Seeking Carolina (5 page)

Warmth, and the papery-leather scent of books. Johanna had never frequented libraries, but the scent always made her think of September and school starting and those hopeful days when the academic slate was clean. She had another year to prove she wasn’t a C student. By Christmas break, she’d always be lagging, all desire to catch up firmly behind her social life and the upcoming school play she always aspired to but never got a part in. Nina studied hard. Julietta didn’t have to. Emma was hit or miss. Johanna was mostly miss and, come senior year, had simply been happy to graduate.

“Excuse me.” She caught a librarian stacking books. “Do you know a man named Efan? He’s a history teacher.”

“Everyone in the library knows Efan,” the young man said. “He practically lives here. What do you want with him?”

“Well, ah—you see…” Johanna blew out a breath. “Okay, I’ll be straight. My sister met him here a couple weeks ago and they hit it off. Apparently, neither one of them gave any contact information.”

“That sounds like Efan.”

“They’re a pair, I’m sure,” Johanna said. “We, my sisters and I, are having dinner across the street, and I thought I’d take the chance of finding him, give him my sister’s info. Is he here?”

He tilted his head, grimaced a little.

“I swear I’m not stalking him.”

“How about you write down your sister’s contact info and I’ll give it to him?” He fished a pencil out of his pocket, handed it to her along with a scrap of paper from the pile on his cart. Johanna wrote down Julietta’s email address, website address, and cell phone number. She handed it to the librarian.

“How do I know you’re not going to chuck that the minute I leave?”

“How about I promise I won’t?”

“How about you pinky-swear me?” She stuck out her pinky.

He laughed, and hooked his little finger around hers.

“Pinky-swear. But I can’t promise he’ll call or anything. Efan is…a little strange.”

She let her hand fall. “So is my sister.”

Johanna didn’t bother taking the circuitous route back to Moose Tracks, but entered through the front door. Julietta didn’t even look up. Emma and Nina gave her a look that said they knew exactly what she had done. Dropping into her chair, she barely picked up a French fry before the door opened again and into the restaurant rushed a tall young man with dark hair and an intense expression focused immediately and solely on Julietta.

Efan
, Johanna mouthed. She was certain. Gratification warmed her through, though it could do nothing about the cold hamburger and fries on her plate. She picked up the burger and took a bite, trying to pretend she didn’t notice Efan’s ungraceful descent to one knee beside Julietta’s chair.

He took her hand, drawing her out of shutdown with a perfectly-Prince-Charmingly accented whisper, “Julietta?”

* * * *

Night two in her old bedroom, in the farmhouse on County Line Road. Night four since Gram’s death. Night five since sleeping last in the room above the bakery, blissfully unencumbered by the memories and bonds so much easier to pretend did not exist. Johanna turned onto her side, pulled the locket free of the nightgown she took from Gram’s drawer. She traced the engraved letters, clicked it open to run a fingertip over her mother’s face she could not see for the darkness.

“I wish,” she whispered. “I wish…”

Her throat tightened. So many wishes. How did one choose which regret to obliterate, and which were too familiar to let go?

Tucking the locket back into her nightgown, Johanna got out of bed and padded across the hall to Nina’s room. She did not knock, but opened the door as quietly as she could, peeking around the edge to see her beautiful sister asleep on her pillow. Alabaster skin ethereal in the moonlight, her blond hair braided to keep it from tangling, Nina looked like a princess in a fairytale, deep in enchanted slumber.

“Come in and close the door, Jo.”

She jumped but was able to stop herself from squealing. Darkness beckoned, and the familiar comfort of Nina. Johanna slipped into the room, closed the door softly behind her, and snuggled into the blankets beside her sister.

“How did you know it was me?”

“You’ve been sneaking into my bed since you were a baby. Who else would it be?”

“It’s so cold in here. Why is your window open?”

“Because I like the fresh air. I don’t get much of it in the City. Hush, now.” Nina took her into her arms. “Go to sleep.”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“Because you had a bad dream. Because there is a monster in your closet. Because you wet the bed. What does it matter? Come on. I’m tired.”

“Okay.”

Johanna cuddled in close. Even as teenagers, she and Nina sought one another’s comfort, just as they had when they were very small, and frightened, and too often left alone. Days and days alone in the buttercream-yellow house, with only a bucket of water, a loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter to sustain them.

