THE DAY I WAS LEAVING NOVA SCOTIA, BLANCHE’S HUSBAND WAS RETURNING. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t get to meet him because his train would arrive after mine departed. But at least Blanche only had to make one trip to the train station. I’d arrived by ferry to Wolfville, but had decided to take the train to Digby and cross on the ferry Empress to St. John’s, a route Blanche had recommended.
As we drove away from the farmhouse—Blanche’s home, my mother’s home, my winter refuge—the children were hanging from the open gate in their places, youngest to oldest. I threw my arm out the window, fingers waving.
Blanche stopped the car in front of the church that had been built on the spot of the old church, the one that had housed all the Acadian “men” over the age of ten on the day they were told they would be removed from their country.
“Most were in disbelief,” Blanche told me as we looked about the church, trying to imagine the scene. “The British had made threats before.” She shrugged. “And besides, who believes such a thing would happen?”
We walked the grounds, the scene of the deportation.
“Your ancestors were deported too, then?” I asked.
“No,” said Blanche, shaking her head. “My husband’s were, but not mine.”
“But you’re Acadian.”
“Oh, yes. But we never left.”
“How could that be?” I asked.
“The Mi’kmaq took my ancestors in. They hid them for many years.”
“You’re not among the returned, then,” I said, “not like my mother’s family.”
She didn’t answer, just looked out over the meadow toward the bay. “There aren’t many Acadians in this part of Nova Scotia, even after the returning.” She sighed. “I can’t take it in, what these people went through.”
“Your people,” I said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And your grandmother’s. She never forgot it. She lived and breathed it. It defined her life.” Blanche looked at me. “And her children’s lives. She wouldn’t let her daughters ever forget, even forcing Laura to marry Frank.”
I hesitated. “I saw a picture of my aunt with Frank. I think she was in love with him.”
Blanche’s brow furrowed. “Was she? I’m sure that wasn’t in your grandmother’s plan. Mrs. Lancaster held that over Cora’s head, that Laura had sacrificed while Cora had run off to New York. She had a great influence over Cora.”
“Over my mother?” I asked, incredulous. “I didn’t think anyone could influence my mother.”
“Your grandmother was made of tough stuff, of the need for vengeance.”
We stared up at the bronze statue of Evangeline, the heroine of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Her head was tilted back and her anguished eyes looked toward the cold blue sky.
“You think my mother is insane, don’t you?” I asked softly. “That she should be in the asylum.”
She paused. “I tried to find you, you know.” I looked at her in surprise. “After your mother was put away, Laura wrote me in distress. I went to her—”
“At Sanctuary?”
“Yes. The only time I’ve left Nova Scotia, in fact,” she said. “And I tried to find out where Laura had sent you, what boarding school, because I wanted to bring you here to live with me.”
A warm feeling came over me as I contemplated that. How my mother had a childhood friend who loved her so dearly she’d tried to find her daughter and take her in. And I marveled at Blanche’s kind, wide heart. What would my life had been like if I’d come here to live? Would I still have searched out Sanctuary, or would this have been enough?
“Laura wouldn’t tell me,” Blanche continued. “And assured me all was well, that this is what Cora had been planning to do for years. I met your uncle briefly and took a disliking to him right away.”
I nodded at that. “So you don’t think Sanctuary is haunted?”
She grew somber, looking around us.
“I know it’s just a piece of earth,” she said finally, “but when I stand here, on this spot, I can sense something in the air. Something that lingers here, that’s sad and tragic. It does makes me wonder if the earth is alive and watching us. We die, and it goes on, but it takes a little of us with it before we go.”
It was eerily similar to what the woman on the boat told me when I arrived. I believed it. I believed the earth and the sea had power. I had an idea about that and what it might represent to Amoret.
Blanche thought dark human emotion created this tragedy. Didn’t it follow that the other end of the spectrum—love and kindness and selflessness—had equal influence?
We were quiet for a while, walking through the snow dusting the fields, finally making it down to the cross set up at the place of deportation. As we sat there watching the placid water of the Minas Basin, Blanche said, “She loved your father, you know. He brought her great happiness.”
“It would seem.”
“If you ever need a place to be, Cecilia,” she said, “this is it.”
I looked at her then, studying her kind eyes.
“You’re always welcome,” she said, “with me and mine.”
HE LOOKED UP FROM HIS DESK WHEN I ENTERED HIS OFFICE. HIS FACE showed his shock. He didn’t say anything, just stayed very still.
I sat across from him. He stared at me, his pen in hand, still poised to write.
“You look thin, Eli,” I said quietly.
He blinked. He put his hand over his face and rubbed his eyes, then looked at me again. He set down his pen and said, “You look older.”
I gave a hollow laugh. “It’s the hat, I think.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked politely.
“That would be nice,” I said, feeling uncomfortable and not knowing what to say and stalling until I could think of something.
