I can tell he’s trying to see where I’m coming from. But he can’t. He doesn’t understand why it hurts me. Is it a difference between males and females? Because men can’t give birth? I’m Georgina’s mother. She came from my body; my blood was once her blood. I breastfed her until I got pregnant with Jojo. It occurred to me today, when I was looking at her while we stood in line to check out at the market, that she must have cried for me when that woman took her. Georgina must have cried for me for days. Months? How long does it take a two-year-old to forget her mother?
“She doesn’t remember the house,” I go on, even though I know he doesn’t want me to. “She doesn’t remember Sadie. You would think a little girl would remember her dog, wouldn’t you?”
He rests his hand on the doorknob. He won’t look at me. “She was a little girl. You can’t be angry with her for not remembering. A lot of people can’t remember anything from when they were two.”
“Did you know that she thought her birthday was in August? She was disappointed when she found out she’s younger than she thought. She asked me about driving. Did you know she has a driver’s license—not to drive alone, of course. Can you believe that woman—”
“Harper,” he interrupts. “Georgina’s old enough to have an intermediate license.”
I lower my head. “I know, I just—”
“You’ve got to stop this.”
He closes the door. So the girls can’t hear us? Or so I can’t get away from him. So I have to listen to what he’s saying. So I have to admit he’s right. Which he is. I know that. Logically I know it, but for so long I’ve been so scared that it’s hard to think of Georgina and even Jojo as more than children. It’s so damned hard.
“I know why you are the way you are,” Remy says, his hand on the door. “But you’ve got to back off. It’s okay to be afraid, but your fear can’t keep our girls from growing up healthy and happy. Last night you said something about Jojo’s immaturity. Why do you think she behaves immaturely? She acts like that because you treat her like a child.”
“Wow,” I say softly. Trying not to be hurt by his words. Still hurt.
“Harper—”
“No, you’re right. I need to expect more of her. I need to . . .” I let my sentence go unfinished. There are so many things I need to do better as a parent that I can’t even begin the list because I’ll feel so overwhelmed. “I’m sorry. I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“I just need to try harder,” I say.
He doesn’t answer. He just kisses my temple and opens the back door. “Come on. Our girls are waiting.”
22
Lilla
Our Lady nursing home smells a little weird, but it doesn’t seem like a bad place. I bet it’s expensive. The landscaping is pretty fancy. There’s a baby grand piano in the foyer. I don’t play any musical instruments so I have no expertise in this field, but it looks like a nice one.
I still can’t figure out if my parents are rich or not. They have that big old house in that ritzy neighborhood, but Remy inherited it when his dad died. I don’t think he pays a mortgage on it. He and Harper Mom both have good jobs, but she doesn’t work full time. They only have the one car, but the seats are leather. Harper Mom doesn’t wear diamonds; she doesn’t even wear a wedding band. Neither of them does. Jojo’s got Ugg boots, but they’re at least a year old. So maybe they have the fancy house, which has to be expensive to maintain, but they don’t have a lot of money. But this place . . . somebody’s got money to be paying for a room here.
As we walk through the halls, two nurses and a man emptying trash cans say hello to Remy and Harper Mom. Everybody acts like they know each other. I guess the parents come a lot. Which isn’t surprising. I’m not an idiot. I know they’re nice people. Sharon would say good people. Remy and Harper Mom would take care of their parents, even when they were sick . . . or crazy. I don’t mean that in a callous way. I just mean that some people might not see the sense in visiting someone who doesn’t know you anymore. Who won’t remember whether you came to visit or not. Putting them in a nursing home where they’ll be fed and kept safe is one thing; driving half an hour in each direction, several times a week, to talk to somebody who doesn’t know you is different. It says a lot for Remy in particular because this granddad isn’t even his father. I know he came twice last week because Harper Mom didn’t. Because of me.
Jojo sulked on the car ride all the way here. She’s really pissed at me. Maybe she thinks I’m going to tell on her. Which is dumb because if I was, wouldn’t I have already done it? I wonder if I should tell, though. Is that what responsible big sisters do? To keep little sisters out of serious trouble? I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never felt a sense of responsibility for anyone else but Sharon Mom.
