and sat down at Mother Gregoria's invitation, and burst instantly into tears. “It's all my fault,” she wailed. She knew that something terrible must have happened, and she was filled with remorse now.
“I'm equally certain that you had nothing to do with it,” Mother Gregoria said calmly. “Father Connors’ death is a shock to us all but it has nothing to do with you, Sister Anne. The circumstances are rather complicated, and he apparently had a health problem none of us were aware of.”
“One of the altar boys told the man at the grocery store that he hanged himself,” she sobbed openly, having heard the horror story third-hand from the mailman, who stopped at the grocery store to buy a soda before he delivered the mail at St. Matthew's. And Mother Gregoria was not pleased to know that.
“I can assure you, Sister, that's nonsense.”
“And where is Gabriella? Sister Eugenia said she was taken away in an ambulance and no one knows why. Where is she?”
“She's very well. She had an attack of appendicitis last night, and came to tell me about it early this morning.” But Sister Anne had seen the somber-faced priests from St. Stephen's leaving Mother Gregoria's office. The convent was a small community, an enclosed world, and like others of its kind, even here in the arms of God, it was filled with gossip and rumors. And there had certainly been plenty of them that morning, but Mother Gregoria was far from happy to hear it. All she wanted to do now was reassure the young postulant who felt so guilty.
“I wrote you an anonymous letter,” she confessed haltingly, sobbing between words, “about them, because I thought she was flirting with him… Oh, Mother… I was jealous… I didn't want her to have what I lost before I came here…”
“That was wrong of you, my child,” Mother Gregoria said calmly, remembering the letter only too well, and the concern it caused her. “But the letter was harmless. I paid no attention to it at the time, and your fears were groundless. They were merely good friends, and they only admired each other in the life in Christ they shared. None of us here need to involve ourselves in the worries of the world. We are free of them. And now you must forget all this, and go back to your Sisters.” She comforted the girl for a while, and sent her back to Sister Emanuel with a little note, urging her to come to the Mother Superior's office as soon as the postulants were in bed. She sent the same to Sister Immaculata, and spoke to the others herself to come to a meeting that night after they had completed their duties.
There were twelve faces looking at her expectantly across her desk at ten o'clock that night, and she urged each of them to quell the rumors that were flying. It was a time of great grief for all of them, particularly the priests at St. Stephen's, but she felt that it was their responsibility as well to protect the others in the community from them. It served no purpose to seek further information about the details, or fan the flames of a potential scandal. On the contrary, they had every reason to want to silence the whispers of the devil. She was firm, and hard, and very powerful in what she said, and when they asked about Gabriella's whereabouts, she told them nothing more than what she had told Sister Anne. She had had an attack of appendicitis and would be back in a few days when she was better.
“But are the rumors true then, Mother? Is it true what they are saying?” Sister Mary Margaret was the oldest nun in the convent, and had no hesitation in questioning her superior, who was far younger. “They say that she and Father Connors were in love with each other.” But not, Mother Gregoria silently thanked God for small indulgences, that she was pregnant. “Is that possible? Did he kill himself? The novices were all buzzing with it this morning.”
“And we won't be, Sister Mary Margaret,” Mother Gregoria said sternly. “There are circumstances surrounding Father Connors’ death of which I am not aware, nor do I wish to be, nor do I wish you to worry about it any further. He is in the hands of God, where we will all be one day. We must pray for his soul, and not to discover the details of how