I have spied on people and defied people. I have been rude to the police and have shown them up and proven them wrong. I have bragged about being smart, and separately, I have brought disgrace on the family name. That’s what I’ve been told. And even though my parents and his disapproved, I had a boyfriend. Had. Past tense. But he was my boyfriend, all right. Use your imagination, Father, because I don’t kiss and tell. But I loved him and he loved me and we were together, with all that that implies.”

There was silence from the other side of the screen, so I continued. Actually, I was missing James again like crazy, and I wasn’t ready to stop talking about him.

“I earned having a boyfriend, Father, because this boy was my first love, and I had a pretty crappy upbringing disguised as intellectual enrichment. My siblings and I were used as guinea pigs. That’s right. Guinea pigs—as in lab animals.

“Our parents fed us drugs that were off-the-charts weird, and they made us different from any other kids in the world. You can believe me or not. Make of that what you will. But I’m an original, Father. And if God made me, I was tinkered and tampered with by my parents, who also made me. All of us Angels were messed with, Father. I think we were subjected to sins against nature. For years.”