As Bright as Heaven(101)

Just thinking of that almost kiss now makes me blush.

“Mother and I will take care of it,” Palmer says, kissing my forehead. He scoops up the papers and slides them back inside the leather portfolio in which he brought them. “All right, then. I think that’s all we need to attend to for now.” He stands, almost triumphantly. He’s heading up to Manhattan in the morning, a day before he starts his new job, to scout out an apartment for us. I stand, too. “Hopefully the next few weeks will fly by and I can come home with good news about where we will be living,” he says as I walk him to the door.

“I hope so,” I say absently.

In the sitting room just a few yards from us, Willa, who has just gotten home from school, begins to pound out a tune on the piano, loud enough to wake the cadavers down the hall. Palmer nods toward the sound.

“She still angry with us for taking Alex?” he asks.

I haven’t given the situation with Willa much thought even though she was rather upset to learn that Alex is coming to New York with Palmer and me. Willa’s ire is understandable this time, but I have had more pressing matters to ponder than how to ease her displeasure. “I suppose she is,” I answer.

“Well, try not to let it bother you too much, hmm?” He kisses me and then opens the door, letting in a chilly blast of cold air. Evie is just coming up the stoop from her workday at the asylum. It’s early, though. Not yet even four o’clock. Her cheeks are crimson from the cold.

“Good afternoon, Evelyn,” Palmer says genially, tipping his hat.

“Yes. Good afternoon, Palmer,” she says quickly, walking past him and coming straight for me. “I need to talk to you, Maggie.”

“She’s all yours,” Palmer says cheerfully. “I’m off.”

I wave good-bye, watch Palmer walk away, and then close the door. In the foyer, Evie has taken off her coat and is now unwrapping her muffler. Her hands are shaking.

“Is it that cold outside?” I ask.

She turns to me. Her eyes are alight with what I can only describe as fear. “I need to talk to you alone.”

“Evie, what is it?”

“Where’s Alex?”

“He and Papa went to the hardware store. Why?”

She pulls a small wooden box out of her handbag and then grabs my arm. We pass Willa, whose fingers are attacking the keyboard like hammer strokes, and head for the stairs. Seconds later we are in Evie’s room on the second floor and she has closed the door, bracing her back against it.

“Evie! What in God’s name has happened?”

My sister closes her eyes for a moment, as if she can’t find the words to tell me her terrible news. I feel my heart thrumming in my chest. I’m afraid and I don’t know why.

“Evie?” I murmur as I sit on her bed, afraid that I may topple.

She opens her eyes and they are rimmed in silver. “I know who Alex belongs to.”

Heat immediately fills my head, and a roaring starts in my ears. “What?”

“I know your secret. I know why you pretended not to know in which house you found him. Because there wasn’t just a dead mother inside it. There was a girl inside, too. A sick girl. His sister.”

I am at once nauseated and hot and cold and flattened. I must be dreaming. Must be. This nightmare where what I did is exposed is one I’ve had before, many times, but it has been a number of years since the last occasion.

I am dreaming, so I close my eyes that I might wake.

Evie is suddenly kneeling before me, her hands tight on my arms, her nails biting into my flesh. “That girl thinks she killed him! His sister thinks she threw her baby brother in the river because everyone told her she did. She’s lived the last seven years thinking she killed Alex! She tried to kill herself because of the horror of it. And now she sits in my hospital after trying to hang herself. For the love of God, Maggie, tell me the truth! What did you do?”

And then the other me, the one who has been agreeing to all the wedding plans, tells Evie what I did. How I saw the dying girl on the sofa and how I’d assured her I’d take care of her brother, how I had run back to Mama with the baby, how Mama and I retraced my steps, and how I had seen through the broken window that the girl on the sofa was gone. And how I only had a second to decide what to do.

“When I found Alex, I thought that girl was dying, and then when Mama and I walked back, I saw she was gone. I told myself she must have crawled into their mother’s bedroom to tell her the baby had been rescued and had died there on the floor where I couldn’t see her. But I didn’t want to look inside and find out if I was wrong. I pretended I couldn’t remember which building it was. I didn’t want to go back with Mrs. Arnold the next day and find out there were other family members. So I lied to her, too. I wanted the baby for us because we had lost Henry and that baby needed us. And we needed him. I thought that girl had died. And no one came for Alex. No one went to the police station asking about him. We waited and waited and no one ever asked.”

“Because everyone thought Ursula had thrown him in the river,” Evie says, her voice husky and her face wet with tears. She is looking down at my hands, limp in my lap.

“Ursula?” I say.

“That’s her name.”

“Why? Why did everyone think she did that?”

Evie then tells me how this girl named Ursula had been so feverish everyone believed her to have been delirious when she said an angel in white lace—me—had taken her baby brother away in a little brown boat—my coat. Ursula had seen the heart-shaped birthmark on his tummy as he wriggled—alive—in my arms. This is how Evie knew Ursula’s baby brother was Alex. Ursula had tried to follow me and couldn’t, and she’d been found wandering down by the river, mumbling that she was looking for the angel who had taken away her baby brother in a little brown boat.