Devious - Lisa Jackson [96]
Amen.
Simone seemed to be the first one who actually understood Cammie. Val thought about keeping Camille’s secret, then realized that was ridiculous. The truth would soon be spread through the press and run through the parochial community like wildfire. Val decided she’d more likely find out the truth if she was forthright.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
Sister Simone’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh, Holy Mother,” she said, shaking her head. “I . . . I was afraid . . . No, I didn’t know.”
“But you knew she was involved with Father Frank O’Toole.”
“I’d heard she was . . . taken with a priest.” Simone’s dark eyes glanced to the ground. “I don’t think I really wanted to know. Once, Camille tried to talk to me but changed her mind, and I saw her leaving with a priest.”
“Father O’Toole?” Val asked, making certain.
Simone shrugged, seemed uncomfortable. Biting her lip, she looked up at the bell tower where swallows were flying erratically, backdropped by gathering clouds. “I don’t know. It was dark, and he was turned away from me, but he was tall, built like Father O’Toole.”
“Did he, Frank O’Toole, come here often? Meet with her?”
“I’m not sure. He’s . . . he’s been here, with Father Thomas for Mass, of course, and he’s visited the orphanage and the clinic, just as many others have. St. Elsinore’s is unique, you know, a real community.”
Valerie’s gut twisted. She did know. She did remember. She’d lived here, if only briefly.
“Sister Camille said that you were her only living relative,” Simone said as they walked across the empty playground where a solitary swing, its hinges creaking mournfully, moved with the breeze.
“Yes, our parents are dead and there are no other siblings or close cousins. However, Camille was looking for our birth parents.”
Simone blinked and her expression tightened. “You knew that? I thought she was keeping it to herself.”
“She and I were in this together,” Val said, stretching the truth more than a little. “I know she was checking the records here and using the computers to find out if the people who we were told were our biological parents really were.”
Fingering the cross at her throat, Simone nodded.
“Did she tell you anything?”
“No.” Simone shook her head. “But”—she glanced over her shoulder, and her eyebrows drew hard together—“I, uh, I helped her with the computer, and I know she kept a notebook.”
The diary! Val’s heart nearly skipped a beat. Finally, Valerie felt as if she were getting somewhere.
Simone cleared her throat, as if nervous that she’d said too much.
“Do you know where it is?”
Simone hesitated, as if she were fighting an inner battle, but finally said, “We have private cubicles here. It’s a relatively new practice because of some theft, but the school decided the few personal items we have and the equipment we need to teach should be locked up.” She led Val past the slide with its corkscrew turns and depression in the sawdust where thousands of tiny feet had landed.
Just not hers.
A gust of wind blew, rattling the chains on the playground again, and it was all Valerie could do not to fall back into the darkest period of her life in this place where she felt forever frightened.
“This way,” Sister Simone said, breaking into Valerie’s reverie.
Telling herself she was being ridiculous, Val realized the nun had stowed the bats and balls in a basket on the porch and was holding the door open. She followed Sister Simone along the old familiar hallways where the art and paint color were different, but the worn tiles on the floor were the same and the doorways hadn’t moved in over thirty years. At the gym doors, there was a flurry of activity, volunteers already working on the auction that would be held in a few days. While the dinner was going to be held in a hotel three blocks away, tours of the orphanage, before it closed its doors forever, would be allowed. Hence, the volunteers were converting the gymnasium into the display area for the donated items that would be auctioned.
Valerie had never spent much time in the gym, as she’d been so