To her left, the copper-green cupola of City Hall stole center stage. Behind it, the sun played on the waters of the Bay and bounced off the rolling Oakland hills. Beautiful-what did Herb Caen call it?-Baghdad-by-the-Bay.

As much as she had fought coming back to the college, Mary Helen had to admit the place was beautiful. She had made her novitiate here in an old building long ago demolished when the Mother-house had been moved. In those days, she had been one of the few young women who had entered her Order with a master’s degree. Rather than flaunt her higher education, she had rarely even alluded to the degree, admitting it only when someone asked her directly.

It wasn’t that she was terribly humble, or even anti-intellectual. Far from it. The truth was, Mary Helen was afraid she’d be sent to the college to teach. She dreaded the idea of being perched on this “Holy Hill,” as generations of students had dubbed it. The college had always seemed too remote, too sterile, too academic for her.

Even as a young nun, she had known she would feel most at home and do the most good in a parish where there were real people with real problems. And, to her way of thinking, she had been right. Her entire religious life had been spent in parish schools. Her list of assignments was long and impressive. Sometimes she had served as the principal; most often as an eighth-grade teacher. Yes, every one of her fifty years as a nun had been spent in a parish, and she had loved it. Right up until this week, when she had officially retired.

Somehow, Mary Helen had managed to avoid retirement or even the thought of it for the last five years. At least, she figured it was about five years. At that time she had begun to lie a little about her age. Now, quite frankly, she wasn’t so sure just how old she was. In a pinch, she reminded herself, I can always subtract my birthdate from the current year. She hesitated to do it because the difference always came out an absolute seventy-five.