by Selena Kitt
“Can I ask you one more thing?” Clay asked. Erica nodded. “Did that really happen? Was that fairy tale true?”
“Yes, it happened. And yes, it’s true.”
“Your father really has a hidden darkroom under his loft?”
Erica stood, pulling on her underwear and a pair of her dungarees. Clay got dressed too, taking his cue from her. She pulled on a t-shirts and went into the jewelry box on her dresser, retrieving a key.
“Come on.”
He followed her down the hall, around the corner, through the living room and under Mr. Nolan’s loft bed. Erica pulled aside the tapestry to reveal a bolted door and a padlock.
“My dad changed the padlock when he found out I’d been in the room.” She held up the key and fit it into the padlock, turning it and unlocking it. “I just borrowed his keys—told him I needed to use the car—and I took the key off his ring and got another key made. Then I put his back.”
“Remind me never to try to pull the wool over your eyes.” Clay’s jaw dropped when she turned on the overhead fluorescents in the darkroom, staring at the pictures of nude women strung up on the line with clothespins.
“This is nothing.” Erica opened the second door, remembering now where she’d seen a latch like that—in the inner sanctum, under the crosses, the access to the hole where Father Patrick had kept his daughter. She wondered if the same person had built them both. Erica took him through and turned on the light, showing Clay the reels of film stacked in the cabinet.
“There are others at the church like this,” she told him. “Behind that room I told you about with all the adoption records—the records of removal. I saw the cases, although they were all locked. But they were just like these.”
Clay held the film of one reel up to the light, giving out a low whistle at what he found there. “This is hardcore stuff. And you think the church is selling it to make a profit? Damn I hate being right so often about corruption and hypocrisy in the church.”
“I think my father’s making it and they’re selling it.” Erica nodded. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
“And Father Michael wants you to give him all of this because…?”
“He’s going to confront Father Patrick,” Erica told him. “The reels from the Mary Magdalene rituals he wants so he can go to the Bishop with evidence. The others?” Erica shrugged. “Maybe just a little more incentive, to get Father Patrick to turn himself in.”
“To the police? If your father was ever found out… Erica, it would be over for him. He’d go to jail.”
“No,” she disagreed. “We thought of that. Once all of this is gone from here, there’s no way to prove it was my father. It would be his word against Father Patrick’s. And once word of the rituals gets out, once people know Father Patrick fathered a daughter by his own sister and that she gave birth to a baby with a birth defect—a child who was raised in secret until he took a fancy to her too and decided to keep her like his pet sex slave in a hole in the basement under the church… and then got her pregnant. Twice…”
“Jeez when you put it like that.” Clay cringed. “So who was Father Patrick’s sister? You didn’t say. Where is she now?”
“Father Michael told me she’s a nun at Magdalene House. Sister Benedict.”
“Does she know he’s still doing it? All the Mary Magdalene ritual stuff, I mean?”
Erica nodded. “She sends the Magdalene girls to him. She sends them to the rituals on a bus.”
“You know this is crazy.” Clay sat on the bed. “Like, really, super crazy.”
“I know.” She smiled thinly. “I told you we were a couple of bananas short of a bunch. I’d understand if you wanted to go. No hard feelings. Really.”
“Are you kidding me?” Clay scoffed, standing and grabbing the box next to him on the bed. “Let’s get the car loaded up and drive this stuff over to Father Michael.”
Erica heard the phone ring and swore. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
“Will do,” Clay replied, sifting through the photographs he found on the bed. “I’m not going anywhere. Just gonna look through these nice pictures of… yowza!”
Erica laughed, going back through the darkroom, coming out under the loft and running to grab the phone before it stopped ringing.
“Hello?” she gasped.
“Hello, Erica, it’s Donald Highbrow calling.”
She nodded, still panting. “Hi there, Mr. Highbrow.”