“It was really sweet, what you did for Julietta.”

Johanna picked up her head. “He’s adorable, isn’t he? All that messy hair. And his accent is sexy as hell.”

“He is apparently brilliant, too. They are perfect for one another. Julietta needs a man as intelligent as she is.”

“And a man who understands what it is to be…different.”

“That too.”

Nina turned onto her side so they were face to face. For all her talk of going back to sleep, her sister’s eyes were wide and glittering.

“And what about you, my little sister?”

“What about me?”

Nina waggled her eyebrows. “Charlie? He’s still got it bad for you.”

“Oh, stop.” She tried to turn over but Nina pulled her back.

“Okay, we won’t talk about Charlie. How about Emma and Mike?”

Johanna giggled like the girl she had once been. “This is so bad. Gossiping like old ladies at the laundromat.”

“It’s only bad if our intentions are mean-spirited, which they aren’t. I’m worried about them.”

“You think there’s a danger of them splitting up?”

“That’s been a danger for a while now.”

“Really? Why? What’s gone wrong?”

“This time?” Nina bit her lip. “Mike had a vasectomy without telling her. She’s devastated.”

“What? How do you know?”

“She told me when we were all here at Thanksgiving.”

The twirling of Johanna’s stomach hit a sudden stop. She lowered her gaze, unable to meet Nina’s. “I should have come home. I wanted to, but it’s such a busy time at the bakery and—”

“Jo.” A finger under her chin, a slight tap. The familiarity of this gesture released the tears always too ready to fall. Johanna looked up and Nina smiled. “You couldn’t have known it would be Gram’s last.”

“It has been eight years. I’m a horrible granddaughter, after all she did for me. For us.”

“Gram understood, and so do I. Coming back here is a huge effort for me. If not for Gunner, I might not come home at all. It’s why Emma stayed. Leaving means to risk never coming back.”

“We had a happy life here.” Johanna said. “Why is it so hard?”

“Because we had a happy life here without them.”

Johanna was not as certain. Yes, it felt like betrayal, and happiness did not banish the ghosts that had followed them to Bitterly, but there were other factors, at least for her.

“What about Julietta then?” Johanna asked. “She seems content to stay here forever.”

“Because for her, familiarity is necessary. Bitterly is what she knows.”

“Do you think she remembers?”

“The accident?”

“That, and Mom and Dad.”

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

“Then why wouldn’t she? You were younger when you last saw them.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Johanna thought back. She had been almost four when the house in New Hampshire burned. Julietta had been just over when they cut her from the car wreck that killed their father. Johanna still remembered Gram leaving her and Nina with Poppy, returning to Bitterly with the little sisters she didn’t know she had, and news none of them wanted. Johan was dead. Carolina had vanished again. Emmaline was six, skinny, and always scared of the government men coming to get her in the night. Their grandparents assured her again and again, it was Johan’s illness that kept them always running from a non-existent government conspiracy. Their father had loved them, and so did their mother, even though…

After a time, Emma forgot about the government men, or at least came to believe they were indeed a figment of Johan’s paranoia. Julietta had come to them a banged up, but mostly cheerful child. Johanna always hoped it meant she hadn’t been scarred by the life she’d been living, or by the accident that changed everything.

“When she was little, I’d hear her crying in her sleep.” Nina’s trembling whisper broke.

Johanna resisted the urge to touch her sister’s face, to wipe away the tears she would not let fall. “I never heard her.”

“Her bed was, is still, right here.” She tapped the wall above their heads. “It wasn’t every night or anything, and it got less and less as the years went by, but over Thanksgiving, I heard her. Gunner did too.”

“Really?”

“I used to go in and calm her. It usually worked. Once in a while, it didn’t.”

“You never told me.”

“What is there to tell, really? Julietta had nightmares. We all did.”

“Do.”

“Still?” Nina asked.

“Don’t you?”

Nina only stared at her a moment, those pale, unblinking eyes almost eerie in the moonlight. She had their father’s eyes.
Johan.
Johanna got his name, but Nina had inherited his beauty, his striking eyes, his stature.

“It’s usually of fire,” Nina said at last.

