As Bright as Heaven(55)
The girls will be all right, Thomas. I know you are already worried for them, but Willa has Evelyn, Maggie has Alex, and you all have the love that I leave here for each one of you. It is spilling out of me even at this moment and finding its way to you all. There is even love for Alex that is gushing out of me, Thomas. I held him for just a short while, but in those few minutes my heart was linked to his.
That child needs you and the girls, Thomas. And you may not know it yet, but you need him, too.
Tell the girls this, will you? Tell them that all the love that had been tucked inside this mortal heart of mine remains with you all. That’s how I will stay close. My love for you all is right there now. Just under your skin. And there it will always—
Oh! Oh, Thomas!
Look! Can you see it? It’s so beautiful! Look!
So beautiful!
Beautiful.
CHAPTER 36
Evelyn
I keep thinking I’m having a bad dream and soon I’ll wake up and everything will be back to the way it was before the flu.
She is gone. Mama is dead. The flu took her just like it wanted to take Willa. Just like it took Alex’s mother and Mrs. Landry and thousands upon thousands of others.
Why, if it could let Willa go, did it not do the same for Mama? Why does it choose to take some and not others? Why doesn’t it just kill us all? I am not asking for the scientific reasons. I know those. I don’t want the medical reasons. I want to know the real reasons.
We were all in the sitting room when Papa came down the stairs several hours after we were told to say our farewells. Uncle Fred was standing by the window, looking out into the darkness. I was on the sofa and Willa was asleep with her head in my lap. Maggie had Alex in her arms, and she was singing to him even though he was asleep. When Papa stepped into the room, she stopped.
He didn’t have to say anything. We knew. Mama had left us. I started to cry and Willa stirred on my lap but didn’t wake.
“I’ll take care of her,” Uncle Fred said a minute later, his voice soft and gruff at the same time.
Papa shook his head. “No. I want to.”
“Let me do her hair,” Maggie said, and all of us looked at her.
“Maggie,” Papa said.
“Please. I want to do her hair!” Maggie said, louder this time, and Alex whimpered in her arms. “Not you, Papa. Not Uncle Fred. Me. Please?”
“I don’t think—” Uncle Fred began, but Papa cut him off.
“Let her do it, Fred.”
Uncle Fred was quiet for a moment. “You want to take her to Quakertown when we’re finished?” he said to Papa.
“Pauline stays here,” Papa said. “Her home is here. With us.” His eyes were rimmed with tears of grief but also anger.
I thought maybe he would gather us all in a wide embrace and we’d cry together for a little while, but Papa just turned and left the room. I think he wanted to be alone to cry, maybe because he wanted to be strong for us. Maybe because he doesn’t like crying in front of people.
Or maybe it was because he wanted to punish Grandma and Grandpa Adler by burying Mama here with us instead of there with them, and he wanted to be alone with those dark thoughts.
When he left, Maggie bolted out of the chair she’d been sitting in. She ran up the stairs with Alex, all the way to the top of the house and her room. Her door slammed shut. Uncle Fred turned to me. He looked so very tired.
“It’s late. You should both be in bed,” he said, nodding to Willa in my lap.
“Do you really want to talk about shoulds?” I snapped. I regretted those disrespectful words the second I spoke them. But I was seething inside. Mama should be alive. That was a should I was willing to talk about!
But I couldn’t trust myself to speak again. Uncle Fred had been so kind to me in so many ways, not the least of which was paying for my schooling and letting me—even encouraging me to—read his many books whenever I wanted. I should have said I was sorry. But I didn’t. He set his pipe in its little tray on the table by the bay window.
“I’m sorry, Evelyn. Do whatever you need to. Stay here as long as you like,” he said softly. He walked away from me, into the foyer and toward the little hallway that led to his rooms. He coughed a few times on the way to his bedroom.
Willa opened her eyes and squinted up at me. “Is it morning?”
“Shhh. No. It isn’t.”
She settled back to sleep and I let my head fall against the back of the sofa. I hadn’t the strength to climb the stairs. I hadn’t the strength to do anything.
? ? ?
I didn’t think I would be able to sleep, but I must have dropped off at some point. The next thing I know the room is suddenly bathed in ghostly light from the rising sun outside the windows.
I ease myself away from Willa and head into the kitchen. Papa is sitting at the table with a whiskey bottle and a coffee cup. The door to the funeral parlor is ajar. He’d been back there already, but I don’t want him to do anything to Mama just yet. I look at him and I’m ready to tell him it is too soon. She’s only been dead a few hours. It is too soon.
He meets my gaze and then nods toward the half-open door that leads to the funeral rooms. “Roland was just here,” he says, his voice void of strength. “Charlie Sutcliff died last night, too.”