How can this possibly get rid of her night visitations? It’s crossed Caroline’s mind more than once that the visions and dreams mean her end is drawing near, and it weighs heavily on her. Her mother’s face is creased with a deep, indelible sorrow each time she comes and Caroline takes it to mean she wants Caroline to atone for her mistakes before she dies. But she’s paid her debt. Isn’t it enough that Nick was ripped from the life they planned, crushed into the earth beneath that tractor, before it even began? And the daughter he gave her, snatched away just as suddenly on that fateful June day?
Caroline doesn’t remember Sarah turning off the light or maybe a black cloud’s crossed in front of the sun but her room’s suddenly as dark as a chapel with a single flickering flame. Sarah has a dull knife in her hand and she’s saluting the air, chanting in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I release you beyond the mountains, beyond the seas.” Strange words.
“I release you where people do not walk, where roosters do not crow, where the wind does not blow.” Not godly at all.
“Do not drink red blood, dehydrate a white body, or strip a yellow bone.” Blood and bones.
Sarah’s face is as smooth and relaxed as someone asleep, her motions trancelike, practised, although she says she’s never done this before. She places the bowl on the desk and takes up the cup she only minutes ago held over the flame. The wax slides easily from the cup into the water and Sarah leans in close for a look.
Caroline catches her breath as she feels an unexpected pressure, a slow lean against the back of her heart. It lets up in the time it takes her to swallow another lungful of air then pushes again, harder this time, behind her left breast, and she pictures her pulsing heart shattering like a china cup. She lifts her hand to her chest and takes another deep breath, and the walls in her room start to spin, the crushing weight bearing down even more. She wonders if she’s having a heart attack. If only she could stand up, take a brisk walk, and get the blood pumping to where it is needed.
“Caroline, are you all right?” Sarah is saying, crouching down in front of her chair.
Caroline feels a hot wind roar in her ears, which she knows is beyond the realm of possibility, just as she knows her mother is not really here, but she sees her right there, sitting on the bed like a prim lady in church, and a fleeting thought slips into her mind: Is she here, now, to lead me away?
Sarah again. Hovering over her. “Should I call the nurse?”
“No, no, don’t.” The pressure is easing up, the tight belt around her heart slowly releasing. “I’ll be fine in a moment.” She’s grounded again, back in her everyday room, and, when she looks over, her mother is gone.
“Could you hand me that glass of water?” she asks, and Sarah passes it over.
When Caroline moves to give the glass back, Sarah is staring into the enamel bowl with a perplexed look on her face.
“What happens now?” Caroline asks, peering up at her.
“I have to tell you what I see.”
“And?”
“There are two shapes. One looks like a tree.” Sarah frowns. “But the other … I don’t know … it’s just a jagged lump. They both seem familiar, somehow, but there’s something I’m not seeing. It’s like a piece of the puzzle is missing.”
Caroline’s heart flips in the quick way it used to when she thought Eldon might catch her in a lie. There is a missing piece, and it’s the secret she’s hidden all these years. Hadn’t Alice once said that secrets are impossible to contain forever? Like dandelion fluff, apt to drift away on a light wind to settle and bloom into someone else’s truth.
“There’s something I need to tell you about that last day. About Becca,” Caroline says. The time has come. The Bilyks have the right to know that Becca is one of their own.
Caroline’s voice cracks when she says her daughter’s name. “She was in such a state that day, pleading with me to understand. Didn’t I know what it felt like to be in love?” Caroline looks down, picks at a bit of loose skin at the base of a nail. “Of course I knew about love. I loved her father desperately.”
There’s a soft tap at the door and Addie looks in but Sarah waves her away. “Becca was furious with me. She didn’t understand why I disapproved of Jack so strongly. She knew about Eldon’s opinion of the Bilyks but she couldn’t understand why I would be so opposed to a romance between them; she expected me to take her side against her father. She was carrying on in the kitchen that day, throwing cups from the cupboard and smashing them on the floor, insisting she would run off and marry Jack and there was nothing we could do. I told her it was impossible, she simply could not have anything more to do with this particular boy.”
“Why? What did you have against Jack?”
“It wasn’t Jack. It was something I’d done that Becca was being made to pay for. But I wouldn’t change a minute of it.” Tears flow freely down Caroline’s cheeks and she makes no effort to brush them away.
The digital number flips on the clock; the usual sounds from the hallway beyond Caroline’s door are muted by a spell that seems to have fallen over the room.
“Becca was hysterical so I slapped her.” She looks at Sarah, her eyes begging forgiveness. “I swear, before that day, I’d never lifted a hand to her. Becca was so shocked, she stumbled back, holding the palm of one hand against her face. She sank to the floor, sobbing, then looked up and told me there might be a baby. She was late by six weeks, but, like any young girl, she didn’t want to believe it. She’d already told Jack and he said they had no other choice but to get married. I couldn’t believe it.” Caroline wrings her hands. “I had planned to keep the secret from her for as long as I lived. What sense would there be in telling her? I thought she’d soon leave for the city, be as happy as I’d been to get away from the farm. She would make new friends. Meet someone else and forget about Jack. But I was so shocked when she told me about the baby, I blurted it out. I told her … that Jack was her cousin.”
Caroline holds her hand over her mouth, stifling a cry. She is remembering Becca’s shocked face when she told her.
“Her cousin?” Sarah says, still seeming confused.
“Her father was Jack’s uncle,” Caroline says quietly. “Nick.” She covers her face with her hands. “I wasn’t able tell her how pure our love was, nothing at all like what she must have been thinking. She pushed me with all her might, called me every vile name you can think of. Told me she hated me. Then she ran off, and it wasn’t until later, when Elvina showed up, that I knew Becca didn’t even want to say goodbye. She never wanted to see me again. And I could hardly blame her. I turned the whole truth of her life on its head.”
In the hallway, the wheels of a cart clatter by as an aide pushes it from room to room, handing out fresh pitchers of water.
There. It’s done. I’m finally free of it.
“So Eldon found out Becca wasn’t his child,” Sarah says.
“I hoped he never would — Becca and I could have kept it between us if only I’d had time to explain — but she ran out. She must have gone straight to Eldon and told him. I stayed in the house the rest of that day, thinking eventually she’d cry herself out and come back. Eldon didn’t show up for supper either, but he came back just before dark. I was in my sewing room, keeping my hands busy, hemming a skirt. He grabbed me, picked up my shears from the sewing table and hacked off my hair. Threw it in clumps on the floor. Then he held the scissors against my throat — I thought he would kill me. He knew it all. About Nick. That Becca wasn’t his own daughter. And about Becca’s baby. I wasn’t fit to call myself a mother, he said, and he was sending Becca away. Then the next day, Jack showed up and told us he was prepared to marry her. Eldon pulled out his gun, told him he’d never see Becca again either.”
Silence fills the room.
“He punished me every day for the rest of his life,” Caroline finally says.
“How did you —?”
“Stay? Survive?” Caroline shakes her head. “What choice did I have? I had nowhere to go. And besides, every letter that came, every packet of mail, I was sure one day I’d find something from her. For the first few years, every time the phone rang, I raced for it, hoping I’d hear her voice. I stayed because I wanted to be there in the kitchen when she came through the door, to hug her, to hold her tight, to tell her I was so sorry.”
Caroline is exhausted. She can scarcely speak. “That’s all I really want. I want her to come home so I can explain. I want the chance to earn her forgiveness.”