“Then we must go there.”
Mother Caridad looked at the appointment card again.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Esperanza’s gaze moved toward the corridor, where Tomás could be heard asking Sister Lucía whether stones went to sleep.
“I want the children to remain here with Lucía.”
“That is sensible.”
“And Doctor Paloma should come with us.”
“I agree.”
Esperanza drew a slow breath.
For years, she had accepted uncertainty as a form of faith. Now she understood that faith did not always mean waiting quietly. Sometimes it meant walking toward an answer without knowing what it would require.
Mother Caridad gathered the documents.
As she lifted the final page from the box, something slipped from beneath it and landed on the table.
A photograph.
It showed two young women standing outside a small house.
One was unmistakably Elena. She had Esperanza’s eyes and the same gentle tilt to her smile.
The other woman was Sister Esperanza herself.
She was not wearing her habit.
She stood with one hand resting over the beginning curve of a pregnant belly.
On the back of the photograph, in Esperanza’s handwriting, were seven words:
I have chosen this. Please help me remember.
Esperanza stared at the sentence.
Mother Caridad turned the photograph over again.
In the window of the house behind the two sisters, a third figure stood partly hidden by the curtain.
A man wearing a ring with a dark stone.
And beneath the photograph, written in a different hand, was a final line:
Ana remembered everything once before.
