The Saints of the Cross

by Michelle Figley

  The shock of hearing those words from those innocent lips causes me to choke, and I spew a mouthful of hot chocolate all over myself. I’m coughing like I just swallowed half a swimming pool, and Emma’s frantically slapping me on the back as she yells in my ear, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I manage to croak. I nudge her off of me before her screaming shatters my eardrum. “I just choked on the cocoa.”

  “Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to die the way you were coughing,” she says and signs the cross over herself. Obviously, she has spent way too much time with Cora back in Spain.

  “I’m going to kill Ethan,” I say once I regain my composure and the coughing fit has stopped. I retrieve some tissues out of my purse to dry the chocolate stains on my white sweater, although I might as well throw it away when we get home; it’s ruined. “We were not having sex in the driveway, I promise.”

  “Good. I was going to say that you’re too much of a lady for that kind of behavior.”

  Christ. My baby sister is lecturing me on what constitutes appropriate lady-like behavior.

  “Exactly,” I laugh, trying to calm myself down. What I’m about to tell her isn’t going to be easy, and I’ve got to maintain some sort of control of the situation and myself.

  “Listen,” I say, brushing wisps of her silky, straight, blonde hair back off her forehead with my free hand. “What I need to tell you involves all of us, and it’s going to change everything about your life as you now know it.”

  She’s blinking expectantly at me with her intense, almond-shaped, green eyes. She inherited the shape of her eyes from our mother and their color from our father—from her father. She nods at me in a very mature, encouraging manner, and all I can think is that I wish Xander were here with me. I need my rock.

  “The reason Dad and I—” I start.

  “And Xander. Don’t forget him,” Emma interrupts. By the expression on her sweet face, I realize that she has a crush on my Xander. And who could blame her?

  “And Xander,” I continue with a smile. “The reason we’ve been gone every weekend for the last month and a half is because we’ve been searching for something.” Okay, that’s a start. Emma’s staring at me now with a perplexed expression, and I know I have to reach deep inside myself and summon the strength I’m lacking on the surface to finish what I’ve started. There’s no turning back now.

  “What have you been looking for?” Emma whispers, and the frown line on her forehead deepens. Isn’t she too young for frown lines? Why haven’t I noticed them before? I’m acutely aware of the fact that depending on how I approach this, it could possibly ruin Emma’s life and forever change who she is as a person. There is absolutely no way I could live with myself if that were to happen, so I take a deep breath and think about how I would want to hear the news. And then I open my mouth.

  “To get my license, I had to bring my birth certificate,” I say, starting from the beginning. “I found the original document from the hospital where I was born, and I discovered Dad’s name was not on it.”

  “What does that mean?” Emma asks, her face crinkled up in confusion.

  “It means that Dad—Nash—isn’t my biological father,” I answer. Her expression tells me that she doesn’t understand what I’m saying to her. “Mom gave birth to me when she was a senior in high school, and Dad met her a year later and married her. Then he adopted me when I was a baby.”

  “Oh, so that means—”

  “You’re right. It means we are half-sisters.” I watch her face. She blinks those innocent doe eyes, and a single tear glistens as it slides down her right cheek. Suddenly, something happens that I wasn’t prepared for: I burst into tears. Emma throws her arms around me and squeezes me tight against her bony little shoulder. She’s stroking my back and whispering in my ear that everything will be okay. I sob harder now because I’m the big sister. I’m supposed to be the strong one.

  I manage to catch my breath and slowly calm myself with help from Emma’s soothing voice. I dry my eyes with the tissue I used to blot my sweater and look into Emma’s stoic face. Although I see a lot of our mother in her, I also see a lot of Nash in her, too. She’s inherited everything that’s good about both of them. She’s strong and wise like her father, and beautiful and kindhearted like our mother. I am none of those things.

  I hook my arm around Emma and pull her closer to me. She wraps her arms around my waist and rests her head on my chest. I kiss the top of her head and tell her, “I love you.” And when I do, I realize I’ve never said those words to her, or to Ethan. Emma cranes her neck up to look in my face. Her eyes search mine, but then she lowers her head and hugs me tighter.

