Seeking Carolina (26 page)

“We do not normally agree to such requests,” Darren told them, “but it seems there was precedent, and for the same family. Carolina Coco was a special case, in many respects, or so I understand. I wasn’t here when she was, but we all know the lore.”

“The lore?” Johanna shook her head. “I am very confused.”

“Is our mother here or not?” Emma asked. “Can you please tell us what’s going on?”

“Perhaps you should start with that.” He pointed to the letter. “And we’ll go from there. Feel free to use the gathering room. The fire is crackling and the couches are very comfortable. I’ll have someone bring you herbal tea. We grow the chamomile ourselves.”

The sisters moved to the gathering room in silence. Eyes watched them, ears listened. The air buzzed with curiosity. Nina made no move to open the letter once they were seated.

“It’s not very thick,” she said. “Too thin for any real explanation.”

“Open it, Nina.” Emma wrung her hands. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Nina tapped the letter, tore off the edge, and pulled the single sheet of paper from within. She read aloud.

Halloween~2006

Girls,

If you are reading this, you are in New Hampshire, at Wolf Moon Lodge where, you know by now, your mother spent most of her life. It also means I’m gone.

As I write this, children are trick-or-treating down at the Green, like you used to. The moon is bright. The air is a perfect sort of cool. And I am mourning the loss of your grandfather. Perhaps that’s why I do this now, because I hadn’t the heart to do it while he was alive. He loved you girls so much, just like he loved Carolina. She was his heart, and she broke it. Over and over, she broke it. He never gave up on her. He never turned his back on her the way his family did his own mother, and his sister. But then you came to us, in pairs. He wanted you to grow up innocent and free, especially after what you all suffered when you were so very young. We had to make some very difficult decisions.

That you are reading this now means I stuck to the decision we made, and so I will say here—your mother lived her life as happily as she was able, and died in November of last year. I will tell you that sometimes she remembered her little girls, but most of the time, she thought only of Johan. She got stuck in the moment he died, and never left it. Your grandfather and I hoped she would come back to us, to you, and had she, we would have told you about her. I think so, at least.

The lawyer who released this letter upon my death arranged for all the legal paperwork necessary for you to get at your mother’s records. There is a box being held for you, of Carolina’s personal things. I asked for it to be kept there so you would never accidentally come across it at home. The staff at Wolf Moon has always been very good to Carolina, and to Poppy and me. She was a favorite there.

In case you are wondering what would have happened had you never sought your mother, and found her in a wish you all shared, I will tell you. The lawyer in Michigan has instructions to contact you if you did not contact him within six months of my death. He will tell you all the legal things you need to know regarding your inheritance. What I will tell you of that is it came from a man named Bruce Johnson. He was not a bad man, girls, even if he was ultimately responsible for your father’s death. He was ill, like your parents, and not getting the proper care. He paid a terrible price for that, and got the help he desperately needed to find his mind again while incarcerated. He loved your parents, and he loved Emmaline and Julietta. Through me and Poppy, he came to love Nina and Johanna as well. He bequeathed all he had left into my care, for you. I will leave that there. You have gotten this far, you will be able to discover more on your own. This letter is already longer than I meant it to be.

I will not ask your forgiveness. I did what I did and I have no regrets. You were all raised in love, and with the best intentions. I need no forgiveness for that. I can’t know what would have happened had you known your mother’s whereabouts, but I am as certain now as I was when we decided to keep her from you—nothing good would have come of her being in your lives. The cycle needed to be broken and, heartbreaking as it was, we broke it.

I love you to the moon and back,

Gram

Silence. Absolute and electrified. Johanna took the letter from her sister’s unresisting hand. Adelina Coco’s tight, tiny letters pecked across the page. Running her fingers along the line of her words brought tears to her eyes. For the first time since standing in the cemetery, in the snow, Johanna wept for her grandmother.

“He died of a broken heart.” Julietta was first to speak. She blinked and tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Who did, love?” Emma asked.

“Poppy. Don’t you see? I can remember so clearly now, looking back. I thought it was him getting old, but it was Mom’s death that took the life from him. He died less than a year after she did.”

