The Saints of the Cross (19 page)

“Sure. I’m not from around here. What’s your address? We can find it.” I motion for Xander to hand me a pen and paper, and I take down the address she gives me. “Okay,” I continue, “my friend Xander and I will be there in a few minutes. Do you mind if I bring my friend?” I totally forgot to tell her about Xander. I’d hate to scare the poor lady when we drive up and she sees a hulking man at her door. Not that he’s intimidating or anything, just very . . . large.

“Land sakes, no. I can’t wait to see you, Evie. I’ll be waiting,” she says and hangs up the phone. My jaw is in my lap. I stare at Xander, my eyes wide, blinking in disbelief.

“What?” Xander asks, and I can only shake my head. “Evie, what is it?”

“She just called me Evie,” I answer, my voice wavering. “I told her my name is Evangeline. She came up with Evie on her own.”

I look down at the piece of paper in my hands, and my entire body is trembling so ferociously that the address is nothing but a blur. Xander moves next to me on the bed and wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him and resting his chin on my head. I wrap my arms around his waist and hug him tight, burying my face into his chest. The tears come hard and fast.

“Shh,” says Xander, stroking my back. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

I squeeze him tighter in an attempt to calm myself down. It seems to work; the tears stop, and I wipe away the wet evidence of my immaturity from my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt. I let go of Xander, feeling guilty for making him uncomfortable with my easy waterworks.

“I’m sorry, Xander,” I say, moving over on the bed. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay, really,” he whispers. “You’re going through a lot right now, and I’m here for you. I’m your friend, and that’s what friends are for, right?”

I nod, but I keep my eyes on my hands, which are clasped together in my lap, the piece of paper clutched between them. Apparently dissatisfied with my weak response, Xander places his hand under my chin and gently turns my face to his, meeting my eyes with his beautiful, golden stare.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks in a quiet, measured voice. I close my eyes and nod. With his arm around my shoulder, I feel him lean in and press his warm, soft lips to my forehead. I’m startled by the intimate gesture, and my eyes fly open just as he pulls away from me. I stare up at him, hoping he can’t hear my heart beating like a drum in my chest. He smiles down at me, an affectionate expression on his face.

“Let’s go,” I say before I lose my nerve.

CHAPTER 14

Twenty minutes later, we arrive at the address Ms. Hamilton gave me over the phone. I look around. An old, single-wide trailer home in disrepair sits alongside the two-lane highway on a junked-out piece of land surrounded by barren corn fields. A yellow kitten dashes out from behind an oak tree adjacent to the driveway and scurries under the trailer through a large hole in the underpinning.

“Guess this is it,” I say, glancing down at the piece of paper in my hand and checking the address one more time to the street numbers on the mailbox.

“Are you ready for this?” Xander asks, looking from me to the trailer and then back again.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” I open the Land Rover’s door and walk up the gravel driveway to the trailer, Xander following close behind.

A wobbly, makeshift staircase consisting of stacked concrete blocks leads to the door, which is about three feet off the ground. I look at Xander, who shrugs, and then I reach up to knock on the metal storm door. A shrill barking comes from inside, and we hear the stomping of footsteps approaching the door.

“Quiet, Macho!” the familiar, elderly female voice shouts from the other side of the door. “Just a minute.”

A few seconds later, the door creaks open and before us stands a small, white-haired woman holding a tiny, long-haired Chihuahua yelping the most ungodly shrill bark I’ve ever heard. The woman props open the screen door with her free hand.

“Come on in, you two, and pay no never-mind to Macho. He’s all bark, I promise ya. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

I glance at Xander. “Ladies first,” he says, motioning to the stairs. He presents a steadying hand to me, which I take as I step on the first wobbly step.

“Careful there, Evie,” the woman—Ms. Hamilton, I assume—warns me as she puts Macho down. He sits at her feet, staring at me with his head tilted and ears straight up at attention.

“I’ve got her,” Xander says, moving his hands to my waist. I feel his grip tighten as I move up the stairs. “There you go,” he says as I cross the threshold into the tiny trailer.

“Evie! I’m so glad to finally see you after all these years,” she cries, throwing her frail arms around me. “Come on in the living room, and have a seat on the davenport.”

