"She what?"
"I'm afraid it's true," Patrick tells her heavily. "God only knows how we'll manage. I don't know the whole story, but if she's going to an order that austere, if she is truly that shaken…"
"It's bad," confirms Shelagh grimly, already reaching for her coat. "Patrick, I have to go to Sister Julienne."
"Of course you do," he says calmly, reaching for her hand. "Sister Mary Cynthia has already agreed to save Timothy, Angela and me from ourselves in the dinner department. She offered as soon as she told me."
"God bless that girl," says Shelagh fervently, squeezing his hand. "And God bless you, too."
She exits in a flurry of kisses and a swirling coat.
"Where is she?" Shelagh demands briskly the moment she enters the front hall.
A small, amused smile on her face, Mary Cynthia points upstairs. By the time Shelagh reaches the top, she's panting, but she can't slow down. Save for the quiet hours of the night when most everyone is sleeping, Julienne's door has never been closed, always open to someone in need of care, counsel, or a medical miracle. But it is shut now, no light shining underneath, and she hasn't even halted before she's knocking sharply.
"I'm not available," Julienne says hoarsely.
"You are to me."
"Shelagh." Her name mingles despair and hope, but not enough of the latter. "Not even to you. I'm sorry."
That, thinks Shelagh firmly, will be quite enough of that.
"For the love of God, Louise, open this door!"
Something hard clatters to the floor, and the next thing Shelagh hears is the soft sound of padding footsteps.
Thank You, she thinks, and takes a deep breath.
Julienne's face is haggard, tear tracks visible on her cheeks even in the dim lighting. "Well," she says wryly, a ghost of a smile flitting about her mouth, "if you've got this far, I suppose you may as well come in."
"As if I would have taken 'no' for an answer," Shelagh informs her, her own voice beginning to choke up. The bedcovers are a mess, and Shelagh bends to pick up the small volume lying on the floor.
She knows the title without needing light: Revelations of Divine Love.
Julienne sits wearily, seemingly aged a decade in a matter of hours. She moves slowly, carefully, as though every movement hurts, and Shelagh has to fight the impulse to put her arms around the mother of her heart. Instead she reaches out, taking Julienne's hands in her own, and sits beside her, simply waiting.
"'Things fall apart,'" Julienne murmurs at last, "'the centre cannot hold…'"
"What isn't holding, Sister?" Shelagh asks her softly. "The world around you? You yourself?" A deep breath, and then: "Or the only centre that will never fail you?"
"Is that true?" Julienne rasps in answer, squeezing Shelagh's hands. "Sister Evangelina…"
"Is suffering a crisis of faith in herself, from what I understand. Not in God, but in what God wants of her - and whether she has truly been doing it. I know that feeling, Sister! A different source and a different reason, perhaps, but I know it. My contemplative silence was of a different kind, but needed all the same.
"Do you truly think for one moment, Sister, that if her faith were truly shaken she would have done as she did? She needs to listen. To shut away the noise and the distraction and hear His call with clarity. And whatever He requires of her, we must surrender to His will.
"You said, once upon a time; 'Certainty is fleeting. That is why we must have faith.' And in so many ways Sister Evangelina has been your certainty, has she not? Your support, as you are hers. But your strength is not in those around you, Sister. It is inside you, by His grace and your faith. Remember: 'What, do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well: love was His meaning.' His meaning is always and ever love, and just because we cannot see it does not mean it is not there."
Julienne bows her head, pressing her forehead to their clasped fingers, and Shelagh nearly breaks. She needs to find her own strength now, inside herself, she thinks firmly. Offering her another crutch is not what she needs now. But oh, how I wish I could!
"I don't," Julienne rasps at last, "I don't know if I do have the strength, Shelagh. I told you once, I feel as though the older I get, the more I have to learn. I cannot keep up, I cannot hold together - 'the centre cannot hold' - and if I fall, what then? I cannot do this on my own!"
The last words are broken, choked with sobs, and then Shelagh does break. Detangling her hands, she draws Julienne against her chest, as the other woman had once held her on a tiny camp bed.
"You are not alone," Shelagh whispers fiercely. "You have God, always. And you always have me."
That, at least, is enough to bring Julienne's head back up. "Do I?" she whispers. "Do I, truly?"
"Yes!" cries Shelagh, her composure broken at last. "Yes, Louise, you do. I may have followed a different road, but our destination is the same, our lives forever intertwined. I am now Mum and Nurse Turner and Patrick's wife and Shelagh, but I will always, always be your Sister Bernadette. There is nothing I would not do for you, no counsel I would not offer, for as long as I live. 'Love was His meaning.' And it is His grace, His gift. That is our strength. Love of Him, and of each other. 'For God so loved the world,' remember? Sister Evangelina's love for you has not departed with her. And neither has mine."
"When did you become so wise?" Somewhere in the choked, sobbing words is a gurgle of true laughter, and it gives Shelagh a new dawn of hope, bright and fragile like the first rays of sunrise.
"I had a very, very good teacher."
"My darling girl," murmurs Julienne, reaching out to caress her cheek. "His grace and His gift, indeed."
"Yes," says Shelagh again, fighting back her own tears. "Oh, Sister, 'I will lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help -' "
"'My help cometh from the Lord, which made Heaven and Earth." Julienne joins the psalm with a gasp of relief, and Shelagh simply holds her more tightly as their voices join together, reciting words as old as time from heartfelt memory.
"'He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.'"
"'He shall preserve thy soul,'" Shelagh whispers fiercely at last, and finally Julienne buries her face in Shelagh's plain cotton dress and lets go in a flood of anguished sobs.