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is not the case. We love you here at the convent and are very proud of you and your accomplishments.”
    Pia looked up briefly to engage the mother superior’s unblinking stare, but she couldn’t maintain it. Almost immediately she looked away, finding herself staring at the crucifix on the wall over the woman’s shoulder, thinking of pain, sacrifice, and betrayal. Pia took a fortifying breath. As usual the mother superior was miles ahead of her, seemingly sensing what was coming. “I’m starting another month of research in Dr. Rothman’s laboratory.”
    “He is a gifted man. The Lord has looked kindly on him.”
    “He is going to make history by personally ushering in regenerative medicine. His work with stem cells will be seminal. I want to be part of it.”
    “From my perspective, you already are. From what you have shared, he has taken to you. Not that I am surprised. How can I help?”
    Pia looked back down at her hands. She felt a tinge of guilt after all that the mother superior had done for her, and here she was immediately offering to do more. “I believe I will want to do medical research full-time, meaning I don’t think I want to go to Africa.”
    There, it’s out , Pia thought. She felt immediate relief. For a few moments silence reigned in the room. Pia suddenly realized how cold it was. “I know this is a rather large change since I offered to go to Africa to repay you and the order for all the help you’ve given me over the years since I aged out of foster care.”
    “Your going to Africa was to be for you, not us,” the mother superior said. “Pia, please don’t be rash. I know I’m going to sound very old-fashioned, but is there a man involved? There must be—it is your burden to be so beautiful. I hope to God that Dr. Rothman is being honorable.”
    Pia suppressed a smile. The mother superior’s suggestion was so far from reality as to warrant such a reaction. She and Rothman had trouble making eye contact much less something more intimate. “I can assure you that Dr. Rothman has been quintessentially honorable.”
    “God has limitless ways to test us,” the mother superior continued.
    “Reverend Mother, I don’t believe God is testing me. This does not involve a man, I assure you. I have made my decision because it pleases me and because God has given me a facility for the work. But I would like to repay the convent. Thanks to Dr. Rothman’s generosity, I have access to fifty thousand dollars. I would like to donate this money to the convent.”
    “I will be willing to accept any donation but not as repayment. For our services you do not owe us anything. After all, your presence was payment enough.”
    “It would please me to donate the money,” Pia said.
    “As you will. But I do have another request. I don’t want you to forget us. I trust that you will still make it a point to visit us on occasion. If you forget us, that will be a betrayal.”
    Pia, who had been looking past the mother superior at the crucifix, was stopped short. Suddenly, her suit of armor was dented, and she looked down at her shoes, feeling young and small. Betray. Betrayal. When she first encountered the word “betray” in a novel when she was eleven, she looked it up in the school’s big dictionary. The definition seemed just right. That’s what her family had done, it had betrayed her. Betrayal was the tragedy that had stalked Pia ever since she was six, on the day when the police burst through the front door of the apartment she shared with her father and uncle and placed her in the clutches of the New York City foster care program.

3.
    COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 1, 2011, 7:30 A.M.
     
     
    S he knows the man’s important but she can’t remember his name. The girl is standing in front of a long desk, wearing a plain, very loose-fitting, institutional gray shift with her shoulders slumped forward and her hands clasped in front of her, elbows tucked into her sides.