by Amy Marie
“Oh.”
For a second, I felt bad for her. Strangely, the girl looked like she cared. “Well, I can change that up next time. I thought it went nice with the pink blusher.”
Fuck. It wasn’t a suitor. She had make-up on her face? “Blusher?”
“I contoured her too. Yesterday. I thought it looked pretty.”
I was curious now, why she even bothered to work as a nurse when her clear interest was in cosmetology. “Why do you mess with her at all?”
“Excuse me? Mess with her? It’s my job to take care of her. She’s young. She’s pretty. Stunning, really,” Caitlin moved closer to the edge of Bella’s bed as if she somehow had to protect my own kid from me. “I do it so she feels pretty.”
“She’s not awake. She can’t feel. She’s not even in there. That’s what the doctors say.”
“Well, I don’t believe that. And neither do you,” she smiled at me.
She had me there.
“No. I don’t either.”
“So I figure, the way you do with the blue dress, it’s nice to give her a touch up here and there so that when she does wake up, at least she’ll have something pretty to look at. She has a long road ahead and I don’t know about you, but I always feel best with my face on.”
She had me there too. I looked at Caitlin Prinn for the first time ever as a human being and more than the evil spawn of Mallory Greenwood and her descendants. She was striking – really. Almost as pretty as my ruby-haired Bella whose blue eyes matched her sky colored dress, but not quite. Her long brown hair fell straight down her back and was always braided, likely a hospital rule. Her eyes were a deep brown so dark they looked almost black and the handful of freckles that ran over her ivory skin were playful. They reminded me of winking stars. “But you don’t wear make-up.”
“I do. Just not a lot. I’m like Bella, I guess. With her, I don’t know. I just assumed.”
I could understand that. Bella’s strong but perfectly smooth features and delicate hands hinted at not only natural beauty but an extra layer of femininity that was rare. It was the very reason I knew I could get the right man to fall in love with her, words unsaid. I reminded myself that, pretty or not, and even if she did take care of my daughter, Caitlin was not safe for her. Her presence was the thing that was likely helping hold the curse. Folding my arms over my chest, I said, curtly, “Well, I wish you would stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Assuming.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’d love to know everything there is to know about your daughter. Lord knows, she knows everything about me, don’t you, beautiful? I talk to her when I’m alone. I’m sure you do that too. She’s probably tired of listening to me.”
“You should stop that too. It’s not professional. She’s trying to heal and doesn’t need to be playing shrink.”
Caitlin put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. I never thought of it that way. I looked at it more like I was keeping her company.” Dropping her hand, she added, “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I can take it from here. I’m all the company my daughter needs.”
I felt like a monster, but the girl was going to hate me soon enough anyway. Patient guardians did have a say over who worked with their loved ones. If they wanted me to keep paying the bills, well, Caitlin Prinn was going to get forever the hell out of my daughter’s room. As for company? She had the suitors. If she would only wake for one of them…
There was a time before Salem, for Bella anyway. And in truth, I knew it was wrong to move her back to my hometown. On the road and living up and down the west coast, I probably should have stuck it out. Had I not brought her back when she was twelve and again after college, she might have escaped the curse. I took a deep breath, figuring, if my daughter needed company so bad, at least I could explain it to her. If Caitlin was right and she could hear us, she probably had a lot of questions. While I’d always talked to her and even promised to break the curse, I’d never really told her of my regrets. Part of it was pride. The other was the tiny cracks that had kept us apart and seemed to grow wider over the years. The older Isabella got, the more I was certain she didn’t like me and wished she had a different parent. I couldn’t blame her, exactly. I knew how different we were. She was like her father—serious and goal oriented—and never one for the types of adventures I swore every kid needed to have to become a well-rounded person.
Pulling a chair up next to her bed, I dabbed at the gold eye shadow in gentle strokes. For a second, I was even tempted to lift her eyelid up. But I didn’t want to see the blank stare I was sure lay under there. “Sorry about that,” I whispered. “She won’t do it again. I’ll be sure of it. If you want, I can get you some mascara and we can stick with that.” It was like some sort of truce offering.
By now, I was sure that even if my daughter was awake in there, she was over the fight we had about her move to the city. For as fierce as our scuffles got, we never held onto grudges for more than a few days at a time. Still, it might have been nice if things hadn’t been left unsaid before this happened. I often laid awake at night wondering if she was stuck in that moment where the seizure hit and if time had frozen for her. Did she still think we were there? Or did she know time had passed, seasons had gone by, and that I was still here, waiting for her?
“She had no right to do this,” I said, growing angrier with Caitlin by the second. The make-up had a gel texture that was quite determined to stay on Bella’s skin. Glad she was sleeping if only so I could scrub it clean before her seeing it, I promised again that the nurse would never come back. I’d see to it the second that I left. “I don’t know how, but I can get you out of this. I promise,” I repeated, as if she’d asked for reassurance again.