  “I always thought you hated me. And Ethan,” she whispers.

  I let loose of her and, tipping her chin up, see that her cheeks are wet with silent tears. A pang of guilt stabs me in the gut, and if I could, I’d twist the knife even deeper, because I deserve it.

  “I have always loved you, Emma. Always. From the time you were just a little baby and momma brought you home from the hospital. You were the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, and she smiles up at me. “I know I’ve been awful to you. I’ve been a terrible sister. And I promise you, I am going to be better.”

  “Thank you, Evie. I love you, too.” She hugs me tighter, and I swallow hard because of what I’ve got to tell her next. I know it will break her heart, but I’ve got to be honest with her. She’s mature enough to handle it—she’s proven that to me—and I promised her I would be better. So that’s what I’m going to do. I let go of her and turn to face her.

  “Emma, I have something else to tell you,” I say and stroke her cheek. She stares back at me with wide, expectant eyes. “When I found the birth certificate, I went to Indiana where I was born to find my father—my biological father.”

  “You did? Did Dad know?”

  “No. He didn’t know. I did it behind his back, and I’m not proud of it.”

  “Did you find your real father?”

  “Nash will always be my real father, because he’s the one who worked hard to raise me. But I had to know where I came from. I had to know where I got this ridiculous red hair and freckles,” I say with a weak laugh. “But no, I didn’t find him. I did find someone else.”

  “Who?” she asks, her voice full of anticipation.

  “I found our great-grandmother—mom’s grandma.”

  “You did? You talked to her?”

  “Yes. Her name is Grayce—Mamaw Grayce—and she wants to meet you.” I pause for a moment because I’ve got to gather the courage to say what’s next. Emma’s staring at me with her big, wet, green eyes. And looking at those beautiful Irish eyes, I know one thing for sure: if I don’t hurry up and tell her the truth, I’m going to chicken out.

  “She also told me something very important that will change your life forever. Although I had my reservations about telling you, I know I have to. You deserve to know.”

  Emma nods emphatically, her eyes never leaving mine. “Go ahead. You can tell me.”

  “The reason that Dad, Xander, and I have been gone every weekend and some nights during the week . . . the thing we’ve been searching for . . . is our mother,” I say finally. Emma’s staring at me as if I had just said I was from another planet.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you said you’ve been searching for our mother,” she states, and the rosy color drains from her cheeks and lips.

  “I did say that, Emma.”

  “But—I don’t understand. Mom’s dead.” She says this as if she’s a parent telling her child something for the umpteenth time and the kid’s just not getting it.

  “It’s a very long story, but our mother is alive. She was sent back to Indiana ten years ago to be treated for a very serious illness called schizophrenia.”

  “Sent?” Her face is twisted up in anger. “By who?”

  “Dad had to send her,” I say. Emma’s face turns bright red, the way Dad’s does when he becomes ir
ate. “Don’t be angry, Emma. He had to do it for our safety. Mom was very sick. She had horrible ideas about us. She was too dangerous for us to be around, especially considering how young we were.”

  “She needed us. She needed someone to help her. Plus he robbed Ethan and me of our mother. You remember her, but we don’t. We never knew her, and that’s not fair,” she says and bursts into tears. I pull her in close to me and hold her tight. I’m silent for a few moments. All I can do is try to comfort her with my touch, as she did for me earlier.

  “Emma,” I say after she quiets down, “I can’t argue that fact with you, but you have to know that Dad did what he thought was best for us. It wasn’t an easy decision for him to send away the mother of his children and the love of his life. It was heartbreaking for him, but he had to do it. If he hadn’t made that choice, I can’t say for sure that we’d even be alive today. Her delusions were that dangerous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She thought we had superpowers and that someone was trying to kidnap us or kill us. She did some really strange things with us, because she thought she was protecting her kids. The final straw was when she was trying to escape with us in the car, and she ran it off the road. We could have been killed. That’s when Dad decided to send her back to America for treatment, which was the Navy doctors’ recommendation because she wasn’t following the medicine regimen they put her on.”

