Chapter 1 — The Sister Who Kept Losing Time

“Mother, it happened again.

I lost the whole night.”

Sister Amparo’s voice broke the calm of the convent of Santa Clara de la Luz, on the outskirts of Puebla.

She stood in the doorway of the office pale and unsteady, one hand braced against the frame, the way a person stands when the floor has stopped feeling entirely reliable.

Mother Inmaculada set down her pencil.

It was the third time in as many weeks that the young nun had come to her like this — describing a sleep so heavy it was less like rest than like being switched off, and a morning that arrived with hours missing from it, as though someone had torn pages out of the book of her night.

Chapter 2 — Three Times Now

“Tell me again,” Inmaculada said.

“From the beginning.

Everything you remember.”

“That’s just it,” Amparo said.

“I don’t remember.

I say my last prayers, I lie down, and then it’s dawn and I feel like I’ve been drugged — my mouth dry, my head full of wool, and this sense that time passed without me in it.” She pressed her fingers to her temple.

“And I’m not the only one.

Sister Filomena said the same thing last week.

Sister Asunción, too.

We all laughed about the bad air, the change of season.