“I remember, too,” Emma said. “I made him go to so many doctors that year.”

“Why didn’t she tell us then?” Nina asked. “Why didn’t they tell us before it was too late?”

“They did what they thought was right,” Johanna answered. “To protect—”

“When we were kids, but we didn’t stay kids, Jo. Do you know how many times I walked the streets in New York City, fearing I’d find our mother living in an alley? Hungry? Alone? Afraid?”

“But she wasn’t,” Johanna said. “There is always going to be the way things didn’t happen.”

“Telling us came with a whole different sort of heartache.” Emma sighed. “They did their best, Nina. We can’t dwell on what might have been.”

“There were years and years we might have known her. Maybe we could have brought her back. Maybe seeing us would have—”

“It would have made no difference.” The sisters turned as one to the older woman entering with a tea tray. Though it was January, she wore flip-flops, and a peach-colored unitard that accentuated her extraordinarily shapely form, offset the darkness of her skin. Only the lines in her face, part sorrow and part time, showed her age. “Forgive me for eavesdropping. I’m afraid I’m not the only one. There are many of us here who remember Carolina, or know of her. She is somewhat of a celebrity here at Wolf Moon Lodge.”

“And you are?” Nina asked.

“Penelope Pitstop,” the woman answered. “But you may call me Penny. I was a friend of your mother’s.”

“You…work here?” Emma asked.

“They give me odd jobs.” Penny smiled. “But you are asking if I am an employee or if I am a resident. The answer is, resident. May I pour for you?”

Penny served the tea. They helped themselves to sugar and lemon, looking to one another, at a loss for words.

“Darren is getting a box of Carolina’s things,” Penny told them. “It’s been waiting for you since she died. I imagine you have many questions about her, and her life here.”

“Just a few,” Nina drawled. She sipped her tea. “The man at the desk—Darren—said something about there being some kind of lore about our mother?”

“Yes, yes. Well, goodness, where to start?” Penny cocked her head, gaze on the ceiling as if the answer could be found there. “I know. Come with me.”

Penny rose and gestured them to follow. Johanna pulled up the rear, looking behind to see if anyone would stop them entering the facility itself. The curious still trailed, but no one called them back. Penny led them through a corridor of offices, and beyond it to a casual dining room. Round tables. A coffee and tea station piled with fruit, packages of nuts, and brownies that looked freshly baked.

Residents talking and snacking looked up as they came through. Johanna was struck by their normalness. If she did not know better, she would have thought she was in an upscale resort, not a mental rehabilitation facility, and then she chastised herself for her clichéd assumptions that had more to do with old movies than it did her experience in such matters.

“Here we are.”

Penny had stopped before a rather large and faded photo. She waited, smiling, for them to gather around. Residents, obviously, posed at some kind of outdoor event. Johanna scanned the faces in the photo, wondered about their lives, and spotted her mother a moment before Penny pointed her out.

“There she is, see? And that’s me standing to her right. Oh, my. Why did no one tell me I was too old for cornrows even then?”

“What year was this taken?” Nina asked.

“2002,” Emma answered, showing her the sign a resident sitting cross-legged in the foreground held. “Three years before she died.”

“She let her hair go white.” Julietta touched her own hair. “That’s what you’ll look like someday, Jo.”

“Beautiful to the day she died.” Penny sighed. “But that’s not why I am showing you this.” She moved in closer, wiped a film of dust from the glass with a perfectly manicured finger. “What do you see?”

Johanna squinted, leaned in as her sisters leaned in. Carolina, standing just off-center in the back row, wore a plaid button-down shirt and cargo shorts. Her hair was loose and long, and wispy-white like Poppy’s had been. She smiled serenely, and Johanna wondered if it was a medicated serenity, or innate. Whatever Penny was trying to make her see, however, she was missing completely.

“She’s alone,” Julietta whispered.

“There are about fifty people all around her,” Emma said.

“No, but look.” Julietta drew a circle around their mother. “See how close everyone else is standing? Mom’s got nearly an arm’s length on either side of her.”

“We always saved room for Johan.” Penny smoothed a hand along her salt-and-pepper hair. “Bless her heart but she never went anywhere without him.”

