Thorns of Truth (37 page)

“I … I don’t understand.” She was aware of her lips moving, but the words seemed to have come from someone else.

Her mother’s eyes fixed on her—huge and overbright. “My own baby was dark, with black hair … like her father,” Sylvie whispered. “After the fire …” She winced, bringing a hand to her chest. “Your mother, your
real
mother, she didn’t get out in time. Everybody just assumed you were mine.…

“I didn’t want to go along, not at first. But then I began to wonder if the fire … and your mother’s death … if it had happened for a reason. I felt almost as if God were … guiding me somehow.” A single, perfect tear slipped from the corner of one eye and trickled down her temple, disappearing into her hair. “Only now I know it wasn’t God.”

Rachel heard herself ask, “What about the other baby?
Your
baby?” She was dreaming this—or her mother was. It couldn’t possibly be true.
Could it?

Behind her, Rachel heard the faint creak of old flooring muffled by carpet. She turned slowly … and in her dreamlike state, which some functioning part of her brain recognized as profound shock, it felt as if the
room
were turning—slow, lazy revolutions, like a carousel. Lightheaded, almost tipsy, Rachel blinked. In the doorway stood a shadowy figure, a tall woman whose outline was strikingly familiar, but Rachel, momentarily unhooked from her moorings, couldn’t place her.

The figure emerged into the room, and Rachel saw that it was Rose. Her wild black hair was strewn every which way, and her cheeks were flagged with color. Even her raincoat was askew; perhaps she’d been in too much of a hurry to notice it was buttoned wrong.

“Rose,” Rachel breathed. And that was when she knew. Turning to face her mother, she asked with soft incredulity, “It was Rose, wasn’t it? The baby you left behind. Your real daughter. Yours and Nikos’.”

Sylvie went so still, Rachel felt an urge to lean close to see if she was still breathing. But Mama’s eyes—oh God, nothing so tortured could be anything but alive. Huge, vivid, blisteringly of this earth, they held Rachel’s gaze as if trying desperately to convey to her some truth that couldn’t possibly be contained in mere words. Then, with a sigh that seemed to sever the last thread holding her together, she whispered: “Yes.”

Rachel went instantly numb. Random chunks of memory rolled and clicked in her head like tossed dice. Memories that hadn’t seemed connected to one another in any way, but which now formed an excruciatingly perfect whole. She saw herself, as a very little girl, crying to her mother that she didn’t
fit in.

She hated the frilly dresses her mother bought for her, and had always felt out of place in this great old house with its delicate fabrics and teetery-legged antiques. And there was Papa, the quizzical way he sometimes looked at her, as if hunting for something—a resemblance?—that wasn’t there.

And the way Mama had looked at her, too. Mournfully, almost, as if …

It wasn’t ME she was seeing.
This thought was accompanied by a blow so crushing she had to brace herself to keep from being flattened by it.
All that time Mama had been wondering about Rose … regretting her mistake.…

Only Rose hadn’t been given away. She’d been abandoned. To strangers. And she, Rachel, had been … well.. .
stolen.

The enormity of it swooped upward in her head like a flock of crows bursting into flight. There was a rushing sound in her ears, like the whirring of hollow-boned wings, and the edges of her vision were feathered with black. In the midst of it all, she was aware of the sound, sane beating of a heart that refused to believe what her mind was shrieking.

Lies! Everything I was told, everything I
believed
in was a lie. My own family isn’t even mine. My mother isn’t really my mother.

Rachel, with a moan, buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t bear it. Everyone she loved and trusted seemed to be slipping away from her, as inexorably as a retreating tide. Iris. Brian. Mama.

Her family, her whole
history,
had been nothing more than an elaborate deception.…

A low, muffled cry prompted Rachel to lift her face.

The day’s dying light, streaming through the mullioned windows, illuminated Rose as if in a portrait. She had come to a standstill several feet from the bed, with its four gleaming posts lifted to the ceiling like arms raised in exultation. Her face was tilted upward, hands clasped together just below her breasts as if in prayer.

