The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

what people think. I would not have believed it myself, if it hadn’t happened to me. When you’re only eighteen years old, and He calls you, what choice do you have, but to listen?”
    She leaned back in her chair. Said, softly: “I had a sweetheart, you know. A man who wanted to marry me.”
    “Yes,” said Maura. “You told me.”
    “He didn’t understand. No one understood why a young woman would want to hide from life. That’s what he called it. Hiding, like a coward. Surrendering my will to God. Of course, he tried to change my mind. So did my mother. But I knew what I was doing. I knew it from the moment I was called. Standing in my backyard, listening to the crickets. I heard His voice, clear as a bell. And I knew.” She looked at Maura, who was shifting in her chair, anxious to break off this conversation. Uncomfortable with this talk of divine voices.
    Maura looked at her watch. “Reverend Mother, I’m afraid I have to leave.”
    “You wonder why I’m telling you this.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “I’ve told this to only one other person. Do you know who that was?”
    “No.”
    “Sister Camille.”
    Maura looked into the Abbess’s distorted blue eyes. “Why Camille?”
    “Because she heard the voice, too. That’s why she came to us. She was raised in an extremely wealthy family. Grew up in a mansion in Hyannisport, not far from the Kennedys. But she was called to this life, just as I was. When you’re called, Dr. Isles, you know you’ve been blessed, and you answer with joy in your heart. She had no doubts about taking her vows. She was fully committed to this order.”
    “Then how do we explain the pregnancy? How did that happen?”
    “Detective Rizzoli has already asked that question. But all she wanted to know was names and dates. Which repairmen came to the compound? Which month did Camille leave to visit her family? The police care only about concrete details, not about spiritual matters. Not about Camille’s calling.”
    “She did become pregnant. Either it was a moment of temptation, or it was rape.”
    The Abbess was silent for a moment, her gaze dropping to her hands. She said, quietly: “There is a third explanation, Dr. Isles.”
    Maura frowned. “What would that be?”
    “You’ll scoff at this, I know. You’re a doctor. You probably rely on your laboratory tests, on what you can see under the microscope. But haven’t there been times when you’ve seen the inexplicable? When a patient who should be dead suddenly revives? Haven’t you witnessed miracles?”
    “Every physician has been surprised at least a few times in his career.”
    “Not just surprised. I’m talking about something that astounds you. Something that science can’t explain.”
    Maura thought back to her years as an intern at San Francisco General. “There was a woman, with pancreatic cancer.”
    “That’s incurable, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. It’s almost as good as a death sentence. She shouldn’t have lived. When I first saw her, she was considered terminal. Already confused and jaundiced. The doctors had decided to stop feeding her, because she was so close to death. I remember the orders on the chart, to simply keep her comfortable. That’s all you can do, at the end, is dull their pain. I thought her death was a matter of days.”
    “But she surprised you.”
    “She woke up one morning and told the nurse she was hungry. Four weeks later, she went home.”
    The Abbess nodded. “A miracle.”
    “No, Reverend Mother.” Maura met her gaze. “Spontaneous remission.”
    “That’s just a way of saying you don’t know what happened.”
    “Remissions do occur. Cancers shrink on their own. Or the diagnosis was wrong to begin with.”
    “Or it was something else. Something science can’t explain.”
    “You want me to say it was a miracle?”
    “I want you to consider other possibilities. So many people who’ve recovered from near death report they saw a bright light. Or they saw their loved ones, telling them it’s not their time. How do you explain such universal visions?”
    “The hallucinations of an oxygen-deprived brain.”
    “Or evidence of the divine.”
    “I would love to find such evidence. It would be a comfort to know there’s something beyond this physical life. But I can’t accept it on faith alone. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? That Camille’s pregnancy was some sort of miracle? Another example of the divine.”
    “You say you don’t believe in