It really wasn’t any different than our relationship had been before she fell asleep—me trying desperately to get through to her and her, well, basically ignoring me. Only now, what I wouldn’t give to watch her hop into a taxi for a ride to the city where she’d chase her dreams. I held her hand, remembering the year she turned six and decided to run away from home. We were living in an apartment just outside Los Angeles. The place was a dive, but it was close enough to the transit line that we could get just about anywhere. She’d learned that fast and had one day decided she was done with school and determined to “find out the truth.” The truth, of course, hadn’t been what she was looking for when she wound up at a police station only to learn that the tooth fairy wasn’t real. But it hadn’t been me to comfort her. Instead, Bella had gone to a teacher to tell her that life was unfair.
I wondered where she went now. Was she off living in a fantasy land or tucked away in the recesses of her mind designing a tailor suit for business women with a distaste for anything bold, loud, or even flowy. I looked down at my tie dyed sweatshirt and vowed to wear something that she might approve of the next time I came in. If she was going to wake up, I wanted to be prepared. But more than anything, what I really wanted was to start over. To take back the years of resentment and hostility that hung between us like a thick, dusty curtain. In her sleep, I hoped, she wanted the same.
Chapter 8
“No! I will not stand for it. It is in her contract that the family does have a say in her care. I don’t want that woman in her room. She had no right to put make-up on her. She’s not good for her. She even told me she tells my daughter her problems. Can you imagine? Like Bella doesn’t have enough worries of her own? My God, she can’t even unclench her hands!” I stood at the charge nurse’s desk fully prepared to get louder. I didn’t care who heard. I was exactly the raving lunatic they all took me for anyway. There was no shame in wanting to protect my daughter. At this point, aside from Merna, I was all Isabella had.
“Ma’am, you have to calm down. I didn’t say we couldn’t change the schedule and assign Bella another nurse. But I need a reason for it. Putting make-up on her when one of her jobs is getting her cleaned up and dressed for the day isn’t exactly a valid complaint.”
&nb
sp; I wanted to spit in the big-nosed woman’s face.
“Painting her up like a stripper is in her treatment plan? I wasn’t aware of that. Hygiene? Okay. But all this make-up is over the top. Do you know that I thought her color looked better? Turned out it was just contour. What kind of crap is that? False hope is what it is.”
The woman’s lip turned up like she was about to laugh. Clenching my fists, I asked to speak to her supervisor.
“I am the floor nurse, Ma’am. If you mean the person I answer to, you’re looking for the resident care manager. He’s not in. I can get you his card.”
I stuck out my hand. With the other on my hip, I was prepared to stand there all day until the dip shit gave me whatever number I needed to launch a formal complaint. Had Bella not already been to all the other facilities in a thirty-mile span, well, I’d have just taken her right on out of there. But with insurance on its last leg and the occupational and physical therapy department programs the best in the area, I felt about as locked in as my daughter in that ugly-assed bed.
Spinning on her chair, the nurse, whose name tag read “Debbie, BSN,” reached down into a drawer and emerged with a stack of white business cards. Pulling the top from an elastic band, she smiled at me as if making a dare and handed it to me. Snatching it, I refused to be done with her. She could ignore me all day long, but it didn’t mean I was going to stop talking. Bella had me well versed in one way monologues and if Debbie was going to get me in this sort of mood? Well, I was taking her with me.
“And another thing, she’s weird. Did you know she put make-up on the dead?”
She nodded. “Yes. The work she did was fascinating. But did you know that the reason she left her work at the funeral home—her family’s business—was because she wanted to help the living? Doesn’t seem strange to me. She put cosmetics on the dead to make them look their best but said her heart was never in it. She wanted to do something more.”
“Oh.”
“And really, if you think about it, that is very important work. How a person looks at their funeral is a big part of how a family remembers them. To me, she was already helping people. But hey, I’ll take her. She’s a fabulous worker. It’s really too bad you’ve had bad experiences with her. I think, if you got to know her, you’d like her.”
“Her family runs a funeral home?”
She nodded. “Good people.”
Sure. Same jerks that put curses on little girls. “Weird. Well, thank you for the card. I’ll be calling him. For now, I would appreciate it if you honored my wishes and kept that girl as far away from Bella as possible. You may think she wants to help people out, but I don’t think making her look like a hooker does that on any level.”
I didn’t give her another opportunity to tell me about how Caitlin was ten steps short of utterly amazing. The hell. I knew what I saw. I knew what I felt, and that was enough. Had I listened to my gut twenty years ago, we wouldn’t be here now.
Chapter 9
I swatted Merna’s hand away as I entered BELLA6, my regular password these days, into the newest dating app. Catch.net, while it worked a lot like a combination of Plenty of Fish and Match.com, was a little bit different. Here, I could get more specific. It was in the details that I might have a better shot of finding my daughter love. I’d seen too many times the waves of disappointment wash over the faces of men in Isabella’s hospital room. While they could see she was beautiful, her stillness was something nearly impossible to capture in a dating ad. I understood that and, for the most part, was grateful for the ones who spared me the pity head turns and pleasantries.
“I really think you should go back. You do know the definition of insanity right?” Merna asked. She was getting on my last nerve.
“Going back is repeating the same thing twice, so stay out of it.”
“I don’t mean you are wrong to be looking for the man to beat the curse. I agree with that. I just think the learning curve on a whole other app might be a little too time intensive.”
