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telling us the truth.”
     
    “But we know she is,” he said. “The doctor has already confirmed that.”
     
    “She requested it,” I said. “And I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I’m going to set it up. I think I can get a buddy of mine to do it tonight.”
     
    “So what do you
really
think?” Anna asked.
     
    “Pretty much what I told them,” I said. “There really
is
something remarkable about her—an effortless grace. She’s quite extraordinary.”
     
    While waiting for Keith Coleman, a friend of mine from FDLE, to arrive to administer the lie-detector test, Anna and I had decided to drive back into Bridgeport and talk to the doctor who had examined Sister Mary Elizabeth.
     
    “You thinking her pregnancy might be miraculous?”
     
    I shrugged. “I’m not there yet,” I said. “But I’m even more open now to all possibilities after having talked to her.”
     
    “Do you believe in saints?” she asked. “I mean people who have a closer connection with God?”
     
    I nodded. “I think they’re very rare. Lot of posers and pretenders, but some genuinely touched people, too—like Sister Mary Elizabeth.”
     
    “You know that already?”
     
    I nodded.
     
    We found Dr. Dee Norton throwing a Frisbee to her Australian Shepherd on the beach, backlit by the evening sun. She had agreed to talk with us as a personal favor for Sister Abigail.
     
    Short, stocky, and slightly masculine, Dr. Norton had coarse, curly salt and pepper hair worn close to her head, glasses, and a plain, smooth face without a hint of makeup on it.
     
    “What can I do for you?” she asked, following the introductions.
     
    “I’m trying to help Sister Abigail figure out how Sister Mary Elizabeth got pregnant.”
     
    “So she says.”
     
    “You’re the doctor who determined she was both pregnant and still a virgin?” I asked.
     
    She nodded. “Let me just say for the record that the only reason I’m talking to you about this is that Sister Mary asked me to. Ordinarily, I’d never discuss a patient’s private information with anybody but the patient.”
     
    “I understand,” I said.
     
    The empty beach around us was peaceful, the deepening green waters of the Gulf calm and serene with a glass-like quality. The warm glow of the setting sun seemed to permeate everything with beauty and tranquility, and a hush rested over sea and sand, muting all sounds as if in reverence.
     
    “I did a very thorough exam,” she said, “and I drew two conclusions to a medical certainty. Sister Mary is pregnant, and she is a virgin.”
     
    “When you say virgin … ,” I said.
     
    “She still has an intact hymen,” she said.
     
    “Is it possible to have intercourse without breaking the hymen?”
     
    “The hymen is simply a ring of tissue near the vaginal opening,” she said. “It’s not a barrier.”
     
    “So it’s possible?”
     
    “Theoretically,” she said. “But it’s very rare. Some hymens are ruptured without intercourse at all.”
     
    Down by the water, Norton’s Australian Shepherd was barking at the incoming tide, chasing it as it went out and backing up to avoid getting wet as it came in, all the while jumping and yelping playfully like a puppy, though he seemed too big to be one.
     
    “It’s highly improbable,” Norton continued. “Any stretching of the hymen will usually tear it. Sometimes they heal in such a way that it is very difficult to determine if it has been broken or not, but that’s not the case here.”
     
    I nodded, and thought about it.
     
    “I’ve heard of a procedure that recreates the hymenal ring,” Anna said. “It was very popular for a while. Could she have had that done?”
     
    “That’s the trouble with jumping from the general to the specific, isn’t it?”
     
    She paused to make a point and we waited.
     
    “You asked if it were possible for a woman to have intercourse and still have a hymen,” she said. “Yes, it’s possible. And you asked if