A Need So Beautiful (A Need So Beautiful #1)(39)

But after an intense burning in my back, I reach out my hand and turn the knob. When the door opens, my sight fades. There is a glowing figure in the room, sitting at a circular table. Sister Dorothy.

If I wasn’t in so much pain, I might laugh. The Need has to help a nun? It seems ironic. But I don’t have time to think about it because I’m entering the room, the door closing behind me.

She looks over her shoulder at me, her features barely recognizable underneath the light. “Miss Cassidy? What are you doing in here?”

Her voice is high-pitched and alarmed, like I’ve broken one of the commandments of St. Vincent’s: Thou shalt not enter the teachers’ lounge. But then her life flashes before my eyes.

Suddenly, I am Dorothy Beaker. I’m in Italy backpacking with my best friend, Marjorie. We are twenty and we came to see the Vatican. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope. We’re waiting in the courtyard and I’m so excited. I feel like God is smiling on me.

The scene changes and Marjorie is crying as we sit in the small room at the hostel. She’s pregnant. She never told me that she was having sex, and I’m offended. I’m offended that she would disgrace her religion. I tell her so. I’m breaking her heart because I am her only friend and I’m ashamed of her.

It’s a year later. I’m back in Washington, living at my parents’ house as I prepare for the order and there’s a knock at my door. I’m annoyed. I want to keep reading but I go anyway. No one else is home.

When I open it, Marjorie is there. Her face is puffy from crying and her body looks softer, curvier after her pregnancy. She asks for my forgiveness. I tell her I’m not the one to forgive her.

I listen impatiently as she tells me how she gave her baby to the church, that she wanted to keep it but her parents wouldn’t let her. She had no one. She didn’t even have me.

Now she’s desperate to find the baby. She asks for my help. She gets on her knees and begs for it.

In the teachers’ lounge, I flick my eyes to Sister Dorothy. She’s fifty-eight and small, a shadow of the woman she used to be. She stares at me, asking me questions and looking like she’s going to go for the phone. But I can’t hear her. I just hear Marjorie’s sobs.

“Help me find her!” she cries.

But I am Dorothy and I tell her no. That she wasn’t meant to have that baby. That the baby is better off with someone else. I am cruel.

As Dorothy, I resent Marjorie. She gave up both her religion and me when she sinned. So why now should I help her? She was supposed to be going into the convent with me. But now she can’t.

Which is why as she cries, I shut the door and leave her.

“Sister Dorothy,” I say finally, startling her. “I know what happened to Marjorie’s baby.”

The light around her blazes, like an overwhelming emotion just struck her. Her gray eyes turn glassy as she stares at me.

“You know Marjorie?” she murmurs, not disbelieving.

“It was a girl. Her name is Catherine.” I smile a little, seeing images of the child growing up, quick snapshots of her life. She was happy.

“Heaven above,” Sister Dorothy whimpers and makes the sign of the cross. She starts to pray quietly, her hands clasped in front of her.

“She has a husband and two little boys. Marjorie’s grandchildren. She’s always wanted to know her mother. But Marjorie passed away a few years ago. They never found each other.”

“What have I done?” Sister Dorothy whispers, her eyes squeezed shut. I step forward and put my hands over her folded ones. When she looks up her eyes gaze past me, like she’s not seeing me. Like she’s seeing something else. Something beautiful.

“Find Catherine,” I tell her. “There’s an old farmhouse just outside of Vancouver. The last name is Paltz. Tell her about her mother. Tell her about Marjorie.”

Sister Dorothy falls to her knees, sobbing, just as the light goes out around her and my sight returns. For the past thirty-six years Sister Dorothy has been repenting. Now she’ll make it right.

I swoon and nearly fall on top of her, but I catch my footing just in time. Euphoria stretches over me and I laugh out loud, feeling so damn good.

“Can I help you?” Sister Dorothy asks sharply. She’s oblivious to the tears on her cheeks as she scrambles to her feet. “You have no business being in here,” she says. “New students should report to the front office. Not the teachers’ lounge.”

I’m stunned. She’s forgotten me so quickly.

Maybe it’s okay that she can’t remember me, I think as I try to calm myself. It’s not like Mercy or Sarah or Harlin. It’s not the same. I should focus my energy on keeping them from forgetting.

Once I’m in the hall and the door behind me closes loudly, I try to take a deep breath. But when I reach up to scratch my nose, I see something that changes everything. There’s a big patch of skin missing from my hand.

I sit alone at a table, the sleeve of my sweater pulled down to hide my right hand. With the left I’m picking through my tater tots, filling an insatiable hunger. Our usual lunch crowd is buzzing with whispers that I know are about us—Sarah’s latest poor judgment and my in-class freak-out. But I don’t have time for petty drama today. I need to keep building memories with the people I care about, people who love me. It’s the only thing that’ll keep me real.