Devious - Lisa Jackson [92]
Val thought that was a lie, but she wouldn’t call the reverend mother on it—not yet.
Georgia offered a kind smile. “I do hope you’re coming to the auction. As someone who was adopted out of St. Elsinore’s, you have a special connection here, and we’re encouraging everyone associated with the orphanage to participate.” Her lips curved into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It’ll be, well, I hate to say ‘fun’ in this time of your sorrow, but let’s just say it’s a worthwhile project. We’d love to have you join us. In fact”—she reached into the top drawer and found an envelope from which she withdrew two tickets—“I just happen to have a couple of complimentary passes. Please come as my guest.” She gave Val the page, flyer, and tickets, then even went so far as to walk her through the hallways and paths that connected the church, playground, and gardens.
Being inside the walls of St. Elsinore’s was difficult. Though the buildings had changed a bit, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was walking backward to her past and the terror she’d felt as a preschooler who’d just lost her parents and was brought here.
The orphanage itself, a two-story building with rows of long windows, caused her skin to crawl. She remembered the ward, just vaguely, a bright, gleaming white room by day that became dark and frightening when the lights had been turned off. Above each metal cot was a crucifix, and the sheets were scratchy and stiff, smelling of bleach. She recalled all too vividly lying in bed, the covers pulled over her head as she heard the sound of footsteps pacing the hall, crepe soles squeaking, dark shadows passing and cried softly for her parents.
She’d been scared to death, and the girls in the ward had only stared at her with wide, haunted eyes. Most of the nuns, who then wore habits, had been kind, if busy, pushing her through her day, but there had been a few who had seemed ill-suited to tend to children.
The playground, too, was a place she remembered feeling left out and awkward. The other kids had their own cliques, a caste system where she, as the newest member, was ignored or made to feel alien.
Today, as clouds gathered overhead, blocking the sun, she glanced at the slide, a corkscrew of twisted metal, and remembered one bossy girl barely older than she was who had blocked the ladder. “This is mine,” the girl had said with a sneer; then, once Valerie had backed down, she’d climbed up awkwardly, dragging a foot in a cast signed by most of the older kids.
Even Val’s infant sister had been separated from her, and it had been Valerie’s worst nightmare that she would never see little Camille again. Thankfully, the Renards had adopted them both.
And now, even that was under suspicion.
Lucia dropped the small package into the postal slot and automatically made the sign of the cross over her chest.
There. It was done.
She almost heard Sister Camille’s low laughter. “I knew you couldn’t keep a promise,” she would have said, her eyes glinting with a quick intelligence. “Some friend you turned out to be.”
Oh, dear God.
Lucia was such a failure!
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, nearly running into a boy of about three who had strayed too far from his mother, a woman holding another baby while juggling a diaper bag and three boxes. The boy slid behind his mother’s legs, staring up at Lucia with round eyes. She offered the child a faint smile. “God be with you,” she said to his mother, and hurried out of the door feeling like the fraud she was.
The glare and heat hit her full in the face. Though clouds threatened the sun, the humidity was high, and she was sweating. From the weather, or her own case of tangled nerves?
“You know what your problem is?” Camille had asked her one day while they’d been walking from the chapel, through the cool dark halls.