Sinful Purity (Sinful Series) Read Free

be safe and obedient at Mary Immaculate Queen as long as he was there. I think back now, convinced that his mind held far more secrets and mysteries than mine ever could.
    Father Brennigan was a portly little man with a large belly and even larger rosy cheeks. Many of the children thought he looked like Father Christmas but with less hair. He was always clean-shaven and had begun balding very early on. By the time I was ten, Father Brennigan was in his early forties and had only a thin ring of hair wrapping his head like a halo. During dinner I would watch the candlelight dance across his bald head. As a little girl, I thought Father Brennigan must be close to a hundred years old. I thought him wise enough and bald enough to be nearly ancient.
    Our dinners together became almost a weekly routine, an occurrence that both he and I looked forward to very much. It wasn’t long before I became Father Brennigan’s favorite. It was because of this favoritism that on adoption days I was somehow previously occupied or deemed unavailable. I heard that many potential parents inquired about me but were told that adoption was not a viable option. I never concerned myself too much about being adopted because I knew that the Perkins family must have been planning to return for me. Why else would I be “not adoptable”? With this thought firmly embraced, I was always quite relieved when adoption day was over. Visitors always created so much extra work around the orphanage. Plus, all the nuns put on their most helpful, godly faces, which made me despise them even more. They were never that kind to us on a regular basis, and I saw them more as hypocrites than as women of the cloth.
    Despite my personal feelings about adoption day, it was a huge deal to the orphanage and the community as a whole. The Mary Immaculate Queen Orphanage was the pride of Chicago. Would-be parents came from around the globe to adopt the “perfect” child. That’s what everyone referred to us as, “perfect.” MIQ had the most well-behaved, highly educated, and respected children. The sisters prided themselves on rearing exceptionally successful and productive citizens through hard work, discipline, an ingrained love of God, and a good dose of religion. MIQ was like the hall of fame for orphans. We had orphans who’d become Pulitzer Prize–winning authors, Ivy League professors, and foreign dignitaries. In fact, two governors, a Supreme Court justice, and a US president had all come from the modest beginnings that were MIQ.
    Once every few years, the news media would drag out the stale story of possible abuse or brainwashing at the esteemed Mary Immaculate Queen Orphanage. The stories were always big sellers and rating boosters, because nowhere the world over could anyone believe that one institution had yielded so many substantial public figures.
    St. Matthew Cathedral next door shared in MIQ’s good fortune and was heralded as having the most “distinguished congregation in the United States.” Globally, St. Matthew’s was second only to the Vatican in Rome. Never in the hundred-plus-year history of the orphanage had any of its charges, past or present, ever committed a crime or had any run-ins with the authorities. There was never anything more severe than a traffic ticket in the lives of all MIQ’s residents. Model citizens were what the orphanage produced and nothing less.
    Another reason I detested adoption day was that it seemed that we were all paraded around on show. Like, “come see the wonderfully perfect Stepford children. Come right on up and see if you can take your very own home today.” I always viewed adoption day more like a used car sale. Like we were all just old jalopies, previously used and partially damaged, that had been buffed up to look pretty and supported by the prestigious MIQ lifetime warranty. Never would a potential buyer be disappointed with a brand new MIQ orphan, guaranteed one hundred percent perfectly ethical,