Emily, Gone

by Bette Lee Crosby

  She leaned over and whispered, “Please get well and come home to us, and I promise you’ll never have to be alone again.”

  Although the ambulance attendant claimed such a thing was unlikely, Rachel swore that at precisely that moment the limp fingers squeezed her hand.

  As it turned out, Mama Dixon had a broken hip, a fractured pelvis, and a hairline crack in the humerus of her right arm. That afternoon she was wheeled into surgery while Rachel and George sat and waited nervously. After nearly five hours of worrying, Dr. Wilcox came to the waiting room and told them the surgery had gone well, and Helen was now in recovery.

  “Is she going to be all right?” George asked anxiously.

  “I believe so,” Dr. Wilcox said, “but because her bone was shattered it was a rather complex surgery. Until that new hip is secure, there’s the risk of infection.”

  “Is there anything—”

  Dr. Wilcox shook his head. “Not right now, but once she’s released, she’ll need someone to take care of her.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Rachel said. “We’re family. We’ll be there.”

  Mama Dixon remained in the hospital for two weeks, and Rachel came to visit twice a day. For the first few days while she was still groggy and in a fair bit of pain, Rachel sat silently by her bedside, sometimes crocheting, often just holding her hand and saying how fortunate they were that she’d gotten there when she did. Once she began feeling better, Rachel brought the yarn basket and stayed long after visiting hours were over.

  She told of how she’d broken through the window and found Mama Dixon at the bottom of the staircase and spoke about the changes they would need to make moving forward.

  “George is adamant about your not living alone,” she said. “He’s suggested we take the crib out of Emmy’s room and fix it so that it’s nice and comfortable for you.”

  Mama Dixon, as feisty as ever, shook her head and claimed she was just as adamant about staying in town.

  “I’ve got a lifetime of good memories in that house, and I’m not about to leave it.”

  “Dr. Wilcox said no stairs for at least six months,” Rachel warned.

  “My hearing is just fine, and I know what he said.” She gave a sly grin and added, “So I’m figuring I’d take the small sitting room downstairs for myself and let you and George have the rest of the house.”

  “Mama Dixon! You know we couldn’t possibly—”

  “Stuff and nonsense. When I pass on, the house will go to you and George anyway. All I’m suggesting is that the three of us could live together and enjoy it while I’m still alive.”

  For the next two days they went back and forth over it, Mama Dixon arguing that her house was big enough for nine people to live comfortably and close enough for George to walk to the hardware store. Rachel wasn’t swayed and remained reluctant to leave their little house behind. She and George talked about it several times, twice over breakfast and every evening as they sat across from one another at the supper table.

  “I’m okay with doing either one,” he said. “The most important thing is that I want you to be happy. Whatever makes you happy will make me happy also.”

  Rachel kissed him and said she loved him all the more for having such an attitude, but it did nothing to solve the dilemma they were facing.

  Then, five days before Mama Dixon was scheduled to be released from the hospital, Rachel returned home later than usual. As she pulled into the driveway, she noticed how the tall pines cast long, dark shadows across the lawn, and in an odd way it looked eerily foreboding. She sat in the car for several minutes, looking one way and then the other. No matter which way she turned, she could not see another house. Not even the smoke of another chimney. On Pecan Street where Mama Dixon lived, houses lined both sides of the street, and on the corner a streetlamp lit the walkways.

  That evening Rachel stood in the doorway of Emmy’s room and tried to imagine it without the crib, the changing table, and the rocking chair. She couldn’t. Mama Dixon’s house was filled with good memories, but this place would forever have the memory of the night Emmy was taken.

  The next morning Rachel told Mama Dixon that she and George would be happy to live in her lovely house and would move in before she was home from the hospital.

