Before I Let You Go(42)

Maybe I’ve let your momma down over the years, kiddo, and maybe she’s already let you down herself—but I promise, I’ll find a way to make all of this right so you two can have a life together.





14


ANNIE


Dear Luke,

Imagination can be a refuge, and soon Lexie and I had created an elaborate world all our own. Somehow, the life I lived in the woods with my sister became more real to me than the rest of my existence. The trees were my home—boulders my furniture, sticks my utensils, the dirt was my carpet and the birdsong was my background music.

Lexie would “tuck me in.” My mattress was the cold dirt, my sheets a carpet of rotting leaves, and my pillow was a rock—but I didn’t feel any of that, because in my mind, I was back in my real home. My fantasy was so vivid to me that I could breathe in the familiar smells of the old house . . . the lingering scent of the cakes Mom always baked back then, the citrusy cleaning products she’d used, even Dad’s aftershave. I could almost see the pink walls of the bedroom Lexie and I used to share. If I strained my ear, I could hear Dad climbing the stairs to say good-night, and I could almost convince myself that if I rolled over the other way, I’d see Lexie tucked in beside me.

“What song do you want tonight, sweetheart?” Lexie would ask as she stroked the hair back from my face.

“Sing me ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, do you know how loved you are? In the morning, in the night, I’ll love you with all my might . . . Twinkle, twinkle, little star, do you know how loved you are?”

The first time she sung the verse, I protested.

“That’s not how it goes!”

“Mom used to sing it that way when you were little. I remember standing at the door and listening when you were a baby.” Lexie smiled at me, and from that day on, she’d sing that funny little lullaby to me, and the tune and the lyrics would wrap their way around me until I felt safe and happy.

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were a baby, silly. But I can remember for the both of us.”

One afternoon, as we walked to the woods, Lexie bent to pluck a seeded dandelion from a random patch of grass. She offered it to me.

“Make a wish?”

I took the dandelion but just before I was about to blow it, I paused. I looked at her, so wise beyond her years, and she was everything to me—because without Lexie, I knew that I was lost. I wanted to use the dandelion to wish that Mom would come to her senses and that we could go home somehow, that we could be a real family again. Life had been difficult since we lost Dad, but it had been only awful since Robert came along. I was sure that if Robert and the community were out of the picture, I’d be happy again.

But it seemed selfish to use the wish for myself. If anyone de- served to be happy, it was Lexie—she was all that had saved me from utter misery over the years since Dad’s death. I passed the dandelion back.

“No, you can have it.”

“Why?” she asked, and she flashed me a quizzical smile as she accepted the stem back into her palm.

“It’s your turn, Lex.”

She raised the dandelion to her lips, then hesitated.

“Actually, let’s do it together. Okay?”

I smiled at her as I nodded, and we each took in a big breath, then at the same time we blew gently against the seeds of the dandelion. They scattered as the wind caught them and pulled them away from us. I glanced at the stem and every last seed was gone.

“What did you wish for?” Lexie asked me.

“Isn’t it supposed to be secret?”

“Well, we shared that dandelion so . . . we have different rules,” she decided.

“I wished that we could be a normal family again.”

“See . . . I wished the same thing,” Lexie said, and she tossed the dandelion stem away and pulled me in for a tight hug. “It’s bound to come true now!”

After that, we always searched for dandelions on our way to and from the woods. It became a ritual that we did not need to discuss or negotiate; we both knew exactly how it would run. When one of us found a dandelion, she would offer it to the other and we’d blow the seeds together to silently make the same wish.

Shortly after we started our dandelion-hunting ritual, Lexie found a doll behind the cupboard at the schoolhouse, and she managed to sneak it out in the folds of her skirt. The next afternoon, we stole a tea towel from the kitchen to make a blanket, and from that day on we had a baby to fuss over during those games in the woods. Given that Lexie always wanted to be Mom, this meant I now had to play the role of Dad, but I didn’t mind that one bit.

“What should we call her?” I asked Lexie as she made a little crib for the doll between two moss-covered boulders. Lexie paused, and then she grinned at me.

“Dandelion,” she announced, and I giggled.

“That’s perfect.”

I was quite sure that our wishes would come true one day, and that the miracle doll was some kind of hint from the universe that it was working things out for us. We just needed to be patient.





15


LEXIE


An hour passes before a nurse tells me Annie is ready to see her daughter. This time, as I walk the long hallway, I get to push the humidicrib myself. The baby opens her eyes as I’m walking, and she stares up with that vacant, unfocused stare newborns have. I smile at her anyway. I know it’s pointless, but I just can’t help it.