“I’ve waited so long to hear you say it aloud: that I’m your daughter. You have no idea.” The words were muffled by a gusting sob that seemed to send Rose lurching forward; she staggered the few remaining feet separating her from Sylvie.

Sylvie raised her head from the pillows on which she lay. Her face, pale as parchment, crumpled with pain. No, not pain.
Relief,
Rachel saw. A relief so profound it was almost shattering. Nikos must have felt it, too. Trembling, he opened his arms, embracing the daughter he could at last claim, fully and without apology. Rachel, from where she sat on the opposite side of the bed, could see his throat working, and the grateful wonder with which he smoothed a huge, callused hand over his child’s heaving back.

As if in a dream, Rachel watched Rose ease from her father’s arms and sink onto the mattress beside Mama. She felt a cool rush of perfumed air as Rose bent close to kiss her mother, who lay between them like a slender volume of poetry between two mismatched bookends. Yet Rachel might have been invisible. It was as if only Sylvie and Rose existed, mother and child, joined at the cheek, a Renaissance sculpture.

With a soft intake of breath, Rose began to weep.

And like a knife twisting in her heart, Rachel heard the woman whom all her life she’d believed to be her mother murmur, “Rose … oh, my precious girl. Can you ever forgive me?”

Forgiveness was something Rose Santini Griffin had long ago checked at the door. By age six, she’d come to the conclusion that the God her grandmother prayed to in church, on Sunday and every First Friday, listened only to thin-lipped Italian ladies dressed in black. And also that the word “fair” was not only used to describe little girls with blue eyes and blond hair, but applied generally to how they were treated as well. The reason God had made her so dark, Rose had believed, was to punish her. Why? Maybe she’d been
born
bad, she’d thought, like with Original Sin, only a whole lot worse.

Her only hope for redemption had been to do well in school, and keep her mouth shut instead of complaining or even crying into her pillow when Nonnie punished her. Nonetheless, she’d fantasized about Mother Mary appearing to her as she had to Bernadette—a miracle that would wipe her soul clean with a single stroke.

Only the vision, when it appeared, wasn’t at all what Rose had been hoping for. The beautiful blond lady who showed up one day outside her school wasn’t barefoot, dressed in a blue robe. She wore a fur coat, and a stylish hat with a veil that dipped down over one eye. And ruby earrings in the shape of teardrops—one of which, startlingly, she’d plucked from her earlobe and thrust at Rose. Though her eyes were sad like the Blessed Virgin’s, she’d turned away without speaking, without giving a clue as to why she’d come.

Rose hadn’t realized it then, but the strange lady was her own mother.

Now, more than forty years later. Rose reached up to finger the ruby earring she’d worn pirate-style until an accident of fate—or
was
it just fate?—had brought her back into Sylvie’s orbit… and led her not only to the earring’s missing twin, but to the truth about her mother.

Gazing down at the frail, elderly woman on the bed, Rose felt pierced by an emotion she couldn’t quite place. This was her mother … the woman who’d given birth to her … her flesh and blood. In the end, it didn’t matter what Sylvie had done, or what Rose had missed growing up. What mattered was that they were connected—a connection that no amount of guilt or resentment had been able to sever. Why? Because there
was
a God. Rose understood at last in some deep way she hadn’t as a child, and He had listened. He had provided her with the love she’d yearned for. Just not in the way she’d been expecting.

Rose brought an unsteady hand to her mother’s cheek, and was shocked by its coolness. But Sylvie’s heart must still be beating, she knew, because it was still capable of feeling. The tears trickling down her face were proof of that.

“Mother.” Rose, for the first time ever, addressed Sylvie as she had yearned to all her adult life, the name like a sweet balm spreading through her.

How easy that was,
she thought.

