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was in the lobby. “I’ll be right down,” she said.
    As she was putting on her coat, she hesitated, then went to the safe and took out Catherine’s file. She slipped it into a tote bag, and feeling relieved to have it with her, left the apartment.
    The driver turned out to be a pleasant-faced man in his mid-twenties, who introduced himself as Tony Garcia. To Olivia, there was something reassuring about the way he offered to carry the tote bag, then put a guiding hand under her elbow at the step in the garage. With approval she noticed that once in the car he immediately checked the gauge and told her there was plenty of gas for the round trip. After reminding her to fasten her seat belt, he concentrated on the driving. The Henry Hudson Parkway North was crowded. As usual, Olivia noted wryly. She had tucked a book in her tote bag, along with the Catherine file. An open book, she had learned, was the best way to discourage a loquacious driver.
    But in the next two hours Garcia did not say a word until they drove through the gates of the St. Francis property. “Just turn left and go up that hill,” she told him. “Beyond it you’ll see the cemetery. That’s where I’m going.”
    A picket fence encircled the private cemetery, where four generations of Franciscan nuns were buried. The wide entrance was framed by a trestle that Olivia remembered as being ablaze with roses in the summer. Now it was covered with green vines that already were tinged with brown. Garcia stopped the car at the flagstone walk and opened the door for Olivia to get out.
    “I’ll only be ten or fifteen minutes,” she told him.
    “I’ll be right here, ma’am.”
    Low stone markers were on the individual graves. Occasional benches offered a place for visitors to rest. Catherine’s grave was opposite one of them. With an unconscious sigh, Olivia sat down on the bench. Even such a short walk makes me so tired, she thought, but I guess I should expect that now. She looked down at the lettering on CATHERINE’S MARKER: SR. CATHERINE MARY KURNER: SEPTEMBER 6, 1917–JUNE 3, 1977. R.I.P .
    “Rest in peace,” Olivia whispered. “Rest in peace. Oh, Catherine, you were my cousin, my sister, my mentor.”
    She reflected on the tragedy that had entwined their lives. Their mothers had been sisters. Catherine’s parents Jane and David Kurner and my father had all been killed in a car accident, when a drunken driver crashed into their car on the highway. That was a month before I was born, Olivia thought. Catherine was only a child herself, just turning twelve. She had come to live with us, and, from what I know, she became my mother’s right hand, the strong one. Mother told me that she could barely handle the grief and that Catherine was the one who got her through it.
    Olivia felt the familiar hurt as her thoughts turned to Alex Gannon. “Oh, God, Catherine, no matter how strong your vocation, how could you not have loved him?” she whispered into the silence.
    Alex’s parents, the Gannons. Olivia wished she could better remember the faces of the people who had been so kind to her mother. They had insisted she stay on as their housekeeper and live in the cottage on their estate in Southhampton after her father, who had been their chauffeur for many years, had died.
    I was only five, but I remember Alex and his brother sitting on our porch talking to you, Catherine, Olivia reflected. Even then I thought Alex was like a young god. He was in medical school in New York, and I can remember Mother telling you that you were crazy to think of the convent when it was clear that he adored you. Long before it happened, I remember her saying,
“Catherine, you’re making a mistake. Alex wants you. He wants to marry you. In a thousand years there’ll never be another one like him. Seventeen is not too young to get married. And why don’t you admit it? You are in love with him. I see it in your eyes. I see it when you look at him.”
    And you said,
“And