Disconnected

by Lisa M. Cronkhite

  “I was just leaving. Amelia, you have my number. Please call me. I’d like to talk to you again. I know I’ve had some rough times, but you were such a joy to have in my life. And I’m hoping that I could still be a part of that.”

  “You will never be a part of her life, Keith,” Aunt Rachel sneers out, tugging at my arm. “You’re nothing but a drug addict.”

  His eyes get glassy as he looks away for a moment. “Rachel, I was just a kid who’d lost the only relative he had. I’ve been clean for years. Milly’s eighteen now. It’s up to her if she wants to see me.”

  Rachel turns to me and says, “What did he say to you, Milly? Whatever it is it isn’t true!” There is panic in her eyes.

  Suddenly my nerves stiffen. Out of nowhere, I straighten out my body, and yank her hand off me. Even though my heart’s racing, I sense a coolness on my skin and finally have the courage to ask. “Why are you like this, Aunt Rachel?”

  Her eyes widen in shock, surprised I would ask such a thing. My voice strengthens deep in my throat. I bellow out all the questions that have been caged within my mind. On and on, I ask, “What have I done to deserve this? Why can’t I find out my past? Why are you keeping things such a secret? Why did you and Grandpa George let me think my parents died in a car accident?”

  Aunt Rachel trembles and steps back. She brings her hand up to her face and her mouth drops open. At first she doesn’t say anything, but I am not backing down now, so I say again. “Talk to me, Aunt Rachel. I have a right to know.”

  “I…I need to sit down,” Aunt Rachel gasps, as her knees start to buckle.

  “Here,” Keith tells her, guiding her to a nearby chair. “You can sit here.” He looks at me. “I’ll be here if you need me, Amelia. Call me?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. He nods and leaves the funeral home.

  Aunt Rachel is falling apart before my eyes. I stand in front of her and wait until she looks up at me and says, “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry, Milly. We didn’t lie to you—about that. I don’t know where you got the car accident idea.” She takes a moment to catch her breath. “But it’s true, we never told you otherwise. We thought that was your only way of coping. I thought I was helping you that way.”

  “Who were my mother and father? Tell me!”

  Aunt Rachel bites her lip, and then says in a shaky voice, “Your mother was my youngest sister, Amelia.”

  And without even processing what she said, I charge into the next question and ask, “What happened to her? Where is she?”

  “She’s…she’s dead.” she says softly and pauses for a few short seconds. “She hung herself on the magnolia tree in the garden. She did it that night—right after she had you.”

  “Why?” I stand over her and she crinkles back in the chair. She takes a tissue from the small end table and brings it up to her eyes. I wait while she composes herself. “Why,” I ask again. “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “It was your grandfather,” she says. “He’s the one. He’s the one who got her pregnant. Grandpa George was your father, Milly.” She breaks down and bursts into tears.

  All the blood rushes to the top of my body and fills my brain with an overwhelming sense of confusion. I need air and fast. I take a few steps back, giving Aunt Rachel one hard look before I turn around and search for Blake. I run into the kitchen where I find him.

  “Take me away from here,” I say, rushing into his arms. “I have to get out of here.”

  “Okay,” he says, holding me close. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Blake drives slowly down the graveled road to Aunt Rachel’s house. I ask him to pull off to the side, behind the small shed, and tell him to wait for me.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Blake asks, parking the car.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  I get out of the car, dart across the yard, and race up the porch steps. Opening the door and crossing the threshold, my heart speeds up just from being in the house again. A nauseous feeling rises in my throat. I take a few deep breaths and run upstairs.

  Hurry, Milly! Hurry! Amelia screams out in my mind.

  I dart in my room, getting a duffle bag from inside the closet, and feverishly pack my clothes. I rake my clothes off the hangers and stuff them into the bag. The room is spinning around me in a windwhirl of darkness. Just being here makes me sick. I imagine George downstairs as if he was still here. Knowing what I know now, it gives me the creeps.

