As Bright as Heaven(102)

“She thinks she killed Leo,” Evie says as she wipes her face with the back of her hand.

“Leo?”

“That’s Alex’s name, Maggie. His name is Leo. And he has a sister named Ursula. And a father named Cal. And grandparents named Rita and Maury.”

For a moment I can only sit on Evie’s bed and try to allow these names to have a place in my head. But I can’t. Alex is ours. He has sisters named Maggie and Evie and Willa. And a father named Thomas Bright. Alex is ours. Alex is ours. Alex—

“Maggie, we have to tell Papa.”

I snap my head up to look at her. “No,” I say plainly.

“We must!”

“No.”

“He’s not ours!”

“Yes, he is.”

Her hands are on my shoulders again. “Maggie, listen to me. You did what you thought was best. No one will fault you for that. You thought Ursula was dying. And then when no one was looking for Alex, you thought she had died. You were young and it was a terrible time for everyone. You did what you thought was best for him. And now we need to do what is best for him again.”

I free myself from her grip. “How is telling him all this going to be best for him? He doesn’t know any of those people! They are strangers to him. We’re the people he loves! We’re his family. How can you even think of letting complete strangers come and take him!”

“Can you tell me you can go on pretending you don’t know who he really is?” Evie says, her voice splintering. “That you can live knowing he has a sister who spends every moment of her miserable life thinking she killed him?”

I want Evie to stop talking. Just stop. Stop.

“He’s not ours, Maggie,” she says.

My mind conjures a horrible image of Alex’s face when I tell him. Of Papa’s. And then I see the shattering image of Alex screaming as people he doesn’t know drag him out of this house. The contents of my stomach rise like a fountain, and I dash off the bed, throw open the door, and run to the bathroom. I heave into the commode, and it seems like my very heart and soul are being expelled out of me.

Evie is at my side, stroking my back and crying softly. A moment later Willa is at the doorway, too, having heard my retching in between the measures of her music.

“What’s wrong with her?” I hear Willa asking. And then, “Evie, why are you crying?”

“Are Papa and Alex home yet?” Evie asks, ignoring both questions.

“Only just,” I hear Willa say. “They’re in the mudroom, I think, taking off their coats.”

“We need you to take Alex for a little bit so that Maggie and I can talk to Papa alone. Will you do that, Willa? Can you take Alex to the sitting room and play one of your piano games?”

“Why? What has happened? What’s wrong with Maggie?”

“Please, Willa. You will know soon enough. Just tell Papa that Maggie and I need to talk to him. Tell him to wait for us in the viewing parlor. Then take Alex to the sitting room and close the doors. Please?”

There is a pause. I can’t raise my head to look at Willa. She will hate me after this.

“All right,” Willa says.

A moment later she is gone. Evie moistens a washcloth and then helps me to my feet. She wipes away the vomit and perspiration from my face.

“I need to get something from my room,” she says.

I put a drinking glass under the tap and then force myself to swallow some water. When Evie returns a minute later, she has in her hand the little box that she’d taken out of her coat pocket when she got home.

“What is that?” I say, loathing it even though I don’t know what it holds. It’s somehow related to Alex being a boy named Leo—I’m sure of that at least—and I hate it.

“It’s Ursula’s. There is a picture of their mother inside. Alex deserves to see it.”

We hear the pocket doors to the sitting room close, our cue that Willa has taken Alex inside. He won’t see our ashen, tearstained faces as we come down the stairs.

“Come,” Evie says to me, taking my hand.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

“Yes, you can.”

I look at the box in her hand. “Can I see it? The picture of their mother?”

Evie opens the box and withdraws a sepia-toned photograph of a dark-haired woman with long curls and kind eyes. She is sitting on a chair with her hands in her lap. A little girl with ringlets stands next to her with her hand on the mother’s left shoulder. The mother’s torso is angled toward the girl, as if perhaps she’d wanted to have her arm around the girl’s waist but the photographer told her to leave her hands folded in her lap. The woman is pretty and young and her slight smile is serene.

This was the woman I saw dead on her bed the day I found Alex. This woman.

His mother.

I hold the photograph to my breast as Evie and I descend the stairs and make our way to where Papa waits for us.





CHAPTER 62



Willa


I found out at breakfast that Papa was going to let those people come for Alex while I was at school.

While I was conjugating French verbs or solving algebraic problems or reciting Longfellow, Alex was going to be taken from us to become a boy named Leo who lives in New Jersey, as though this was just any old ordinary day for the Brights. I’d smashed several cups and plates before Papa had relented and said I didn’t have to go to classes today. I could stay home and watch Alex’s real family come and take him.