My gut instinct tells me to keep my mouth shut. At least this time. Maybe when Jojo’s done being mad she didn’t get to go to the party, she might be glad I kept her from getting into big trouble when she got caught. Maybe she’ll even like me. A little. I don’t know how I feel about that, either. I’ve never cared about what anyone but Sharon Mom thought about me. Now there are three more people in my life that I know I should care about. Even more waiting in the wings, because Remy and Harper both have family I haven’t met yet. That’s supposed to be sometime soon. We’re going to have a family dinner, which I hope doesn’t resemble our family meeting.
The parents didn’t seem to notice in the car that Jojo was in a bad mood. There was something going on with the two of them. They were acting weird. They were talking, but their voices were . . . tight. What their disagreement or whatever was about, I don’t know. Probably had something to do with me. It seems like it always does.
We keep walking down halls, first one, then another. There are old people walking around. An old lady in a wheelchair wearing plastic Mardi Gras beads waves at us as we go by. The nursing home is a big place. It looks like a cross between a hospital and a college dorm. I’ve never actually been to either. I wanted to go to a computer coding camp for high schoolers last summer at a college in Alabama. They provided a room and meals and everything. I really wanted to go and I was so angry when Sharon told me I couldn’t. Her excuse was lame, something about transportation because she had to work. Looking back, I realize that she gave me plenty of freedom in some ways, but in others she didn’t. I was always allowed to do what I wanted alone, but not with other people. I guess she was paranoid about someone getting too close to me and finding out her secret. Which is absurd. How could I tell someone I wasn’t her daughter, if I didn’t know it? So Sharon was crazy and paranoid. Or do they go together and get lumped into one?
Neither of us was ever sick, and we didn’t have any close friends, so I was never inside a hospital, either. My experiences are secondhand. I saw dorm rooms in movies like Liberal Arts and Monsters University. And hospitals on TV. Sharon and I watched Grey’s Anatomy together for years. Until it got too silly.
We stop at a door with a nameplate that says “Joseph Wolff.” That was Harper’s maiden name before she married Remy. I saw her undergraduate diploma on the wall in the office in the house. I wonder why she decided to take Remy’s name when they got married. A lot of times female doctors don’t take their husband’s name. If I worked as long as she did to be called doctor, I don’t know that I would have changed mine. Of course I don’t have the same last name I did three weeks ago so I’m not sure I’m a good person to ask.
Remy knocks on the door. “Joe?” It’s open a little. He pushes it in. “Joe, it’s Remy, your son-in-law.” He walks in. “I brought someone special to see you.”
Harper Mom stays in the doorway. “Go on in,” she tells me. “Your dad will introduce you. I want to talk with my dad’s nurse before she heads home for the day.” She cuts her eyes at Jojo. “You too. Go say hi to Granddad. One day he’ll be gone and you’ll be glad you did.”
Jojo doesn’t look to me like she’s ever going to be glad about anyth
ing.
Harper points. “Go on.”
“Do I have to?” my sister huffs.
I wonder if Jojo knows what a poor impression she gives people. Her mom and dad are smart and nice. She can’t be the total loser she acts like she is most of the time.
“I’m hungry.” Now Jojo is whining. “Can I go see what’s in the vending machine?”
“We’re going out to eat. Go say hello, Josephine.”
I step inside. It’s a decent-sized room, but it’s got a lot of furniture in it. I hear a TV. Loud. There’s a single bed that’s made with a blue bedspread and a nightstand next to it. Then there’s a dresser and a bookcase and something that looks like a huge dish cabinet. There’s a big TV on a stand. And a recliner where a little old man sits.
“Look who we’ve brought, Joe,” Remy is saying, loud, so he can be heard above the TV. He picks up the remote from a table next to the chair and uses it to lower the volume.
“Remy?” the old man says. He squints, staring through wire-frame glasses. “My son?”
