Echoes Page 0,89
to ask you to do something very difficult,” the Mother Superior said sadly, “for your sake, as well as ours. I have no other choice.” Amadea was still too overwrought over what she had heard about her mother and sister to absorb much more, but she nodded and turned sad eyes to the older nun. “I am going to ask you to leave us, just for now. If you stay here, it could put the whole convent at risk. When this is over, when life is normal again, you will come back. I know you will. I have never doubted your vocation for an instant. Because of that, I am asking you to do this. You will still be one of us, even in the outside world, wherever you are. Nothing will change.” She had professed her temporary vows four times so far. She was due to do so again in two months. She was two years away from final vows. And this was yet another blow. She had lost her mother and sister, perhaps forever, and now she was being sent away. But even in her distraught state, she knew it was the right thing. It was a sacrifice she could make for them. As the Mother said, she had no other choice, nor did they. Amadea nodded her head.
“Where will I go?” Amadea asked in a broken voice. She had not been outside the convent walls in six years. She had no place to stay, nowhere to go.
“Your mother sent me a letter several months ago. With the name of a friend. I called him a few minutes ago. He said he would be here within the hour.”
“So soon?” She knew without asking who it was. He was her mother's only friend, and she had told Amadea as well to contact Gérard Daubigny if something went wrong. She had even said he had money for her. But she couldn't put them at risk either. She was a danger to everyone. “Will I be able to say goodbye to the others?” The Mother Superior hesitated and then nodded. It would have been too cruel to her and to them otherwise. She rang the bell after that, which warned the sisters that something important had happened, and they were to gather in the dining hall. They were all there when Amadea and the Mother Superior walked in. All the familiar faces, all the nuns she had worked with, lived with, and loved for so long. The young ones, and the older ones, even the ones in wheelchairs. It was agonizing for her thinking of leaving them. But the Mother Superior was right. She had no choice. Wherever she went, to whichever convent, or if they kept her here, she presented a danger for the others. She loved them too much to do that to them. She had to leave them. But as the Mother Superior had said, she knew she would come back one day. This was the life she wanted. This was her home. She knew with utter certainty that she had been born to be a Carmelite, and serve God, in whatever way He chose.
Mother Teresa Maria Mater Domini offered no explanation. She said nothing. Even knowing the circumstances of Amadea's departure could be dangerous for them. If the police came afterward, they knew nothing. And the fact that she had left exonerated them. If anyone paid a price, it would be the Mother Superior and no one else. Amadea simply moved along their ranks, hugging and kissing each one of them, and saying “God bless you, Sister” softly to each one. It was all she said, but watching her do it, they all knew she was going, just as they had known when Sister Teresa Benedicta had left them three years before.
It took her half an hour to say good-bye to them, and she did not return to her cell to pick up her things. She had nothing to take with her. She had brought nothing and would leave with nothing. And now she had to go back out into a world she no longer understood and hadn't seen in so long. A world in which her mother and her sister no longer lived, where she had no home, and no belongings, and no one. All she had was her father's friend, and as she waited in the Mother Superior's office for him, he arrived, with grave eyes. Gérard Daubigny walked into the office and took Amadea