Seeking Carolina (22 page)

And then Charlie was coming to pick her up, and she would have the rest of the day with him.

The happy thrill came before the anxiety—a good sign even if the bakery, Cape May, and a solitary life among acquaintances still beckoned.

“There’s Efan,” Nina said as they hurried down the hall. He stood outside the door of Julietta’s room, his arms crossed and his head leaning toward the hushed voices inside.

“What’s going on?” Emma asked as they neared.

“She doesn’t want me here,” Efan answered. “At first, she seemed happy to see me. She hugged me so tight. When she finally let me go, she said, ‘We went off the road.’ A moment later, she threw me out. Threatened to have me escorted back to Wales.”

“She’s embarrassed,” Johanna offered. “I know my sister. She would hide for days after an anxiety attack.”

“Give her some time,” Nina soothed. “She’s probably really confused. Does she know why she’s here?”

“I don’t know. She refuses to speak to me.”

Dr. Sam came out of the room. His smile was tight. Forced. “Good morning, ladies. You must be anxious to see her.”

“Very.” Johanna started for the entrance, but he stopped her.

“Don’t tell her anything, let her tell you.”

They all nodded.

“Excellent. When the nurse comes in to help her bathe, find me in my office. We have a few things to discuss. Efan?” He turned to his friend. “You going back to school?”

“I will not leave her, not even to eat.”

“You have classes to teach.”

“Let them fire me. I’m not leaving her.”

“Efan.” Nina put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t lose your job. Julietta will be asking for you before you know it.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Well, maybe not that fast. But she will.”

“Come.” Dr. Sam motioned to his friend. “You can walk me to my office.”

“You have my cell number,” Efan said as he hurried after him. “If she asks for me, call. I will be here in moments.”

Johanna waited in the silence following the men down the corridor. Finally, Emma spoke.

“Are we ready?”

Nina nodded. Johanna said, “Ready.”

First Emmaline, then Nina, and finally Johanna filed into Julietta’s room. Always-instant tears welled in Johanna’s eyes. Her youngest sister sat propped against the pillows, hair poking up and cheeks pink as a blossom. She smiled as they came to stand around her, the awkward angles of her skinny shoulders and knees shifting under the blankets.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing she said. “I ruined New Year’s Eve.”

“Don’t be silly.” Emma sat on the mattress, smoothed Julietta’s hair. “It was a wonderful night, no matter what happened after. And as for that, you’ve nothing to be sorry about.”

“It’s all still such a blur.” Julietta grimaced. “Dr. Sam said I have no physical injuries.”

“Not even a bruise,” Nina said.

“Then why can’t I go home?”

“Dr. Sam just wants to see you awake for a little while,” Emma answered. “That’s all.”

“That’s not all. I’m not an idiot. What happened?”

The women exchanged glances. Nina asked, “Can’t you tell us?”

Julietta’s gaze went beyond them, focused on a point somewhere near the ceiling. “Efan’s car hit a patch of ice and we went off the road. I remember…I remember freaking out—”

“You had an anxiety attack—”

“Let her talk, Emma,” Nina hushed her. “Go on, Jules.”

“I woke up here. This morning. But—”

“But?” Johanna prompted.

Her eyes blinked. She looked at Johanna. Tears welled. “I called you Mommy.”

“I do look like her.”

“I thought you were her. I thought it was…was then. I remember that night.”

“Maybe we should get Dr. Sam.”

“No, I…it’s all so foggy, like trying to remember a dream after being awake a few minutes. I can get bits and pieces, but none of it is of now. It’s of then. Going off the road must have triggered memories.” Julietta looked up. “How long have I…what’s the date?”

“January sixth,” Johanna said. “Six days since New Year’s Eve.”

“January sixth…” Julietta blinked, and blinked again, thoughts processing behind her eyes. A slow smile made its way to her lips, and with that smile, tension scattered. “It’s Little Christmas.”

“Oh, wow,” Nina said. “It is.”

“It’s been a while,” Emma said. “Remember how Gram used to make such a thing of it?”

“I think that’s when I baked my first cake.” Johanna stuck out her tongue. “And if I remember right, it wasn’t very successful.”

“She’d make us sing the Twelve Days of Christmas before we got our gifts,” Nina added. “I don’t know if I could remember all of them now.”