“Son-in-law. Your daughter Harper’s husband.” Remy offers his hand and the old man shakes it, but he seems suspicious. Of all of us.
Joe Wolff, my grandfather, is wearing blue pants and a blue flannel plaid shirt with a knit vest over it. He’s got a lot of hair for an old man, hair so white that it doesn’t look real. He has a nice face, really wrinkly, but nice. I wonder how old he is. Seventy-five? Eighty-five? I’m not good with ages. His eyes are very green. Like Harper Mom’s and Jojo’s.
“This is your granddaughter, Joe,” Remy tells Granddad. “We brought Georgina. Your granddaughter.”
“My granddaughter?”
I walk over to him and offer my hand the way Remy did. I feel a little weird. I don’t really know any old people. Last year, I had a social studies teacher, Mrs. Benson, who was pretty old. She retired at the end of the school year, which was a shame because she was really good. She wore old-lady shoes, and this guy in my class said she was seventy, but she didn’t act old.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” I say. His hand is warm and dry and bony. But not creepy. I think we’re going to shake the way he and Remy did, and he’ll let go, but he holds on to my hand.
Granddad frowns. “Who are you again?” he asks me.
“Remy,” Harper Mom calls from the doorway. “I’m going to go down and talk to Maddy. She gets off soon.”
“I’ll come with,” Remy says. He looks at me. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.” Then he leans and whispers to me. “He’s really nice. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t remember you. He played with you when you were little. He only lived a few blocks away. He read to you all the time. You adored him.”
I nod, looking at the old man again. He’s still holding my hand. Staring at my face like he’s trying to remember me.
“Stay here,” Remy tells Jojo as he walks by her.
“Tell me again. Who are you?” my grandfather asks me again.
I ease my hand from his. “I’m Lilla,” I say, half spooked, half mesmerized by him.
Jojo makes a sound of annoyance. “It’s Georgina, Granddad. Your granddaughter who got kidnapped. Remember? Somebody took her out of her stroller? Have you got any snacks?”
He points to the dish cabinet that doesn’t display any dishes. “Cookies, Cheetos, and red whip licorice.” He turns his attention back to me. “I like red whip licorice. You like it?”
Jojo abandons me.
“You like it, Granddaughter?” he says to me.
I’m not sure what whip licorice is, but I nod. “I like red licorice.”
“Hey!” Granddad calls to Jojo. “Don’t eat all the licorice. Bring us some.” He reaches for an upholstered footstool that matches the chair he’s sitting in. It takes him so long to pull it closer that I debate whether or not I should help him. But he’s getting it done. Sometimes people don’t want help. They want to do things themselves.
When he finally gets the footstool where he wants it, he pats it. “Sit,” he tells me.
It’s a little closer than I want to be to him, but I sit. He doesn’t smell bad. In fact, he smells good, like soap and fabric softener. I notice that his clothes are clean and new. And he’s wearing expensive sheepskin slippers. Maybe he pays for this fancy place himself.
“So what’s your name?” he asks me. Before I can answer, he goes on. “Georgina or Lilla? Which is it?”
I’m surprised he remembers what Remy said and I said. From the way Jojo was talking about him, I figured Granddad was pretty out of it.
“Um . . . both,” I say.
He stares at me, adjusting his glasses. “You’ve got two names?”
I look at Jojo. She’s taken a big tin out of the cabinet and she’s pulling out bags of chips and cookies and candy. I look at Granddad. “You knew me by Georgina. That’s what Harper Mom . . . Mom and Dad called me,” I explain. It feels weird calling them that. Not Remy so much because I never had a dad, but calling Harper “Mom” feels like a betrayal of Sharon. Who doesn’t have a right to be called Mom anymore, I know that. But I don’t have all these ideas set in my head yet; they’re still swirling around and I’m waiting for them to settle.
Granddad waits for my explanation.
“I was abducted when I was a baby.” I say it quietly, hoping Jojo can’t hear me over the sound of the TV. I don’t know why I care if she hears me. I just do. “The lady who kidnapped me named me Lilla. So growing up, I thought my name was Lilla. She was Jewish.” I have no idea why I say that. It has nothing to do with anything. Maybe I figure I ought to tell him since he’s obviously Catholic. A big crucifix, the kind with the dead Jesus, hangs over his bed.
