Natalie and Sam meet at a diner where their intrusions develop into curiosities, concerns, then friendship. She needs him to defend her after a priest is murdered the very night he raped her, and he needs her to put into perspective his own failure after a priest he prosecuted years earlier died in prison days before his accusers recant.

SYNOPSIS:

Two strangers running away from their own ghosts meet (not exactly by chance) at Harry’s greasy spoon diner. Natalie is a young waitress on the evening shift and Sam is an elderly gentleman who takes a room indefinitely at the local flea trap hotel down the street.

They meet minutes before the diner closes when Sam barges in insisting on being served. For many nights thereafter they banter back and forth and listen to each other’s cell phone conversations, inadvertently learning more and more about one another. Natalie is concerned that several people she’s hiding from may find her, and Sam is preoccupied with a major news story clearly relevant to the past he is running from.

Sam and Natalie’s unintentional intrusions develop first into curiosities, then concerns, and finally into deep friendship. Natalie needs Sam, a lawyer in his most recent professional life, to defend her against a murder she claims she didn’t commit. Sam needs Natalie to put into perspective his own perceived failures as a state prosecutor and to provide purpose for his remaining years.

Finally, Natalie divulges to Sam the secret life of Mary Jo O’Brian left as an orphan in the Montpelier Boarding School for the daughters of Mary Magdalene and raped by a monk with a black heart, putrid breath, and wandering hands, a monk who is murdered the night he rapes her a second time. That is when Mary Jo runs away … to Harry’s diner and becomes Natalie. She is followed close behind by Rondo, a gardener at the boarding school, who had been stalking her, and Martinson, a detective convinced she murdered the priest.

Sam admits being a priest in his earlier life and then a lawyer. As a young priest he describes walking in on his superior and a boy; an incident that turns him off to the priesthood. As a lawyer and prosecutor, that incident and others like it drive him to wrongfully convict a priest of a similar crime, a priest subsequently murdered in prison days before his supposed victims recant their allegations.

Those are only some of the surprises Natalie and Sam deal with including her biggest secret, a daughter who resulted from the black hearted monk’s first transgression, a daughter who was stolen away from her at birth by the church. It is that secret that sets into motion Sam’s purpose in life, a quixotic journey to find Natalie’s daughter.