  Emma’s gaze drifts over to the water formations, where a small girl is teetering close to the edge. Emma’s eyes are distant, and I can tell she’s hashing over everything in her mind. We watch as the toddler’s mom swoops in and gathers her up in her arms, spinning her around in laughter. I wonder what Emma is thinking right now. Is she wishing she’d had her mother in the tough times to sweep her up in her arms? Is she wishing she had known the sound of her mother’s laughter? The feel of her mother’s lips on her cheek? Or the comforting sensation of their fingers laced together? How about the warmth of the unconditional love that only a mother can give? Emma and Ethan never had the opportunity to experience these things and I am incredibly saddened by this realization.

  Finally, Emma turns to me and says, “I need time to think about this and figure out how I feel.”

  “Of course you do,” I say and hug her tight. “And I’m here for you if you need to talk or to answer your questions. Whatever I can do.”

  “Thank you,” she says, and a small smile crosses her face.

  My cell phone starts buzzing in my pocket. I take it out and see it’s a text message from Dad.

  Come home asap. I got a reliable lead on your mother.

  Although my hands are trembling, I quickly gather up my purse and Emma’s dance gear. I grab Emma by the elbow and raise her from the stony seat.

  “Come on. We need to get home,” I say, trying to remain calm, but inside I’m hopeful. I lead the way toward the metro station at the National Mall and text Xander to meet us there.

  “Is everything okay?” Emma asks, her face full of worry.

  “Yes, I hope so,” I say, and leave it at that for now.

  CHAPTER 20

  Honestly, I never thought this day would come. I know I’ve dreamt of it almost nightly since I discovered my mother is alive. These happier dreams have replaced the horrible nightmares I’d been having about her. In the new recurring dream, I’m reunited with my mother, and she’s just as she was before the disease overtook her. She’s young, vibrant, and beautiful. She’s everything I think she should have been, and nothing that she actually was. When we are reunited for the first time, she holds me and tells me she loves me, and I feel like everything is okay again. But then I wake up, and I know it is not. My life is the exact opposite of okay.

  Dad received a call yesterday from Maryland’s state police saying that mom’s description matches a Jane Doe who is currently in a coma in a Baltimore extended-care facility after being hit by a car five years ago. She had no ID on her, and no one has come forward to claim her. Police hypothesized that the woman is schizophrenic by witness accounts of how she was acting before she walked into rush-hour traffic in downtown Baltimore. Dad decided we would drive to Baltimore today to investigate whether the woman is my mother.

  Xander, Emma, and I are sitting in the Land Rover in the gated parking lot, waiting for Dad, Grandma Winnie, and Ethan to arrive. When they do, we go into the building together. It’s a state-of-the-art, single-level structure, with an elaborate security system. We walk through two sets of glass doors before stopping at a locked steel set with a video camera mounted to the side. The receptionist at the front desk buzzes us in after we give her our names and the purpose for our visit over the intercom. Standing by the front desk is a slender, middle-aged lady wearing prim dress clothes and sporting an equally prim smile. Over the desk hangs a sign: Meadowlark Extended Living. The lady informs us that her name is Helen, and that she is the social worker for the facility. After brief introductions, she leads us down a dimly lit hallway and stops abruptly outside a closed door. She turns to Nash and gives what is probably a routine speech in this place.

  “I want to warn you,” she informs us, “if this is your loved one, she won’t look the same even taking into consideration the aging process. She has been on and off a respirator that inserts through the front of her neck, called a trach, and she has been tube fed for the last five years. She’s receiving medications and hydration via intravenous lines. Her body is bloated because of the artificial nutrition, and she looks years older than she actually is. She is completely unresponsive. She does have occasional nonpurposeful movements, such as her eyes opening; but these movements are nothing more than reflexes. She’s in what is commonly known as a persistent vegetative state.”

