“Is anyone else staying here now?” Kate has sensed the stillness of the house from the beginning.
“No, you have the place to yourself, at least until the weekend when a group from La Paz will be here.” Carlos looks at her curiously. “How long will you be with us, Hermana?”
Kate glances at Sister Domitia, who gives a small shrug and says, “Not very long, Carlos. Perhaps just a day or two, if that would be all right.”
“Está en su casa.” He bows to Kate and opens the slatted wooden door to the bedroom that would be hers. Its two windows look out over the garden to the ocean in the distance. She opens the window and the smell of the sea fills the room. The pounding waves roar on the beach. Now Kate can’t wait to be alone.
“You’re sure you’ll be all right here by yourself? I know Carlos and Rene are in a wing right off the kitchen, but it seems a little lonely here to me.” Sister Domitia joins her at the window. The sun is setting, the light playing at an angle on the water, glinting gold and red shards in the sea.
“I think it’s just what the doctor ordered,” says Kate.
“You look better already. Your eyes have lost that haunted look they had yesterday when you came.” The older nun takes her hand. “I’ll be praying for you. Remember, Sister, God made you the way you are. Everything He made is good. Don’t be afraid. He loves you as you are.” She sighs then, and turns to go down the stairs.
Kate stands in the doorway until the car swings around and disappears down the drive, scattering yellow leaves. When she goes back into the house she feels a surge of delight. This is a holiday. She can do whatever she wants. She has a place to stay, everyone knows where she is, and for the first time in a week, she doesn’t feel guilty.
She takes the stairs two at a time and realizes that she isn’t even out of breath as she would have been in Juliaca. She tosses the fussy little veil she has been wearing on the bed and peels off the borrowed skirt and blouse. The jeans she had salvaged from the charity box fit snugly, and she pulls the navy blue sweater on and laces up the Keds.
Kate hurries through the garden toward the iron gate that opens onto the beach. The air is velvet against her skin. In the lengthening shadows a white hibiscus glows. Now she is walking on the beach, and the wind lifts her hair. She shakes her head and breaks into a run, gulping in the salty air, the sand firm and wet beneath her feet.
The sea is new to her. Growing up in the Midwest, she had played in woods with deep ravines and gullies buried in piles of leaves. She had waded in cold streams in the Ozarks, watching the minnows dart between her skinny legs. But the sea is foreign, strange in its eternal pounding, its inexorable tides pulling everything out, far out from the shore into its glittering but dangerous depths. She runs for a while, darting in and out of the foam on the beach.
She slows to a walk. The sky is streaked with red in the west. A few high clouds, thin and fleeting, linger above the setting sun. She stands, hands on her hips, watching the sun grow to an orange ball as it nears the horizon. Then it flattens and spreads for a moment before the dark teeming sea swallows it whole.
The sky glows like pearls. Heading back, retracing her footsteps, she sees on a dune a flock of small terns. Gray and black, they stand in ranks staring out at the sea. Kate laughs out loud. They look like nuns, Dominican nuns, their hands tucked modestly in their sleeves, lined up for chapel. Far out, beyond the sand bar, sleek dark heads of some birds she doesn’t recognize bob in the waves, riding their fury, impervious and serene. Overhead, a lone seagull drops suddenly earthward, skimming close over the waves. Then banking right, he lets the wind lift him into the darkening sky. She watches until he disappears.
Kate strides fast now, and her footprints are clear and deep in the sand. She takes great gulps of air. I’m going to leave the order. I’ll start my life over. She says the words again, testing them aloud against the sounds of the sea. Leaving has nothing to do with Tom, and yet everything. What was it Sister Domitia said? “God made you as you are.”
“You made me this way,” she whispers into the wind. “You are the potter; I am the clay.” Like the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, Tom has awakened her, but she knows for herself now what she is in her deepest core. She strides on. The air is cooling fast and the wind has picked up, but Kate is warm, her heart beating steadily with the waves.
When she comes to the gate of the house, she stands for a minute and watches the waning moon rising in the still glowing sky. Then she picks up her shoes and heads toward the house. Lights are on, spilling over the sand, signaling her way. She smells wood smoke.
When she opens the back door, Carlos steps into the light, startling her. In a low voice he says, “Hermana, there is someone waiting to see you in the sala.”
Kate looks up as she brushes the sand from her feet and struggles to put on the tennis shoes. “Who is it?” She feels let down.