“I was wondering if you might know how to track down one of the girls from Magdalene House. You did such a good job of finding Leah’s roommates…”
“Sure,” Erica said, grabbing a pen. “Give me the info.”
She wrote it down, slipping the paper into her pocket and reminding herself to ask Father Michael about it. Given the extensive nature of Gertie’s card catalog, it was pretty likely they would be able to find the girl Donald Highbrow was looking for without too much of a problem.
Erica stopped short at the door under the loft, realizing that in all of her candor, there was one thing she had missed telling Clay. She hadn’t revealed that his mother, Gertrude Louise Webber née Phillips, had participated in the Mary Magdalene rituals as a “Mary,” that Clay’s mother could never have given birth to him, because she was sterile. Clay, like Erica, had been adopted.
She considered telling him, but she remembered what her mother had said, up in the loft on the morning of Leah’s wedding when she had asked if Susan had ever told Rob about her feelings for Father Patrick, and her mother had said, “There are some secrets a woman keeps for a lifetime.”
Erica knew this one was one of those.
She crept back in through the darkroom, sure she would find Clay looking through dirty pictures or even watching one of the blue movies, but instead he was sitting in the same spot on the bed, holding an old, faded and yellow article in his hands.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking over his shoulder and gasping when she saw the image of her father—Robert Nolan—wearing a Nazi uniform and doing the Hitler salute. “Oh my God, where did you find that? What is it?”
“It’s in German.” Clay surrendered the article when she put her hand out for it. “Do you read German?”
“No.” Erica held it up to the light. “What does this mean?”
“I don’t know.” Clay shrugged. “But if Nazis are involved, it can’t be anything good.”
“I’ll just keep it.” Erica folded up the clipping, putting it into her pocket with the information she was supposed to find out for Donald Highbrow.
“Are you going to ask him about it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Well while you’re chatting, you might want to ask him about these,” Clay said, holding up a stack of pictures.
Erica took them, flipping through, her mind doubling back on itself as she looked at the pictures of her mother—mothers, plural, her real mother, Patty, and her adopted mother, Susan, in various sexual positions together in the photographs.
“I’m guessing from the look on your face that you didn’t know about those?”
Erica tossed them into the box, shaking her head. She was so tired of the lies, the pretending and hiding and keeping up appearances. But she was keeping secrets too, not telling Clay about his mother, about the fact that he was adopted, so how could she possibly judge?
Clay stood, putting his arms around her, pulling her close. He didn’t say anything, he just held her, and when Erica lifted her head to look into his eyes, she realized the words she’d repeated to him were true. She did love him. She had come to love him very much in a short amount of time. She knew it sounded impossible, but it had happened and it was true. Just like everything she had told him today, the post-coital horror story hidden in a fairy tale, had also happened and was also true.
There were some secrets you kept for a lifetime, and some stories you wished had never happened, and some people you never, ever wanted to leave, and some pe
ople you wished you’d never, ever met. But in the end, Erica realized, thinking about her mother, her first mother—the one who had been the daughter of a monster, who grew into a sort of monster herself, because that was the story she had been told was true about her—in the end, you lost everyone you loved, and all the secrets you kept and all the stories you believed died too.
The only thing you could hold onto in the world, the only thing that made any sense, was the feeling she had when Clay put his arms around her and told her he loved her. That was worth having, worth holding, worth its precious weight in gold. The rest of it was just a fairy tale, a made-up story with characters who walked around and talked and did all the things the storyteller told them to until people forgot about them and then they too, were nothing more than dust.
Nothing stayed, nothing ever changed. But love, only love, that was the true part of the story, no matter what the beginning, middle or end.
* * * *
Things had returned to some semblance of normal when it happened. Erica and Leah had gone to Hudson’s the Saturday after they’d returned from their honeymoon to take back some of the duplicate items Leah and Rob had received as wedding gifts. They were meeting Leah’s mother for lunch on the thirteenth floor and Erica was looking forward to her Maurice salad, but it never even made it to the table.
