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She sat at her massive desk, an ample woman in her late fifties, her white coif framing a face with apple cheeks and a prominent chin. Spectacles sat on a small nose and the eyes behind the wire-rimmed lenses were dark and bright and intuitive. The crucifix hanging from her neck was large and seemed to wink in the lamplight. A fireplace burned softly in one corner.
“Sit, Lucille,” she ordered in English, her German accent making the words sound stern to Lucy’s ears. She then nodded to Sister Anna, who swept out of the room and closed the door with a soft click.
Lucy took a seat on one of the tall, high-backed chairs facing the desk and wondered what her unknown sin was. She’d never been called to the headmistress’s office before and was certain she was in deep trouble. Maybe she’d been caught cheating on her math exam, or there was a chance someone had ratted her out for throwing out “good food” into the garbage, or had Beatrix Chevalier complained because Lucy had made faces at her during choir?
The woman behind the desk sighed and looked at her kindlier than Lucy had expected. She’d heard Sister Maria was a stern taskmaster, was inflexible, that her word was law, and anyone who disobeyed her or broke the rules was in for unspeakable punishment and trouble.
“How are you doing?” she finally asked and seemed curious.
“Fine.”
“You fit in here with the other girls.”
Was that a question? A trick question? Lucy had only been here six months, didn’t really know what to expect. “Sure,” she said, and realized she was swinging her feet, so she stopped and sat erect, hoping her uniform wasn’t stained from the gravy she’d splattered at lunch.
“Any problems?”
“Nah . . . I mean, no, Sister.” Lucy glanced away, to the window where, through the paned glass, she caught a view of the Alps, snow-covered peaks slicing up to the blue sky. She swallowed hard and met Sister Maria’s gaze again.
The headmistress was nodding, as if having a private conversation with herself. She stood and walked over to the massive bookcase that loomed behind her. Every shelf was stuffed with hardbound tomes, and she seemed to study each, but Lucy thought she wasn’t seeing the binding, but was turning something over in her mind.
I’m in for it now, Lucy thought, remembering that Mama had once said that the quiet snakes, those that didn’t rattle or hiss, were most likely to strike, the deadliest. Her throat grew tight and she was sweating, her fingers gripping the arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles bulged and showed white, and damn—er, darn it, her legs were swinging wildly again. Once more she forced them to be immobile.
The headmistress returned to her chair, opened the desk drawer, and, as if she were throwing dice at a gaming table, flipped two wobbling, colorful objects across the desk.
Lucy’s heart froze.
She stared at the rolling heads of her Barbie and Ken dolls as they stopped before her, Barbie’s hair a wild mess, Ken staring straight up.
Lucy thought she might be sick.
“These are yours.”
Not a question.
Not a trick question.
A statement.
“Found in your pillow.”
Could she lie and get away with it? Insist the disfigured doll parts didn’t belong to her? Denial formed on her lips, but when she looked up and met the nun’s cool, unyielding stare, she held her tongue and swung her leg.
“This is disturbing, Lucille,” Sister Maria said in a soft voice. “But . . . you’ve been through a lot and . . . I’ve prayed on this, and I’ve spoken with your sister—”
Lucy’s head snapped up and she felt tears spring to her eyes. Marilyn would tease her mercilessly for the rest of her life if she knew . . . but it seemed like it had already happened.
“I want you to talk to Sister Rosa,” she said. “She’s a doctor, you know.”
A doctor? But she wasn’t sick.
“A . . . counselor. Someone you can open up to.” Sister Maria offered a small smile. “I think it would be good for you to spend some time with her.”
Lucy stared at the doll heads, but didn’t dare pick them up. She understood intuitively that would be a mistake, so she sat on her hands because she wanted to touch them, to rub them. She knew it was weird to keep them, but they reminded her of why she hated living so far away from her home in California.
At the thought of the stucco house surrounded by palm trees, she felt an all-too-familiar pang and tried to ignore it.
And wished like crazy that she could leave with the heads, but she glanced up at Sister Maria and knew that doing so would be a vast, irreversible mistake, so she contented herself with staring at them and tried not to think what would happen once she met with Sister Rosa.
