As Bright as Heaven(103)

“If that’s what you really want,” Papa said. He was crying, too, though not like me. His tears had been falling slow and silent.

“So we’re talking about what I really want?” I’d yelled, and I think I swept another dish off the dining room table. It’s hazy now, at what point I’d run out of dishes. I think Evie may have removed some before I got to them all. She kept saying, “Willa, please! Don’t make this harder than it already is.” Maggie sat in her chair like a statue. Like a gargoyle. Alex, thank God, was across the street at the Sutcliffs’. Dora had wanted to say good-bye and make him banana pancakes for breakfast. His favorite. Alex had spent a lot of time with Dora when he was little and we girls were in school.

Yesterday, when word had gotten out that Alex’s real family had been found, Dora and Jamie and Roland had come over to our house pale-faced and distressed, like there’d been a death in the family.

“How did all this come about?” Dora had said as she cried and twisted a handkerchief in her hands.

Evie had to tell the Sutcliffs all the terrible details because I was too mad to explain anything and Maggie was holed up in her room like a coward. Papa and Alex were at the county offices or the police station—I didn’t know which and I didn’t care—because the authorities needed to talk to him and Alex, and Alex’s real father and grandparents were coming to meet him and to discuss when to turn him over. Like Alex was a lost dog we’d found.

Evie told them about her patient Ursula Novak and how she figured out Alex is Ursula’s brother. Then Evie told them what Maggie had done all those years ago during the flu when she found Alex. “Maggie honestly thought Ursula was dying,” Evie had said. “And when no one reported Alex missing, she was sure that’s what happened.”

“Oh yes, I do remember that,” Dora had replied, wiping her eyes. “I remember how we kept waiting for the police to say Alex had family looking for him.”

Then Jamie had asked how Maggie was doing, as if she’s the only one whose heart is breaking. Evie said the police aren’t going to charge her with any crime because she was only thirteen when it happened, and Papa wasn’t going to be charged, either, because we’d duly reported that we had found the baby and were caring for him. It should have been the authorities who connected the dots, not us. We did mostly everything right. Mostly. Maggie’s not being truthful about where she found Alex was the wrong thing to do. The police didn’t know if the family would bring civil charges, but everyone is hoping—the authorities included—they won’t.

Jamie had then asked if he could see Maggie, and Evie said maybe another time. Imogene Towlerton wanted to see Maggie yesterday, too, and Maggie had said she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. Palmer called her from New York, and she wouldn’t even talk to him on the telephone.

“Oh dear,” Dora Sutcliff had moaned. “What a sad time this is. Except for that other family, I suppose. They are probably thinking this is the happiest news ever.”

And Evie said, yes, it has definitely changed one life for the better in an immeasurable way. Ursula Novak no longer wants to die.

“She’ll be getting out of the asylum, then?” Roland had asked.

And Evie said Ursula’s discharge would likely take place soon, provided the upheaval from Alex returning didn’t send her spiraling into a different kind of mental trauma.

“The mind is a delicate thing,” Evie had said.

An hour later Papa and Alex had come home. Alex looked like he was walking around in someone else’s dream. He didn’t appear to be sad or happy. He just clutched his mother’s photograph like it was a train ticket he’d been told not to lose or he’d be scolded.

He wanted to go upstairs and see Maggie when he got home, and Evie didn’t tell him not to bother her. Alex was the one person Maggie still wanted to see.

When he was out of the room, Evie asked Papa how it went. She had met Alex’s grandmother before, but not the grandfather or Alex’s dad, and she wanted to know what they were like.

We were in the sitting room. Papa had eased himself down onto the sofa. He looked twenty years older.

“They seem like good people,” Papa said. “I don’t know. Alex’s father is . . . He seems to be still in a state of shock. He’s not taking Alex to his house, because his new wife just had a baby, so Alex will be living at the hotel with his grandparents. As will Ursula, when she’s released.”

This made my blood boil. “His father doesn’t want him?” I said.

Papa ran his hand across his face. “I think it’s complicated for him.”

“Complicated for him?” I yelled. The china dancer on the end table looked ripe for hurling, and I had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t reach for it.

“Keep your voice down!” Evie had said, shushing me like a mother might.

“How can you even let them take Alex?” I continued. “Do they have any idea how complicated this is for us? For Alex?”

“Willa—” Evie began, but I’d just moved on to my next objection.

“How dare they think living in a hotel with grandparents he doesn’t even know is better for Alex than living here with us?”

Papa had taken his hand away from his face. “He’s their flesh and blood, Willa. What would you have me do? The law is on their side.”