Twice Cursed (17 page)

From inside the car, she could hear
Cookie barking. The chocolate lab was a better lookout than Buffalo
Bill, and that meant everyone knew she had arrived. Flipping the
visor back up, she grabbed her purse and got out of the
car.

From her vantage point, she could see
the entire yard. The large oak tree off to the side of the house
still held the chair swing where she and Terry used to sit for
hours, talking and laughing. She closed her eyes, and for a moment
she was twelve years old again, helping Carl carve their names into
the trunk of the tree.

Beverly’s planters were still in their
place on either side of the slate walkway, iced over and barren,
but Lily knew come Mother’s Day they’d be overflowing with
impatiens and begonias.

The house itself was an old
groundskeeper’s cottage, modest by comparison to the sprawling
acres and large farm homes surrounding it. But what it lacked in
size, it made up for in charm. Red brick, with a double peaked,
grey slate roof, it looked as though it belonged on the pages of a
fairytale. In the spring, an English wildflower garden graced both
sides of the yard, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds by the
score.

On the outside, nothing had really
changed. But Lily didn’t need her psychic ability to guess how
things had changed on the inside, and that’s what worried
her.

Taking a deep breath, she shoved a few
stray strands behind her ear and started up the front path. What
was she going to say? Did she still own the right to just breeze in
as if this was still her home, as if she still belonged
here?

With her hand on the brass
doorknob, she bit her lip.
Just one quick
peek...
She shook her head. No. The truth
might hurt too much. With a deep breath, she reached for the
doorknocker, instead.
Tap. Tap.
Tap
.

Cookie barked madly behind the door,
and Carl’s deep voice resonated from the other side for her to sit
and be quiet. The front door swung open, and there he stood,
unchanged and smiling.

“
What are you doing
standing outside in the cold? Get in here and give me a hug!” he
said, opening his arms.

Lily’s breath hitched, and her throat
tightened against a sudden urge to cry. She walked into his arms,
breathing in the familiar scents of peppermint and cherry pipe
tobacco that always clung to him. A million memories flooded her
mind as he gave her a squeeze before leaning back to kiss her
cheek, nuzzling his salt and pepper beard against her chin, as he
did when she was a child.

“
How’s my wild girl?” he
asked, when he finally stepped back, allowing her the rest of the
way through the door. He scrutinized her as she shoved her gloves
in her pocket and took off her coat and hat. “You okay?”

“
I’m fine, Carl. How about
you?”

He slid his arm around her shoulder
and steered her towards the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Better now that we know you’re home and safe.”

Lily cringed inwardly. It
was about as close to a verbal admonishment as he would give her,
but translated it said,
‘Your mother was
crazy with worry, and I had to deal with her for months. Is a
simple phone call too much to ask?’

Carl was a big man, about six foot,
three inches, and Lily looked up at him across the wide expanse of
his flannel shirt. “Yeah…I’m sorry, about that. I guess I should
have called.”

“
Hmmm. Well, you’re here
now, and that’s all that matters,” he said, depositing her at the
kitchen table and moving toward the coffeepot and mugs Beverly had
obviously set out. “You want to warm up with a cup of coffee or do
you want to head upstairs and see Beverly first?”

Lily instinctively glanced through the
kitchen door towards the hall stairs. “Why is she still upstairs?
It’s almost noon, is she sick?” There was nothing upstairs except
the two bedrooms, the upstairs bath and the tiny staircase that led
to the attic.

Beverly was never one to lie down
during the day, and she always made sure the beds were made, and
the rooms picked up before she came downstairs in the morning.
Immediately worried, Lily pushed herself up from the kitchen
chair.

“
Sit down, Lily. Bev’s
fine. She’s just in the attic looking through some things she
thought you might want to have. That’s all.”

He wasn’t telling her everything. The
attic was as cold as hell this time of the year, and there was no
way Beverly would be up there unless…

She didn’t wait for him to elaborate.
Guilt slashed across her chest making it hard to breath. It was
obvious. Beverly was losing herself in the attic among the things
she had saved from Terry’s life, from her life. Hence, the memory
box left for her in the apartment.

Beverly was stuck, and Lily
had left her alone in her grief, with no one to cling to, no one to
help ease her pain except Carl. Lily had taken herself out of the
family equation, too obsessed with her own selfish quest for
revenge. Shame, heavy and suffocating, descended on her, and Lily’s
mind replayed the same words over and over again.
Thoughtless, Self-centered.

Lily took the hall stairs two at a
time, purposely ignoring the family pictures hanging on the wall.
At the top, she headed straight for the attic door, left partially
ajar. As she climbed the narrow stairs, the wind whistled, low and
moaning through the attic eaves, and the temperature dropped
significantly the closer she got to the top.

“
Beverly?” she called out
gently. “You up here?”

“
I’m here, dear…in the back
by the trunks. Watch your step, Carl still hasn’t gotten around to
fixing those loose boards.”

Lily walked over to where Beverly sat
cross-legged on an old remnant of carpet, a thick throw blanket
wrapped around her shoulders, and fingerless gloves on her hands as
she sorted through items in one of the trunks.

“
Bev, for Christ sake, it’s
got to be twenty degrees up here. What are you doing sitting in the
freezing cold?”

The older woman looked up, waving Lily
off with one of her gloved hands. “Oh, honey, I don’t feel the cold
when I’m all wrapped up like an Eskimo. And let’s not forget about
my hot flashes. So, don’t worry. I’m as toasty as can be up here in
my little perch.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled as
she smiled up from her spot on the floor, but the telltale signs of
where she’d grown careworn were there, despite her attempt at
humor. The light had gone out of her eyes, and Beverly’s voice had
lost the lilt of easy laughter.

