Sister Eve and the Blue Nun Read Online Free Page A

It’s something I found and shouldn’t have taken in the first place. I was wrong to take them. I know that now. Father Oliver said not to tell anyone else and that we’d just take them back, and that’s what I was going to tell her. I was going to tell her that I needed the pages back and that she was just going to have to wait until we went through the proper channels and that she’d be the first to have access to them later if we got them again, but that we had to take them back.”
    He was rambling, and Eve was having difficulty following what he was saying. “So, this thing, these pages, Kelly had them in her possession?”
    He nodded. “I gave them to her when she first arrived.
    “Last week,” he added and then smiled. “She was so happy.” He looked at Eve. “I really made her happy.”
    Eve smiled in return. “But she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about them?”
    He nodded again. “I just wanted to give her some time with them alone, let her enjoy this revelation all by herself, as one of the first people to know about it.” He reached up and pounded his forehead with his fist. “But I was wrong to do it, and Father Oliver said I was and that I needed to get them so that we could take them back. But she had already told people and she was going to tell everybody at the presentation tomorrow.” He stopped and looked at Eve. “The conference,” he said. “What will we do about the conference? I don’t know what to do.”
    “Anthony . . .”
    He was rocking back and forth, both hands now clenched and pushed against his forehead. “What have I done? What have I done?” he kept asking as he continued to rock.
    “Anthony.” Eve tried to get his attention once again. She pulled at his arms, but he was too strong. “Anthony, listen to me!” she shouted.
    “I’ve killed her . . . I made this happen . . . It’s my fault . . . I’ve killed Kelly,” he repeated over and over.
    “Anthony, you didn’t kill her. Let’s go to her room and let me see what has happened. We’ll make this right, I promise,” Eve said, her hands still on his arms. “Let’s just go to her room.”
    “I can’t go back there.” He was shaking his head. “I can’t go back.”
    “Okay, you stay here,” Eve instructed him. “I’ll go to her room and see for myself. I’ll call an ambulance and the police. I’ll help make this right.”
    He stopped rocking and dropped his hands from his face, looking Eve in the eye. “It’s too late. You can’t make this right. It’s too late.”

FOUR

    Eve was able to pull herself away from Anthony, who promised he would wait for her in the chapel, and she ran as fast as she could all the way to the guest quarters and to the room where she knew the young professor was staying. She was winded when she arrived at the door, conscious that she wasn’t in the greatest shape. She bent down, grabbing her sides, trying to catch her breath.
    There was no one around that part of the monastery as far as she could see. It was late, and the New Mexico night sky was dotted with bright stars and a full moon. It was chilly too, even though it had been seasonably mild for the high desert winter. Eve could hear coyotes in the distance, three, maybe four, a pack, she couldn’t tell for sure, but the cries were familiar to the nun, and she wondered how far away the animals were from the Pecos abbey.
    She stood up, breathing normally, and leaned in, placing her ear to the door, trying to hear if there was any noise coming from the small guest room at the end of the quarters that had been built with the intention of being the residence of the nuns—a place away from the monastery proper that Father Oliver had hoped would change the archbishop’s mind about making the nuns leave. In the end it didn’t sway the leaders of the diocese, and the residences became the guest quarters.
    Eve felt her heart rate quicken, knowing that it had nothing to do with her run from the chapel but was