Rueful Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

hasn't happened to you, it's kind of hard to explain. We say we've been called. We've been given a vocation."
    Ruby cleared her throat. ' 'If God wanted you here, why did you leave?'' The question might have been tactless, but it was on my mind, too.
    Maggie picked up her coffee mug. I could sense a softening in her, a sadness. "I thought I'd be at St. T's for the rest of my life. I loved the quiet. I loved my work in the kitchen. I even loved the garlic field.'' She paused and took a sip of coffee. When she spoke again, her voice was low.
    "It wasn't easy, believe me. Leaving was like tearing out a piece of my soul."
    I was startled. I'd expected to hear that she felt stifled by the discipline or fell in love with a priest. This was something quite different.
    Ruby stared at her. "Then why did you do it?"
    For a minute, I thought she wasn't going to answer. " Vocations are fragile," she said finally, without inflection. "Sometimes they last a lifetime, sometimes they don't I was angry. I was fed up with the Church's attitude toward women. We're okay for cheap labor, but they'll never allow us to be full participants. They can't afford to. They know we'd change things."
    Bernice came with our food, and the next few minutes were filled with moving plates around and making sure we had what we needed. While we got started eating, I was thinking. Anger against the hierarchy must drive a lot of women out of the Church these days. But something made me wonder if there hadn't been another reason for Maggie's leaving. When she'd spoken about living at St. T's, her voice had been soft and shaken, deeply truthful. When she'd told us why she left, she might have been reading from a newspaper. I could feel her longing for the life she had abandoned. But I couldn't feel her outrage.
    Ruby was blunt. ' 'But if you really liked your life at St. T's, why didn't you fight for it?" She pushed her sleeves back and picked up her fork. "The Vatican is seven time zones away, for cryin' out loud. They wouldn't know if you got together with a few nuns and celebrated Communion. Or you could have joined a group and tried to change things."
    "I'm sure you're right." Maggie looked down at her plate. ' 'But about that time my father died and left me some money. It was as if God had handed me an invitation to do something else with my life." A smile ghosted across her mouth.
    I was about to observe that the money might have been a test of her desire to stay just as easily as it could have been an invitation to leave, but Ruby spoke first. "You've been happy doing your restaurant thing, haven't you? You always
seem
happy."
    Well, maybe. I wasn't sure that it was happiness I'd sensed in Maggie as much as acceptance. She takes life as it comes, without trying to do much about it. It's a state of mind-of soul, maybe-that I have to admire. It's totally different from the aggressive I'm-going-to-get-what-I-want-come-hell-or-high-water attitude of the people I knew when I was practicing law. But acceptance can be a problem too. If I had chosen to live at St. T's, you can darn well bet I wouldn't have let myself be driven out by the backward ideas of a few old men.
    Maggie nibbled on an onion ring, musing over Ruby's question. "Am I happy? Mostly, I guess. The restaurant has given me self-confidence-I needed that. And I've loved having friends, especially you two. But I still miss the community. Mother Hilaria, the other nuns. It's…" She swallowed. "It's as if I've been in exile for the last two years."
    "Well, if you miss it so much," Ruby said practically, "why don't you-?"
    The rest of her question was lost in a sudden
whoosh
of chill air from the open door. A fair-haired man in a dark Stetson, jeans, and boots strode in, shrugged out of his sheepskin jacket, and hung it on a peg by the door. He turned in our direction and stopped.
    There was a long moment, freeze-frame, while our eyes met and held. My heart lunged to the top of my windpipe and stayed there