Johanna tried not to react, but she felt her body tense, the tears sting, the apology form on her lips—the one she had never uttered. The one no one knew she owed.

“I wake up certain the apartment is on fire. That’s pretty much it.”

“Pretty much?” Johanna coughed as the words struggled to get around the truth.

A tear finally slipped free of her sister’s eye. She nodded her lie. Now Johanna was the one gathering her sister into her arms. She held her close. “Remember,” she whispered, “picking wildflowers with Mommy?”

“I do.”

“And playing in the snow with Daddy?”

Another nod.

“He used to say the snowflakes were fairies?”

“Willies,” Nina corrected. “Like in Les Sylphides.”

“Sylphs.”

Nina laughed softly. “Yes, sylphs.”

Hush, Jo-Jo. Shhh. The sylphs are sleeping. If you wake them, they will make you dance until dawn.

She remembered the cold. She remembered hiccupping in the silence, and being held in strong, trusted arms. The clarity of that moment remained. Johanna never doubted the veracity. Eyes closed, she pulled his image out of baby memory. Daddy. Johanna was certain she remembered him bigger and more handsome than he actually was. “He loved us, Nina. He loved us so much.”

“Of course he did. So did Mom. They couldn’t help what they were. Even today, treating mental illness is such a crapshoot. Can you imagine what it was like for them?”

“Especially when they were separated. When they lost custody of us.”

“And then again with Emma and Julietta.” Nina sighed. “At least we didn’t know we were desperately poor and squatting in an abandoned farmhouse. We ate. We were mostly warm.”

“And we were constantly left all alone and unsupervised for days on end. Every child’s dream.”

“While they hunted, or picked through dumpsters. I believe nowadays they’d be called freegans.”

Both sisters laughed. Gallows humor had its merits.

“At least we had a home,” Nina said. “Jules and Emma didn’t.”

“Mom and Dad were pretty deep into the crazy by then.”

“Jo, that’s unkind.”

“Oh, come on, it’s true. I don’t have to pretend with you, do I?”

“No. You don’t.” Nina settled. “How did we all escape it, whatever genes made them…you know…”

“Crazy?”

“Mentally ill.”

“Same thing.” Johanna answered. “Maybe just stupid luck.”

“It does seem that way. I still worry a little about Julietta, but I don’t think she’s like they were. She’s just Julietta.”

Johanna stroked her sister’s hair. None of them had ever doubted the extraordinary love affair between their parents. It was all in the letter Gram kept in her jewelry box. She told them the story as if it were a movie script, a dark comedy, or a tragedy of love blooming in a mental facility and culminating in a high-speed chase that left their father dead. But the story never included their mother dying too, only vanishing so completely, she might as well have.

“Do you think she’s dead?”

Johanna opened her mouth to answer, and discovered it was she who had asked the question.

“I have no idea.”

“Do you wonder? Or have you stopped?”

Nina turned onto her side again. Her brow furrowed. “It’s like the nightmares,” she said, “we all have them, and we all wonder. How can we not? She’s our mother.”

* * * *

My girls, look at them sleep. Like babies, in one another’s arms. They whisper truths and hide them. They lay bare their souls and conceal them. They console and they hurt. Words are ever like that, never quite saying what is meant. Golden seraph. Wild sylph. Reasons one and two I wish for the locket, for the wish inside, and to have back my painful life.

Ten Lords a’Leaping

More snow. Bitterly’s record accumulation was already almost met, and it wasn’t even Christmas. Johanna stood at the big front window, watching the snowflakes fall and doubting she would see New Jersey any time before the spring thaw. Though she hadn’t told her sisters yet, she closed for the season after getting the call about Gram. Christmas would have helped line the coffers of her slow season—tourists loved Cape May during the holidays almost as much as they did during the summer—but business was always slow between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day, and didn’t really get good again until Easter. She had been tempted, but never closed for the winter. It scared her a little, having no income, but Thanksgiving was profitable enough, if lonely. Watching the recorded Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade while eating holiday-in-a-container from the gourmet health-food shop wasn’t as much fun without her sisters’ snide commentary. Hosts whose hair never moved. Obviously lip-synched Broadway extravaganzas. This form of holiday-bashing was one of their favorite traditions of the season for as long as she could remember.