"Something bad happened," she thought as soon as she saw Shelagh at the clinic on Tuesday.
Shelagh had not been the same as always for many months, but between the Turner couple there was always a thread of trust that united them and that seemed unbreakable, until that Tuesday.
The work was slow and exhausting, and during all the hours, Julienne noticed how Shelagh seemed almost not even to be there, except for the times when she heard her talking to a mother or nurse. Her pale countenance, her tired eyes, her slow movements, and a nervousness combined with her extreme stillness set off all the alarms in Julienne.
She knew very little about marriages, just what Poplar taught her over the years, but still, watching Shelagh and Dr. Turner, she could assure that what separated them was not a simple fight.
An argument or a disagreement about being late, forgetting something, burning food or something like that was not enough reason for this studied coldness that enveloped them.
There was such a palpable remoteness that anyone who walked in and did not know the couple before, could swear that they were both strangers who had never seen each other.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Timothy Turner entered the clinic dragging his bag and his legs. That was weird, Julienne knew that the boy was not very interested in spending his free time among a lot of pregnant women and crying babies, unless he had a job that paid him a few coins.
Julienne thought that perhaps he was too tired to play with his friends and that his recovering legs needed a bit of stillness, but the boy did not seem exhausted, and he greeted Shelagh and stood by her like a little guardian.
Tim glanced at his father from time to time with such a mixture of fear and anger that he barely greeted him when the doctor noticed him. Again Julienne thought that anyone new in Poplar could see Timothy and think he was Shelagh's son, while the doctor was simply the doctor and no one else.
She approached slowly, just to hear a whispered conversation.
"Do you need me to help you with something, Mom?"
"No dear, everything is under control. Thanks for coming. Are you okay with your legs?"
Julienne leaned closer, just as Tim answered yes with his head.
"I just wanted to come here and be with you."
She felt her heart swell with pride when she saw Shelagh smiling a little more when she heard that. Definitely Shelagh would be feeling very happy, Timothy was a blessing and only Julienne could understand that relationship between two people not related by blood but who are united with the most sacred maternal love.
But still, everything was different, strange, and sad, because it was obvious that Tim was not in his normal behavior and for something he was even more attached to Shelagh.
"Tim, do you want to come to the kitchen?" she asked, smiling at both the boy and Shelagh, "Today we have the cookies you like."
The boy looked at her mother for permission and she nodded with a small smile.
Once in the kitchen, Tim began to eat cookies as if he had not eaten in days, giving Julienne a chance to start a casual conversation.
"You seem to be very hungry, did Shelagh lose her skills as a good cook?"
The boy denied, giggling a little with his mouth full of crumbs.
"She is always good in the kitchen. Well, not as much as Mrs B, but better than Dad of course. She is always better than him."
The last line was not said in a funny way, there was a seriousness there, a statement that did not go unnoticed by Julienne.
She cleared her throat, set a cup of tea in front of the boy, and sat across the table, secretly thanking this little rest for her swollen feet.
Timothy continued to eat ravenously, while he opened one of the school books and searched for something among the pages.
"How are you doing in school? Do you need help with that?" the nun asked, trying to ease the tension emanating from the boy as he turned the pages more quickly.
Without looking at her, Timothy shrugged.
"I'm fine. We don't do much either," he smiled with some haughtiness, "Generally, what the teacher says I have already known for ages."
"Oh that's good, I congratulate you."
"Yes, or I read it before, or Mom already taught me. She knows a lot."
Again Julienne detected the serious tone, and that marked preference for Shelagh.
She thanked God for that, because for a few weeks Shelagh had stopped being Shelagh to be "mom" and Tim said it whenever he could. This was a balm for Shelagh, Julienne could see it when the boy called her that and her eyes sparkled with love.
"Yes, your mother was always very intelligent, and a very good teacher too. I saw it when she was teaching nurses. She has a lot of patience," Julienne accidentally smiled at the memories of a very young Sister Bernadette, studious and intelligent, learning everything and teaching the other novices and nurses, without an iota of arrogance but with authority and at the same time, affection.
Timothy snapped her out of her memories with his angry child's voice as he furiously erased something in his notebook.
"That's right, she is not like dad, she has patience. He just freaks out about everything."
Julienne tried a smile, although the boy was not looking at her, and she tried to control the feeling of anger that was beginning to grow rapidly.
