“Sí, Padre,” the driver said, then added: “Don Cletus, if I had only known you were coming, we would have been waiting for you.”
“Not to worry,” Frade said grandly. “That sort of thing happens.”
On the way to the convent, Welner explained the Lincoln. It was Beatriz Frade de Duarte’s car and had been sent to Mendoza when it was thought she would be going there.
“I didn’t know they made a four-door sedan,” Frade said.
“They don’t. When it came down here, it was a drop-top coupe, and Beatriz said that mussed her hair, so she had it rebodied in Rosario.”
Cletus had, and was immediately ashamed of, the unkind thought that his Aunt Beatriz had apparently always been some kind of a nut.
[TWO]
The Convent of Santa María del Pilar
Mendoza, Mendoza Province, Argentina
1820 14 August 1943
The Mother Superior of the Mendoza chapter of the Order of the Little Sisters of Santa María del Pilar, who received them in a dark office crowded with books, was a leathery-skinned, tiny woman of indeterminate age.
“Thank you for receiving us, Reverend Mother, on such short notice,” Welner greeted her.
There’s just a touch of sarcasm in that, Clete thought.
The nun who’d answered the convent door had told them the Mother Superior’s schedule was full for the day and they would have to make an appointment to see her when she was free, possibly tomorrow. After Welner told her his business with the Mother Superior was quite important, the nun had reluctantly disappeared through a door and left them standing for fifteen minutes in the cold and chairless foyer before finally returning to announce, “Follow me, please.”
“You’re always welcome in this house of God, Father,” Mother Superior said.
And there was sarcasm in that, too. What the hell is going on here?
“This is Don Cletus Frade, Reverend Mother,” Welner said. “And la Señora Dorotea Mallín de Frade.”
That got Mother Superior’s attention. She stared intently at Clete for thirty seconds, then said, “Yes.”
“How do you do?” Clete said politely.
“So this is how you turned out,” Mother Superior said. “Your mother would be pleased.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can see your father in you,” she said. “But there is fortunately much more of your mother.”
This seemed to please her.
“Are you a Christian?” she asked.
“You knew my mother?”
“We were dear friends,” she said. “I asked if you were a Christian.”
“I didn’t know you knew Cletus’s mother,” Welner said.
“Respectfully, Father, there’s probably a good deal you don’t know,” Mother Superior said. “Well, did whoever raised you bring you to our Lord and Savior?”
“How did you know my mother?”
“I asked whether you are Christian or not.”