“
Why didn’t you make Carl
carry all this downstairs for you? If you’re worried about his
back, between the two of us I’m sure we can shimmy it down the
stairs. We’ll put it in the old bedroom, that way you can look
through everything without risking frostbite.”

Beverly just blinked. “No. I like the
solitude up here.”

“
Well, Carl doesn’t like it
and neither do I. You may think you’re fine sitting up here in the
freezing cold, but even in this dim light, I can see your
fingertips are blue. This is nuts! You’ve had time enough for
solitude…”Lily stopped herself, suddenly conscious of the annoyed
tone to her voice. This was not the time for her habit of masking
concern with anger. When it came to appropriate ways of dealing
with emotions, who was she to talk?

Her chin sunk to chest, her cheeks hot
with self-reproach. “…and so have I,” she added softly. “We’ve both
been alone in this for too long. I’ve been alone in this for too
long.” Her voice caught, and she looked away, not wanting to upset
Beverly any further.

The older woman stood, pushing down on
the lid of the trunk with her hand to steady herself. “Oh,
sweetheart…don’t. You did what you had to do,” she said, taking a
step towards Lily. “We all deal with grief differently. I found my
place of peace up here with my memories.” She paused, as if afraid
to ask. “Have you found yours?”

Lily hesitated, and then slowly
nodded. What else could she say? It was the truth, even if the
truth was more farfetched than any legend or folktale. She had
found peace with Sean, with his entirely unreal reality.

Would she ever be able to tell Beverly
about Terry, and how she stayed for a while as an earthbound Shade?
Probably not. It would hurt the woman too much if she knew she
could have said goodbye to her daughter, yet not been given the
chance. No. This was one secret that needed to stay
buried.

“
Come on. Let’s both get
warmed up, and then Carl and I will bring whatever you want
downstairs,” Lily said, changing the subject.

“
I…”

Lily took her elbow, steering her
toward to stairs. “Sorry, but I’m not giving you a choice. I want a
nice, long visit, and I’m not doing it up here in the tundra.
You’re coming back downstairs, and I don’t want t hear another word
about it.”

Chuckling, Beverly slid her arm around
Lily’s waist. “When did you get to be so pushy?”

Lily leaned in to her, the warmth of
being home flooding her body with peace. “I learned from the
best.”

***

Lily and Beverly sat on the
floor of the spare bedroom, sorting through the trunks Carl had
dragged, one after the other, down the stairs. He refused any help,
yet red faced and out of breath, mouthed the words,
‘thank you’
, to Lily as
he left the two women to their task.

The room had changed so much in the
four years since she and Terry had moved out. But the feeling of
belonging, of coming home, permeated the walls and a weight lifted
from Lily’s chest. No matter where she went, this was home.
Reaching into the trunk, she took out a stack of photographs and
flipped through them. Most were of Terry as a baby, but one picture
stopped her and left her staring.

“
What’s the matter,
honey?”

“
Where did this come from?”
Lily asked, holding up a picture of Beverly at their town’s
Halloween parade. Terry was in her stroller, in a pink onesie with
bunny ears and eyeliner whiskers. In the background was Lily’s own
mom, with Lily in her arms dressed as a bat.

Beverly peeked over Lily’s arm and
chuckled. “Carl took that picture our first year in North Salem.
It’s funny that the four of us are in that picture; I didn’t even
know your mother at that point. You know the story—we didn’t meet
until we enrolled you girls in the community center’s Mom and Tot
music class. You and Terry were just two years old at the
time.

“
Your mom and I took one
look at each other and knew we’d be friends. She was the only
down-to-earth woman in that entire group! Talk about your bunch of
wannabes.”

Lily held the photo, running her thumb
over the curve of her mother’s face. In the photograph, her mother
was about the same age as she was now.

“
You look just like her,
you know,” Beverly said softly.

Lily nodded, and with a sniff, placed
the photo back in the trunk. “Lucky me,” she said with a
shrug.

“
Sweetheart, you should
keep the photo. It was a good luck omen then, maybe it’ll be a good
luck omen now,” she said, placing it back in Lily’s
hand.

Lily shrugged again. “Stranger things
can happen. It’s funny though. Even as babies, Terry was all in
pink and I was all in black.”

Beverly smirked. “Only you would think
of that.”

Lily opened her mouth to say something
else, but stopped, watching Beverly pull a blue and white receiving
blanket from the last trunk. “What’s that?” she asked. “I don’t
remember seeing that before.” The blanket looked old and worn, and
it certainly didn’t look like anything Beverly would have put on
Terry as a baby. It had an institutional feel about it.

“
This is the blanket that
Terry was wrapped in when the nuns brought her to me.” Beverly held
the blanket up and Lily saw the Good Samaritan Hospital stamp
across the back.

“
Nuns? Don’t you mean
nurses?”

Beverly shook her head. “No, sweetie.
They were nuns.” She lifted her eyes, and they were full of
nostalgia and regret. “We never told her, or you.” She paused.
“Terry was adopted.”

Lily was speechless, but her face must
have spoken volumes because Beverly’s crumpled a bit.

“
Oh, honey, I don’t defend
not telling her. We always thought the right moment would present
itself, that we had all the time in the world to find a way to
break it to her gently.” Beverly’s eyes misted over, and her voice
cracked. “I even wrote her a letter. I bet you think that’s pretty
chicken shit, huh?”

Lily just blinked. Hadn’t she used
those same exact words to chastise herself for not calling? Guess
emotional avoidance was a learned behavior. In this family,
anyway.

Except for
Terry…

Beverly reached into the trunk and
pulled out a flat rectangular jewelry box. She lifted the lid and
took out a small stack of papers and official looking envelopes.
“It’s in here, along with her adoption papers,” she said, handing
Lily the stack. Lily took them from her hand and placed them on the
carpet next to her.