"That's because your father has a very..."
"Yes, I know," Tim interrupted, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. That was surprising, he never interrupted adults, he was a very polite boy, "he has a very exhausting job, but that doesn't justify treating us like that."
Her breath stuttered. "Us".
Timothy looked up from his writing, looking scared, as if he feared to talk too much and revealed something forbidden. Julienne smiled at him or at least that was what she tried to do, and the boy went back to his homework, although he no longer wrote anything and only kept his gaze fixed on the same point in his notebook.
She decided to go straight to the point, because she could tell that the boy wanted to go there, and he was just waiting to be asked.
"Why do you say that, Tim? Surely it's nothing serious."
The boy played with his pencil between his fingers.
"No, it's not…" he began, took a deep breath and began to write, "But he hardly talks, he hardly eats, he's never home. He doesn't even listen to me. Well, he did that before too, when…"
Tim left the words hanging in the air, hoping he did not have to say them and Julienne intervened, moving a little closer to him across the table.
"I understand."
That seemed to be enough for him, as he continued:
"Yesterday mom spent the whole day preparing his two favorite desserts, and he didn't even taste them. He doesn't care about anything."
She did not know what to answer, because what she wanted to answer involved standing up, looking for Dr. Turner, and slapping him.
"He's been like this for days," Tim continued, oblivious to his interlocutor and more talking to himself, in a way to vent his frustration, "Sometimes I'm afraid that because of his bad behavior, mom will leave us. Why would she want to live with such a surly? Nor do I want to. By the way, I learned that word today: surly. It was in a story that we had to analyze."
Julienne nodded at the boy's change of subject, but she stood up, walked over to him, and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.
"I'm sure everything will pass, sometimes families have some problems, but nothing is serious."
Timothy looked at her suspiciously, but also eager to believe her words. She ruffled his hair a little to make him laugh, which he did.
"I leave you to do your homework, I must work too. Eat all the cookies you want."
"Of course, sister, I will," he smiled, happier.
Julienne left the kitchen and walked over to the table Shelagh was so diligently ordering.
She saw the woman's back, straight and steady, her perfect hairstyle, her busy hands.
But when she got a little closer, she saw better how Shelagh's throat was swallowing hard, how raising her eyes and greeting each patient with a smile was an effort for her.
The nun put a hand on her shoulder in the same way that she had done with Tim, and spoke to Shelagh, as if she, too, was a ten-year-old girl.
"Shelagh, dear, can you come with me?"
Something in her tone of voice perhaps revealed what the motive was, because Shelagh only nodded meekly, as if she had no escape.
She stood up, looked around her, checking that no one needed her, and then followed Julienne out of the clinic, into the hallway that led to the restrooms.
"Something happened?" she asked when they arrived, "Did I do something wrong?"
Julienne's heart broke a little at the question. Good God, was there anything in the world that Shelagh could do wrong?
"No dear," she said trying to reassure her, "Far from it. You never do something wrong," she squeezed her elbow, Shelagh only responded by twisting her mouth.
"Tell me what's going on. Don't you feel good? You can go home."
"I'm perfectly fine, sister," she said looking at the ground.
"Shelagh, I had noticed improvement in you, especially when I knew that you had decided to adopt but..." Julienne stopped, something in the word "adopt" made Shelagh wince as if she had been burned.
Even so, she did not raise her eyes, although Julienne saw her face wrinkle in an attempt to hold back the tears.
"Oh my God, Shelagh, what happened? Did they reject you? If so, you know that you can count on me, I can write to some contacts, I can affirm that no baby will be better off than in your family."
The lack of response worried her even more.
Shelagh only searched her pockets until she found a handkerchief with which she carefully wiped her eyes underneath the glasses.
"Shelagh, dear…"
"It's not that," she said barely. "He lied to me."
"Who lied to you, dear?"
Shelagh looked up and Julienne felt an inexplicable wave of hatred.
Her daughter, the person she loved the most, was devastated. She blamed herself for not caring enough for her, for allowing something like this to happen. Who knows what Patrick Turner did, but it could all have been prevented if she had taken Shelagh away from him. If she had realized everything before it happened, she could have prevented Shelagh from leaving everything to marry someone who clearly did not deserve her and was destroying her life.
"I will kill him," she said abruptly, and walked toward the clinic with such steadiness and determination that even Sister Evangelina would feel intimidated.
