The Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page B

Katherine had worn the full habit when Loren was at St. Margaret's. Now she was decked out in something undeniably pious, though far more casual. The clerical answer to Banana Republic, Loren guessed.
    Steinberg said, "I'll leave you two alone."
    Mother Katherine was standing, her hands folded in preprayer position. The door closed. Neither of them said anything. Loren knew this technique. She would not talk first.
    As a sophomore at Livingston High School, Loren had been labeled a "problem student" and sent to St. Margaret's. Loren was a petite thing back then, just five feet tall, and she hadn't grown much in the ensuing years. The other investigators, all males and oh so clever, called her Squirt.
    Investigators. You get them started, they'll shred you with the cutting lines.
    But Loren hadn't always been one of the so-called troubled youth. When she was in elementary school, she was that tiny tomboy, that spunky spark plug of a girl who kicked ass in kickball and would sooner die than don anything in the pink family. Her father worked a variety of blue-collar jobs, mostly involving trucking. He was a sweet, quiet man who made the mistake of falling for a woman far too beautiful for him.
    The Muse clan lived in the Coventry section of Livingston, New Jersey, a slice of suburbia well beyond their social and economic means. Loren's mother, the ravishing and demanding Mrs. Muse, had insisted because, dammit, she deserved it. No one- but no one- was going to look down on Carmen Muse.
    She pushed Loren's father, demanding he work harder, take out more loans, find a way to keep up, until- exactly two days after Loren turned fourteen years old- Dad blew his brains out in their detached two-car garage.
    In hindsight her father was probably bipolar. She understood that now. There was a chemical imbalance in his brain. A man kills himself- it's not fair to blame others. But Loren did. She blamed her mother. She wondered what her sweet, quiet father's life would have been like had he married someone less high maintenance than Carmen Valos of Bayonne.
    Young Loren took the tragedy as one might expect: She rebelled like mad. She drank, smoked, hung out with the wrong crowd, slept around. It was, Loren knew, grossly unfair that boys with multiple sex partners are revered while girls who do the same are dumb sluts. But the truth was- and Loren hated to admit this- for all the comforting feminist rationalizations, Loren knew that her level of promiscuity was adversely (though directly) related to her self-esteem. That is, when her self-worth was low, her, uh, easiness factor rose. Men didn't seem to suffer the same fate, or if they did, they hid it better.
    Mother Katherine broke the stalemate. "It's nice to see you, Loren."
    "Same here," Loren said in a tentative voice that was so not like her. Gee, what next? Would she start biting her fingernails again? "Prosecutor Steinberg said you wanted to talk to me?"
    "Should we sit?"
    Loren shrugged a suit-yourself. They both sat. Loren folded her arms and slid low in her chair. She crossed her feet. It occurred to her that she had gum in her mouth. Mother Katherine's face pinched up in disapproval. Not to be cowed, Loren picked up the pace so that the discreet chew turned into something more like a bovine mastication.
    "Do you want to tell me what's going on?"
    "We have a delicate situation here," Mother Katherine began. "It requires…" She looked up as if asking the Big Guy for a little assistance.
    "Delicacy?" Loren replied.
    "Yes. Delicacy."
    "Okay," Loren said, dragging out the word. "This is about the nun with the boob job, right?"
    Mother Katherine closed her eyes, opened them again. "It is. But I think you're missing the point."
    "Which is?"
    "We had a wonderful teacher pass away."
    "That would be Sister Mary Rose." Thinking: Our Lady of the Cleavage.
    "Yes."
    "Do you think she died of natural causes?" Loren asked.
    "I do."
    "So?"
    "This is very tough to talk about."
    "I'd like to