The Wonder(80)

“That’s not the word,” whispered Anna.

“Whatever you call it, then.”

“Sister says ’tis the kiss of Jesus.”

“What is?” Lib demanded.

“When something hurts. She says it means I’ve got close enough to his cross that he can lean down and kiss me.”

The nun had meant it as comfort, no doubt, but it horrified Lib.

A rattling breath. “I just wish I knew how long it’ll take.”

Lib asked, “Dying, you mean?”

The girl nodded.

“It doesn’t come naturally at your age. Children are so very alive.” This was quite the strangest conversation Lib had ever had with a patient. “Are you afraid?”

A hesitation. Then a tiny nod.

“I don’t believe you truly want to die.”

She saw such misery in the child’s face then. Anna had never let this show before. “Thy will be done,” the girl whispered, crossing herself.

“This is not God’s doing,” Lib reminded her. “It’s yours.”

The limp lids fluttered and finally shut. The loud breathing softened and evened out.

Lib kept hold of the swollen hand. Sleep, a temporary mercy. She hoped it would last the night.

The Rosary began on the other side of the wall. Muted this time; the chanting low. Lib waited for it to be over, for the cabin to settle down as the O’Donnells retreated to their hole in the wall and Kitty bedded down on the settle in the kitchen. The fading of all the small sounds.

Finally Lib was the only one awake. The watcher. Ever this night be at my side.

It occurred to her to ask herself why she wanted Anna to live through this Friday night, and the next night, and however many nights were left. As a matter of compassion, shouldn’t Lib be wishing for this to be over? After all, everything she did to make Anna more comfortable—a sip of water, another pillow—was just prolonging her suffering.

For a moment, Lib let herself imagine bringing on the end: lifting and folding a blanket, setting it down over the child’s face, and bearing down on it with all her weight. It wouldn’t be difficult, or take more than a couple of minutes. It would be an act of mercy, really.

A murder.

How had Lib reached the point of contemplating killing a patient?

She blamed the lack of sleep, the uncertainty. Everything a muddle and a mess. A swampy wilderness, a child lost, and Lib stumbling after her.

Never despair, she ordered herself. Wasn’t that one of the unforgiveable sins? She remembered a story about a man wrestling with an angel all night and being thrown down over and over again. Never winning, but never giving up.

Think, think. She struggled to apply her trained mind. What history has a child? Rosaleen O’Donnell had asked that in reply to Lib’s questions that first morning. But every disease had a story with a beginning, middle, and end. How to trace this one all the way back?

Her eyes roamed the room. When they fell on Anna’s treasure chest, she remembered the candlestick she’d cracked, and the dark curl of hair. The brother, Pat O’Donnell, whom Lib knew only from a photograph with painted-on eyes. How had his little sister become convinced that she needed to purchase his soul with her own?

Lib laboured to take Anna’s struggle on its own terms. To put herself in the position of a girl for whom these ancient narratives were literal truth. Four and a half months of fasting; how could that much sacrifice not be enough to make amends for the sins of a mere boy?

“Anna.” Only a whisper. Then more loudly. “Anna!”

The child struggled to surface.

“Anna!”

Her heavy lids batted.

Lib put her mouth very close to the girl’s ear. “Did Pat do something bad?”

No answer.

“Something nobody else knows about?”

Lib waited. Watched the flickering lids. Leave her be, she told herself, suddenly exhausted. What did any of this matter now?

“He said it was all right.” Anna barely voiced the words. Eyes still shut, as if she were still in her dream.

Lib waited, breath held.

“He said it was double.”

Lib puzzled over that. “Double what?”

“Love.” A push of tongue for the L, the merest puff of breath, teeth pressed to the lower lip for the V.

My love is mine, and I am his; one of Anna’s hymns. “What do you mean?”

Anna’s eyes were open now. “He married me in the night.”

Lib blinked once, twice. The room stayed still, but the world plunged dizzyingly around it.

He comes in to me as soon as I’m asleep, Anna had said, but she hadn’t meant Jesus. He wants me.

“I was his sister and his bride too,” the girl whispered. “Double.”

Nausea rose through Lib. There wasn’t another bedroom; the siblings must have shared this one. That folding screen she’d put outside the room on her first day had been all that had separated Pat’s bed—this bed, his deathbed—from Anna’s mattress on the floor. “When was this?” Lib asked, the words scraping her throat.

A tiny shrug.

“How old was Pat, do you remember?”

“Thirteen, maybe.”

“And you?”

“Nine,” said Anna.

Lib’s face puckered. “Did this happen just once, Anna—on a single occasion—or…”