A/N: 1000-word drabble from Shelagh's POV. Spoilers for Episode 4.2

She knew the instant she answered the phone that all was not right. There was hesitance and pain in the voice at the other end.

"Is everything all right, Sister?" she asked.

"I've just had some news. About a friend. An old friend, who – " a hitched sigh "—who passed away, recently."

Shelagh let out a sharp breath. "Someone from the Order?" Many of the nuns were elderly, and the community that had been her only family for nearly a decade was slowly dying out.

Another pause. "No. Before that."

"Oh." She hadn't thought about before. She hadn't known Sister Julienne before. She had always thought of her as Sister Julienne, the way a child always thinks of its mother as "Mum."

Sister Julienne's voice sounded very small at the other end. "Would you – I'm in need of counsel and –"

"Of course," she said. "I'll be right over." She finished with the files she was organizing and let Patrick know what had happened, then walked as briskly as she could from the surgery to the convent on Leyland Street.

She found Sister Julienne not in her office, but in the chapel, alone. She stood at the altar, arranging flowers. Shelagh couldn't see her face, but the nun's bent shoulders and slow movements belied her grief.

"Sister?"

The nun turned and now Shelagh could see the tear tracks on her cheeks and how sadness weighed down her smile. "Shelagh. How are you?"

She stepped closer and took the nun's hands in her own. "How are you, Sister?"

"I'm –" Her chin trembled and she stopped. Shelagh tugged her gently into one of the chairs and sat beside her. She opened her handbag and gave the nun her handkerchief.

She'd never seen Sister Julienne this distraught – not when the original convent was demolished, not when she left the Order, not during any of the hard and sometimes tragic births they'd attended together over the years. She looked adrift, like she'd lost her moorings. It made Shelagh feel a bit adrift, too.

"Thank you," the Sister said after a few moments.

"They must have been a dear friend," Shelagh said.

"They – he was."

He?

The nun must have caught the slightly shocked frown on Shelagh's face, because she smiled and patted her hand. "I should start from the beginning."

Shelagh listened as Sister Julienne told her about Charles Newgarden, how they first met, the man he was then and the woman she was before. She told her how she fell in love.

At one point, the Sister handed her a copy of Revelations of Divine Love, one page marked with a photograph and a letter. Shelagh gazed at the picture in wonder. The woman in it looked so young and so different. She looked somebody who would answer to Louise, a woman in love. A woman with a different life ahead of her.

"I thought I knew what love was. I thought I knew what faith was," the nun said. "But I didn't."

"You felt a calling," Shelagh said softly. She had felt that calling herself once. To ignore it was impossible.

"Yes," Sister Julienne said. She stood, went to the altar and began arranging the flowers again. The sight reminded Shelagh of the times she'd sat in chapel, trying to pray but lost in anguish, because of the love growing steadily in her heart. Love was also impossible to ignore.

"We exchanged letters over the years," Sister Julienne continued. "And I visited him recently. We talked and made amends. He wished to create a legacy for Nonnatus in his will. I received word of his passing this morning, in that letter."

Shelagh's heart broke for her friend as she read it. "I am sorry, Sister," she said, at a loss for more comforting words.

"Who could I turn to, if not you?" she said. "Who would console me, if not you?"

What possible consolation could she offer? Sister Julienne had comforted her so many times, and she wanted to help. But how?

Shelagh glanced down at the prayer book in her hands and found the answer where she always did, habit or no – in God.

"You don't need me to console you, Sister. The words are in here, and you know them in your heart as I do."

"The money he left us will restore the building to such good order our clinical certificate will be renewed without question. We can carry on serving the people who need us." She sounded so weary. Was it from grief? Shelagh wondered. Or regret?

Timothy had asked her once if she regretted joining the Order. "If you hadn't been a nun, you could have married Dad a lot sooner," he said, stretched out on his hospital bed, his schoolwork forgotten in his lap for the moment. "And all those women wouldn't gossip behind your back."

She pursed her lips. It was just after Christmas and their first canceled wedding ceremony, and Shelagh had already heard more than her share of mean-spirited gossip. She'd learned to ignore it, but she hated to think of such lies worrying Timothy, especially when he was still recovering from polio.

"I felt a calling. It was my life, my family and my work for 10 years. It was where I was supposed to be," she said gently. "And if I hadn't joined the Order, I would have never even met your father."

Timothy gave her mischievous grin. She adored that grin. "Or me."

She laughed. "Or you."

Now, she tried to summon some of the wisdom she so easily passed along to Timothy, that Sister Julienne had once passed on to her. "Do you not believe that it was meant? The chance you didn't take was intended all along?"

"I don't know." Her voice broke. "And I don't know, how to not know anymore. I have so often had to be the wise one."

Yes, Shelagh thought, she had. She had given her advice and her love freely whenever she had asked for it, no matter if she was Sister Bernadette or Shelagh Turner. She had often wondered, during her own times of trial, how Sister Julienne could be so forgiving and understanding. The nun had seemed almost like a saint to her at times, especially when she was still a young postulant.

But she was only human, and she was tired, grieving and in need advice herself. Her small smile was a plea for help.

Shelagh gripped the book in her hands. She couldn't take away the pain or the fatigue, but she could offer what she had always been given – love.

"It's in here, Sister," she said, placing a hand over her heart. "Just as much for me as it is for you." Taking a deep breath, she recited the words that had come to her in the sanatorium and propelled her down the road to her new life, to Patrick and Timothy and Angela. "What? Do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was his meaning."