The Convent Rose (The Roses) by Lynn Shurr

gotten pregnant by a total stranger. The man had passed through town with the rodeo, and Bets did love a bull rider. He’d had beautiful blue eyes was all she could recall. Often, she’d laughed and said Bodey must look like his daddy because he sure didn’t look like her. Betsy Landrum never saw Bodey’s sire again, though she’d taken Bodey to the rodeo every year since birth and tried to match up faces. It was a hard thing to know about your mother.
    Bets had put off telling him for sixteen years. Even being in the midst of hormone-driven teenage lust himself when his mama finally came clean hadn’t helped much. To know that his own mother once had been, well, like Renee Niles, or the women he’d slept with on the circuit, was hard to take, but that hadn’t stopped him from accepting their offerings.
    After all these years, Renee would have given him a tumble if he’d gone home with her this morning like she wanted. She was still a good-time girl, and they’d had some fine sex between his birthday and the end of his senior year when he’d hit the road to do some rodeo before college started. He had the experience now to know Renee had been a fairly sexually accomplished seventeen-year-old. They’d hooked up now and again when she attended college, once at Noreen’s wedding in fact, and she’d been even more skilled then. With two husbands behind her, she probably had the experience of most high-priced call girls by now. His mother would have been proud that her son hadn’t been very tempted.
    He was rich and ready to settle down. He stood up straight and looked at himself in the mirror again. Bodey Landrum was prime property. So, why wasn’t Eve showing more interest? Both times when he kissed her, he’d felt her on the verge of cracking open like a big dungeon door suddenly letting in the white, hot light of day. Both times, the door slammed shut. It galled him that maybe the key to that door lay in the hands of a horse-maned, eagle-beaked, puppy-eyed artist named Evan Adams ready to turn.
    ****
    Eve took her lunch at the Academy as usual. She sat with the two elderly nuns who had influenced her the most during her school years. At the time, she thought of them as ancient, when in reality they had been in their late fifties and vigorous. Now, Sr. Helen’s arthritis and a palsy prevented her from teaching the art classes, though she still taught French. Sr. Inez, a candidate for hip and knee replacement, rarely went riding anymore. The shortage of nuns and a desire to help a former student led to Eve’s taking over their specialties.
    Eve swallowed a spoonful of Lenten bean soup. A roll of crusty brown bread laid broken open but untouched at the side of her bowl. She picked at the small, green salad and drank some of her iced tea. Sr. Inez and Sr. Helen exchanged glances.
    “You’re very quiet today, Eve. Are any of the students giving you trouble?” Sr. Helen asked slowly and gently, her white curls bobbing along with her head under the short veil she still preferred to wear.
    “I can come lay down the law for you,” Sr. Inez, whom the girls called Nessy behind her back and whose friends used the nickname to her face, offered with relish. She’d been a martinet in her day, but her students always learned their lessons. Those she favored, like Noreen Courville, went on to win prizes at the Social Science Fair. She still taught history, having given up her post as riding mistress with reluctance.
    “It’s not that. Two men I used to know have come back into my life recently, and I’m not sure how to handle them.”
    “Men,” said Sr. Helen. “We aren’t the best people to ask about men.”
    “But, we are willing to listen,” Sr. Inez offered.
    “Thanks. I’m not sure you can help. You see, I—ah—lived with one of them for a year while I attended art school.” Eve blushed.
    “We are well aware such situations exist,” Sr. Inez said. “Go on.”
    “Around the time my mother got sick