Runaway

church building seventy-five or eighty years old, covered with stucco, not as old or anything like as impressive as churches usually were in the part of Canada where Juliet had grown up. Behind it was a more recent building, with a slanting roof and windows all across its front, also a simple stage and some seating benches and what looked like a volleyball court with a sagging net. Everything was shabby, and the once-cleared patch of land was being reclaimed by juniper and poplars.
    A couple of people—she could not tell whether men or women—were doing some carpentry work on the stage, and others sat on the benches in separate small groups. All wore ordinary clothes, not yellow robes or anything of that sort. For a few minutes no notice was taken of Juliet’s car. Then one of the people on the benches rose and walked unhurriedly towards her. A short, middle-aged man wearing glasses.
    She got out of the car and greeted him and asked for Penelope. He did not speak—perhaps there was a rule of silence—but nodded and turned away and went into the church. From which there shortly appeared, not Penelope, but a heavy, slow-moving woman with white hair, wearing jeans and a baggy sweater.
    “What an honor to meet you,” she said. “Do come inside. I’ve asked Donny to make us some tea.”
    She had a broad fresh face, a smile both roguish and tender, and what Juliet supposed must be called twinkling eyes. “My name is Joan,” she said. Juliet had been expecting an assumed name like Serenity, or something with an Eastern flavor, nothing so plain and familiar as Joan. Later, of course, she thought of Pope Joan.
    “I’ve got the right place, have I? I’m a stranger on Denman,” she said disarmingly. “You know I’ve come to see Penelope?”
    “Of course. Penelope.” Joan prolonged the name, with a certain tone of celebration.
    The inside of the church was darkened with purple cloth hung over the high windows. The pews and other church furnishings had been removed, and plain white curtains had been strung up to form private cubicles, as in a hospital ward. The cubicle into which Juliet was directed had, however, no bed, just a small table and a couple of plastic chairs, and some open shelves piled untidily with loose papers.
    “I’m afraid we’re still in the process of getting things fixed up in here,” Joan said. “Juliet. May I call you Juliet?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I’m not used to talking to a celebrity.” Joan held her hands together in a prayer pose beneath her chin. “I don’t know whether to be informal or not.”
    “I’m not much of a celebrity.”
    “Oh, you are. Now don’t say things like that. And I’ll just get it off my chest right away, how I admire you for the work you do. It’s a beam in the darkness. The only television worth watching.”
    “Thank you,” said Juliet. “I had a note from Penelope—”
    “I know. But I’m sorry to have to tell you, Juliet, I’m very sorry and I don’t want you to be too disappointed—Penelope is not here.”
    The woman says those words—
Penelope is not here
—as lightly as possible. You would think that Penelope’s absence could be turned into a matter for amused contemplation, even for their mutual delight.
    Juliet has to take a deep breath. For a moment she cannot speak. Dread pours through her. Foreknowledge. Then she pulls herself back to reasonable consideration of this fact. She fishes around in her bag.
    “She said she hoped—”
    “I know. I know,” says Joan. “She did intend to be here, but the fact was, she could not—”
    “Where is she? Where did she go?”
    “I cannot tell you that.”
    “You mean you can’t or you won’t?”
    “I can’t. I don’t know. But I can tell you one thing that may put your mind at rest. Wherever she has gone, whatever she has decided, it will be the right thing for her. It will be the
right
thing for her spirituality and her growth.”
    Juliet decides to let this pass. She gags on the word
spirituality,
which seems to take in—as she often says—everything from prayer wheels to High Mass. She never expected that Penelope, with her intelligence, would be mixed up in anything like this.
    “I just thought I should know,” she says, “in case she wanted me to send on any of her things.”
    “Her possessions?” Joan seems unable to suppress a wide smile, though she modifies it at once with an expression of tenderness. “Penelope is not very concerned right now about