The Look of Love Read Free Page A

wanted to return. She had given up her spot, and someone else had taken her place.
    Esperanza wiggled her toes and felt the softness of the bed linens. She closed her eyes and began to concentrate on her breathing as the yoga teacher who came to the cottage for private lessons had taught her to do in order to relax. As she inhaled, a light scent of lavender filled her nostrils.
    She loved it here.
    Maybe if she told them that she was having flashbacks and was afraid for her life, they would see she was traumatized and let her stay longer. Esperanza hadn’t told anyone that she was remembering something she saw when she opened the door and the acid was flung in her face. But she didn’t want to answer any more questions from the police. Things had finally quieted down, and she didn’t want to stir it all up again.
    Most of all Esperanza was terrified that if threatened with identification, whoever had attacked and scarred her would find her and finish the job. Yet with what she now remembered, she realized that she might not really be safe at Elysium after all.

Chapter 3
    S ister Mary Noelle bowed her head and knelt in the chapel of the Monastery of the Angels. Her fingers rubbed her rosary beads as she murmured the Hail Marys along with the voices she could hear praying on the other side of the screen that separated the chapel’s two parts—one for the cloistered sisters and one for the laypeople who came to pray. They asked for various things: a job, the restoration of a damaged relationship, a cure for a sick child, a miracle.
    She couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see her.
    Sister was aware that this was the most secular night of the year. Outside the monastery walls, traffic buzzed along the Los Angeles freeways. People were heading off to an evening of partying and drinking, often to excess. Glamorous clothes and makeup, gyrating bodies, bright lights, dreams of being discovered by modeling agents or casting directors beckoned.
    For Sister Mary Noelle, the beckoning had come from Christ, when he asked her to “Come follow me.” That beckoning had led her to the contemplative life of a cloistered nun. She had completed her two years as a postulant, taken her simple vows, and was now a novice extern sister, with two more years until she made her final vows.
    It was a life she would never have imagined for herself as she grew up just a few miles away, the daughter of a successful plastic surgeon and a former model and actress. She and her sister had lived a beautiful life, in a beautiful home, and they’d gone to private schools where they socialized with other beautiful people. She grew up thinking that was just the way it should be. She had been proud of her father and the things people said about him, the way they raved about his work and declared him a miracle worker. The magazine articles about the spa he had founded touted his “magic hands.” The tabloids speculated on various movie stars for whom her father had turned back time. Occasionally she’d overheard her father telling her mother about the actor or actress who had come to Elysium looking to be transformed in order to revive a flagging career.
    “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Sister Mary Noelle’s lips moved, but barely a whisper came out of her mouth. She prayed for her dear father, her beloved sister, and her deceased mother.
    Sometimes through the greatest pain came the greatest blessings. If her mother hadn’t died of a heart attack after cosmetic surgery, Sister Mary Noelle might never have rejected the empty pursuit of physical beauty. She might never have discovered what was truly important. She might never have become Sister Mary Noelle.

Chapter 4
    B efore she dressed for the party, Piper took a minute to Google the name Jillian Abernathy. The most recent links were to articles about the acid attack. They recounted that a woman, hired to clean the house, had opened Jillian’s front door thinking she’d be