Excerpt from The Foundling by Ann Leary, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The baby made little mewling sounds. Sister said, "Ah, there, my little one, there, there, my sweet... . Lillian Faust—you wake her up; I'll knock you dead; don't test me now."

Lillian, who loved babies, had been kissing the back of the infant's little head. Now she slid down off the chair so Sister would finish telling the story.

"The bull, girls," Sister continued, "there's a devil of a creature. After all—think about it now, what does a bull eat to sustain itself?"

She scanned our puzzled faces. Finally, a small voice said, "Children?"

"CHILDREN! Good Lord, no, Edith. Bulls eat grass, don't they? Hay and grass. That's all they eat. That's my point. They don't kill to survive like lions or tigers, no. They kill ... for sport."

She let that sink in for a moment, then added, "Well, by the time the men had run the beast off, it was too late for Deirdre. She's in heaven with Jesus our savior now, may God bless her soul for eternity."

We did the sign of the cross with Sister and sat in stunned silence. After what was either a short nap or a long silent prayer, Sister opened her eyes and said, "Now, I hope that'll serve as a lesson to you all."

A little girl offered, in a thin, wavering voice, "I'll never climb a tree, Sister. Never."

"Yes, there's that too, but the lesson I meant is to never wander into a field of cows unless you know where the bull is keeping himself."

We lived in a small city. I, for one, had never seen a field of cows. I prayed that I never would.

"But, girls, it wasn't the bull's fault, not entirely, no," Sister said, and now she had that hushed, lilting tone we loved—the voice she used when telling us things she shouldn't.

She glanced at the door. You could hear a pin drop.

"She was cursed-like, poor Deirdre," Sister continued, in a near whisper. "The whole Murphy family had the curse on it. The grand-father, Jimmy Murphy, he's the one who interfered with the fairy fort when he was a child... . Sure you remember I told you about him."

We remembered all right. We begged her to tell us again.

Sister Rosemary didn't teach any classes, she only had night duty, and we'd all heard Mother Bea admonish her for telling us stories about fairies, ghosts and other "pagan nonsense." But we knew Sister's stories weren't nonsense—every word was true. She was an ordained nun, and she swore to the heavenly father they were true.

"May God strike me dead if I'm telling a lie," she said. Often.

And she wasn't talking about strangers, they were people she'd known personally who'd been skewered on fence posts, dragged behind runaway pony carts, drowned, trampled, scalded, smothered, or otherwise destroyed because they'd upset a fairy or banshee. Oh, she'd seen plenty of dark magic back home, Sister Rosemary had.

On the other hand, she once saw an angel with her very own eyes. There were angels who watched over us all, even if we couldn't see them. Sister Rosemary saw her own dead mother's angel when she was a little girl. It's what had made her decide to become a nun.

How we loved Sister Rosemary.

After I left the orphanage, I had trouble sleeping in Kate's cold, silent house, knowing that in a steamy, crowded ward across town, softly whispered stories of angels and mothers drifted from cot to cot long after Sister Rosemary had dozed off in her chair.

Of course, now I knew the nun's stories were silly; Mother Bea was right, they were superstitious nonsense. But I wondered if seeing me had caused Lillian to reminisce about St. Cat's as well. She'd been an unruly child, and some of the stricter nuns had dealt with her harshly, but she was a favorite of Sister Rosemary. I wondered if being mentally deficient was a sort of blessing for Lillian. Did she think about dear, befuddled Sister Rosemary as often as I did? If she thought about her, did she find it hard to keep her tears inside, where they belonged, like I did?

Excerpted from The Foundling: A Nove by Ann Leary. Copyright © 2022 by Ann Leary. Published by Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights Reserved.