With a nod, he left the office. The heat was barely on. I pulled my coat around me and looked out the second-floor window until he returned.
I sipped the hot coffee. “Good,” I said, gesturing with the cup.
“You look good, well.”
“I feel … rested.”
“Where have you been?” His distance hurt my heart.
“Nova Scotia.” Then more quietly, “Acadie.”
He raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that.” I wondered if he’d been searching for me. “I thought you wouldn’t want any …” His voice trailed off.
“Reminders.”
He nodded.
“I had some things I needed to figure out.”
“Did you figure them out?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you back? Are you returning to Sanctuary?”
“I need to do something first,” I said.
He nodded. I tried to tell him with my eyes how much I missed him, trying to see in his eyes if he missed me. But he wouldn’t hold my gaze; he kept looking away.
“You could have written,” he said finally.
“Yes.”
“Just to let me know you were all right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You haven’t forgiven me, then?” he asked.
“I understand why you did what you did.”
He studied me for a moment with unreadable eyes. Talk to me, I wanted to say. “Why are you here, Cecilia?” he asked.
I paused and looked at my hands. “I need your help.”
“My help,” he repeated.
“Is that such a surprise?”
“It is.”
“You’re angry with me?”
He looked so weary, I wanted to reach over the desk and put my hand on his cheek and tell him how much he meant to me and how sorry I was that I had left and that I did forgive him and that now I hoped he forgave me.
He took a long breath. “I’m relieved to see you’re all right. Very. Relieved.”
“So you’ll help me?”
“With your uncle? I’d prefer you didn’t go back. There’s not anything for you there.”
&
nbsp; “Not with my uncle,” I said. “But I do need to return.”
“Why?” he asked, exasperated.
This was a new Eli. I had only seen him mostly calm. I realized it was because he was angry, and angry with me. I wasn’t sure if he even knew it, but he was wrestling with it.
“I have something I need to do,” I said quietly.
He stared at me for a long moment, then looked away, saying to the wall, “What do you need my help with?”
I paused long enough for him to look back at me. “I need your help with my mother.”
“I’ve been visiting her.”
My eyebrows shot up. “How is she?”
He hesitated. “I’m concerned about Dr. Brighton’s medical treatment of her.”
I pressed my lips together. “I want you to help me get her out.”
He thought for a moment. “I’m a new psychiatrist just beginning my career,” he said finally. “She won’t be released because I say so.”
“There must be something you can do.”
“I’ve tried, believe me. Especially when I found out what Dr. Brighton … I’m sorry. I need to tell you.”
“What?” I asked, in a panic.
“Cecilia,” he said gently, “he wants to perform a neurosurgical procedure on your mother’s brain.”
“What kind of procedure?” When I saw him hesitate, I said anxiously, “Just tell me.”
“The surgeon would remove parts of the cerebral cortex—”
“What? No!” I interrupted, sick to my stomach. I continued to stare at him as he looked at me sadly. “When is the operation?”
“Next week.”
“You have to help me get her out of there! Help her escape.”
He gave a long, slow blink. “Escape?”
“She can’t stay there. You know they shouldn’t do that to her. You’re a moral person, an ethical person.”
“Cecilia,” he said slowly.
“We have to get her out.”
“If I’m caught,” he said, “I’ll never practice as a psychiatrist again.”
I looked out the window. “Yes,” I said, realizing he was right. “I can’t ask that of you. I’m not like Helen.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said she, your fiancée—”
“She wasn’t my fiancée.”
“She asked you to give up your career. I can’t ask you to do that. I know what it means to you.” I stood. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m doing it.” I went to the door, my mind racing. I had things to figure out.
I told him where I was staying and left.
I JUMPED AT THE KNOCK ON MY DOOR, THINKING IT MIGHT BE THE CRAZY man down the hall, who was still here. I’d hoped Mrs. Oliver, the landlady, had thrown him out by now, but it was a cruel thing for me to wish on someone suffering or deranged or both. I understood what it was to suffer.
“There’s a man to see you,” Mrs. Oliver said. “He’s in the sitting room. There’s no one else in there right now,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
He was standing, playing with a clock on the mantel, his hat on a chair behind him.
“Hello, Eli,” I said.
When he turned to me, I was hoping I’d be able to read his face. But I couldn’t. He was even more reserved than when I’d first met him. I felt the loss of him and sat down in a chair.
He almost sat on his hat, but then moved it. The door opened without a knock preceding it. Mrs. Oliver came in balancing a tray of cups. “It’s such a cold night,” she said to me. “I thought you and your guest might want a cup of hot tea.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I told her as Eli cleared off the coffee table so she could set down the tray.
“Thank you,” Eli said politely, the edge gone from his voice, and I saw a little of the man I’d first met at Sanctuary. But when the landlady left, his distance returned. Politely, quietly, he made my tea the way I liked it and handed me a cup. He didn’t take any for himself.