  In the few remaining days, Rachel went through the house packing the things she would take and pushing aside the things to be discarded. The nursery was last. Emily’s rompers and frilly dresses held good memories and still had a faint scent of her clinging to them, so Rachel folded them carefully, layered them with tissue paper, and packed them into a box that would go to Pecan Street. It had been easy to decide they’d no longer need the flowered sofa and a kitchen table that was too small to begin with, but when it came to Emily’s crib, the decision was impossible. There were both good and bad memories attached to it, and she couldn’t decide which outweighed the other. She waited until George arrived home from the store that evening, then tearfully explained the dilemma.

  She told him of how she’d saved the baby clothes but simply couldn’t deal with the crib. “Every time I see it, it’s a reminder of the night Emily was taken.”

  Looking at her, George could see the sorrow of such a decision draped across her shoulders like a leaden cloak. “I doubt the bad memories attached to that crib will ever go away,” he said. “So maybe it’s better we let go of it.”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped, and she looked up with an expression of astonishment. “Just walk away and leave it sitting here?”

  “No.” George shook his head. “I was thinking I’d take it to Goodwill and let someone in need of a crib have it.”

  “But . . .” Rachel was going to ask if anyone would want a crib with such unhappy memories attached to it, but George addressed the thought before she gave it voice.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the crib itself; the bad memories that are part of it belong to us and us alone. They can’t be passed along. To some needy family this will be nothing more than a nice sturdy crib for their new baby.”

  The next afternoon while Rachel was at the hospital visiting Mama Dixon, George closed the store and hung a sign on the door saying he’d be back in two hours. He drove home, cleared out the nursery, and brought the furniture to the Goodwill store in Chester.

  The door to Emily’s room was closed when Rachel arrived home that afternoon, and she sensed it was best left that way.

  The following morning after the moving van carried off the things marked for Pecan Street, Rachel closed the front door and didn’t look back. As she left the drive and started for town, a tear overflowed her eye and rolled down her cheek. She brushed it back and kept going. If she and George were ever going to find a future, she knew the sorrow had to be left behind in that house.

  FINDING THE LETTER

  Fairlawn, 1973

  A year after Vicki’s death, Angela received a telephone call from Dimitri.

  “I’ve got something I think you might want to have,” he said. “Would it be okay if I stop by this afternoon?”

  “Of course,” Angela replied. “It will be good to see you.” She fully expected he’d be bringing some memento from the diner, along with a request that she think about coming back to work.

  Two hours later the bell chimed, and when she opened the door Dimitri was holding a brown tote bag. “This belonged to Vicki, and I thought you might want to have it.”

  “Oh my God!” Angela reached for the bag as she swung the door back and motioned Dimitri inside. “I don’t understand. How did you—”

  “The same night Vicki died, there was a three-car pileup on the interstate and the emergency room at Saint Vincent’s was crazy. With all those patients coming in, Vicki’s tote was set aside and forgotten. When a nurse finally noticed it and couldn’t find any ID in the bag, it was sent to lost and found. Two days ago, an aide was clearing out the older items and found a letter in the tote. It had Vicki’s name and the diner’s return address, so she called me.”

&
nbsp; Shaking her head in utter amazement, Angela said, “It’s hard to believe that after all this time . . .”

  “Yeah.” Dimitri laughed. “It’s been a while.” After telling how they had five new waitresses come and go, he asked if she’d be interested in coming back to work.

  “No way,” Angela said and smiled. “I’m a mama now, and that occupies every minute of my day.” Just as she started to say Vicki’s baby had grown into a little girl and was talking a blue streak, Lara came running into the room.

  “Mama, Mama, my book fell . . .” She spotted Dimitri, stopped, then edged her way over to stand beside Angela.

  “Don’t tell me this is Vicki’s baby!” he said with a look of surprise.

  “It certainly is.” Angela’s face was aglow with a look of pride. “Lara’s going on three now. She already knows her alphabet and can count to ten.”

  “Wanna hear me sing the ABC song?” Lara volunteered.

  Dimitri laughed. “Yeah, okay.”