  I take a seat near the window, trying to catch my breath. From the corner of my eye, I see someone walking across the backyard. It’s Aunt Rachel. I’m surprised to see her back from the funeral home so soon. Is she following me? No. She’s headed straight for the garden.

  The garden where the birth mother I never knew is buried. How many secrets? How many lies?

  From the window, I see her standing there, right under the magnolia tree. I watch the light pink petals drift in the breeze. A prickle of goose bumps spread along my arms. The chill unnerves me.

  I get up and race back downstairs. My heart gyrates inside my chest and is about to burst out of me when I reach the landing. I try to catch my breath as I glide through the front room and into the kitchen.

  Pushing the screen door open, it sways shut behind me as I step out onto the porch. I run down the steps and into the open yard. I make it to the rose bushes and turn around the corner, hoping she’s still there. I walk across some flagstone and reach for the gate. I swing it open. When it swings back and clinks on the latch, it startles her.

  But my attention is on the statue, and the tombstone beneath it. “Isn’t this your mother’s grave?” I ask.

  “No. My mother died a year before…before it happened.”

  “Then…”

  “Your mother, Amelia—her ashes are buried here. Beneath the tree where she ended her life. She always loved this magnolia tree.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Aunt Rachel?” I shout out as she stands near the grave.

  She looks disheveled with her hair, once tightly wrapped in a bun, now falling apart with loose strands blowing in the wind. Her eyes are swollen with tears and her mouth drops open, searching for words to say as if she could gulp them in with the right gust of air.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, sucking in another breath, trying to calm down her cries. She pauses and looks like she could start sobbing again, yet she continues. “But I just couldn’t….”

  I stand there, feeling the wind whip my hair around, though I am still. I clench my fists as if balling all this in. “Why not?”

  She turns her stricken face and looks at the grave. “Because I was so ashamed! Because, God help me, I didn’t believe her.” Her voice gets shaky and she has to gasp for another breath. But then she steadies her words. “I yelled at her. Called her a liar. A whore. I was so horrible to her! Then I ran away, as far as I could go, and tried to never look back.”

  She looks at me, her eyes welling up with tears again, yet she continues on. “And then she was dead. She was all alone when she gave birth to you, in her room in the attic. Then she bundled you up and—” She stops and buries her face.

  My skin tingles. “But I heard crying in the attic when we first moved in.”

  Aunt Rachel shakes her head. “That was me. I needed to get some old documents up there and all the memories came flooding back.”

  I turn my head away for a moment, thinking Amelia was wrong about that too.

  “It was George who found her body,” continued Aunt Rachel. She is oddly calm, her voice flat. “They got in touch with me and I came back—but I couldn’t bear to look at you. All I saw was Amelia. All I could think was…what if I just believed her? Helped her. What if I had just done something different? Would she still be here? Amelia might not have died if you had never been born.”

  I take a step back, anger building up inside me. “You do hate me.”

  “I hated the world.” She throws her hands in the air then drops them as if they
just went limp. “I hated George for what he did in a sick drunken fit. I hated Violet for not being there to help. And yes, I hated you for, because—” She stopped suddenly, and put her head in her hands. “No. I hated myself. Though I didn’t realize it till you came back into my life. The guilt. Oh God! Maybe me not believing her drove her to it. I don’t know. I’ll never know, and that’s what hurt the most. I had to leave. Violet and Frank agreed to take care of you. Violet was always maternal that way—unlike myself. You were safe with her.”

  My anger bubbles up and I spit out, “How could you turn your back on my mother? She loved you so much! She wrote you every month!”

  “And I read every one of those letters and heard all about you. I just couldn’t reply. I tried, but it all came out wrong. Then I got busy…I kept putting it off….” There’s a long pause between us.

  “She told me how her relationship with Frank began to deteriorate. He spiraled down as his drinking got the better of him. Violet finally had enough and told him she wanted a divorce. Frank swore he’d sue for custody of you, just to cause her pain. They argued. At least, that’s what you said after the fire…that you’d heard them, and it upset you terribly.”