They had just sat down when Leah excused herself to use the bathroom. Erica didn’t think anything of it. Their mother—still so strange to think of her that way, but she was slowly growing used to it—was showing them a new hat she’d purchased and Erica sipped her water and listened, watching Leah disappear around the corner.
Her sister had come home happy and tanned from the Caribbean, talking about blue water and white sand. Her father couldn’t wait to get to his darkroom to develop the photographs he’d taken, and Leah and Erica had curled up on the couch together and played catch up.
Of course, Erica didn’t tell her everything she’d done while they were gone. Her father would find out, soon enough, she gathered, when he went into his darkroom. She didn’t know how often he used that hidden darkroom, to be honest. He had another darkroom. There was a red light over the door that meant keep “out.” That was the darkroom he went to when they’d returned from their honeymoon, coming out with photographs so beautiful they took Erica’s breath away.
“So I hear they’re talking about New York,” Patty said, sipping her tea.
“That’s what Leah said.” Erica raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know Leah had told their mother already that they were making plans, looking for a new house.
“Well, that will be good if you go to Wellesley or Brown.”
Erica shrugged, tracing her finger over the round, wet ring left by her water glass on the tablecloth. She didn’t want to advertise it too much, but she was really hoping to get into USC. Going to Berkley with Clay was the most exciting thing she could imagine. They’d spent all week talking about it, planning for it. Things were moving fast, so fast, but for Erica, they couldn’t be fast enough. She’d spent the whole week with him, playing house, and she discovered that there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to play house with him for real.
She’d fallen in love with him so fast it scared her, but in spite of that, she wasn’t going to shy away from the fact. She loved him, and more than anything, she wanted what Leah had with Rob, what she saw in their eyes when they danced that first wedding dance—only with a smattering less sappy and a dash more sarcasm. That was Clay, and that was what she wanted.
They both heard the raised voices at the same time, their eyes meeting in surprise. Someone was having quite a heated argument at the front of the restaurant. That’s when Erica clearly heard Leah’s voice, pitched at a near scream, loud enough for every head around them to turn in that direction.
“Where is she?” Leah screamed, and that’s all Erica needed to hear. She bolted from the table, Patty close on her heels. “I want my baby back! Where is my baby? Where is she?”
Erica found her way blocked by a crowd of spectators that had begun to gather at the front of the restaurant, near the restrooms. Patty used her shoulder to edge her way through, saying, “Excuse me! Excuse me, please!” the whole time, but she was knocking patrons aside like a linebacker, and Erica followed in her wake, the screaming turning to crying, wailing really, a high-pitched keen.
“Leah!” Patty burst through the crowd, finding her daughter being restrained by a burly security guard, but she was still struggling, kicking her feet—her heels were scattered on the floor, along with the contents of her spilled pocketbook. Erica got on her knees, hurriedly picking up her sister’s things, still trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“This is hers too.” The woman handed her a hair comb she recognized, one with sharp metal teeth, and Erica looked up, seeing matching gouges in a long line down the woman’s bloody face, right under her eye.
If the puzzle wasn’t clear enough already, Patty cleared things up, leaning over to whisper in Erica’s ear, “It’s the social worker.”
“She could have blinded me, the vicious little bitch!” the social worker snapped as the owner of the restaurant apologized, offering her a cloth and some ice for her cheek, and Erica watched this with growing anger, resisting finishing what Leah had started only by sheer force of will.
No matter what Patty or Erica said, the security guard refused to let Leah go, insisting, “She assaulted that woman! She’s going to jail, Lady!”
Desperate, Erica ran for the pay phone, calling her father who was, thankfully, still at the house. She told him what had happened and he said he was on his way, hanging up before Erica could even finish telling him everything.
“Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?” Over and over Leah screamed, her voice growing hoarse, whittled down to a croak by the time the police arrived. The crowd that had gathered was told to disperse, but they refused, staying to watch the train wreck.
