My herbal expertise, I figured she meant. Was there a problem with the garlic? If so, there are plenty of people who know a lot more about it than I do. The few garlic varieties I grow hardly qualify me to be a consultant. "If it's the garlic you need help with, Mother," I said, "I don't think I'm the best person. You might get in touch with-"

She cut me off firmly. "I won't bother you with the details now. I hear the voice of God in this, my child. Your cottage will be ready for you."

Brian shifted Einstein from one shoulder to the other. ' 'I guess prayer is like having a direct line to God," he said. "He probably hears nuns better than ordinary people. Because they're so holy, I mean. And they get a lot of practice praying."

"That's the theory, I suppose."

"I guess I won't ever be holy enough to ask God for a favor," Brian said regretfully. "Do you suppose you could ask the nuns to put in a good word for the Cowboys? If they hurry, it's not too late to do something about tomorrow's game. Tell them it's, like, well, crucial."

"I'll inquire," I said, and dropped several mysteries and a romance into my bag. No herb books this trip. I would feed my fantasies while I relaxed.

McQuaid picked up my suitcase. "Want me to carry this?"

"Thanks," I said. "I just need to get a jacket."

Brian was still looking at me, his brow furrowed. "You will be back, won't you, China?"

I nodded as I took a denim jacket out of the closet and pulled it on over the tee shirt Ruby had given me for Christmas. On the front was the declaration I Am a Woman, printed in big, bold letters. Beneath, smaller but still firm, was the statement I am invincible. Beneath that was a small, shaky scrawl: I am tired. It was entirely appropriate, I thought.

Brian's question came again, anxious. "You're sure you're coming back?"

"I'm sure." I knelt and gave him a hug. I could understand his anxiety. After all, his real mother-who, just last summer, had threatened to jump out of a hotel room window right in front of him-had moved away. He hadn't heard from her for months. For all he knew, I was about to do the same tiling. I was touched. I might feel burdened by the responsibility of being a stand-in mom to a twelve-year-old boy, but it felt nice to be wanted.

"Of course she'll be back," McQuaid said complacently. "Where else would she go?"

I started to protest at the idea of being taken for granted, but Brian cut in.

"Boy, am I glad," he said, relieved. "I need a costume for the Valentine's Day play. I found out about it before Christmas, but I forgot to mention it. I'm going to be the King of Hearts." He looked at me. "Mrs. Howard's got this pattern you're supposed to sew it by, China. I'm supposed to have a crown too. Gold, with emeralds and rubies. She's got a picture you can look at so you'll get it right."

A costume for the King of Hearts. A gold crown with emeralds and rubies.

Maybe I wouldn't come back.

Chapter Two

"You look like you're glad to get away," Maggie said.

We were headed into Pecan Springs, several miles away, to leave Maggie's van behind the restaurant and meet Ruby, who would drive us to St. Theresa's. The sky was a chilly gray and drops of rain were splattering on the windshield. In central Texas, winter is never what you expect, and usually not what you want. Before Christmas, when I'd been stuck in the shop, the sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the temperature was a balmy seventy. Now that I was free, the next two weeks would be cold and blustery. But what did it matter? I had books to read, a place to stay warm, and time to be quiet. A blizzard could blow down from the Panhandle, and I'd still be content.

"Glad? You bet." I stretched my legs in the roomy front seat. "I've got a lot to think about while we're gone."

"St. T's is the place for thinking," Maggie said. She grinned wryly. "There isn't much else to do out there but cultivate the inner life."

Maggie is in her mid-forties and stockily built, with sturdy arms and hands made for work. Her graying hair is razored flat in a no-nonsense boy-cut, and in the two years she's run the restaurant, I've never seen her wear lipstick. Her beauty is in the smile that softens her square face. And in her eyes-blue, intelligent, caring. She's been out of the monastery for a while, but she still has the look of a nun. It's a quiet, inward-turning look, as if she were engrossed in a reality that the rest of us don't see.

Nuns are a mystery to me. They seem different, otherworldly, untouchable, self-contained. But there's a deeper mystery about them, a contradiction I've never quite understood. They're independent enough to reject things that women in our culture are supposed to want-a career, a house, a husband, children. But at the same time, they're dependent on God and the Church and obedient to their superiors, including the male hierarchy that has such power over them. Then there's commitment. How can somebody commit herself for an entire lifetime, for God's sake? It's hard enough for me to commit myself to an eighteen-month lease on a house.

"Yes, St. T's is very restful, very quiet," Maggie remarked. She paused. "Or at least it was. Now…"

I glanced at her. "Now what?"

"It's complicated," Maggie said. "There are a lot of uncertainties. A lot of unrest."

"In a monastery?" I asked, surprised. From the outside, monastic life looked settled and certain, a cocoon of perpetual calm.

Maggie was looking straight ahead. She didn't answer.

"Tell me about the place," I said. "I don't know much except that it's famous for its garlic."

There is garlic and there is garlic.

The garlic you buy in the grocery store in spring and early summer (eight or nine months after it was dug out of the ground) has probably already expired. The living, breathing bulb was sprayed with sprout inhibitors and asphyxiated in a tightly wrapped plastic coffin. By the time it arrives in your kitchen, it's DO A, a victim of the packing and shipping industries. It can be moldy on the outside and empty inside. You'll probably throw half of it out.

But even if it's fresh, garlic fanciers say, supermarket garlic still isn't the most flavorful garlic. Commercially grown garlic is called "soft-necked" or "nonbolting" garlic. The bulbs are small and tight and white, easy to harvest, easy to store and ship. But if you want sweet, sharp, smooth-tasting garlic, you want rocambole, which is not easy to find.

If rocambole (the word rhymes with soul) tastes so much better, why don't more producers grow it? The answer lies in the odd growth habit of this plant, which is sometimes called "top-setting" or "serpent" garlic. Cheered on by spring rains and bright sun, rocambole sends up an enthusiastic flower stalk, two or three feet high, coiled like a snake. At the top of this curlicue stalk is a pod of a hundred or so bulbils, each one keen on sprouting into a new garlic plant when the top-heavy flower stalk falls over. This curious arrangement is garlic's way of ensuring that another generation will be around to carry on the delightful business of being garlic.

Rocambole's fervent insistence on providing for the future, however, makes it a commercial disaster. The snaky stalks snarl harvesting equipment. The bulbils fall between the rows, where they sprout, come spring. To make matters worse, the cloves are only loosely attached at the root base. They fall apart and bury themselves in the soil, happily intent on growing into adult rocambole. These untidy pro-creative habits result in a whole slew of eager volunteers sprouting greenly between the rows in April and May, where they must be pulled by hand or rousted out by a cultivator. Finally, and perhaps most damning of all, the cloves aren't paper white (which is the politically correct color if you happen to be garlic). Sometimes they're brown skinned. Sometimes they're red. Sometimes they're purple. The garlic that is grown by the sisters of St. Theresa's is a hard-necked, top-setting rocambole with flavorful, colorful cloves that practically pop out of their richly purpled skins. It is arguably the best garlic grown in the state of Texas-or anywhere else, for that matter. In the past few years, St. Theresa's rocambole has become increasingly popular among cooks who are fussy about garlic.