The old woman leads me into the tiny space, and I follow her command, taking a seat on the edge of her couch. I look up, and Xander’s closing the door behind him as he enters the trailer. He’s so tall that he has to duck underneath the threshold. Macho looks like a tiny mouse, circling Xander’s feet and jumping up on his legs, begging for attention. Xander manages to maneuver around the dog and takes a seat next to me on the couch. Ms. Hamilton apologizes for her “bad manners,” gets up, and hurries (as much as an ancient person can) to the kitchen to retrieve a couple of sodas for us from the refrigerator.

I look around the tiny room and notice that despite the mess outside the trailer, the inside is neatly kept. Several framed photos, some yellowed by time, hang on the paneled walls, while others sit on a three-shelf bookcase across from the couch. In one photo, a familiar young girl with bronzed skin, shiny raven hair, and haunting black eyes smiles down at me from across a tortuous river of time.

“Is that your mom?” Xander whispers, staring up at the picture. I nod at him.

“Ms. Hamilton,” I begin when the woman returns, handing Xander and me each a cold can of Coca-Cola. “How are you related to Mia Hamilton?”

“She’s my granddaughter,” she answers, sitting down on a chair adjacent to the couch. She squints at me. “I’m sorry, Sugar. I thought you knew that when you called me earlier.”

“You’re my great-grandmother?” I ask, the hint of disbelief in my voice.

“Yes, darlin’. You’re named after me, didn’t ya know that?”

“I figured it out when I saw your name in the phone book.”

“You got my number in the phone book? Your daddy didn’t give it to you?” She’s blinking at me with a puzzled expression on her wrinkled face.

“Well, honestly, he doesn’t know I’m here.” I sound guilty, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I could get into big trouble with my dad—er, Nash—for coming here. “Listen, I’m here because I have a question I need answered, and I didn’t know who I’d find when I got here, if I’d find anyone to talk to at all. I couldn’t tell my dad I was coming here because I didn’t want him to know that I’d discovered the truth, that he’s not my real father.”

“Let me guess; you’re here to find out who your real daddy is.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Well, I’m sorry, but Mia never told any of us who he was. She refused to tell anyone. Don’t know why, neither.” She gives me a sympathetic smile and pat on the arm.

“Do you know where Mia’s mother, my grandmother, is? Maybe my mom confided in her.”

“Caroline died from drinkin’ too much, among other things, when your momma was just a small girl. Caroline got to drinkin’ when her husband was killed in the line of duty. He was a state trooper and got himself shot when he pulled over a car full of escaped prisoners from the federal pen in Terre Haute. I raised Mia from the time her momma died, and she would’ve told
me
, if she was gonna tell anyone. I was all that child had.”

A sad look comes over the woman’s face, and I feel a twinge of guilt for bringing up these painful memories.

“Even when your daddy sent her back from Italy, and she got straightened out on her medications, she would never tell no one who got her pregnant with you. It was like she was protectin’ the guy or something—”

“Excuse me, what did you just say?”

“Yes, she never told nobody—”

“No, what did you just say about Italy?”

“Umm,” she answers, looking up as though she’s trying to remember something. “Oh, you mean ’bout Mia comin’ back from Italy? You know, about ten years ago, your momma came back here when she got real sick in the head.”

“What are you talking about? My mother died ten years ago in a car crash in Italy.”

A look of absolute confusion settles over her weathered face. Her eyes move from me to Xander, then back to me, searching my face as if she’s trying to figure out if I’ve completely lost my mind.

“Evie, your daddy sent Mia back here to stay because she’d gotten off her meds, and he said she was doin’ crazy things. He said he was worried ’bout your safety. Said she was sayin’ crazy things ’bout you kids. He wanted her seen in a hospital here, because the doctors in Italy weren’t takin’ her threats seriously.”

The room closes in on me. I hear the cuckoo clock on the wall ticking, but the sound is a hundred miles away. The voices on the TV are hollow and distant, drifting up from the depths of a bottomless well. When Grayce speaks again, I see her lips moving, but her voice seems to originate from somewhere within me, within my own mind.

“She’s alive, Evie. Well, last time I saw her,’ bout five years ago, she was alive.”