  She tells me as if I should remember saying this, but honestly I don’t. Yet I am trying.

  “The police said they were probably arguing when the fire started, and didn’t notice until it was too late. They ran upstairs to save you—but you weren’t there. The stairs collapsed and they couldn’t get out. Keith found you at the other end of the house.” She stands still, with such sadness in her face, keeping in her sniffles. “It’s hard to think of it. I came back again for the funeral and met you for the first time. Do you remember?”

  “No,” I say in a curt tone. Amelia must have been keeping that from me too.

  “You were devastated. Finding out you were adopted. Violet and Frank dying in such a horrible accident. It was too much for you. You changed. You were in the hospital for a while. For a long time.”

  All this confusion makes my heart race and my cheeks flare up with heat. I am mad and hurt and baffled at the same time. But I need to hear it all.

  “After that I went back to New York and Grandpa George took care of you. He moved out of the house to take you away from the burned-down guesthouse. He sent me updates about you. He said you were getting better.”

  “You left me with a rapist,” I spit out. “Thank God, he never once touched me! Why would he even do something like that in the first place?”

  She puts her hand up to her face, pausing for a moment as if trying to figure out why. Finally after several awkward seconds standing there, she takes her hand away from her mouth and says, “There was a time when George was a heavy alcoholic. I know that’s no excuse, but it may have been the cause of it. But after you were born he sobered up and changed his whole life around.”

  I can’t believe what I am hearing. This is too much too fast. Yet I can’t take my thoughts off her words. “The whole family is sick,” I choke.

  Aunt Rachel takes a deep breath and sighs. She looks defeated and drained. “We had a difficult childhood. George was strict and remote, and mother submissive and sickly. Amelia was the center of my universe. I helped raise her. She was special. I’ve written and thought about her so much after it happened, trying to rationalize it myself.”

  “She’s the lost girl in all your books, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. In my books I could always have a happy ending. I could pretend it never happened. And in a way, I convinced myself it never did.” She wraps her arms around her, hugging herself, then flings her hands in the air again. “God, why didn’t I just believe her?”

  She twists herself around, swiping the loose strands away from her face as she glances at the grave, then swivels back and looks me dead in the face. “After a while I couldn’t seem to write what I wanted. I lost my voice. My career fell apart. This was the last place I wanted to come to, but in the end it was the only place I had to hide. And after you and George moved in, I couldn’t hide anymore. Seeing you, knowing you were suffering—it’s like you were my Amelia. It killed me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I cut her off before she can say more. “You’re still doing it. Pretending nothing’s wrong. Why couldn’t you just get me help?”

  “Honestly? I still resented you,” she says, unable to look me in the face. “Oh, I knew deep down none of this was your fault. I just thought it was best not to rock the boat. I didn’t realize how sick you were until you went into the hospital.”

  “You’re lying,” I say, stepping back. “I know you’ve read my journal.”

  She blinks, and her cheeks flush. “Yes. I’ll admit it. I’ve read your journal. Blake gave it to me. But I only read a few pages. I was confused by it. It was so filled with anger. Yet it seemed like you knew the truth about everything. I was glad. I thought it meant I didn’t have to tell you. I wanted to help you.”

  “You are so in denial,” I say with a trembling voice. “You never helped me. You never helped anyone. You’re a weak, selfish woman, who does nothing but turn away from the people who need her most. Lucky for me, George made a better guardian than you ever would.”

  Tears stream down her shocked face. She reaches out to me, but I back away from her. Dropping her arms, she walks over to Amelia Livingstone’s gravestone and drops to her knees and starts to cry uncontrollably. “Dear God, can you ever forgive me?”

  I leave her crying there and head back inside the house.

  I run up the winding staircase and to my room again to get my things. Jinks pops out of the closet and darts over to caress my legs, gently rubbing up against me.

  “Oh, honey, I missed you too,” I tell him, picking him up. “Come on, Jinks. It’s time for us to move on from this place.”

