It was more than the stitches in her knee and the bandage on her burned left hand that had Heidi limping with purpose toward the front entrance of the memory-care facility. It was the words Vicki had directed at Heidi this morning—the morning after the fire—that caused her to pack up her things, tuck the vintage photo album under her arm, and get into her car.
“Get out.”
Two words that summarized the culmination of their familial relationship. As if she herself had started the fire. As if the police weren’t investigating it as arson. As if her testimony and repeated insistence that a strange woman had saved her from the cabin fire meant absolutely nothing.
“More of that Misty Wayfair crud?” Vicki had said, glaring at her.
Of course not. No. This wasn’t a legendary ghost, old-town folklore, or some random account people had all but forgotten in the annals of time. It was a real human being.
Still, it did all come back to the photograph, and a face which looked just like hers. It came back to Vicki, who acted like getting rid of Heidi would rid them of the chaos that trailed after. The one who’d upset the family. It came back to the twist of emotions on Vicki’s face that told Heidi she warred against wanting to strike out and blame Heidi for everything, and also wanting to weep and wrap her arms around her little sister, thankful Heidi hadn’t been killed. Heidi could see it now—the desire to give life to sisterly affection—but Vicki didn’t act on that emotion.
“Get out.”
The impact of the moment had left Heidi stunned but obedient. She had left immediately. Without a backward glance.
The only person who might make sense of it all was barely in control of her wits, let alone her mind. Her mother. The one who’d penned the mysterious letter that had brought Heidi to Pleasant Valley to begin with. The mad wanderings of a woman who’d lost herself in the heartbreaking passages of dementia.
Vicki’s words of accusation as Heidi had packed her things still curled into Heidi with the vicious attack they were meant to be.
“You’re crazy, Heidi. You always have been, and you always will be.”
It was a word people used often. Crazy. It was crazy how windy it was outside. Or, how crazy was it that the Green Bay Packers shut out the Minnesota Vikings in the last quarter? Or, if one didn’t get more sunshine, they’d go crazy.
Crazy.
Crazy is as crazy does.
That was what it meant to Vicki. Crazy meant a state of mind and actions that defined a person. It wasn’t a word that was bandied about loosely for the Lanes. No. It meant too much in their family.
Heidi was the crazy one. The girl who had locked herself in a closet when she was five and rocked back and forth as if she’d lost her mind. No matter that she was terrified—of what, she didn’t know and never did find out—she was just horrifically and utterly alone.
Without comfort, or nurture, or even medical help, she’d coped as well as a child could. ADHD. An early diagnosis her parents refused to believe, later recalled, then reassigned as an anxiety disorder. No matter. Heidi could fix it. As she always had. But she couldn’t stop to think. Because if she did, logic and emotion would war against each other, the world would spin, and that closet that kept her safe in a controlled environment would become ever so appealing once again.
No thinking.
Action only.
Curse the consequences.
And now here she was.
Heidi stared across the small dining room of the care center. Her mother sat at the corner table, her back to the wall. Her gray hair was bobbed around wrinkled, gaunt cheeks. She was four years away from eighty. For a moment, Heidi allowed herself to think of what it must have been like for her forty-six-year-old mother to have found out she was going to have a baby when her only child was already in high school and she was well on her way to independence from children. A stab of empathy, and then Heidi tasted the familiar bitterness that so quickly followed it. She only knew what it had been like to be the “accident,” and the troubled one at that.
Stifling a sigh, again she shut down her thoughts. Heidi hadn’t eaten lunch, her stomach already nauseated and upset. She didn’t need to turn her mind over to the anxiety that always stood just outside the door, knocking, as persistent as Jesus.
Heidi gave an attendant a weak smile. It must have been the woman’s cue, for she approached Heidi, straightening the hem of her scrubs shirt.
“Loretta has been doing all right today,” she began.
Heidi nodded. Good. Maybe she’d be coherent enough to explain the letter crammed in the back pocket of Heidi’s jeans.
“She just ate lunch,” the aide continued, “so she’ll probably do well for another hour or so, but then she usually needs to rest.”
“For sure,” Heidi agreed. An hour was enough.
She pulled out a chair and swiveled it so the chair was next to her mother. Loretta Lane’s wheelchair was pushed up against the table. A small jigsaw puzzle had been dumped onto the table, and Loretta was fingering a puzzle piece.
“That’s an edge, Mom.” Heidi decided that maybe a little normalcy would help her mom relax. “Why don’t we sort the edges from the middle pieces?”
It was what her mom had always done when putting together puzzles. Sort. Then construct the frame, then fill in the middle. Of course, this puzzle was maybe a hundred pieces, and each piece wasn’t nearly as small as the five-thousand-piece puzzles Loretta used to do.
Loretta looked up at Heidi. A line drew between her brows, her eyes studying Heidi for a long moment before she looked back at the puzzle piece in her hand.
“Oh.” A nod. “Yes. Let’s do that,” Loretta agreed.
