Salome: Episode 36.

The Year Following.

Aug 03, 2026

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My Dear Salome,

I enjoyed reading your last letter, and I am so thrilled to hear that you have taken your vows. I am proud of you and all that you have done.

It has been seventeen months since the last time I spoke to you. Almost to the day.

While these months have been hard for me, they have been enlightening, the days of darkness slowly lifting as time goes on. I have learned to forgive myself, and those who have done me harm.

I could not imagine my recovery going as well as it has with you praying for me, and writing to me even when I haven’t been able to write back. I am ever so grateful for your friendship, and your love. I feel it through every drop of dried ink.

Father John was good on his word. I have received the greatest care, and for the first time in my life, I am safe. I am loved. I have hope for the future.

Each day I grow stronger, and I am in good company. Muldoon is still here, undertaking his training. He visits from time to time. He does not talk of his crisis, but I can see that he is lost without his gift. I pray for his recovery and hope that he can return to his work.

Please tell me of how the others are doing. I enjoy hearing about everything, and everyone.

One more thing.

I have sent this letter ahead of significant news that will be with you any day now.

With His Holiness’ approval, I have sent something to Liverpool. It is everything I have, and there is no one I would entrust with it more than you, my dear Salome. I cannot speak more of this special gift, as is the case for much of our work in this order, but I need you to accept it.

It is important to me that you do.

Your dear friend,

Catherine.

Postscript: 1 John 4:8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love”

I stared down at the ring on my finger, its coolness still strange, still new. Most of us wore them now. If our places in the world had ever fallen into the shadow of doubt, it had been a temporary event. We were the northern branch of The Order now, small as we were. I swallowed the last of my tea and wished Sister Margaret a good morning as we parted ways in the refectory, my mind busy with speculation and excitement.

“You forgot this!” she called. I ran back to her, shaking my head at my absent-mindedness. She held my notebook in her hand. It contained everything I needed to know in order to become an instructor—a duty I did not expect to undertake for many more years, but the incident the year before had accelerated the journey somewhat.

“Thank you,” I said, stuffing it under my arm.

“And your—” she said, pointing to the folded letter still on the table.

I folded Catherine’s letter and put it back in my pocket, where it accompanied me everywhere.

This was the eleventh time I’d read her letter in a fortnight. What would she have sent? I waited at the window every spare moment I had, my new attaché, Mother Josephine, despairing: “If we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” I smiled and continued with my studies, but my mind always wandered, the possibilities conjured within my imagination an endless source of entertainment.

Every time the postman came with letters, I hurried to see what was there for me, shifting invoices and letters aside, none of them in her handwriting.

Then, after what felt like the slowest weeks of my life, the bell rang one damp, uneventful Monday afternoon. Sister Bridget answered the door. I heard her muffled cries of jubilation first, then her cooing and fussing. My heart stopped when I heard his voice.

Father John.

I rushed down the stairs to the ground floor, unable to speak.

He removed his hat. His hair had whitened since I saw him last, the scar on his mouth fully healed. I was so very glad to see him, but I still could not move.

He handed his hat and coat to Sister Bridget and stepped aside, revealing a companion.

I gaped several times at the woman in the hallway. I did not know her face. From her greeting I knew she was an Italian, like me, but she was not a sister. I glanced around at their faces: Sister Bridget smiling, wiping tears from her plump cheeks, the bags still in a stack on the top step of the doorway, Father John reassuring the other woman that I was all right.

“Salome?” Father John asked quietly, approaching me slowly. I could not understand what I was seeing.

“Perhaps we uh… Say hello?” the Italian lady asked in broken English, stepping forward, her arms secured on something she carried on her hip. She gently took a little hand and bobbed it up and down. “Buongiorno Salome,” she said in a gentle voice. “Mi chiamo—”

A child, brown eyes staring back at me full of wisdom beyond its years. The nurse was holding a child. A baby boy, and in the time it took to blink, I knew who he was.

Elpidio.

My papa’s name. Catherine remembered.

I held out my hands, and she gave me the child, his fullness weighing my arms down as I held him close to me, resting him on my hip, his soft warmth radiating. The last of my line and the future of my family, sucking on his fist as he babbled. The nursemaid laughed, clapping her hands together while cooing at the baby. He squealed and laughed, filling a space I didn’t realise had been empty. I held him, inhaling the sweet smell of his soft hair. I looked up at Father John.

We would not fail again.

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