We sat together for a moment in the quiet with me drinking my tea. The crackling of the fire, the coziness of the room, the darkness of the night mirroring the window created an intimacy I hadn’t experienced in Eli’s office. But the sudden closeness meant I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face. Instead I stared at his hand resting on the arm of the chair: a strong, capable hand that had caressed my eyelids …
“I’ve realized I did a terrible thing to you,” he was saying. My eyes went to his and must have still held the soft look of memory because he stumbled trying to find his next words. “Betraying … your trust.”
I nodded at him, not able to look away.
He cleared his throat, pressed on. “I thought I was doing a good thing, trying to help someone. I’d met your mother and consulted with Dr. Brighton and heard the case. Dr. Brighton believed—based on his interviews with your mother and what your uncle had told him—that you and your mother shared a mental illness.”
I looked away.
“There was evidence to suggest this was true,” he said quietly.
This was still a sore subject for me. I thought I had put my fears and my anger behind me. But I realized I still had some healing to do after all. Maybe it would be a journey I’d always be on. “You thought that after you’d met me?” I asked.
“I want to be honest. Yes, there were things you said and did that made me question your mental state. But I also felt you had a very rational mind and that you tried to reason things out. That trait in you conflicted with the other things happening and your reaction to them. But … I also realized I had … fallen for you,” he said, faltering a little. (Was that gone now, Eli?) “And that might be affecting my perception of …”
“Of my sanity.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “But when … when I saw the fireflies surround you that way, almost like they were protecting you, and I felt it too, not just saw it. Felt some strange energy there. And … now that I’ve had time to think about it, away from the island, I remembered sometimes feeling as if the house itself had some sort of presence trapped within it. I realized there were things that I didn’t understand.” He paused, leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. “Part of me is intrigued by it. I was always drawn to the study of the mind. It’s exquisitely incomprehensible. Perhaps there are other mysteries that I don’t understand, that don’t seem possible, but somehow … are.”
He looked up at me, and I nodded.
“So,” he said, “I began to look more deeply into your mother’s case. I interviewed her frequently. I realized Dr. Brighton was experimenting on her. He said it was to help. And I know he has a genuine interest in psychiatry, but it doesn’t emerge from compassion. It’s cold science to him. By being careful and observant, and with not a small amount of sleuthing, I’ve discovered he has several patients he’s manipulating in the same way—patients who have no families or ties—how they react to certain medication, certain dosages, and other therapies.”
“There must be something that can be done.”
“I haven’t figured out what it is yet. Dr. Brighton is a man of considerable power, wealth, and prestige in the local and in the psychiatric community. His family is old, and his money is old. He is well respected, well liked. He has well-placed friends and colleagues.”
“But surely there is evidence.”
“He is very careful.”
“We must get my mother out.”
“We must get your mother out.”
My eyes went to his. He gave me a nod.
“Your career?” I asked.
“What good would I be to myself, to my future patients, if I look the other way? Would I be true to myself if I did that? I don’t think so.”
We were quiet for a moment. Finally, I said, “I’m sorry I said that all those weeks ago, about you not being the man I thought you were. I’ve regretted saying it. It’s not true and it hurt you.”
“I hurt you too. I’m sorry too.”
I bit my lip, l
ooking away. He still seemed so far from me. I wanted things to be like they used to be between us, but there was such a wall there, or a sea, a vast sea of betrayal and hurt.
“So,” he said, still in that reserved tone he’d adopted with me. “So we’ll get your mother out. And somehow in the future I’ll figure out how to help the other patients, although I believe that will be a long, hard path. But we must get your mother out now, before the operation. We don’t have much time.”
ELI AND I WERE SITTING ON THE BENCH IN FRONT OF THE ASYLUM, watching as people entered the building for visitor’s day. I felt agitation rising in my chest as I stared at the sanitarium, remembering my lifelong fear of the place and now my uncle’s intent to have me committed.
I glanced down at my mother’s watch. “She’ll be here soon, I think.”
He nodded.
Three days had passed since Eli had come to see me at the boarding house. In that time, he’d been visiting my mother every day, telling Dr. Brighton he wanted to observe the surgery and aftercare “to witness the improvement in the patient.” The arrogant Dr. Brighton didn’t even suspect an ulterior motive, so certain was he that everyone would find my mother’s surgery as fascinating as he did.
“Do the nurses and orderlies know you well?” I asked Eli.
“Some of them very well.”
I nodded.
He put his hand over mine. Startled, I stared down at our hands. I wanted to strip off our gloves and touch his skin. That need swept over me, immediate and primal. I missed him. Even as he was here right beside me, I missed him. He hadn’t touched me in three days. I hadn’t kissed him in ages. He was so far away, even though his hand was just there, resting on mine.
“Security isn’t as tightly controlled as it should be,” he said, removing his hand. “And they know me and trust me, especially these last few days, with all my visits.”
“Thank you,” I said very quietly, too quietly.
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