Tonight, at their usual corner table at Neary’s, over a predinner cocktail, Nan got back on the subject. “While I was waiting for the bus I watched Dr. Monica walking up the block. She’d had such a long day, and I was thinking, poor thing, it’s not like she could get a phone call from her mother or dad to talk things over. It’s such a damn shame that when her father was born in Ireland only the names of his adoptive parents, Anne and Matthew Farrell, were given on the birth certificate. The real parents certainly made it their business to be sure he couldn’t trace them.”

The sisters bobbed their heads in agreement. “Dr. Monica is so classy-looking. Her grandmother probably came from a good family, maybe even an American one,” Nan’s youngest sister, Peggy, volunteered. “In those days if an unmarried girl got pregnant, she was taken on a trip until the baby was born and then it would be given up for adoption, with no one the wiser. Today when an unmarried girl gets pregnant she brags about it on Twitter or Facebook.”

“I know Dr. Monica has lots of friends,” Nan sighed as she picked up the menu. “She has a genius for making people like her, but it’s not the same, is it? No matter what you say, blood is thicker than water.”

Her sisters nodded in solemn unison, although Peggy pointed out that Monica Farrell was a beautiful young woman and it would probably be only a matter of time before she met someone.

That subject exhausted, Nan had a new tidbit to share. “Remember how I told you that that nun Sister Catherine is being considered for beatification because a little boy who was supposed to die of brain cancer was cured after a crusade of prayer to her?”

They all remembered. “He was Dr. Monica’s patient, wasn’t he?” Rosemary, the oldest sister, said.