Tessa asked Father Ignatius what more she could do.

“Have patience, child,” he said.

Tessa had been patient and it had gotten her nowhere. She wanted a baby of that she was sure, though she would not have a husband. She had tired of trying. Max was gone. She could not bring him back. She tried to sit through dinner with a man and could not think of anything but the baby. That is what she thought of without pause. For nine times, fertility treatments had not worked. Max had suggested it. When Tessa thought of Max her mind grew cloudy and she struggled to leave the fog of memories. She wanted to remember his curly tousled hair when he turned to smile at her in the sun, she pushed the rest out of her head and thought instead of praying to the Lord for his blessing. She stepped in silence, careful not to let the delicate heels of the soft suede shoes sound on the stone floor as she glided like a bird to the chapel where the votive offerings were left. Silver crests of sleeping children with words of gratitude were tightly grouped on the wall behind the Madonna in the tiny, dark alcove. Tessa knelt on the shiny wood kneeler and clasped her hands in prayer. She did not have a votive offering of silver. An act of sacrifice in petition for a favor from the Lord was necessary to receive intervention.

Tessa looked at her pale hands and down at the floor when she stood up. She would leave the new shoes for the Madonna. That would be her act of sacrifice. Before she left, Tessa lit one candle, putting a coin in the slot of the metal box. The chinking of the money sounded sweet. She lit another candle and another. Each time she dropped a coin and heard the chiming of it hitting the other coins in the metal box. When she finished her coins, she had lit more than a dozen candles, her moving lips formed silent prayers with each one. Tessa closed her wallet, slid it into the pocket of her purse and, leaving the shoes behind the Madonna, she left the chapel barefoot and made her way over the bridge and the cobblestones home.

A black, beaded rosary swung in one hand. She walked to the river and crossed the bridge. Halfway across there was an opening where she could see the river quiet and calm in the setting sun. Tessa knelt to say the rosary. She recited one decade of Hail Mary’s preceded by one Lord's Prayer and followed by one Glory Be for each bridge over the river instead for the stations of the cross. If God would not help her, she would ask the river to intervene on her behalf.