No one could ever know what happened in the blue classroom.

For four decades, Sister Emmanuel's second grade class kept their lips sealed, locked tight. They didn't tell about the beatings, humiliations, blood-soaked dreams or those horrible deaths so close to Christmas. What happened in the blue classroom stayed secret, a sacred trust between God and child. Not even Father Begin's confessional could break that Rule.

Then, on an October day in 1998, backhoes and steam shovels descended upon Immaculate Heart of Mary Academy, and the blue walls of a classroom seeped human blood.

God was everywhere. She was everywhere, and a penance had to be paid. Don't tell, or I'll find you. Don't tell, or I'll kill you.