"No sister, you don't understand," Shelagh's calm voice and her tight grip on her arm stopped her. She turned to see her, Shelagh was smiling a little.
"I appreciate that you want to defend me, but I have to fix this on my own. Although I don't know how, nor do I know…" she let out a tired sigh, surely she had not slept for days.
"What happened?" Julienne asked again, taking her cold hands. "I don't know anything about marriages, but I'll do everything to help you."
Shelagh nodded, looked down but frowned, remembering.
"We had the interview to adopt a baby. It was quite complicated, a lot of nerves, as you can imagine. I thought everything was perfect but the woman who visited us started asking questions about the past..."
Juliene frowned. Society was closed-minded for many things, but surely they would not be rejecting Shelagh for being a former nun.
"Patrick... He... Well... He didn't lie, technically."
Julienne was going to say that it no longer mattered what did or did not do that man, because he would not escape her fury.
Shelagh continued, her voice smaller and more hesitant. She clearly still did not understand what was going on.
"He left out a few things. To the woman, and to me. Things I don't know, and…" Shelagh shook her head, raised her tear-filled eyes, "Sister, can we talk later? They need us, we are working."
Julienne sighed. It was clear that as troubled as she was, Shelagh wanted to stay as far away from this conversation as possible.
"Fine. But my dear, I want you to come to me as soon as you can. You need help, you should have come to me before. I'm here to listen and support you, no matter what happens."
Shelagh made a face, something like a smile.
"What kind of adult would I be if I did that? I don't want to be seen as... as a child. I am not, I'm tired of that, and I cannot admit that my marriage is a failure."
Julienne opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
That shocked her, and the truth was that she no longer knew if she blamed Dr Turner, because she was leaning dangerously toward the option of blaming God. How could this be happening to Shelagh? Illness, infertility, now no chance of adopting… All her dreams were being destroyed one by one.
She approached Shelagh to hug her, she wanted to give her comfort, support, she wanted to protect her from all this calamity and tell her that asking for help did not make her a child nor should she think so little of herself, but Shelagh took a step back, drying her eyes, leaving Julienne with her arms eager to give shelter.
"Sister we must work, then we will talk."
But Shelagh did not return. She neither called, nor did she approach, nor did she show traces of her sadness again.
Julienne felt puzzled, confused, and also a little offended. Why didn't she come closer, why did she close in on herself like this?
She did not want to meddle, but she could not bear to be without any tools to help Shelagh either.
Everything was concealed with a mask of professionalism that even Timothy adopted. The Turners were, in Julienne's eyes at least, a family full of ice and things unspoken.
"And you should have seen his face," she heard Trixie say one night after dinner as she whispered to Cynthia and Patsy in the kitchen, "He clearly didn't know that today was choir practice so she kicked him out there with her Sister Bernadette voice."
The blonde giggled a little, though Cynthia remained serious.
Julienne settled herself better behind the door, to avoid being seen. It was wrong to eavesdrop there, but she could not help it.
"How is it possible that he didn't remember it? Shelagh looks very happy with her choir, everyone knows what day they practice."
"Lack of communication in the couple," Patsy resolved as she exhaled her cigarette smoke.
"That is obvious, they have ignored each other for days. Do you think we should intervene?"
Julienne was a second away from coming out of her hiding place to prevent further speculation, as well as any ideas the girls might have about the Turner marriage.
But she went back to her cell, thinking, and praying.
And then, just a week later, she found Shelagh completely different. The light from her face and her eyes had returned, her hands restless, her voice clear and sing-song as she walked down the street and greeted the neighbors.
Julienne braked her bike at a safe distance, watching.
Something happened that made Shelagh return, stronger than before. Tim also looked very light, again a child far from the concerns of adults.
"Sister!" Shelagh greeted her and leaned closer, a huge smile on her mouth, and Julienne felt her heart clench inside her chest, unable to stop smiling as well.
"My dear, how happy it makes me to see you," she declared, and Shelagh just nodded, and squeezed her hands in contentment.
"I don't know what happened, but you made it my little one. And you're a woman, the strongest I know," she thought while Shelagh gave Tim permission to go play with his friends, and then turned to her to talk about her day, her shopping, her husband, her happy life.
"You did it, my daughter. You are stronger than I thought."