“Our dad was the schizophrenic,” Johanna said. “Mom was bi-polar.”

“Labels, labels. We don’t like labels here. They tend to define us rather than help us. Carolina didn’t see manifestations born out of faulty wiring in her brain. Johan was with her. He was…well, real isn’t quite the right word, but that’s close enough. We could feel him. Even some of the doctors admitted to an uneasy feeling when he was around.”

“Yeah, right.” Nina chuffed. “The cold air thing? Hair standing on end?”

“Oh, no.” Penny waved her off. “When Johan was around, the air was charged with…with…I don’t know. Energy, I suppose. ‘Passionate in life, passionate in death,’ Carolina used to say.”

“All right, I’ve had about enough of—”

“Stop it, Nina.” Julietta snapped. Nina paled, even shrank back a little. Julietta turned back to Penny. “Please go on.”

Penny glanced Nina’s way, pursed her lips. “I am not a madwoman making things up,” she said. “You asked for the story behind Carolina’s legend. I am giving it to you. You can do with it what you wish.”

“I’m sorry,” Nina murmured. “Please, I’m listening.”

Penny turned back to the photo. “Your mother and father had the sort of love only possible in the movies. It transcended life and death. It knew no boundaries. She said he was with her, and we all believed, because we could sense him there. Waiting. Watching over her. There were times I was envious, and there were times I felt pity for her. To have such a love only to lose it so tragically.” Penny tsked. “But she had it, and it is more than some of us get.”

“Did she talk about us?” Emma asked. “Ever?”

“She did.” Penny patted Emma’s hand. “But she always spoke of you in the past tense. I thought she was like me—a mother who lost her children and could not speak of it, could no longer cope in the world. I didn’t learn you girls were still living until after she died.”

“How did she?” Johanna forced the words through the constriction of her throat. “Die, I mean. Do you know?”

“Well, now, that is part of the lore,” Penny said. “About, oh, a week or so before Carolina died, she told me she had a secret, and this secret made her happier than I had ever seen her in all the years we were friends. It took some prodding, but she told me Johan was coming for her, just like he always promised. ” She bit her lip. “You do know your parents fled the institutions they had been committed to not once but twice, yes?”

“We were born after the first escape.” Nina pointed to herself and Johanna, then to Julietta and Emma. “And they were born after the second.”

“Ah, I did not know. Carolina told me that Johan vowed he would always come for her, no matter who tried to separate them. And now he was going to fulfill his promise. I admit I got a little scared. I told her doctors, fearing it was going to be a suicide attempt. They did not seem overly concerned. Carolina lived her life somewhere between this one and the next. She was mostly sweet and mischievous, but there were times she would go into herself for days. Weeks. She didn’t know me, or anyone else. Only Johan. Sometimes your grandmother.”

“Gram came here?” Emma blurted. “And Poppy?”

“I only knew Addie,” Penny answered. “I was under the impression she was a widow.”

Johanna looked from sister to grim sister. Had Pop ever gone to see her? Or had it only been those later years he could not bring himself to do so? And then she died, and he faded away.

“How did she die?” Julietta asked. “Can you tell us?”

“She just did.” Penny snapped her fingers. “Like that. When she didn’t come to breakfast, I went to wake her. She was fond of sleeping in, but it was getting quite late, and I didn’t want her missing out altogether. I went to her room.” Penny’s voice hushed. “And there she was sitting beside an open window, Johan’s urn clutched in her arms. Gone.”

“Did she have a stroke?” Nina asked. “A heart attack?”

“She was young,” Penny said. “Well, too young, and too healthy for anything like that. I cannot say what the actual cause of death was. The doctors don’t share such information with us. But I can tell you what the residents say.”

They waited. Penny crooked her finger and they all leaned in.

“Johan came for her, just as he promised.”

Eavesdropping residents were scattering, breaking the spell of Penny’s story. Darren-at-the-desk hurried into the dining room, making a beeline for them.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, but you can’t be back here.”

“I was only showing them a picture of Carolina,” Penny said. “Telling them a little bit about her. They know nothing. At least I knew her for a few years.”