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Mary rolled her eyes.

“Mary!”

“Maybe it’s good news,” Mac suggested, keeping an eye on his daughter. “Some nice thing Sister Helena wants to tell us in person. An award or something. Could that be it?”

“Maybe,” Mary said, but Mac saw her mind working, the wheels turning in there.

ONCE SHOWN TO SISTER HELENA’S office, Mac and Lillie had only taken their seats when she told them they were actually going to have the meeting with the principal in his office. She led them down a hallway lined with lockers to a carpeted room with a huge walnut desk, shelves of books, and an enormous crucifix on the back wall. Lillie was nervous. They could already tell by Sister Helena’s demeanor that it wasn’t good news. Lillie whispered to Mac that the only times she’d sat across from a priest were during confession.

“What’s there to be nervous about?” Mac whispered back. “He’s not actually God.”

“That’s something your father would say,” Lillie said. “Could she be pregnant?”

“Jesus. I hope we’d know something like that before Monsignor Edmund,” Mac said.

“She has seemed busy with something lately. I went to put her laundry away last week and she met me at her bedroom door to take it from me. I wonder—”

“Sit, please,” Monsignor Edmund said when they came in, and Sister Helena closed the door behind them. His office had the musty, wood-soap smell of a rectory. The monsignor was pleasant but officious, and Mac could see that whatever Mary had done, this man didn’t like her. And then he got a feeling like the priest’s goal here was to make them dislike her, too, to get them so far on his side that Mary wouldn’t know what hit her.

“We’ve called you in to make you aware of an ongoing situation with Mary, and to talk about what we can do,” Monsignor Edmund said. He opened a folder that contained a stack of fliers with the words ORDAIN WOMEN NOW in large print. He gave them each a copy. The smaller print was information for a meeting scheduled for earlier that day.

“Not long after this school year started, we got word from Mary’s religion teacher that she was being a little argumentative about certain topics. You may be aware that she collected money from her classmates to donate to an organization that distributes free condoms in Africa?”

Lillie paled and glanced at Mac.

“I don’t mean the twenty girls in her religion class. I mean the entire grade. Probably girls in other grades too. That was the start. When we found out about this, Mrs. Brennan—her religion teacher—sent her to Sister Helena, who sent her to me. Mary said to me here in this very office that since I believe in the sanctity of life, then I should also contribute to her fund, because condoms prevent pregnancies, and preventing pregnancies prevents abortions.”

Mac considered his daughter being alone in a room with a priest and using the words condom and pregnancy. Lillie gaped. Mac could tell she was getting ready to start apologizing.

“Last month she suggested that a woman is not a full member of society without the right to have an abortion. She asked Mrs. Brennan if her husband would allow her to make medical decisions for him like he was a child. She argued it was the same thing. Poor Mrs. Brennan lost her husband two years ago.”

Monsignor looked at him and Lillie to see how this was going over so far. Lillie was white-knuckling the arms of her chair but Mac kept his expression blank.

“This month, her focus seems to have shifted to the idea of getting women ordained as priests. She disrupts her religion classes every day because she won’t let the subject go. The flyer that you’re holding? She distributed copies in every hallway, and the concerning part is that the girls are listening to her. She has them signing a letter she says she’s going to mail to the Vatican. Mrs. Brennan has reported that the rest of the girls are being disruptive, too, now. She’s dedicated two entire classes to reviewing all the ways women are of critical importance to the Church, what roles they can take on—” He gestured at Sister Helena as an obvious example. “But Mary won’t let it go.”

Sister Helena spoke up. “Mrs. Brennan started sending her to speak with me in Guidance, so I asked Mary if perhaps she has a dream of being a priest and is upset she can’t be called to God in that way. But do you know what she said to me? When I asked her if she wanted to be a priest?”

Lillie shook her head. Mac had an inkling.

“She said—excuse me now—she said the F-word and then said No. Do you understand? She said F no. Except she said the word.”

“Oh my god,” Lillie said.

“She apologized right away, I’ll give her that. It’s a word I’m sure she uses with her friends. They all use it, we ignore it, but it was really something to hear it in my office. That was a first.”

“So.” Monsignor held his hands open as if in supplication. “What are we going to do? Because I have to tell you that even though she’s an outstanding student, headed no doubt for valedictorian if she gets her act together, we can’t have this go on any longer. We’re starting to get calls from other parents.”

“No, of course not,” Lillie said. “We’ll certainly have a serious talk with her when we get home, Father. I mean, Monsignor. And we’ll—”

But Mac interrupted. “What did Mrs. Brennan say when Mary asked why women can’t be priests?”

“Sorry?” Sister Helena asked.

“How did she explain it?”

“She explained the same way I explained when she was in my office. I explained all the roles she can have.”

“Name some of them if you don’t mind. I’m drawing a blank.”