He squints. “You were kidnapped?”
I rip a dry cuticle off my thumb with my teeth. “Yes, sir.”
“From my daughter. When you were a baby?”
I nod.
He looks like he’s thinking. He thinks for a long time. Jojo is rustling a bag. Planet Earth is on the TV. I’ve seen this episode. It’s about grasslands. I like Planet Earth.
Granddad speaks again. “You were kidnapped when you were a baby and now you’re back.”
“Yes . . . I . . . They found me,” I say awkwardly.
“And now you’re grown-up?”
“I’m sixteen.”
He thinks again. “But you’re definitely my granddaughter.” This isn’t a question. He’s studying me.
“Yes.”
He smiles at me and I smile back. I feel a weird connection to him. It’s like . . . he gets me. He gets what it is to be me. I get the sense that he understands what it’s like to be in this weird place where people are telling me who I am, but I don’t remember. I bet he feels the same way because he doesn’t really remember who we are . . . or maybe even who he is anymore.
“So what do you want me to call you?” Granddad asks.
“I . . . I don’t know.” I press my lips together. I really like this old man and I don’t know why. Is it because I feel a connection to how lost he must feel without his memory? Or is it because he read to me when I was little and I love books and somehow, subconsciously, I remember him? It seems far-fetched, but what part of my life doesn’t seem far-fetched anymore?
He frowns and his forehead becomes a mass of wrinkles. “What are my choices again?”
I smile. I can’t help myself. “They named me Georgina, but I thought I was Lilla.”
“Lilla. Like Lilly. Only with an a. That how you say it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods slowly. I study his face. I know we don’t have wheels for brains, but I can almost see his turning. It’s like he’s trying so hard to follow the conversation and figure things out.
“I like Lilla,” he says after a moment. “I think I’ll call you Lilla.”
“Okay.” I pick a piece of fuzz off my new jacket. “I’m not sure how your daughter will feel about that. But that’s fine with me.”
He gives a wave. “She’ll get over it.
” He looks past me. “Hey you, girl. Are you eating my licorice?”
Jojo laughs.
“Bring Lilla and me some red whip licorice.” He looks past me at the TV. “You like Planet Earth?”
I turn on the footstool so I can see the TV. “I do.”
“You want to watch with me and eat red whip licorice, Lilla?”
“I do, Granddad.” I reach for the remote and for the first time since the police took me out of our house, I feel a little bit like myself. Not like Lilla Kohen. She’s gone. But maybe a little bit like this new girl, Lilla Broussard.
23
Harper
I stand in the kitchen, alone, sipping a cup of coffee in semidarkness. The only light on is the one above the stove. I know I shouldn’t be drinking coffee at seven p.m. I’ll never sleep. It doesn’t matter; I’m not sleeping much anyway. And it’s not due to too much caffeine. It’s Georgina. It’s Remy. It’s Jojo.
Me.
Most of all, me.
I know nothing is ever quite as good as you think it’s going to be. I’m not naïve. But Georgina’s been here three weeks and our household doesn’t remotely resemble what I thought it was going to. What I dreamed of, for fourteen years, when I prayed to God to bring her home.
No one is getting along. No one can agree on anything. Except maybe their dislike of me.
No, that’s not true. Remy and Georgina are getting along great. She never gives him that dark-eyed stare. She never gets angry with him. Even though I make him be the bad guy whenever I need a bad guy. Remy was the one who told her she had to continue at Ursuline even though after three days she said she wasn’t going back. He told her she couldn’t get a part-time job. Not yet. And he’s the one who’s been putting her off for weeks about contacting Sharon. And now we know where she is.
I swear, I feel as if I’m living in an alternate universe. The woman who kidnapped my child, a woman in prison, has actually become a person in my life. Her name actually comes out of my mouth as if she were a neighbor or an acquaintance from church.
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