“Sounds like a lot of work,” B. said.
“Having an ex-wife?”
“No, running a B-and-B. It’s a job description that automatically requires the owner to be civil to a bunch of yahoo customers first thing in the morning,” B said. “Before you even have your first cup of coffee. Spare me.”
“Because you’re a grump in the morning?” Ali asked.
“Pretty much,” B. agreed.
When their joint workout was over, Ali and B. paused in the kitchen long enough to share a cup of coffee and two pieces of leftover pizza. Coffee beans kept in the freezer were the only fresh food that could survive B.’s long absences without going bad. Ali was grateful for the pizza. After spending the night living in sin at her place or B.’s, she was capable of showing up at the Sugarloaf and brazening it out with her parents, but she didn’t like doing it.
“I’m going to miss you,” Ali said.
“No, you won’t,” B. replied. “You’ll be too busy planting that garden of yours to even notice I’m gone.”
“You’re wrong,” Ali told him. “I’ll notice.”
Sometime later, knowing that B. needed time to get gathered up and packed, Ali kissed him goodbye and headed home, where she found she had the place to herself. Leland was out doing some last-minute shopping for dinner, while the house was filled with the tangy aromas of the duck-breast and sausage-laced cassoulet they would share that evening with Sister Anselm.
Stopping off long enough to pour herself a cup of coffee, she went into the library, where there was a distinct chill in the air. A storm had blown in overnight, driving away yesterday’s bright blue sky. Outside her window, a few flurries of snowflakes drifted from an overcast sky.
“So much for spring,” Ali muttered, lighting the gas log in the fireplace.
At her desk, Ali set her cup down in the empty space next to her computer and found herself missing her kitty. For years, that spot on her desk had been one of Samantha’s favorite perches. Trying not to miss Sam too much, Ali booted up her computer and began looking for articles about a recent officer-involved shooting near Nogales. She was busy reading through a collection of online news articles when her new-e-mail notice dinged. Checking the list, she found a message from Sister Anselm.
An energetic seventy-something, Sister Anselm split her time between serving as a resident psychologist at St. Bernadette’s, a facility for troubled nuns in Jerome, and acting as a special emissary for the head of the the Phoenix diocese, Bishop Francis Gillespie. A “call out” meant that she had been summoned to serve as the patient advocate for some unfortunate who had landed in a hospital somewhere in Arizona without anyone to act as an intermediary between the injured patient and the medical community.
The vast majority of Sister Anselm’s patients were UDAs who came to grief while making the dangerous trek north and hoping to cross the border undetected somewhere in the wilds of the Arizona desert. Some of her patients came with injuries suffered in fierce car chases that routinely scattered dead and dying illegals along isolated stretches of Arizona roadways. Some of them, attempting to cross the border on foot, were abandoned by coyotes without sufficient food or water to survive in the unrelenting desert. Sometimes Sister Anselm’s patients were found close to death from dehydration or starvation or sunstroke. Others were clearly the victims of vicious acts of violence perpetrated either by their supposed guides or by their fellow illegals.
The most seriously injured ended up in hospitals with no idea of what had happened to them or how they had come to be there. Isolated and alone, they found themselves being treated by doctors they couldn’t understand. Usually they had no one to help them navigate the unknown health procedures that might or might not save their lives. In those situations, Sister Anselm often turned out to be their only ally. She knew what it was like to be lost and alone in a foreign land because it had happened to her.
Sister Anselm had been born as Judith Becker into a German-American family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to the beginning of World War II. When war broke out, her father, Hans, a recent immigrant, was arrested on suspicion of being a German spy and sent to a war relocation center in Texas, where he developed TB. His wife, Sophia, a natural-born citizen, renounced her U.S. citizenship and went to Texas to care for him, taking her two young daughters with her.
The father. Hans, died on board a Swedish ocean liner during an abortive prisoner-of-war exchange, leaving his widow and daughters to soldier on as displaced persons in war-torn Europe. By then Sophia had also developed TB. When she, too, died, her orphaned daughters were taken in and cared for by the sisters in a small convent in France. The older of the two girls had rebelled against her religious caretakers and come to a bad end on the streets of Paris by the time she was seventeen. The younger girl, Judith, had grown up to become a nun herself- Sister Anselm.
Blessed with a natural facility for foreign tongues, she was fluent in several languages and conversant in several more. Sister Anselm’s personal history of utter abandonment while she was a child had left her with an affinity for people in similar circumstances. It was her skill as a translator that had brought Sister Anselm and her story to the attention of a young American priest named Father Gillespie at Vatican II in Rome. Years later, when Father Gillespie was appointed bishop of the Phoenix Diocese, he had sought out Sister Anselm and brought her back to the land of her birth where he put her to work interceding on behalf of people who otherwise would have no voice.
That was how Sister Anselm and Ali had first met-at the bedside of a critically burned woman who was terribly injured in a fire set by an ecoterrorist. Before it was over, the two women found themselves facing down a crazed killer in a desert shoot-out. With a relationship forged under a hail of bullets, it was hardly surprising that the two women had been fast friends ever since, but they both knew that when Sister Anselm was on call, she was on call.
Ali went straight to the kitchen to let Leland know their expected dinner guest would be a no-show. She knew he would be saddened that his cassoulet, two days in the making, would be wasted on just Ali and Leland. For her part, Ali was already regretting that she and Sister Anselm would miss the long philosophical conversation that often preceded and accompanied their shared meals. For Ali, those discussions were as much food for the soul as Leland’s well-cooked dishes were food for the body.
In the kitchen, the yeasty aroma of baking bread had been added to the mix. When Ali gave Leland the bad news, he was clearly disappointed.
“How about if I invite my parents and Chris’s family to come over?” Ali suggested. “Chris would probably jump at the chance to dodge making dinner.”
Leland brightened at the prospect of having company. “If the little ones are coming,” he said, “I should probably whip up a batch of mac and cheese. No doubt the cassoulet will be far too rich for them.”
In situations like this, Ali usually checked with her daughter-in-law before checking with her son. She didn’t want to be held responsible for bullying Athena into a social engagement she didn’t really want. It turned out, however, that Athena was absolutely ecstatic at the idea of eating Leland Brooks’s food, regardless of what it was. With Chris and Athena’s invitation settled, Ali moved on to her parents, catching up with her mother at the Sugarloaf during a small lull in the weekend lunch crowd.
“It would have to be early,” Edie Larson cautioned.
Unseen on her end of the phone, Ali rolled her eyes. It wasn’t exactly news that Edie Larson went to bed with the chickens so she could be up at O-dark-thirty, in time to do the day’s worth of baking at the Sugarloaf.
“It will be early,” Ali promised. “Athena says her softball game should be over right around five. She’ll come here straight from school. That means we should be able to sit down to dinner by five-thirty at the latest.”
“You’re sure Mr. Brooks doesn’t mind cooking for all of us?” Edie asked.
“I’m sure,” Ali said.
“Do you want us to bring something?”
“Just yourselves,” Ali told her, “and your appetites.” She went into the kitchen to give Leland a revised guest list. “Everybody’s coming, twins and all.”
“I think I’ll do a flan for dessert, then,” he said. “Colleen especially likes that.”
His statement confirmed something Ali already suspected-that Colleen Reynolds had Leland Brooks wrapped around her pudgy little finger.
“Do you need any help?” she asked.