  I grab my bag in one hand and carry Jinks in the other and head back to Blake’s car.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  It’s been three weeks since George’s death. All he is to me now is George, not my grandfather, not my birth father, not anyone I really know. All I knew of him was just one big lie.

  After the funeral, I moved in with Blake. Blake’s apartment is small yet quaint, with one bedroom and a little galley kitchen. It’s on the second floor, and when we look out the balcony doors, we see the beautiful budding trees that surround us. It is like our own little tree house—our own little private place, just the two of us. Plus Jinks. It’s sweet to see that Jinks is enjoying himself in our new place.

  After moving in, I decided to switch schools and finish out my senior year at a high school nearby. I did it to not only get away from all the old memories I had there, but to stay away from all my old so-called friends.

  Beth told to me the last time I saw her how sorry she was to hear that I was in the hospital. She didn’t say anything about why she never called back and she never mentioned Matt. I guess she’s pretty shallow, and is comfortable with hiding things from me. I’ve come to the conclusion she isn’t the kind of friend that I need. I can’t hold on to that type of unhealthy relationship anymore, even if it means not having any friends at school. In my heart I know I’m making the right decision to stay away from her.

  Blake fixed the sofa bed for me, so I’ve been sleeping in the front room. At first I suggested we could just sleep in his room—together. It was funny to see the look on his face. He wants to take things slow, while I am all for it—sex, that is. But he treats me like the delicate flowers in the garden, making me food and showering me with such love and affection. He says it’s too soon to be that close and that he wants to take things slowly and cherish what we have together. He often says I need to heal from what happened to me.

  But in all honesty, I’ve been dealing with it all my life. My coping mechanism has always been Amelia.

  Aunt Rachel sent me a letter a few days after I left. She wrote:

  Believe it or not, I love you very much. Just as I loved your mother, Amelia. In so many ways, you remind me of her. I
hope someday you will be able to forgive me. Until then, Milly, please take care of yourself.

  It’s hard to process everything Aunt Rachel told me, yet I am trying. I know deep down she didn’t mean to hurt me. In a way, I feel sorry for her. All these years she has struggled—and she’s still not at peace. I feel her pain. But I just don’t think I’m ready to have a relationship with her again. At least not right now. I need to heal from this.

  However, I am ready to have a relationship with my Uncle Keith.

  We’ve already spoken a few times over the phone and even met for coffee once. I’m really starting to enjoy our talks. He’s told me things about Violet and Frank I never knew. And the few times he’s reminisced about the past with me, I vaguely remembered him being in my life. I’m hoping I can restore some of those memories. I’m looking forward to having a relationship with him. Maybe being family. But all in due time.

  As I unpacked my things, looking at the items I took and the clothes I wore before all this happened, I thought of the promise I made to myself in the hospital. I still want to help people when I graduate, which is actually in a few weeks. Hopefully someday I’ll become a nurse or perhaps a doctor, who knows? Now that I’m eighteen and with my inheritance, I could pursue anything, really. But I plan to do something in the medical field, that’s for sure. It will also help me better understand my own illness—something that will stay with me till I die.

  I’ve maintained my health with regular visits to the doctor and therapist. Going to outpatient therapy has really helped too. Plus, I have my friends. Randy has come to visit with her son, Christopher. We are so supportive of each other and, in a way, I think if I hadn’t ever been in the hospital, I don’t know where I would be. I don’t regret what happened. Cutting myself was a mistake, but everything happens for a reason. It was the only release I could think of at the time. I just wish I’d had some release that was safer. Now with my much healthier regimen, I do.

  My doctor said that the new medication I’m taking may take up to six weeks to fully work, but the hallucinations about my birth mother, Amelia Livingstone, have stopped. I guess my parents tried to hide her existence from me, but I must have seen photographs of her in my youth. I blocked them out, but Amelia remembered and connected the memories to the statue and the magnolia tree. Ever since I found everything out, I’ve been able to come to terms with those memories, and it has helped me to move on.