Lovely, Dark, and Deep Read Online Free Page B

the women who found the tomb empty, the morning Jesus rose from the dead. Our Joanna loved that moment more than any in the Bible: the moment of resurrection, the joy of the empty tomb.”
    “Ahh,” I said. I sensed that Sister Moira was stalling. She wasn't the type to waste my time or hers, and I knew we were on the verge of something here. I wrote “Joanna was at the empty tomb,” in my notebook, for something to do. Then I looked back at Moira, expectantly.
    “She was murdered,” said Sister Moira simply.
    I had expected it, but her confidence was shocking.
    “How do you know?” I asked.
    “I want you to investigate. To find her murderer. It will give her soul peace, I think, and peace to me as well.” Her hands were still folded, but her knuckles, I thought, were a bit whiter.
    “But the police—”
    “Considered it a case of hit and run. I know better.”
    "I don't mean to pry, but I would need to know facts. This case is what, ten or eleven years old? Without knowing why you think this, I have no place to start. What makes you so sure that Joanna was murdered? Why can't it be hit and run?" I know I must have looked skeptical.
    “She told me,” said Sister Moira MacShane, meeting my gaze with a clear-eyed one of her own.
    I inhaled sharply and some saliva went down the wrong pipe. I spent the next minute coughing, holding up a finger. A real hotshot interviewer, I am.
    “She told you?” I finally gasped. “What are you telling me? That you saw a ghost? That the ghost of Sister Joanna came to you and told you she was murdered?” I pointed at her with my pen.
    “No,” she said. She paused, obviously trying to sort her thoughts. “Madeline, you know that I am a practical woman.”
    I thought of Sister Moira in English class, marching back and forth in front of the board with great fervor, crossing out deadwood in a wordy sentence and asking exasperatedly, “What is the point, people, what is the point?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “But I am also a woman of faith. I am a woman who believes in miracles.”
    “I don't know if I am,” I said apologetically.
    "Hear me out. I never dream, Madeline. Oh, they say we all do, but I don't remember, if that's the case. I go to bed at night, and I wake up in the morning, and I don't recall the intervening hours." She looked into the middle distance, as if trying to remember them now.
    “Okay,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. For some reason, my hand was shaking, so I put down my pen and casually folded my arms.
    “Last Friday I woke up with a very strong sense that I'd just been talking to someone. And then I remembered a dream I'd had—a vivid dream, in which I was talking to Sister Joanna.”
    I felt the hairs standing up on my arms. I was one of those kids who would leave the room when friends told ghost stories at slumber parties. I really didn't want to hear about an encounter between a dead nun and a living one. And yet a part of me was so fascinated that I continued to listen, simply because this was an experience I would never have again. “But it was a dream,” I said.
    “Yes.” She looked thoughtful, remembering. “I tried to write it down immediately afterward, what happened, what I felt, to put it into words. I'm afraid it was something that defied translation, except that I was left with that one singular certainty: she was murdered. It's strange, isn't it?”
    “Oh, yes,” I agreed readily.
    "And I saw Joanna—saw her so clearly—and you know how, as the years go by, you lose that ability to summon up the features of a person long dead? You try to picture the once-loved face, and you get only a hazy recollection. But I saw her face, her habit, her expression, which spoke so much, Madeline, so much that I can't explain—"
    “But that's easy to call up from one's subconscious,” I said.
    “Yes. Remember the story of Christ walking on water, Madeline? The apostles thought he was a ghost. And Christ comforted them, saying, “Be not