“I am so confused right now. Are you saying that she didn’t die in a car crash in Italy? Are you saying that my father
lied
to us?”

She hesitates for a moment, and then looks me square in the eyes, “I guess so, Evie. I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this.”

“I don’t believe you. My father would never do that. He loved my mother, and he was devastated by her death.”

“I got proof, young’un.”

Grayce stands up from the chair and ambles to a china cabinet in the kitchenette. She returns to us with her arm outstretched, a postcard in her hand. I take the card from her. The picture on the front is a glossy aerial shot of the Lincoln Memorial. I turn it over and notice that the postmark in the top right corner is dated December 21, five years ago. I don’t need to read the message to know who it’s from; I recognize my mother’s scrawled handwriting immediately. She had been the one to teach me how to write my name, and I’ve spent many a night reading the journals she kept when she was a young girl.

Dearest Grandmother,

I am fine. I still have not foundthe children. I will call you soon.

Merry Christmas.

All my love, Mia

I suck in a deep breath as Xander wraps an arm around me. I look up into his beautiful, worried face, but I can’t respond to his concern. My mind is numb with the implications of what I hold in my trembling fingers. My mother is alive, and she’s looking for me. She’s looking for all of us. My father sent her away. He lied to me, and to the twins. But why? Who knows the extent of his lies?

“Why would my father do that?” I ask.

My mind is a million miles away, trying to remember anything that could help me make sense of this mess. Any memories of life when my mother was still with us are few. I close my eyes and try to visualize the day my father came home and told me that my mother was dead. It was so long ago and I was so young that the details are foggy at best. I’m remembering my confusion and fear at the time, rather than the actual conversation.

“Your momma, she was sick. She wasn’t right in the head, Evie,” Grayce says after a few moments of silence.

“You keep saying that, but I have no idea what you mean!” I snap at her and hide my face in my hands in an attempt to calm the storm of emotions raging in my head.

“Sorry,” Xander says to Grayce, pulling me closer to him. “This is a lot to take in at once. Can you tell us what happened, from the beginning?”

“It’s okay, baby girl,” Grayce says, leaning over and patting my knee. “You want me to start from the beginning?”

I nod and brace myself against Xander’s shoulder for what I’m about to hear. I glance up at Xander, who is listening so intently that you’d think it’s his mother she’s talking about. She tells us of that November day ten years ago when she received a phone call from my dad. He told her that he was sending mom back to Indiana to be treated for a mental condition. She’d become delusional, believing someone or something wanted to kidnap us because we possessed superhuman abilities. Dad had said she was doing risky things to herself and the kids. He said he’d notified the doctors in Indiana, and that he would send for mom once she was better. But after a few weeks, divorce papers arrived in the mail.

Listening to my great-grandmother’s story is surreal. I find myself longing for Javier’s comforting arms. I feel myself coming unhinged, so I wrap an arm around Xander and hug him tight in an attempt to ground myself in his strength.

“After a few months,” Grayce continues, “your momma was on medicine and doin’ better. But she didn’t remember anything that had happened in Italy. She didn’t remember your daddy sendin’ her back here. All she knew was that she had to find her babies. I told her what your daddy’d done. She didn’t want to believe it, but when she couldn’t get a hold of you’ns in Italy and the Navy wouldn’t give her any information on your whereabouts, well, she had to start believin’, and it damn near broke her again. Finally, one mornin’ I woke up, and she’d just gone. She’d taken off for Washington, DC, according to the note she’d left me. She was goin’ there to find you’ns. To bring her babies back home to Indiana.”

She stops talking, sucks in a deep breath, and looks up at a picture of my mother suspended in time as a young, beautiful girl, her life not yet ravaged by mental illness. When Grayce begins speaking again, her voice is weak and cracks under the weight of years of uncertainty and worry.

“That was the last I heard from her,” she whispers, pointing at the postcard in my hand. “I pray every day she’s okay, but I worry she’s off her medicine, that the stress of lookin’ for her family has been too much to bear.”

She drops her eyes, starts to cry, and covers her face with her right hand. I get up and sit on the arm of the chair next to Grayce. It’s my turn to do the comforting. I wrap both of my arms around her and hug her tightly. Immediately I’m engulfed with a familiar scent—my mother’s favorite perfume, White Linen.