They worked in silence for a slow five minutes more. Heidi reached into her pocket, took out the letter, and laid it between them. Folded but glaring up at them. Loretta focused on the puzzle. Each piece taking anywhere from twenty to thirty seconds to determine if it went in the edges or the middle-piece pile.
Finally, Heidi was done waiting. She slid the letter around the puzzle and in front of her mother.
Loretta stared at it, then raised her eyes. “Is that from your father?” she asked.
“Dad?” Heidi was taken aback for a second.
Loretta nodded, her eyes wide. “He hasn’t come by in a while. Is he away on a trip?”
Heidi avoided blurting out that her dad had died a few years before. “Sure. Yeah, he is.” She nodded. Why make her mother revisit the grief? “But the letter isn’t from Dad. You sent it to me.”
Loretta drew back, her hand fluttering to her throat. “I did? I don’t like writing letters.”
No. No, she didn’t. Another reason Heidi had found it so very odd when she’d received it.
“Should I read it to you?” Heidi offered.
“No, I can read,” Loretta snapped. She lifted the paper and eyed her scrawling handwriting. Her eyes remained focused on her own words, and Heidi allowed her the time to take it in. To digest it. Hopefully, to remember it.
“Well, that’s silliness.” Loretta set it back on the table. She looked at Heidi with an earnestness Heidi wasn’t prepared for. “Why would I write that?”
Heidi felt her hopes thud to the pit of her stomach. Exactly. Why? And her mother didn’t remember. “I don’t know, Mom. I was hoping you could explain it.”
Loretta lifted a puzzle piece and tapped its one straight edge. “I don’t believe I wrote it. It’s stuff and nonsense, that’s what it is.”
Okay then. Heidi was just going to go for it. She picked up the letter and skimmed the words. “What did you mean by, ‘we lived in a house of ghosts’?”
Loretta’s lips thinned, and she gave Heidi a sideways look. “We don’t believe in ghosts. Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. You know that.”
Yes. She’d heard that many times growing up, and Heidi had to admit she’d seen little evidence to support paranormal activity anyway. All right. So her mother hadn’t meant real ghosts.
“Did you mean we lived in a house of secrets?” Heidi pressed. She didn’t want to feed her mother answers, but at the same time, a nudge might help things along.
Loretta blinked a few times as if to clear her thoughts. She looked at Heidi. “Who are you again?”
Oh, Lord, have mercy.
Heidi could feel the impatience welling up within her.
“I’m your daughter,” she answered.
Loretta’s mouth quirked into a smile that insinuated Heidi was the one mixed up. “No, you’re not.”
Aggravated, Heidi reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. She resettled in her seat. “Mom, I’m Heidi.”
No. Not Vicki. It stung that her mother didn’t remember her, but she remembered Vicki.
“I’m your younger daughter. Heidi Loretta Lane.” Maybe saying her full name would prompt her mom’s memory.
Loretta’s smile waned, and her eyebrows raised sternly. She wagged her index finger at Heidi. “No. You’re not my daughter.”
“You said I am the reason the stories are never told.” Heidi pointed to the line in the letter. “Why is that?”
Loretta was quiet. Maybe remembering. Maybe just confused.
“You were never supposed to be.”
The whisper was barely audible. Heidi leaned forward. To hear it from her mother’s lips. The words that confirmed everything she’d ever felt.
“You didn’t want me?” she asked blatantly.
Loretta pushed a puzzle piece over toward another. She reached out and pushed them together. They didn’t fit. She pressed harder.
“Fudge,” the woman mumbled. She separated the two pieces.
“Mom?” Heidi couldn’t believe how fast the woman could exit the conversation. How her mind had become a prison of sorts, letting her out only momentarily to enjoy reality and then penning her back inside.
“Hmm?” Loretta lifted her head.
“Mom, what are your secrets?” Heidi asked. She had to push. She had to know.
Loretta dropped her gaze.
“Mom?” Heidi reached out and laid her hand over her mother’s palm.
The woman looked at their hands, then flipped hers over and curled her fingers around Heidi’s. They were cold, the skin paper thin, and Heidi could see the veins in them.
“You always had a mind of your own, you did.” Loretta squeezed Heidi’s hand. Their eyes met, and for a moment Heidi sensed her mother was back. That she recognized her. That she knew it was Heidi to whom she spoke.
Heidi held her breath. Afraid even a sound would break her mother’s awareness.
Loretta continued. “When you died . . . all of me died with you.”
No. She wasn’t speaking of Heidi. But the clarity in her mother’s eyes was startling nonetheless. Unsettling, really.
“Mom, I’m here. I’m not dead.” Heidi leaned closer, trying to capture her mother’s attention.
Loretta released Heidi’s hand with a small smile. “No. No, you’re not.” She returned to the puzzle, lifting a piece and eyeing its shape. She mumbled as she placed it in the edges pile. “But, you might as well be.”