The officer put her in handcuffs, but he told his partner they really needed four-point restraints and radioed for an ambulance. When they arrived, Leah was put on a stretcher, this time in some sort of jacket that wrapped around her body and buckled to keep her from moving.
Her eyes were closed, and she was drugged and mumbling when they started wheeling her away. The only word Erica could make out was, “Grace.”
The paramedics tended to the woman, the one Leah had called ‘the ghoul,’ bandaging her face and suggesting she come with them to the hospital.
“I’m not riding in the same ambulance with her.” The ghoul sneered, looking over where Erica stood, her father just arrived, hugging his daughter close, his desperate gaze searching for some glimpse of his wife, but they had just wheeled her away. Patty was holding Leah’s things—the dropped pocketbook, her shoes, looking as lost as Erica felt.
The ghoul pointed in their direction, eyes burning with anger. She came closer, her voice low, but loud enough to hear. “That dirty little whore will never, ever get her hands on that baby now. She’s going to jail for this, and I hope she rots there. I’ll see you all in court on Monday.”
Chapter Eleven
“All rise.”
Leah did, with Rob’s help at her elbow, although her knees were wobbly and threatened to buckle. She had dreamed about Grace all night, tossing and turning and crying out in her sleep. Poor Rob had a bruise on his side from where she had elbowed him, dreaming about fighting the ghoul for her baby, wrenching the infant away from the woman, only to find the blanket empty.
She had done her best to cover her dark circles, dressing very modestly—their meeting with Donald Highbrow the day before had deeply impressed that upon her. Appearances mattered. He just shook his head and sighed when they told him about her arrest and being taken in restraints to the hospital. She’d only stayed there overnight, being released in Rob’s custody on Sunday.
She knew she had put the case in jeopardy, b
ut when she’d seen that woman in the restaurant bathroom, just standing there washing her hands, carefree and happy as a lark, she had lost it. There was the ghoul, the woman who had taken Leah’s baby right out of her bassinette, bold as you please, right under her nose. The ghoul was singing to herself as she dried her hands, turning to see Leah standing in the door, and the worst part was, she didn’t say a word. Not one word.
The ghoul just straightened her shoulders, tossed her head back and walked right past her, nudging Leah aside to open the door. It was that cold, callous treatment, the woman’s utter disregard, like Leah was nothing to her, invisible, that had done it. Leah had snapped. She couldn’t remember much after she grabbed the ghoul’s arm, turning the woman to face her at the front of the restaurant, demanding to know where her baby was.
She didn’t remember the fight, and Erica and Patty weren’t much help in that regard, since they had arrived after it had been broken up, but she had, apparently, removed the comb from her hair and gouged the woman with its metal teeth at some point during their argument. Rob told her it was probably the drugs causing her loss of memory, but she wasn’t sure that was it. Everything in her vision had gone black with rage when the ghoul had turned around and told her in a hiss that she would never, ever see her baby again.
Rob sat, pulling Leah down with him, and she collapsed into him like a rag doll, trembling against his side. Her mother served as another bookend on her right, holding her up, and Erica was next to her. Erica had asked Clay to come with her, and she was sitting close to him, holding his hand.
The lawyer had explained everything. First the judge would come out and he would call their case. There would be other cases, and other people in the courtroom. Today they would be simply addressing Donald Highbrow’s motion that the child be returned to Leah based on the law—she had six months to change her mind about the adoption, regardless of whether or not she was coerced into signing the papers.
The lawyers would present their arguments and witnesses. Leah would be called to the stand to verify that, yes, she was changing her mind about the adoption and now wanted her baby back. Donald explained that the state would present their case, calling the social worker and others in an attempt to show Leah as an unfit mother. They would also be able to cross-examine her. He had prepared her as best he could for their questions, making it very clear if she had another outburst in the courtroom like she had in the restaurant at Hudson’s, it was likely she really would never see her baby again.