  “Why don’t we go in and see her? We want to see if we think it is her, before we go any further in discussing her condition,” Dad says, throwing a nervous glance toward Ethan and Emma. He’s right; this sort of thing could give them nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  “Fair enough,” Helen answers and opens the door. The unpleasant sounds, sights, and smells hit me immediately. Apparently, they hit all of us. I look from face to face, and see how disturbed the others are by what we’ve walked into here. All of us, that is, except for Emma. She is the most stoic of us all. Her expression is completely neutral—there’s absolutely no hint of what she’s thinking or feeling on her face. As my senses come back to me, I realize Xander has grabbed my hand. I look up at him, and he’s staring down at me, concerned.

  “You don’t have to stay in here,” I whisper to him.

  “I want to,” he whispers back, and I nod at him. I glance over to his left and see that he’s holding Emma’s hand as well. I smile up at him, and he winks down at me, but there’s nothing playful in his expression.

  The social worker begins to explain what we are seeing. I look over toward the hospital bed and everything comes into focus again. Machine pumps perch on poles. They make strange clicking sounds as they supply hydration and medications through clear, plastic tubes that are inserted into the veins in her arms. There’s a small monitor on a bedside table that beeps in time with her heartbeat, and reports on her heart rhythm and oxygen level. If the saturation number becomes too low, the social worker explains, then the nurses have to hook her back up to the respirator for a time. Hellen tells us that this usually happens when she gets pneumonia, which is common in people who are bedridden. She points to another machine. On this one hangs a bottle of what looks like chocolate milk. This liquid runs through a tube that disappears under the blankets. Helen says it’s her artificial nutrition, which is administered through a tube that is inserted into her small intestine. Apparently, the rancid chemical smell permeating the room is the tube feeding. It’s an odor that’s difficult to get rid of, and it doesn’t smell so great after it’s been digested. When she says this, there’s a sob-slash-gag, and I turn around as Ethan heads toward the door, hand over his mouth and shoulders heaving. Grandma Winnie hooks an arm
around him and mumbles something about how this is no place for children and they disappear through the door.

  Emma’s eyes flick to mine for just a split second, and then focus back on the bed. There’s no doubt in my mind that she was checking to make sure that I’m handling this okay, that I didn’t need her. I release Xander’s hand and step forward until I’m standing directly next to the bed. Dad moves around to the other side. Emma comes up next to me and wraps an arm around my waist, and together we stare down at what was once a woman. She is so incredibly bloated as to almost be unrecognizable as a human being. She’s propped on her side with pillows tucked behind her back. Helen informs us that repositioning the patient at least every two hours is a method employed to prevent skin breakdown and bed sores, although no matter how diligent the nurses are with turning her, she does still get them. Because of her poor nutritional intake and oxygenation, the sores are increasingly difficult to heal. Wow. This woman’s life, if that’s what you want to call it, is incredibly bleak.

  Helen removes the pillows from behind the woman. She’s flat on her back, so I get a better look at her face. But she is so swollen that her eyes and mouth are nothing more than tiny slits, barely visible between mounds of flesh. Her short, black hair is matted against her head. Thick masses of fluid-filled flesh hang from her neck, and her hands are puffy. Dad bends down and peers closer at her as if he’s looking for something. He stands up straight and turns to Helen.

  “May I touch her?” he asks. Hellen hands him a pair of medical gloves as Xander crosses around to the same side of the bed. Dad leans down and moves his face closer to the woman’s neck. He places a gentle hand to her neck and presses some of the abundant flesh taut. He stands up straight again and looks to each of us. He inhales a deep breath and says to Helen, “It’s not her.”

  I’m blinking at him, and Emma says, “How can you be sure?”

  “Your mother has a heart-shaped birthmark on the base of her neck. This woman’s neck has no birthmark.” He removes the gloves and tosses them in a nearby trash can.