As Bright as Heaven(93)

“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said empathetically.

“Then I come to find out from the police that Ines is dead and Ursula was found wandering around the river, blood all over her, sick with the flu, and carrying on about an angel coming for Baby Leo in a little brown boat. She tossed him into the river. A helpless baby. She drowned him.”

Rita Dabney’s eyes had misted over.

“I’m so very sorry.”

“The worst of it is, she says she doesn’t hardly remember that day.”

“I think maybe she does,” I said.

“Well, I’ve asked her time and again what on earth made her think an angel had come in a little brown boat for that baby, and she could never tell me.”

“Maybe the baby had died. Their mother was dead. Maybe the trauma of losing both her mother and her brother in the same day was too much. Maybe Ursula’s mind created the image of the angel taking Leo to soften the blow of seeing them both dead.”

“But she threw him in the river!”

“If the child was dead already, then she didn’t drown him.”

“Then why is she the way she is? Why did she try to kill herself? He was alive when she threw him in. If he wasn’t, she wouldn’t be carrying the guilt that she is. She is the way she is because deep down she knows she killed that baby. Probably because she was jealous of him.”

“She was sick with fever.”

“But my grandson is dead just the same.”

I paused for just a moment to collect my thoughts. “You and your husband took her in then?”

Rita Dabney’s nod was accompanied by a half-concealed snort. “What else could we do? Ines had no other family that we knew of. The city was plumb full of orphans. They didn’t want another one. And I did feel sorry for her. I did. Ursula was the saddest child I’d ever laid eyes on. When Cal came home some months after the war, he didn’t even want to see her. It was several years before he’d even look at her. And he had his own problems from the war. He softened up after a while, but there were times before he met his second wife and she gave him a new baby when he’d get ahold of liquor, and when he did, he always lit into Ursula and blamed her for everything bad in his life. It wasn’t her fault Ines died or that Cal had to see what he did in the war, but he heaped the blame for it all, and Leo’s death, too, on her. I don’t blame her for having left.”

“Left? Didn’t she run away at fourteen?”

Rita opened her mouth and then closed it. A second later when she spoke again, I knew we were finished. “She left. You apparently read the note I wrote to her. I told her she always had a home here. But she wanted to go. And now I think it’s time you went.”

I thanked Rita Dabney for her help and she merely tipped her head to acknowledge she’d heard me.

It was raining harder as I stepped outside. I ran to Conrad’s automobile, so grateful that he had wanted to wait for me.

“Did you get what you needed?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“More or less,” I said.

He needed to concentrate on the slick street as we made our way back across the bridge into Pennsylvania, and the easy camaraderie that we had on the way to Camden was gone. The silence as he drove seemed to emphasize the fact that we were alone in his car.

We pulled into the gravel driveway of the hospital some minutes later, just as a break in the clouds appeared.

“Thank you for taking me,” I said as Conrad set the Buick’s brake. “I so appreciate it.”

“I’m the grateful one. You’re the only person who has shown any real interest in helping Sybil.”

“I wish I could do more. I truly do.”

He had held my gaze from across the seat. “I know you do.”

I stayed for only a second more. Then I went into the hospital ahead of him, my face warm despite the chill.

And now, several hours later, I sit with Ursula’s secret possessions lined up on my bureau and the memory of that look Conrad gave me.

I don’t know what to make of any of it.

A knock at my door pulls me from these thoughts.

“It’s Maggie. Can I come in?”

She opens the door and her face is flushed. I can’t tell if she’s happy or terrified. I haven’t seen much of her since Jamie’s sudden return.

“Everything all right?” I ask.

She extends her hand toward me. On the ring finger of her left hand is a shining sapphire rimmed with little diamonds.

“You said yes.”

“I did.” Tears glisten in my sister’s eyes. “Two nights ago. But he gave me the ring tonight.”

“It’s official, then?”

Maggie exhales nervously. “I suppose it is,” she says.

“And Papa?”

“I was there when Palmer asked him. He couldn’t be happier for us. And he understands about Alex. He wants us to take him.” She shudders a bit, as if a frosty gust has just swirled about her. She reaches up with the hand that wears Palmer’s ring to catch a tear that has started to fall. “This is the best thing for Alex, isn’t it? Taking him?”

“It’s not always easy to identify the very best thing to do until you do what you think is best,” I tell her, with Ursula’s pencil box in my peripheral vision. “I do know Alex loves you like a son loves his mother. And he is obviously very fond of Palmer.”