Chapter One

Chapter One




I am named for virgins.

Four, actually: three saints and another woman whose canonization has stalled.

Saint Emiliana, aunt to a pope, died in the sixth century, never having left her father’s house. Saint Emily de Vialar didn’t leave her father’s house until she was thirty-five, when she received a large inheritance from her grandfather, which she promptly put to use founding an order of nuns. Saint Emily de Rodat devoted her life to teaching poor children and caring for what her biographers unfailingly call “unfortunate women.” And when the Blessed Emily Bicchieri (beatified in 1769, she, like me, is still awaiting promotion to full sainthood) learned that Dad was planning a big wedding for her, she said no: no, take all that money and build me a convent, please. Which he did and which she entered and there she died, forty years later. On her birthday. A virgin.

So it’s really no surprise, then, that tradition holds Emily is the patron saint of single women.

And no surprise, an Emily, I’m single.

And maybe it’s no surprise that in the fiftieth year of my life, thirty-four years after leaving my father’s house, ten years into a career of teaching children who were, on the whole, quite fortunate, I did something I had never, ever done before.

I kissed a boy.

When I die, a bell will ring. Mrs. Ramirez told me this over coffee, after mass. Mrs. Ramirez, half my height, twice my age. She also told me that she was part Gypsy. That she could see the future. That if I gave her twenty-five dollars she would tell me my fortune, and Father–she was referring