I knew what she was getting at. I was well aware that we didn’t have much time. My kid had machines keeping her alive and the insurance company wasn’t particularly happy about it. Hell, the two-foot pile of bills on my kitchen table told me that. There weren’t enough fundraisers and spaghetti suppers in the world to ever touch those. I was medically bankrupt and so was my girl. But that didn’t matter. With a renewed vigor sparked by a waste of time conversation with the resident care director, I was determined. The only way to get my daughter out of Maleficent G. Westford Rehabilitation Center for Hope was on her own two feet, or, at the very least, in a wheelchair. If she could talk, even Bella would agree. Cursed with an unfortunate legacy, it really was our only answer. Merna, like it or not, knew it too.
It wasn’t like they didn’t know the whole, convoluted story. It’d been passed down for generations. Abigail Finn had been caught fornicating with the married Samuel Winston. The priest had called it an abomination. He’d put them in the stocks for two weeks, shaming them publically and praying over them that the mark they’d forever carry might not be cursed. Nine months later, the child she carried, my great, great grandmother, had been born. But the curse didn’t begin with the bastard child who grew up poor or even the trials that had Abigail eventually beheaded. It had started with Caitlin’s ancestors, who’d circled her after the moon went down and chanted that the child she carried would sleep eternal, never to be born. Even the tourists who came when the leaves turned orange in our small town knew of the bitter Sarah Winston, who spent the remainder of her days inside her small cabin, mortified her neighbors knew what Samuel had done and working up curse after curse. It wasn’t news, or shouldn’t have been, that Isabella had come from twisted roots. But more? That Sarah’s descendants carried hatred in their hearts for anyone of Abigail’s blood.
True love. It was a thing Sarah said she’d had with Samuel, only to have it stolen by Abigail. It was something a woman like Abigail and even her spawn would never deserve. She said it’d be impossible for a Finn descendant to ever know true love. And if she was wrong? Well, that would be the thing that could break the curse. As a child, I’d listened to my grandmothers tell the stories with wide eyes. And on my wedding day to my first husband, and again to Isabella’s father, I’d known that true love was a thing I didn’t deserve. I was, after all, of bad blood. Deep in my heart, I feared and even believed in the curse—never thinking to question why the babies that came from us were never stillborn and why it was that my grandparents always seemed so happy in love. But I was only a child. And later, as I did my best to find and keep what I believed to be true love, I found myself using the curse as an excuse to hold back the softest parts of my heart; eventually leaving me alone to raise Bella on my own. Did I hope to protect her? Is that why I pushed him off?
For years, I told myself it wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of love. It was that my true love was adventure and the stories and memories my daughter and I made together during her childhood years on the road. My God, I’d been so wrong. All along, Bella had been my own true love. Or not. I’ve tried that too. I’ve kissed her a million times. She hasn’t woken up. Is it possible I’m not capable of that kind of love? Is she? Is Abigail or even Sarah still haunting us? Will we forever pay for their misdeeds? Am I too selfish for that kind of love?
Chapter 10
She was always a little odd. I looked down at my daughter, the tube coming from her throat and even with the machines around her, and wondered why it should shock me that she could still look beautiful. It was impossible to forget her fifth grade play, where she’d insisted on being Mr. Darcy. Refusing to play the “expected role” where she’d be forced to get her hair done up “all fussy,” she’d promised her mustache didn’t itch and even worn it at home on weekends to prove her point. And then, of course, were all the times she’d declined back to school shopping with me. What I had hoped would be bonding time was something Isabella had called “impractical.” In grade nine, she begged
me to fix the leaky pipe under the sink, passing up new sneakers. For a kid who had big fashion dreams, she sure wasn’t very needy. Instead, my daughter saved her allowance up and spent it at thrift shops where she dug through piles of half-used threads and needles. With an old mannequin I’d pulled from a boutique dumpster, she’d disappear for hours only to emerge with some new creation.
But her creations, to me anyway, were anything but creative. Straight lines, neutral colors. She was stiffer than Ralph Lauren, and I often teased her that she was the original preppy. She’d roll her eyes at my flowy bohemian dresses, call me tacky, and return to her room to use up every last bit of fabric, never one to waste a dime. Pushing a long strand of fiery hair from her face, I let my hand rest on her cheek. Her skin was warm and, finally, unpainted. Soft like it had always been, I wondered if she could still feel me. It was true that the doctors said there was no brain activity. That would mean her nerves weren’t talking to the brain either. Yet, believing that completely was too difficult for me. Gently pinching the sides of her cheeks the way my grandmother had taught me to create a flushed pink when a boy was coming and your mother wouldn’t allow you to wear make-up, I smiled as rosy dots came to her face. Her blood was still flowing and that was good enough for me.
An hour later, when Merna showed up with coffee, I asked about the plans for the evening. Last night, we’d had three men Bella’s age willing to show up to visit her. It had been Merna’s job to follow up.
“Well, I think we have two out of three?”
“What happened to the third?”
“Has to work.”
“Darn visiting hours. Screwing everything up.”
“I thought you had that nurse watching the door. Or not watching. You know what I mean. I thought she was going to let you sneak them in.”