“We each sang three days,” Julietta said. “I always got calling birds, maids milking, and the drummers.”

“I always wanted the golden rings and the partridge in a pear tree,” Johanna added. “Nina, you could never hold the notes without cracking…”

* * * *

It was almost noon when the nurse arrived to help Julietta to the shower. Dr. Sam had left the building for lunch by then and was unavailable until after one o’clock. She thought she saw him pass by while the sisters talked and laughed together, but wasn’t certain. It was going to be difficult to meet with him before Emma and Nina had to leave.

While Julietta showered and her other two sisters went to the commissary to bring back food, Johanna waited by herself in the hospital room. Standing at the window overlooking a snowed-over courtyard, she imagined it in the spring, green and flowered. She missed the Berkshires in the spring when the mountains shrugged off their mantle of grey. Evergreens slipped into the background, giving way to the deciduous varieties that washed the skyline in a more muted version of autumn before bursting green. Cape May was lovely, but it got hot, fast. In the mountains, worn down and ancient, everything was slower. She could almost feel it in her pulse.

Her phone buzzed. She pulled it from her pocket to find a text from Charlie.

Still on for four?

Johanna answered,
yup
. Sliding the phone back into her pocket, she felt bad about creating doubt where there hadn’t been a shred. He feared she would bolt again. He feared what happened with Julietta had frightened her enough to pull her away from him, send her back into a simpler life where love existed at a distance. She knew his fear, because it was her own.

“Much better,” the nurse helping Julietta back to the bed said.

Johanna turned from the window.

Wet hair plaited, dressed in her own clothes, Julietta looked like herself rather than a hospital patient. But for the IV still in her arm, she looked ready to go home.

“Your lunch will be up shortly,” the nurse told her. “And Dr. Chowdary will be in later.”

“Great, thanks.”

When the nurse was gone, Johanna moved to sit beside her sister, put her arm around her. Julietta’s head rested instantly to her shoulder. “Why do you think we stopped celebrating?”

“Celebrating what?”

“Sorry. Little Christmas. It was such a big deal to Gram, and then we just…stopped.”

“I guess we were getting a bit old,” Johanna said. “Was that the year Poppy died?”

“I thought about that, but no. It was the year before.” She felt silent, then, “I’ve always remembered.”

Johanna shifted so her sister had to look her in the eyes. “You need to stop assuming I know where your thoughts are coming from, sweetheart. What have you always remembered?”

Julietta’s uncanny eyes did not blink. They held Johanna’s gaze like magnets gripping metal.

“The accident,” she said at last. “Not the details, just…it. I suppose that’s what happened when Efan and I went off the road. The details just popped out of where they are stored in my brain. But I’ve always remembered some of…I guess it must have been the impact. Mom in the front seat, reaching back for Emma. Dad covering me with his whole body. I remember feeling safe and not at all afraid, because he was there. Because he would never let anything bad happen to me.”

Johanna took her sister’s hand. “Emma remembers a different Daddy.”

“She was older. Like Nina. You and I were both small enough to remember him in better ways. Mom, too. What did we know about madness as long as we had food and shelter and love?”

“We didn’t always have food and shelter, or them around to watch over us.”

“That’s what we know now,” Julietta said. “It’s not what we knew then. We weren’t old enough.”

That is what you told yourself as you got older, as you remembered it. A child of three has no real sense of such dire consequence.

Dr. Sam’s words whispered back to soothe in ways they hadn’t then, because Julietta said them too.

“I know Dad died in the accident.” Julietta’s voice brought Johanna back to the present. “But Mom…I can’t believe she’d have vanished forever unless she died too. I wish I knew what happened to her, Jo. I feel like a lot of what’s wrong with me would ease up if I did.”

I wish. I wish.

A sound like chimes twinkled in Johanna’s ears. Her head felt suddenly full of cotton that forced the twinkling from her head to her fingers to her toes, through her blood crackling like pop-candy in cola. Her hand went to her chest, slid to the locket hidden in her clothes. Then it was in her hand, her mouth was opening to tell Julietta they all had the same wish, that Gram must have known, and somehow it all came together to help them find Carolina.

Nina and Emma flew into the room, cooing and clapping over Julietta’s transformation. They spread the food from the commissary out on the tiny hospital tray, called Johanna to them with voices she could not hear, because the chimes still rang.