  In a squeaky little-girl voice, Lara ran through the letters and did fine until she got to the X; then she looked up. “Mama, what comes next?”

  “Y and Z.”

  Lara giggled, then finished off the song.

  After saying what a wonderful job she’d done, Dimitri looked back at Angela, his expression a bit sorrowful. “I was hoping to convince you to come back to work, but I guess that’s a waste of time, huh?”

  Angela nodded. “Definitely a waste of time.”

  Later that afternoon, when Lara was settled in front of the television watching The Mickey Mouse Club, Angela went through the tote bag Dimitri had delivered.

  Inside was a half-used tube of the peachy-red lipstick Vicki wore, a change purse with a few singles and some loose coins, a handful of tissues, several pictures of houses torn from magazines, and at the bottom of the tote an envelope with MOVED, NO FORWARDING ADDRESS stamped across the face of it.

  The envelope was addressed to Russ Murphy in Wynne Bluffs, the town where Angela had picked Vicki up on the day she came to live with them.

  Russ Murphy. Lara’s daddy.

  A sick feeling rose in Angela’s stomach as she began to realize she now had a name. Not just a name but conceivably an address where she could start looking for the unknown stranger.

  In the corner of the envelope were Vicki’s name and a return address for Dimitri’s Diner. Why? Why would she list the diner as her return address?

  Angela slid the letter from the envelope and began reading. The letter made no sense at all. Vicki had said the guy mistreated her, but the first line of her letter read, “I hope you can forgive me.” Forgive her for what? Angela’s eyes moved to the next sentence: “I know I was wrong in not trusting that you would keep my secret.” What secret? As she continued to read, more and more questions arose. What was Vicki frightened of? Why did she question whether or not it was too late for them? What was the dream they shared?

  After she’d read the letter over five times, Angela had learned only two things—Vicki loved Russ Murphy, and she wanted him to be Lara’s father—but there were also questions hanging on to those things. If she wanted him to be Lara’s father, then why did she say he’d abused her and she was afraid for the baby?

  Haunted by all the questions without answers, Angela waited two days before she told Kenny about the letter. And by the time she told him, she’d changed her mind three different times about trying to find Russ Murphy.

  The moment she brought out the letter, Kenny’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw stiffened. “Okay, you know Lara’s father’s name. But as far as I’m concerned, that changes nothing. It’s pretty obvious that this Murphy guy is not looking for Vicki or the baby, so why stir up trouble by trying to find him?”

  Angela was quick to buy into the thought. “You’re probably right,” she said. “Although the letter says she wants him to be part of Lara’s life, I have my doubts. Vicki was always such a fickle-minded person—one day she wanted this and the next day it was that.”

  Kenny nodded. “I’m sure your sister meant well, but what she wanted and what’s best for Lara may not be the same thing. Kids need stability. We’re the only family Lara has ever known. Bringing some stranger in and saying he’s her father could be devastating!”

  He and Angela both found countless reasons for not trying to find Murphy, but neither of them voiced the real reason—they were petrified that Lara’s birth father might try to take her away from them. Angela knew that losing the child she loved as her own would break her heart into a million little pieces.

  Although thoroughly convinced they were doing the right thing, Angela couldn’t dismiss the one niggling thought that remained in her mind. What if someday Lara wants to know about her biological father?

  That night she tucked the letter in the far back of a dresser drawer with the intent that it would remain there.

  A NEW BEGINNING

  Hesterville, Winter 1973

  Once the decision to move into the house on Pecan Street was made, Rachel came at it with fire in her soul. Whereas George had simply boarded up the broken window, she’d hired a glazier to replace the glass and ordered new curtains to take the place of the torn shreds left hanging. For two days she cleaned, vacuumed, scrubbed, and polished until every room was as sparkly as a new penny.

