"Promise me you will keep what I'm about to tell you to yourself," Mother Katherine said. "It's very important. In this climate especially. Even the whiff of scandal-"

"I won't cover anything up."

"Nor would I want you to," she said, now giving her the theologically offended tone. "We need to get to the truth. I seriously considered the idea of just"- she waved her hand-"of just letting this go. Sister Mary Rose would have been buried quietly and that would have been the end of it."

Loren kept her hand on the nun's. The older woman's hand was dark, like it was made of balsam wood. "I'll do my best."

"You must understand. Sister Mary Rose was one of our best teachers."

"She taught social studies?"

"Yes."

Loren searched the memory banks. "I don't remember her."

"She joined us after you graduated."

"How long had she been at St. Margaret's?"

"Seven years. And let me tell you something. The woman was a saint. I know the word is overused, but there is no other way to describe her. Sister Mary Rose never asked for glory. She had no ego. She just wanted to do what was right."

Mother Katherine took back her hand. Loren leaned back and recrossed her legs. "Go on."

"When we- by we, I mean two sisters and myself- when we found her in the morning, Sister Mary Rose was in her nightclothes. She, like many of us, was a very modest woman."

Loren nodded, trying to encourage.

"We were upset, of course. She had stopped breathing. We tried mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. A local policeman had recently visited to teach the children about lifesaving techniques. So we tried it. I was the one who did the chest compressions and…" Her voice trailed off.

"… And that was when you realized that Sister Mary Rose had breast implants?"

Mother Katherine nodded.

"Did you mention this to the other sisters?"

"Oh, no. Of course not."

Loren shrugged. "I don't really understand the problem," she said.

"You don't?"

"Sister Mary Rose probably had a life before she became a nun. Who knows what it was like?"

"That's just it," Mother Katherine said. "She didn't."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Sister Mary Rose came to us from a very conservative parish in Oregon. She was orphaned and joined the convent when she was fifteen years old."

Loren considered that. "So you had no idea that…?" She made halfhearted back-and-forth gestures in front of her own chest.

"Absolutely no idea."

"How do you explain it then?"

"I think"- Mother Katherine bit her lip-"I think Sister Mary Rose came to us under false pretenses."

"What sort of false pretenses?"

"I don't know." Mother Katherine looked up at her expectantly.

"And," Loren said, "that's where I come in?"

"Well, yes."

"You want me to find out what her deal was."

"Yes."

"Discreetly."

"That would be my hope, Loren. But we need to find the truth."

"Even if it's ugly?"

"Especially if it's ugly." Mother Katherine rose. "That's what you do with the ugly of this world. You pull it into God's light."

"Yeah," Loren said. "Into the light."

"You're not a believer anymore, are you, Loren?"

"I never was."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Loren stood, but Mother Katherine still towered over her. Yep, Loren thought, twelve feet tall. "Will you help me?"

"You know I will."

Chapter 4

SECONDS PASSED. Matt Hunter guessed it was seconds. He stared at the phone and waited. Nothing happened. His mind was in deep freeze. It came out and when it did, he longed for the deep freeze to return.

The phone. He turned it over in his hand, studying it as if he'd never seen it before. The screen, he reminded himself, was small. The images were jerky. The tint and color were off. The glare had also been a problem.

He nodded to himself. Keep going.

Olivia was not a platinum blonde.

Good. More, more…

He knew her. He loved her. He was not the best catch. He was an ex-con with few bright prospects. He had a tendency to withdraw emotionally. He did not love or trust easily. Olivia, on the other hand, had it all. She was beautiful. She was smart, had graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia. She even had some money her father left her.

This wasn't helping.

Yes. Yes, it was because, despite all that, Olivia had still chosen him- the ex-con with zero prospects. She had been the first woman he'd told about his past. No other had hung around long enough for it to become an issue.

Her reaction?

Well, it hadn't been all flowers. Olivia's smile- that drop-you-to-your-knees pow- had dimmed for a moment. Matt wanted to stop right there. He wanted to walk away because there was no way he could handle being responsible for dimming, even for a brief moment, that smile. But the flicker hadn't lasted long. The beam soon returned to full wattage. Matt had bitten down on his lip in relief. Olivia had reached across the table and taken his hand and, in a sense, had never let it go.

But now, as Matt sat here, he remembered those first tentative steps when he left the prison, the careful ones he took when he blinked his eyes and stepped through the gate, that feeling- that feeling that has never totally left him- that the thin ice beneath him could crack at any time and plunge him into the freezing water.

How does he explain what he just saw?

Matt understood human nature. Check that. He understood subhuman nature. He had seen the Fates curse him and his family enough to come up with an explanation or, if you will, an anti-explanation for all that goes wrong: In sum, there is no explanation.

The world is neither cruel nor joyous. It is simply random, full of particles hurtling, chemicals mixing and reacting. There is no real order. There is no preordained cursing of the evil and protecting of the righteous.

Chaos, baby. It's all about chaos.

And in the swirl of all that chaos, Matt had only one thing- Olivia.

But as he sat in his office, eyes still on that phone, his mind wouldn't let it go. Now, right now, at this very second… what was Olivia doing in that hotel room?

He closed his eyes and sought a way out.

Maybe it wasn't her.

Again: the screen, it was small. The video, it was jerky. Matt kept going with that, running similar rationalizations up the flagpole, hoping one would fly.

None did.

There was a sinking feeling in his chest.

Images flooded in. Matt tried to battle them, but they were overwhelming. The guy's blue-black hair. That damned knowing smirk. He thought about the way Olivia would lean back when they made love, biting her lower lip, her eyes half closed, the tendons in her neck growing taut. He imagined sounds too. Small groans at first. Then cries of ecstasy…

Stop it.

He looked up and found Rolanda still staring at him.

"Was there something you wanted?" he asked.

"There was."

"And?"

"I've been standing here so long, I forget."

Rolanda shrugged, spun, left the office. She did not close the door behind her.

Matt stood and moved to the window. He looked down at a photograph of Bernie's sons in full soccer gear. Bernie and Marsha had used this picture for their Christmas card three years ago. The frame was one of those faux bronze numbers you get at Rite-Aid or a similar drugstore-cum-frame store. In the photograph Bernie's boys, Paul and Ethan, were five and three and smiled like it. They didn't smile like that anymore. They were good kids, well-adjusted and all, but there was still an inescapable, underlying sadness. When you looked closely, the smiles were more cautious now, a wince in the eye, a fear of what else might be taken from them.

So what to do now?