In This Small Spot Read Online Free PDF Page B

know.”
    Mickey grinned. “I know and God knows, but
you’d better wipe those crumbs out of your beard.”
    He quickly combed through the thick dark
hair with his fingers. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he
said.
    “Without Alice, you mean,” Mickey
corrected.
    “No,” he said sincerely. “I meant both of
you. Your donation to the PFLAG group was very generous.”
    “What’s generous is your letting them meet
here,” Alice said, coming from around the car with another armful
of cookie containers. “I’m guessing you didn’t ask the bishop.”
    Christopher shrugged and laughed. “Better to
ask forgiveness than permission.”
    “See?” Mickey said indignantly, turning to
Alice with her arms outstretched. “How come that doesn’t work when
I say it?”
    Alice looked at her, one eyebrow raised
slightly. “It’s his church. And he doesn’t have to live with
you.”

 
    Chapter 6
    “Mother, I was angry at being asked to do an
extra task in the kitchen. I broke two plates because I wasn’t
paying attention.”
    Each week, the community held a Chapter of
Faults before Mass. Mother Theodora would call the names of five
nuns to come forward, one at a time, kneel before the community and
confess any transgressions against abbey rules or other
sisters.
    “Most convents have done away with the
Chapter of Faults,” Sister Rosaria told the postulants when she had
first explained the process, “but in a cloistered community where
we can’t get away from each other, even little things can fester
and grow with time. Better to clear the air while they are
little.”
    Mother Theodora would assign each a penance
in accordance with the severity of her infraction. To the nun who
had confessed the breaking of the plates, “You will ask the
forgiveness of the Sister you were angry with, and you will assist
her with her work in addition to your own for one day.”
    Mickey had discovered that Mother Theodora’s
brand of penance was powerful. Requiring personal forgiveness
rather than simply assigning menial, unsavory tasks as penance had
the effect of drawing the community closer together. “Sister
Stephen is much less intimidating after she has had to ask your
forgiveness for losing her temper with you three times last week,”
Mickey had written to Jamie who thought this was a barbaric
practice when he learned of it, but “no one can hold a grudge under
those circumstances,” Mickey insisted and usually the penitent
would only be permitted to perform a token task by the other
sister.
    Usually, but not always. Twice, Mickey had
confessed to losing her temper and swearing – both times at Wendy. There’s just something about her, Mickey often thought in
frustration, but… it was impossible for her to put it into concrete
terms. It wasn’t anything Wendy said or did overtly – “but she
isn’t overt, that’s part of the problem,” Mickey would have said if
she could have voiced these thoughts aloud. Wendy was still
scrupulous in her observance of the rules – when Sister Rosaria was
looking. But Mickey had noticed how often Wendy seemed to disappear
when there was work to be done, only to reappear just in time for
the work to be inspected. Her comments often contained subtle
double-entendres, but why am I the only one who reads the
nastier meaning into them? Mickey wondered. None of the senior
nuns seemed to notice these things; in fact, they seemed to delight
in the ease with which Wendy had adapted to the discipline of
monastic life, treating her like a sort of pet.
    “It must be me,” Mickey said with a shake of
her head. And yet… just the week before, Wendy had taken full
advantage of Mickey’s penance, letting her scrub an entire floor by
herself before returning and feigning that she only meant for
Mickey to start on it before she took over. But there was something
else. Wendy had said she got caught by one of the senior nuns and
couldn’t get back any sooner, but later, Tanya had