The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

Chapter 36. Blessings & Mysteries

The nuns gave Jacquetta a party. They gave her the “special dispensation” to “step over the rail” and mill about the parlor with them. Sister Elgarde baked a cake, and if it was a little too dense and packed with raisins the frosting was a gustatorial delight as well as a thing of beauty.

They oohed and aahed over her business card for “A Sister in Need.” And it turned out each of them knew of a mystery; a dropped stitch from the skein of Time. Attics were stuffed and barns choked with the detritus and confusion left behind by the lost and missing.

“My aunt Cinderella was taken to the State Mental Home when I was just a child,” Mother Xavier reminisced. “But when we went to visit her, she wasn’t there, and they claimed they never knew her.”

Jacquetta produced a notebook and began to scrawl in the distinctive sketchy hand no one else could read.

“They do say she was raped by her own father,” Mother Xavier hissed.

“And Mrs. Molino, who helps out in the store, when she came to clear out her father’s house, it turned out the funeral director owned everything,” said Sister Hyacinth. “The funeral director!”

“That can’t be right,” said Jacquetta.

“And Reverend Cross’s nephew Bob went to Newark to take up a job and he was never seen again! His car gone and everything! Not a word and it’s been seven years,” complained Sister Philomena.
“What did the police say?”

Philomena shrugged. “That a twenty-three-year-old man is welcome to go anywhere in life that he wants. But Bob Cross wasn’t the boy to ignore his parents and sisters! Never!”

The nuns were full of such stories. They took a card to put up on their bulletin board – a special sign of support and recommendation – and another to place by their phone. They toasted her in daffodil wine, and at the end of the party she knelt to receive their blessing.

“May the road rise up to meet you and the wind always be at your back”, said Mother Xavier.

“May it be a long road, a walkable road and not throw you off it,” quavered old Sister James-and-John.

“It will certainly be interesting, whatever else it is,” prophesied Mother Xavier.

“May the sun shine upon your face and all the little flowers,” said Sister Elgarde.

“May you see your children and your children’s children and may all God’s children be your children,” said Sister Philomena.

“And may God hold you in the Palm of His Hand,” blessed Mother Xavier.

“Or Her Hand,” said Sister Hyacinth. “Whatever the case may be.”