“We’re having this fight again? I was twenty years old when I lost my virginity to him. How old were you when you had sex the first time?”

“I’ve repented. And clearly you haven’t.”

“I’m a sexual being, Mother. I know you don’t want to accept that your daughter has sexual thoughts and feelings, but I do.”

“I know you do. We all do. But we don’t go around writing about them, do we?”

“What?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”

“What exactly did you catch me doing?” Elle asked, more confused now than ever.

Her mother reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a sheaf of bent and folded papers.

“You left this here in the laundry room the other day. And it’s a damn good thing I’m the one who found it. Mother Prioress would have you out on your ass in five seconds if someone had brought this smut to her.”

Elle saw it now. Her story. Her Daphne and Apollo story.

She laughed.

“You think this is funny?” her mother demanded.

“You found my book,” Elle said. “That’s why you’re mad.”

“What did you think I was talking about?”

“Nothing,” she said hastily. “I didn’t know you’d found it.”

“I did find it, and I read it. You can’t have pornography in a convent. Have you lost your mind?”

“Mom, it’s not pornography. It’s a romance novel. They sell them in grocery stores. Last time I was in a grocery store I didn’t find any porn. I looked.”

“This is what you think romance is? No wonder you fell in love with that man.”

“Yeah, no wonder.” Elle tried to compose her face into a mask of sincere contrition. Or at least a passable fake. “I’m sorry. Seriously. There’s nothing good to read in this place. It’s all theology and politics, and I got bored. It’s a novel based on a mythology story.”

“It has explicit sex in it.”

“People do have sex sometimes. So I hear. Every now and then. When they’re not in a convent.”

“You don’t have to write about it.”

“I don’t have to. But I want to.”

“Are you trying to get thrown out of here?”

“Well, no.”

“Then if I were you, I’d burn this trash. Burn it today. Get rid of it before anyone else finds it and reads it. And stop wasting your talent on this garbage. Use it to write something good. When God gives you a gift, you use it to glorify Him, not to glorify sin. Or worse, to glorify yourself.”

“Some people don’t think sex is a sin, Mom.”

“And some people think the world is flat and that there’s nothing wrong with letting a priest beat you and abuse you. Those people are wrong.” Her mother threw the pages down onto the counter. She pointed her finger at them. “Now get rid of that before someone else finds it. I find it again, and I’ll throw you out of here myself.”

Elle swallowed. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Her mother shook her head in disgust one last time. She walked to the door of the laundry room. Elle could have wept from relief. She’d been so sure her mother knew about her and Kyrie...but this. A dirty story? That was nothing.

But...

“Mom?”

Her mother paused by the door and turned around.

“What, Eleanor?” she asked in clipped tones.

“Do you really think I’m talented?” Elle’s voice sounded small even to her.

Her mother didn’t answer at first. She looked at Elle, who squirmed under the intensity of the gaze.

“I read every page,” her mother finally said.

“You did?”

“I didn’t need to read every page to know what it was I was reading. I’ll admit, I kept reading long after I told myself I should stop reading.”

“I guess that’s a good sign,” Elle said, smiling. She hated how much she wanted and needed her mother’s praise. “I’ve had fun writing it. I think...maybe...I think it’s pretty good.”

Her mother fell silent once more. Her lips pursed tight and her eyes revealed nothing. Elle tried to see her mother as her mother, not the nun she’d become. If she took off the habit and put on her old white bathrobe and grew her long black hair out again, a little makeup...she’d be Mom once more.

“Do you remember a day in school...you must have been six, I think. First grade. And they took all the children out of your class one by one and gave you tests out in the hallway?” her mother asked.

“I think so. Yeah,” Elle said, nodding. “There were flash cards and different colored blocks and we had to do puzzles for these people.”

“You know what that was for, right?”

“No.”

“They were administering IQ tests to all the first graders.”

“So that’s what that was. Anything to get out of class for a few minutes. They gave us cookies and orange juice.”

“I never told you this, but the school called me a week later and said you’d scored higher than any other student in your grade. Your IQ was—”

“One hundred and sixty-seven,” Elle said.

“Genius.”

“I wouldn’t test that high now,” Elle said, shrugging. “Kids tend to test high.”