In the middle of my thirty-seventh year, I found myself driving, lost, on a single-lane dirt road canopied by trees, many miles from home. The sheet of directions I'd been mailed lay crumpled on the seat beside me. I'd followed them carefully, but had not seen the driveway they mentioned, nor the sign I'd been told to look for. Now it was getting dark, I was late for my appointment, and my destination, wherever it was, seemed to be sinking quickly into the shadowed farmland as I passed. In the manner of all anxious travelers, I asked myself questions. How long is this road? When can I turn around? And — in my case, a very important question — what am I doing here, anyway?

I was on my way to a Catholic monastery somewhere in the Maryland countryside, more than an hour from where I live. Other than for my mother's funeral, I had not been inside a house of worship in nearly twenty years. My parents sent all three of their children to Catholic primary schools, but their devotion to the church had fallen off by the time I was ten or so. We all graduated from public high schools, got accustomed to skipping Mass on Sunday. If asked, my father calls himself an agnostic now. My mother later returned to the church, but I assumed it was her illness, her fear of dying badly, with the old resentments still on her soul, that drove her back to the priests and prayers and sacraments in the last years of her life. It was because of that, because of her, that I'd gotten lost.

The first phone call I'd received in my new home was from a young man who introduced himself as Brother Paul. He said he was an assistant to Father Thomas, the priest who had been my mother's last confessor.

It was an Indian summer day, late September, and the movers had just left. I was sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes, drinking the last of a bottle of water.

"This is kind of a bad time," I said. "I'm in the middle of something here."

My voice echoed in the room around me. My new home.

"I'll make this quick, then."

Thomas, he told me, had died. Going through his things, they'd discovered a box of books and papers that had belonged to my mother.

"Papers. You mean, letters?"

"Not really," he said. "More like, well, a research project."

I felt the old resentments creep up my throat.

"Brother — Brother ..." I began.

"Paul."

"Well, Paul, I should tell you. My brother is the executor of my mother's will. She picked him, you see. So legally, I think that what you might want to do is call him —"

"I appreciate your telling me that. I do. But your mother was very clear. She wanted Thomas to look through the box, see if he thought anything was of value. To publish, maybe. I don't really know. But then — and she was very clear about this — the box was to go to you. To Louise."

"He told you this?"

"No, I was there. In the room when she told him what to do."

My head began to ache. I switched the phone to my left hand, rubbed the right one across my forehead, which was damp and tight.

"You knew my mother," I said.

"Not well, no. She came out here to Fellowship House a few times, on retreat, for services, but her work was with Tom. He took me with him once, toward the end, to visit her. We went to her house, in — oh, where was it? — where she lived with — with her husband ..."

"Kenny."

"Yes. Close to the university ... "

"College Park."

"Right. Anyway, she said — very clearly, she said — 'Give this to Louise. My youngest. The artist.'"

There was a triple knock on the door, and then it flew open.

"I got pepperoni, I couldn't resist. And two bottles, a red and a white, so we — oh, sorry."

Lynda was there, holding a carry-out pizza box, a brown bag under her arm. She mouthed, Jason? I shook my head, held up a finger.

"That is you, right? The artist?"

"Yes. Yes, that is me."

Into the silence, he began to speak of practicalities: the monastery was about a ninety-minute drive from the city, he had use of a car two days a week, sometimes more, and he could bring me the box one of those days, unless he was called for other chores. Or if I preferred, I could come out there and pick it up myself.

"You have been to Fellowship House before?"

"No."

"Well, you might like to see it. Many people, many different kinds of people, have found something good here."

I don't know how much that moved me. But I couldn't think of any other way to get him off the phone. And though I had worked hard for years to erase any curiosity I might have had about my mother's strange interior life, it was hard not to be just a little curious about what was in that box.

And she had called me an artist. That was important too.

I said I'd come and get it. The drive, at least, would be nice. I didn't get out of the city much anymore, since I'd left Jason.

It was that line of thinking that brought me to the middle of nowhere, on a chilly Thursday evening, the leaves already disengaging from the trees, wheeling sadly to earth. It would be cold soon. I have always hated winter. On a road marked "Private: No Trespassing," I turned around, heading back to where I'd come from. It's pointless, I thought. I will never find the place. I remembered an inn I'd passed, closer to the highway; it had looked friendly, the diners inside silhouetted by what seemed, through the windows, to be firelight. I decided to stop and treat myself to the dinner I'd skipped, have some wine. I'd call the young monk from the restaurant, apologize, ask him to mail me my mother's things.

Which I would then give to Dylan. He always loved solving my mother's problems. What had I been thinking, to get involved in one of her messes again?

Just as I thought this, my headlights picked up a small sign on the left, white letters on dark wood, pitched on a post low to the ground. Fellowship House. The Brothers and Sisters of Saint Benedict. Catholic Retreat and Study Center. Established 1983.

Now you've done it, I thought, almost angry with myself for having seen the marker. Now I had no choice but to go through with it. And so, tucking away the anticipation of that almost-dinner, I turned onto the dark and rutted road that led to the monastery.

* * *

A THERAPIST FRIEND TOLD ME that it is a common reaction to grief to want to make big changes in other parts of one's life — divorce, a job change, a move. Therapeutic wisdom says that such hasty, grief-driven acts should be discouraged. I didn't know that then, but I doubt it would have slowed me down. I behaved badly in the months after my mother's death, and hurt people who deserved much better treatment than I was, just then, capable of giving them.

But the blame is all mine.

It wasn't my mother's dwindling body on the metal bed that made me chafe at the sound of Jason's voice, describing how this or that producer had at last seen his vision, acknowledged his genius, increased his budget or his credit. It was not standing over my mother's body in the casket without Jason beside me that made me realize I would never marry him. And I cannot blame my mother...