Bill Buchanan came to see her the next day, and said the court would confirm his trusteeship as a formality, according to her father’s will. He also explained to her that her father had been unable to decide where Alex should live. He told her that her father had appointed him her trustee, but he had no solutions either.
“Can’t I just live here with Elena?” she asked in a quavering voice. She had hoped that would be possible and if not, what was going to happen to her? Bill had told her that her father had provided for her financially, for her education and to help her afterward, within reason, but where she would live was still unresolved. And she was too young to live alone. Eric had wanted the house kept for Alex for when she was older, and had suggested to Bill that they rent it out in the meantime, which Bill thought was a good idea. It would provide some income and preserve the house for her until she could use it.
“I don’t want to go to boarding school,” she said, reading the lawyer’s mind. But there were no relatives to send her to, and she couldn’t live with the neighbors for the next four years until she turned eighteen, nor at the house, with Elena, who went home at night.
“Let’s both think about it,” the lawyer said reasonably. “And for now you can stay here.” But boarding school was the only solution he could think of. Elena had agreed to stay at the house with Alex until they came up with a solution.
He was so upset about the dilemma of where Alex should live that he talked to his wife about it that night.
“Her father didn’t want her in a boarding school either. He knew she wouldn’t want that. But what am I going to do?” He felt like an ogre sending her away, but she was a fourteen-year-old girl with no living relatives. What else could he do? As her trustee, he had an obligation to solve the problem but had no idea how, other than a residential school. But even vacations would be a problem with nowhere for her to go.
“Let me make a call. I have a crazy idea,” Jane Buchanan said, and got up from the dinner table to call her cousin, who was the mother superior of a busy Dominican convent in a Boston suburb. It wasn’t an orphanage or a home for young girls. It was a residence for teaching and nursing nuns, all of them with jobs outside the convent, and most of whom no longer wore the habit. It always reminded Jane of a college dorm for adult women whenever she went to visit her cousin, who was a lively, very intelligent woman who was engaged with the world. They ran seminars and taught evening classes to women in the neighborhood, and maybe she’d have a suggestion or creative idea. Jane’s cousin, Mother Mary Margaret, was the only one she could think of who might help. Her nickname in the family was MaryMeg. She had waited until she was thirty to join a religious order, and was a nurse practitioner by profession. And as usual, when Jane called, it took her forever to come to the phone.
“Sorry, I was taking a Pilates class. We just started it here, and I love it.” She was in her late fifties, and she had taken cooking classes and photography lessons too. She loved taking advantage of the classes they offered, staying current with the world, and meeting the women who came to the convent from the community they served. Their adult classes were her personal and clever way to draw people back to the church. They were heavily attended, although the diocese reminded her occasionally that she was not running an entertainment center, but she insisted it was all in the interest of health and education, and somehow she got away with it. “What’s up?”
“I need your advice. Bill has a problem relating to a client who just died.”
“I don’t do funerals, and I’m not a lawyer. I’m a nurse.”
“And my smartest relative.” She explained Alex’s plight to her, orphaned at fourteen, with nowhere to live.
“And I assume there’s money if her father was Bill’s client,” Mother MaryMeg said practically.
“A respectable amount, apparently. He wasn’t crazy rich. But they have a house, and he had savings and a sizable insurance policy. The problem is no relatives, and no one to live with.”
“Poor kid.” Mother Mary Margaret felt sorry for her, but didn’t see what she could do. “What about boarding school?”
“She doesn’t want to go. Bill says she’s an unusually bright kid. She’s lived alone with her father for years. Her mother abandoned them, and then died when she was nine. Bill says she’s exceptional, and she thinks boarding school would be like prison. I’m not sure how great she is with other kids. He says she’s shy and introverted, and was very close to her father. She may be better with adults than her peers. Her life was pretty different.”
“Where does she go to school now?” Mother MaryMeg asked her cousin, and was impressed by the answer. “It’s too bad to pull her out of there, but you’re right, she can’t live alone. We don’t take kids, or I’d take her here, and you can’t put her in state foster care. That would be a lot worse than boarding school. What do you want from me?”
“Any bright ideas you have. You’re the best problem solver I know. I thought maybe you could think of a place for her. She’s not really a child at fourteen.”
“Nor an adult. Our nuns aren’t babysitters. They all have jobs, and they’re busy with our classes at night.” The mother superior sounded pensive for a minute. “On the other hand, it’s a crazy idea but I wonder if we could keep her here. The diocese would probably have a fit. Maybe I could get special dispensation, and we could try it for a while. If she doesn’t want to go to boarding school, she might not be thrilled with a convent either.”
“She doesn’t have much choice.”
“Let me think about it, and I’ll ask the others. We have a pretty full house. I’ve got twenty-six nuns here at the moment. But I’ve got an empty room upstairs. Wouldn’t it be odd for her to live with a bunch of nuns, though?”
“Maybe you could get her to enlist early,” Jane teased her.
“We don’t do that anymore. Half the women who come in are in their forties, or just over thirty at the youngest. We don’t recruit teenagers.” She laughed at the thought. “If we did, that would probably drive me out of the order. Have you met her? What’s she like?”
“Bill says she’s a lovely kid.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, let me talk to the sisters.” She ran the convent democratically, although the final say was hers, with the permission of the archdiocese for anything unusual, of course.
“Thanks. I didn’t know who else to call.”
Mother MaryMeg thought about it that night, and prayed about it, and brought it up to the other nuns at breakfast the next day, after six o’clock mass. Most of them had to be at work by eight, and the convent was almost deserted during the day, between the teachers and the nurses. There were two older retired nuns who ran the front office while the others were at work.