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Five months passed in which Mary didn’t visit Willow, though she often visited Sister Dominic Agnes. The three were caught in a web, and when the aging nun and Mary fought against the strings trapping them, the strings on Willow’s side of the web tightened. I had only to look across to see Sister Dominic Agnes, ever thinner and paler and more bent at her kneeler, and the black chain hanging heavily above her. When the first graders left in the afternoon, she turned off the lights, lowered herself, and prayed. Weekends too, in the dark, the room had the air of a chapel. Mary slipped into the somber space feeling fitted to the dark and welcome under the funeral chain velvet with dust. They prayed for Mary’s vocation, that she could come to accept God’s call, and they talked of the days w