  At Mama Dixon’s insistence, she and George took the large upstairs bedroom with a window overlooking the backyard where she could plant a flower garden in the spring. A daybed was brought from the attic to the small sitting room downstairs for Mama Dixon. Then Rachel added a sunshine-yellow coverlet, curtains to match, and a potted chrysanthemum. Placing three colorful throw pillows in the center of the bed, she stepped back to study the results and smiled. It felt good to be doing something for someone else.

  “Mama Dixon is going to love this,” she said, then moved on to the kitchen, where she was organizing tins of tea and spices.

  Two days later George brought his mama home from the hospital. She was pale, thinner than she’d been in years, and leaning heavily on a walker but glad to be home. She thumped from room to room, admiring first one thing and then another.

  “The place looks better than it has in years,” she said. Whereas she’d once found fault with every aspect of Rachel’s housekeeping, she now couldn’t say enough good things about it.

  At the doorway of the small sitting room, she stopped and smiled.

  “Why, I’d never thought of using yellow for this room,” she said, “but it looks beautiful and brightens the place up.”

  She thumped over to the comfy-looking daybed, then plopped down. “All this excitement has worn me to a frazzle. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a nap.”

  “Go right ahead,” George said and pulled the door closed behind him.

  Minutes later she was sound asleep and remained so all afternoon. When she woke, dinner was ready.

  “I hope you don’t mind that we’re eating in the dining room,” Rachel said. “I used your good china because I wanted this to be a new-start celebration.”

  “Mind?” Her smile was stretched out as far as it could go. “I’m delighted.”

  When she finally pushed back from the table, Mama Dixon declared the dinner to be one of the most pleasurable she’d ever experienced, and, oddly enough, Rachel agreed.

  The next day Sadie Jenkins came with a basket of freshly baked scones.

  “I’m not going to stay,” she said. “I just wanted to stop by and ask how Helen is feeling.”

  “She’s doing much better,” Rachel replied, then looped her arm through Sadie’s and led her back to the kitchen before there was time to protest.

  The three women settled at the kitchen table, and after a short while Rachel was laughing and talking as she hadn’t in years. She listened eagerly as Sadie shared news of the town, told of the families who’d moved in and those who had left, and how the Women’s League had raised money enough for new playground equipment. When Sadie suggested they were going
to need a new chairwoman for the library restoration committee, Rachel smiled and said it was something she’d have to think about.

  Later that evening when Rachel snapped off the light and climbed into bed beside George, she scooted a bit closer to him. “I’m thinking about helping out on the library restoration committee,” she said.

  He turned to face her and traced his hand along the curve of her cheek. “It would be good to see you getting involved in something like that again.”

  “Living here makes it easier. With people stopping by and my taking care of Mama and the house, it seems as if I’m busy all the time.” She closed her eyes for a moment as though she were remembering something from the past, then said, “I still think about Emily a lot; I worry if she’s being loved and cared for, but now it’s not always my first thought in the morning and last thought at night.”

  “Isn’t it better that way?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Yes, I suppose it is, but I feel as if I have to learn how to breathe all over again. It would be impossible for me to ever forget Emmy; she’s part of who I am. I don’t expect that will ever change, but I’m finding a way to live with the ache in my heart.”

  The moon was high in the sky, and in the silvery light it cast across the room, Rachel saw a smile taking hold of George’s face. “She’ll forever be a part of me also,” he said.

  She raised herself up on her elbow, then leaned across and kissed his mouth. “Maybe your thought of us one day having another baby wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

  The week before Thanksgiving, Mama Dixon was getting around so well that she abandoned the walker and switched to a cane. By then, friends were stopping by most every day, and she claimed the walker was an eyesore, whereas the cane hung unobtrusively on the arm of the chair.

  For almost a decade, the big house on Pecan Street had sat there with only a single lamp lit in the upstairs bedroom. That winter it came alive. Lamps were aglow in almost every room, cars came and went, and then two days before Christmas a tree appeared in the living room window.