I yanked open the screen door. Nag-champa incense, chatter in the kitchen.

‘Hello-o?’ Auntie Liz called out, her tone both welcome and rebuke. I was late for my date with a nun.

Framed in the light of the doorway, my dark curly hair was splayed in Medusa-tangles, my mascara smeared, my heeled sandals clutched in a weak, shaking fist. I hoped there was no spew on my mouth from when I’d asked last night’s one-night stand — my first ever, at twenty-eight — to pull over on the drive across town.

I sat at the wooden kitchen table, apologising, breathless. Gurrumul’s songs played soft in the lounge room. Auntie Liz’s goddess drawings hung on the fridge.

‘Hi, Margie.’ I smiled apologetically at the nun I’d invited to brunch. My auntie had worked with the Sisters of Mercy in
the nineties. Auntie Liz thought her old colleague Sister Margie Abbott might direct me to some answers. Everyone else’s plates were maple syrup–smeared. Uncle Sal picked up a spatula to serve me ricotta-orange hot cakes. For the last three months, our Sunday pancake ritual had tempered the loss of my thirteen-year-old churchgoing routine. But today I shook my head in panic.

‘Not hungry, are you?’ His eyes glittered beneath wavy silver hair.

Auntie Liz poured me coffee with a smirk, and said, ‘We were just talking about Margie’s trip to Ireland, Louise.’

Lively coils of wiry white hair sprang from Margie’s head. No habit, no black gown; just cargo pants and a bright-blue Patagonia jacket. She emitted a stoic, pragmatic sensibility, like a straight-backed rural farmer, but held her body with light, natural ease.

The author of several books, her latest was Cosmic Sparks, which suggested rituals to unite hearts with the earth. I’d summoned no ordinary nun…

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