“Jo?” Nina’s hand on her arm silenced the twinkling. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I…” She gripped the locket tightly. “I think I know why Gram—”

“Ah, good.” Dr. Sam and his manila envelope fluttered into the room. Efan hovered at the door. “Ladies Coco, you are all here. I returned from lunch to find this on my desk.”

“What is it?” Emma asked. “The hospital records?”

“It is, and better.” He looked to Julietta. Before he could ask, she said, “Whatever you tell them, you tell me too. I can handle it.”

He nodded, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “Right, then,” he said, and opened the folder. “Not only do I have the hospital records from the accident, but a letter from the attorney who handled your adoptions. She also oversaw the power of attorney granted, and commitment papers for one, Carolina Coco, to a psychiatric rehabilitation hospital in New Hampshire in March of 1984.”

Two Turtle Doves

Their father’s death certificate showed that Johan Finn Anker was approximately six-foot-four, and one hundred eighty pounds, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and dead on impact. The official cause of death was a severing of the brain stem. His parents were Johan Anker and Agata Raske Anker.

From his death certificate, they also discovered he graduated high school, attended college but did not finish, and that he and Carolina Valentine Coco were, in fact, married. She was listed as his surviving spouse on the document, as well as the informant for the document itself. Johanna was not sure how reliable the information her mother gave might be, but it was officially documented, stamped and dated as fact.

Other hospital records showed that Adelina and Giovanni Coco were contacted, Emmaline was treated for minor bruising and lacerations but remained in the hospital with Julietta, whose age was noted as forty-eight months, not twenty-four. Her injuries were more extensive—a broken arm, concussion, stitches in her scalp and forehead. Other than that, her physical injuries were minor. Emmaline was allowed to stay in the pediatric ward with her, notes said, to keep the toddler from screaming. According to hospital records, their grandmother arrived the day following the accident, and took them home, appropriate documents in hand, four days later.

Of Carolina’s injuries and hospital stay, there were no records. She appeared only as informant, wife to, mother of—until the lawyer’s letter.

…Power of attorney granted to Adelina Coco for Carolina Coco, 10/18/83.

Minors: Nina Carol Anker, Johanna Elsbet Anker, Emmaline Prudence Anker, and Julietta Agatha Anker given over to the temporary custody of Adelina (Fiore) Coco and Giovanni Coco as of 12/27/83. Custody relinquished 4/22/84. Adoption finalized: 6/18/84.

…5/22/85. Settlement against Bruce Johnson, driver of the car, $1.5 million, awarded in civil proceedings. Extensive info on civil as well as criminal proceedings. Request for full access will take some time to fulfill. Advise if required.

…Carolina Valentine Coco willingly committed to Cully Mountain Psychiatric Convalescent Facility: 3/26/84.

“There is way too much information here,” Nina, who had been searching the documents, set them down again. “Did you find Cully Mountain yet, Emma?”

“Nothing’s coming up for a psych facility named Cully Mountain in New Hampshire.” Emma did not look up from her tablet. “But I did find a Cully Mountain. It’s in Killian, New Hampshire.”

“It was thirty years ago.” Johanna picked up the folder, started flipping through. “The facility must not exist anymore.”

“But we know she survived,” Julietta said. “She gave up her parental rights to us in April, and went to Cully Mountain in March. She must have been injured really bad to need so much recuperation time.”

“Or she was temporarily committed in some other hospital,” Nina told them. “Gram had power of attorney.”

“Does that mean she could be committed her against her will?”

“I’m not sure.”

Johanna paged through the attorney’s report full of numbers and dates and events that told them almost nothing they wanted to know. Had Gram and Pop ever seen a dime of the money awarded? It would explain why the house in Bitterly never had a mortgage, and how they afforded the hospital bills including—at least for a little while—Cully Mountain.

Gram had a job, when she wanted one, making homemade pasta for D’Angelo’s, as well as with the florist during holidays. Johanna remembered helping in the garden, selling the vegetables they grew at the Farm Market every Saturday through the summer months. Hard as she tried, she could not remember Poppy ever having a regular job outside of plowing roads in winter. And yet they never did without. In fact, now that she thought about it, they’d lived relatively comfortably. She looked up from the folder.