“The staircase is wide enough for five kids to come down together, but they don’t count that. Maeve, we could go on and on,” Sister Cordelia interrupted. “The bottom line is that in under four weeks we have to close the doors on the Home Base program, and if any of those kids show up, we have no choice but to send them home to an empty apartment with no security and no supervision.”

Monsignor Ferris reached for his empty cup as Kate held up the teapot. “Thank you, yes, Kate. And I think it’s time to share our good news with the others.”

Kate looked shy. “Why don’t you, please, Monsignor?”

“Gladly. Bessie, God rest her, realized the end was near, and the day after Thanksgiving she asked me to stop in.”

Let this news be what I think it is, Alvirah prayed silently.

The quiet composure that was a habitual expression on Monsignor Ferris’s kindly face was brightened by the obviously happy tidings he was about to impart. He smoothed his silver hair, which still was somewhat disheveled from the wind at the graveside service, then he smiled. “Bessie told me that, of course, in her will she left this house to her sister, as well as an income that would ensure Kate’s comfort, but Kate had indicated to her that she would like to turn the house over to Sister Cordelia for the Home Base program.”

“Saints preserve us!” Cordelia said fervently. “Oh, Kate.”

“Kate would want to stay on, living in the fourth floor apartment the Bakers are now occupying. Bessie quite frankly wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but felt it was Kate’s decision to make, and she asked me to make sure nothing went wrong with all the arrangements.”

“You know Bessie always treated me as if I couldn’t find my own way to the store,” Kate said fondly.

“I told Bessie that with the rectory just three doors down, there’d be no problem keeping an eye on everything, although I also told her that Kate is very much able to handle her own affairs,” the monsignor explained.

“I’ll love having Home Base here,” Kate said. “I’ve wanted to volunteer to help ever since you opened it, Cordelia, but Bessie needed me.”

Monsignor Ferris stood, smiling as he watched the news register on Sister Cordelia’s face. “I’ve always believed foresight should be considered a cardinal virtue,” he announced. “I happen to have a bottle of champagne cooling in the ice bucket. I think a toast to the Durkin sisters, Bessie and Kate, is in order.”

This is such wonderful news. So why am i so worried? Alvirah asked herself. Why am I sure that something is going to go wrong? Mentally she examined the possibilities in much the same way she might use her tongue to seek out the source of a toothache. It only took an instant to find the source of her concern: the Bakers.

“Are you sure you can get the Bakers out, Kate?” she asked. “It isn’t so easy to get rid of tenants these days.”

“Absolutely sure,” Kate said firmly. “The lease is for one year, and it’s up in January. There is a specific clause saying that the renewal is solely at the discretion of the owner. You remember how we had that young man in that apartment who was an exercise nut? At least once a week he’d drop a barbell, and always in the middle of the night. Bessie was sure the house would cave in. You know how she loved this place. After she finally got rid of him, she added the renewal clause to the lease for the new tenants.”

“Looks as though you’ve thought of everything,” Willy observed.

“I do feel sorry about telling them they have to move, but I’ll be honest-I’ll be glad when they’re gone,” Kate said. “Vic Baker is always underfoot, looking for things to fix around here. You’d think he owned the house.”

When they left an hour later, Willy and Alvirah walked Monsignor Ferris to the door of the rectory. The already cloudy sky was now completely overcast. The wind had become sharp, and the raw, damp cold was bone penetrating.

“They’re predicting a long winter,” Alvirah said. “Can you imagine in a couple of weeks, having to tell those little kids that they can’t go to Home Base, where they’re safe and warm and comfortable?”

It was a rhetorical question, of course, and as she asked it, even Alvirah was only half listening. Instead, her attention was directed across the street, where a young woman in a sweat suit was standing, staring at the rectory.

“Monsignor Tom,” she said. “See that woman. Don’t you think there’s something odd about the way she’s just standing there?”

He nodded. “I saw her there yesterday, and then she was at early Mass this morning. I caught up to her before she left and asked if I could help her in any way. She just shook her head and almost rushed away. If she has a problem she wants to discuss, I think I’m going to have to let her come to me.”

Willy put a restraining hand on Alvirah’s arm. “Don’t forget we’re due at Home Base to help Cordelia with the rehearsal for the Christmas pageant,” he reminded her.

“Meaning mind my own business. Well, I suppose you’re right,” Alvirah agreed cheerfully.

She glanced across the street again. The young woman was walking rapidly away, headed west. Alvirah squinted to get a good look at her classic profile even as she admired her regal carriage. “She looks familiar,” she said flatly. “I’ll have to put on my thinking cap.”

4

They’re talking about me, Sondra thought as she hurried away. The townhouse she had been standing in front of was no longer under repair, as it had been before. There was no scaffolding to shield her today as she tried to decide what to do.

But what could she do? Certainly she couldn’t buy back that moment seven years ago when she had crossed the street, opened the stroller and left her baby on the rectory stoop. If only. If only, she thought. Then: Dear God, where can I turn? What happened to her? Who took my little girl? She fought back tears.

A cab with its light on was stopped in traffic. She raised her hand to signal the driver. “The Wyndham, on West Fifty-eighth between Fifth and Sixth,” she said as she got into the backseat.

“First visit to New York?” the cabbie asked.

“No.” But I haven’t been here in seven years, she thought. Her first visit had been when she was twelve and her grandfather brought her here from Chicago to a Midori concert at Carnegie Hall. He had brought her twice again after that. “Someday you will play on that stage,” he had promised her solemnly. “You have the gift. You can be as successful as she.”

A violinist whose hands had been limited by arthritis, cutting short his career, her grandfather had made his living as a music teacher and critic. And supported me, Sondra thought sadly-when he was sixty years old he took me in.

She had been only ten when her young parents had been killed in an accident. Granddad devoted himself to me, taught me everything he knew about music, she reminded herself. And he used every spare penny he could find to take me to hear the great violinists.

Her talent had earned her a full scholarship to the University of Birmingham, and it was there, in the spring of her freshman year, that she met Anthony del Torre, a pianist visiting the campus for a concert. What followed should never have happened.

How could I have told Granddad that I got involved with a man I knew was married? She asked herself now. I couldn’t have kept the baby. There was no money to pay for help. I had years of schooling ahead of me. And if I had told him what had happened, it would have broken his heart.

As the cab made its way through the slow traffic, Sondra thought back to that wrenching time. She thought about how she had saved money to come to New York, she remembered checking into a cheap hotel on November 30th, buying the baby clothes and diapers, the bottles and formula and stroller. She had located the hospital closest to the hotel and had planned to go to the emergency room when she went into labor. She would, of course, have to give a false name and address. But the baby had come so quickly on December 3rd; there had been no time to get to the hospital.