moment, and the elderly nun in charge of letting people in and out came forward and opened the door very slowly, and for a long, silent moment, the three of them stood there. The old nun nodded then, showing Gabbie the way out, and with a single, trembling step, Gabriella stepped across the threshold. This was nothing like the days she had hurried out to meet Joe, pretending to do their errands. This was a single step into darkness. And as she stood in the bright sunshine outside, she turned and looked at them, and as their eyes met, the old nun closed the door, and she was lost to them forever.
Chapter 15
GABRIELLA STOOD OUTSIDE the convent door, staring at it, for what seemed like an eternity, and she had no idea where to go, or what to do now. All she could think of was all that she had lost in the past four days, a man, a life, and a baby. The enormity of it was so overwhelming, she felt as though she were reeling.
And then, she picked up her suitcase, and slowly walked away. She knew she had to go somewhere, find a room, and a job, but she had no idea where to go or how to do it. And as she looked at the buses passing by, she suddenly remembered some of the girls she'd gone to school with at Columbia. Some of them lived in boarding houses and small hotels. She tried to remember where they were. Most of them were on the Upper West Side, but she had never really paid any attention.
She still felt numb as she got on a bus and headed uptown, with no particular sense of where she was going. And for a crazed moment, she thought about trying to find her father in Boston. When she got off the bus on Eighty-sixth and Third, she walked into a phone booth and called Boston information. They had no listing for a John Harrison, and she didn't know where he worked, or even if he was alive by then, let alone if he wanted to hear from her. It had been thirteen years since she had last seen him. She was twenty-two years old, and she was starting her life as though she were a baby. And as she came out of the phone booth outside a coffee shop, she suddenly felt very dizzy, and realized she hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning. But she wasn't hungry.
People were hurrying past, and there were children in strollers being pushed along by their mothers. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere, and Gabriella was the only one with no direction and no purpose. She felt like a rock sitting in the river, as the currents and everything they carried with them rushed past her. She walked into the coffee shop for a cup of tea finally, and as she sat there staring into it, all she could think of was what Mother Gregoria had said to her when she left her. She wondered why everyone told her how strong she was. It was a death knell, she knew now, a sign that the people she loved were about to leave her. They were preparing her to be strong, because she would have to be, without them.
And as she finished her tea, she picked up a discarded newspaper. She needed to find a place to stay, and glanced down a list of small hotels and boarding-houses, and she noticed that there was a boarding-house not far away, on East Eighty-eighth Street, near the East River. She didn't know the neighborhood, but it was a start. But without a job, she wasn't even sure she could afford it.
She paid for her tea, and walked slowly back into the sunshine. She still felt dead inside, and the tea had only slightly warmed her. She had been icy cold for days, after all the blood she had lost, and even the hot drink hadn't really helped her. She was still deathly pale, and her whole body ached as she walked east down the long blocks toward the East River, wondering how much a room would cost her. She knew she couldn't survive long on five hundred dollars, or at least she didn't think so. She had never had to take care of her own needs. She didn't know what anything cost, not food or restaurants or rooms or clothes. She had no idea what she could do,