"I wouldn't necessarily believe anything he told me," I said. "Our fur-hatted friend has his own agenda. And I suspect he'll be ruthless about fulfilling it."

Her voice heavy with disapproval, the mother superior said, "Mr. Romanovich, sir, you presented yourself to this community as a simple librarian seeking to enrich his faith."

"Sister," he disagreed, "I never said that I was simple. But it is true that I am a man of faith. And whose faith is so secure that it never needs to be further enriched?"

She stared at him for a moment, and then turned to me again. "He is a real piece of work."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'd turn him out in the snow if it wasn't such an unchristian thing to do-and if I believed for a minute we could manhandle him through the door."

"I don't believe we could, Sister."

"Neither do I."

"If you can find me a child who was once dead but can speak," I reminded her, "I might learn what I need to know by other means than Mr. Romanovich."

Her wimpled face brightened. "That's what I came to tell you before we got into all this talk about Jacob's father. There's a girl named Flossie Bodenblatt-"

"Surely not," said Romanovich.

"Flossie," Sister Angela continued, "has been through very much, too much, so much-but she is a girl with spirit, and she has worked hard in speech therapy. Her voice is so clear now. She was down in rehab, but we've brought her to her room. Come with me."

NINE-YEAR-OLD FLOSSIE HAD BEEN AT ST. Bartholomew's for one year. According to Sister Angela, the girl was one of the minority who would be able to leave someday and live on her own.

The names on the door plaques were FLOSSIE and PAULETTE. Flossie waited alone.

Frills, flounce, and dolls characterized Paulette's half of the room. Pink pillows and a small green-and-pink vanity table.

Flossie's area was by contrast simple, clean, all white and blue, decorated only with posters of dogs.

The name Bodenblatt suggested to me a German or Scandinavian background, but Flossie had a Mediterranean complexion, black hair, and large dark eyes.

I had not encountered the girl before, or had seen her only at a distance. My chest grew tight, and I knew at once that this might be more difficult than I had expected.

When we arrived, Flossie was sitting on a rug on the floor, paging through a book of dog photographs.

"Dear," said Sister Angela, "this is Mr. Thomas, the man who would like to talk to you."

Her smile was not the smile that I remembered from another place and time, but it was close enough, a wounded smile and lovely.

"Hello, Mr. Thomas."

Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her, I said, "I'm so pleased to meet you, Flossie."

Sister Angela perched on the edge of Flossie's bed, and Rodion Romanovich stood among Paulette's dolls and frills, like a bear that had turned the tables on Goldilocks.

The girl wore red pants and a white sweater with an appliquéd image of Santa Claus. Her features were fine, nose upturned, chin delicate. She could have passed for an elf.

The left corner of her mouth pulled down, and the left eyelid drooped slightly.

Her left hand was cramped into a claw, and she braced the book on her lap with that arm, as if she had little other use for it than bracing things. She had been turning pages with her right hand.

Now her attention focused on me. Her stare was direct and unwavering, full of confidence earned from painful experience- a quality I had also seen before, in eyes this very shade.

"So you like dogs, Flossie?"

"Yes, but I don't like my name." If she had once had a speech impediment caused by brain damage, she had overcome it.

"You don't like Flossie? It's a pretty name."

"It's a cow's name," she declared.

"Well, yes, I have heard of cows named Flossie."

"And it sounds like what you do with your teeth."

"Maybe it does, now that you mention it. What would you prefer to be called?"

"Christmas," she said.

"You want to change your name to Christmas?"

"Sure. Everyone loves Christmas."

"That's true."

"Nothing bad ever happens on Christmas. So then nothing bad could happen to someone named Christmas, could it?"

"So, let me begin again," I said. "I'm so pleased to meet you, Christmas Bodenblatt."

"I'm gonna change the last p-p-part, too."

"And what would you prefer to Bodenblatt?"

"Almost anything. I haven't made up my mind yet. It's gotta be a good name for working with dogs."

"You want to be a veterinarian when you grow up?"

She nodded. "Can't be, though." She pointed to her head and said with awful directness, "I lost some smarts in the car that day."

Lamely, I said, "You seem plenty smart to me."

"Nope. Not dumb but not smart enough for a vet. If I work hard on my arm, though, and my leg, and they get b-b-better, I can work with a vet, you know, like help him with dogs. Give b-baths to dogs. Trim them and stuff. I could do a lot with dogs."

"You like dogs, I guess."

"Oh, I love dogs."

A radiance arose in her as she talked about dogs, and joy made her eyes appear less wounded than they had been.

"I had a dog," she said. "He was a good dog."

Intuition warned me that questions I might ask about her dog would take us places I could not bear to go.

"Did you come to talk about dogs, Mr. Thomas?"

"No, Christmas. I came to ask a favor."

"What favor?"

"You know, the funny thing is, I don't remember. Can you wait here for me, Christmas?"

"Sure. I got a dog book."

I rose to my feet and said, "Sister, can we talk?"

The mother superior and I moved to the farther end of the room, and confident that we could not manhandle him, the Russian joined us.

In a voice almost a whisper, I said, "Ma'am… what happened to this girl… what did she have to endure?"

She said, "We don't discuss the children's histories with just anyone," and fried the Russian with a meaningful look.

"I am many things," said Romanovich, "but not a gossip."

"Or a librarian," said Sister Angela.

"Ma'am, there's a chance maybe this girl can help me learn what is coming-and save all of us. But I'm… afraid."

"Of what, Oddie?"

"Of what this girl might have endured."

Sister Angela brooded for a moment, and then said, "She lived with her parents and grandparents, all in one house. Her cousin came around one night. Nineteen. A problem boy, and high on something."

I knew she was not a naïf, but I didn't want to see her saying what surely she would say. I closed my eyes.

"Her cousin shot them all. Grandparents and parents. Then he spent some time… sodomizing the girl. She was seven."

They are something, these nuns. All in white, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they pull out of it what is precious, and they shine it up again as best they can. Clear-eyed, over and over again, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they have hope always, and if ever they are afraid, they do not show it.

"When the drugs wore off," she said, "he knew he'd be caught, so he took the coward's way. In the garage, he fixed a hose to the exhaust pipe, opened a window just wide enough to slip the hose into the car. And he took the girl into the car with him. He would not leave her only as damaged as she was. He had to take her with him."

There is no end to the wailing of senseless rebellion, to the elevation of self above all, the narcissism that sees the face of any authority only in the mirror.

"Then he chickened out," Sister Angela continued. "He left her alone in the car and went in the house to call nine-one-one. He told them he had attempted suicide and his lungs burned. He was short of breath and wanted help. Then he sat down to wait for the paramedics."