Rose drooped like an unstrung puppet. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them slowly. She’d run out of tears. A palpable aura of shame settled over her.
“Rose . . .”
Shiny sweat bloomed around the bruise on the girl’s forehead. Her hands trembled no matter how tightly she clutched them together. Sister Theresa had seen it all before.
“What have you been using? How long since the last time?”
“It’s not drugs,” Rose whispered hoarsely. “I don’t do drugs. Never. Ever.” She tried to swallow, but choked instead and doubled over coughing.
Sister Theresa tightened her hands into fists until the closely trimmed fingernails dug into palms. “Then what? Look at yourself! Your hair’s dirty. Your clothes are dirty. You look as if you slept in the street. What have you been doing, if not drugs?” The nun waited a moment before answering her own questions. “Is it a man? Is it men? Is it, Rose?”
Rose swung her head silently, emphatically, from side to side.
The nun sat back in the pew. She cast her glance upward at the crucifix—a simple one of painted plaster now, but even that bolted to the wall so it could not be easily stolen—then brought it to bear on Rose’s heaving shoulders.
Four years ago Rose D’Onofreo had come to the mission, a runaway from the routine horrors that passed for family life in the East End. Healing her body had been the easy part. Regular meals and undisturbed sleep worked the obvious miracles. But Sister Theresa’s sorority thought they’d wrought a deeper miracle by healing Rose’s soul as well. She went back to school, graduated, took secretarial courses. She got a nice job—a dress-up desk job—working for an East Ender who’d made good without forgetting where he’d come from. The sisters told themselves Rose was proof that their work was worthwhile.