As Bright as Heaven(98)

Her gaze registers interest.

“I need to ask for your trust. I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I am asking you to trust me.”

“Trust you for what?” Her tone suggests maybe she has had bad luck trusting people.

“That my sole desire and aim is for you to be well and happy.”

“I guess,” she says, sounding dubious.

I reach out to squeeze her hand in gratitude. I want her to think of it as a handshake—like we’ve agreed on this. She doesn’t flinch, but neither does she show any signs that she and I have struck a deal.

I take back my hand. “I need to show you something.” I peel back the napkin from around the pencil box.

Her eyes widen only slightly. “Who gave that to you?”

“Your roommate, Matilda, happened to know you kept it hidden in your room. She showed it to me.”

Ursula blinks languidly as she stares at the box, and then she turns her gaze back to the window. “I don’t care that she did. I don’t need it anymore. I don’t need anything inside it. She can have it if she wants.”

I steel myself for what I will say next and for whatever Ursula will say or do. “Ursula, I spoke to Rita Dabney at the hotel. She told me what happened. I know about your baby brother. I know you think it’s your fault he died.”

Ursula doesn’t move. She swallows with effort and then two tears track down her face like silver strands of light. “It is my fault.”

“You were ill. You had the flu and were delirious with fever. It wasn’t your fault.”

She shakes her head and more tears fall. “You weren’t there.”

“It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t there. The facts are the facts regardless. Your mother had just died, Ursula. I know you loved her. I saw the photo of you and her in this box. I saw the list of hers that you saved. The necklace. She had just died, and you were very sick with the same thing that killed her. And maybe Leo was sick with it, too. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe you took him to the river because it was just too sad to see his dead body alongside your mother’s. And then your mind created the angel and the brown boat so that you could imagine him safely traveling to heaven.”

“He wasn’t dead,” she whispers, the tears suddenly falling freely. “He was alive.”

She makes no move to wipe the tears from her face. I reach into my skirt pocket for a clean handkerchief and offer it to her. But she seems not to see my hand in front of her.

“I saw the angel in white,” she continues softly, almost as if she is recounting the day to herself, not to me. “I saw the little brown boat in the angel’s arms. I don’t remember going down to the river with Leo. But I remember he was alive in the angel’s arms. He was alive.”

Her voice falls away.

“Are you sure he was, Ursula?” I ask, again offering the handkerchief. “Perhaps he wasn’t.”

“The angel told me I didn’t have to worry, that Leo was safe with her,” Ursula continues, but not to me. She is speaking to her reflection in the window glass. “I saw him crying, reaching up to touch the angel’s face, and I saw the little heart-shaped mark on his stomach as he wriggled in her arms. He was alive.”

My breath catches hard and cold in my throat. “What did you say?”

“I tried to follow them,” Ursula says, numbly. “I wanted to go with them to heaven. I tried. The angel was too quick. She flew. I tried to follow them. . . .”

She continues to weep quietly, but I am barely aware of anything but the bolt of dread hammering its way through me. Ursula’s memories are colliding with my own. No, not colliding. Coming into focus. They are layers of the same truth. Hers. Mine. The same. I see them folding in on themselves to reveal one reality, not two.

The heart-shaped birthmark.

Alex.

The angel in white.

Maggie wearing Mama’s lace scarf as a mask.

The little brown boat in the angel’s arms.

Maggie’s coat bundled to carry the naked, crying infant away in the chilled October air.

Ursula, struggling to her feet to follow them out of the building. Maggie, walking too fast. Ursula, losing sight of Maggie and the baby in the warren of tumbledown row houses. She ends up at the river, too dazed and fevered to even realize she’s there.

When the authorities are called in by passersby who see the sick girl wandering about, they figure out who Ursula is and where she lives. They take her home and find a dead mother and an empty cradle. They ask this nine-year-old girl found delirious by the river where the baby is and she tells them about the angel with the little brown boat who took her brother to heaven.

I’d always known Maggie was lying when she said she couldn’t remember in which row house she’d found Alex. But now I knew why. It was because she had seen Ursula. And Ursula had seen her.

Alex is Leo.

For a second I cannot breathe. And then I feel all that I am inside wanting to vomit itself out of me. I let this happen. I am the one who put Ursula in this hospital. I’m the reason she tried to kill herself. Maggie lied about how and where she found Alex. And I knew she had lied. I have always known. I put a hand to my mouth.

Ursula, in her own private hell, doesn’t seem to notice.

“Ursula, I need to take care of something,” I say, mechanically. “I’ll be back in a little bit.” I grab the pencil box and rise on shaking feet, wondering where I will go.