Sylvie smiled faintly. Her face gleamed as pale and smooth as a seashore washed clean by the tide. “I … wish… ,” she murmured, straining to draw each breath, “it could have been different. That … I could have told the truth sooner.” She turned her bright gaze upon Rachel, who wore the fixed, disbelieving expression of someone startled in her own home by an intruder. “I was afraid. For
you,
Rachel, dear. Of what it would do to you. But now I see that the one I was most afraid of hurting was myself. I’d lost one daughter already. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing another.”

“You didn’t lose me.” Rose brushed roughly with the heel of her hand at her own tears. “I’ve been here all along.”

Sylvie motioned her closer, murmuring thickly, “In my nightstand … a key.” She waited until Rose had slid open the drawer of the delicate burled table. “Do you see it? On a silver chain, next to my heart medicine. It’s to the locked drawer in my desk downstairs. There’s something in it I want you to have.”

“What…?”

Sylvie smiled. “You’ll know when you find it.”

Rose stared at the tiny key in her hand. She couldn’t imagine what might be in that locked drawer. A family heirloom? A piece of jewelry like the ruby earrings Sylvie had given her?

“Your sons … my
grandsons …
” Sylvie’s breath came in short, whistling bursts. “Tell them … please. That I love them. As much as I do Iris. Remind them that they still have Nikos. He can’t be a father to them, not like Max … but he’s their grandfather. They need to know.”

“I’ll tell them.” Rose felt something in her chest give way, like an eroded embankment crumbling.

“There’s something else.…” Sylvie’s voice was so low Rose had to lean close to hear. She didn’t know how much more she could take; she felt as if she were being ripped apart inside—torn into tiny bits, as she had been after Max died. “I loved you,” Sylvie whispered. “From the moment I first held you in my arms. Even though I was frightened of what might happen … of what Gerald would do. You were
mine.
If it hadn’t been for that fire …” She shut her eyes briefly, her chest rising and falling in fitful little bursts. “I would have kept you. It wouldn’t have been easy, but I would have found a way. I … I was wrong to have done what I did.”

Beside her, Rose heard a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob. Rachel. Rose swung around to face her. For the first time in all the years since Rachel had become known to her—first, as Brian’s bride; then, incredibly, as the daughter Sylvie had raised in
her
place—Rose felt truly sorry for her.

She touched Rachel’s sleeve, but Rachel didn’t respond. She just sat there, her head bowed, her chest heaving with inarticulate grief. And for once, Sylvie—gazing at Rachel with the helpless, agonized eyes of a mother who wished desperately she hadn’t had to make such a choice—wasn’t reaching to console her.

What was there for Rose to say either?
You had her all those years
—
please don’t begrudge me these last few moments.
How could she expect Rachel to understand the preciousness of the gift Rose had been given?

Common compassion caused Rose to seize hold of Rachel’s icy fingers. Their past differences—even their recent clash—paled in comparison to this. Rachel was suffering, that was all that mattered. Rachel wasn’t to blame for the choices Sylvie had made.

You won’t die,
Rose reassured Rachel silently.
Some days it feels like you’re going to … and if one more person says, ‘Take it a day at a time,’ you’ll hit them, you really will, because you can’t think that far ahead
—
you don’t know how you’re going to make it through to the next
minute.
But you will make it.

“Come.…” Sylvie extended her arms shakily. “I must have a moment alone with Nikos … but first let me hold you.
Both
of you. My girls …”

No one had called them “girls” in at least a hundred years. But as Sylvie, her eyes afire in a face pale as ashes, gathered them to her, both Rose and Rachel felt exactly the way they had as little children—when the one thing each had desired most was the comfort of a mother’s embrace. For Rose, it was a comfort made all the more sweet for having been denied; for Rachel, a sense of coming home so powerful she had to throw an arm about Sylvie to keep from drowning. As they lay with their heads pressed to her laboring breast—one fair, one dark—a cloud passed before the sun, plunging the room into shadow, and making the burst of light that followed all the more brilliant.

Caught in its glow, the three women clung to one another, and wept.

Randomly, a line from a poem memorized in childhood drifted into Sylvie’s head as she lay against Nikos, her eyes closed.

I remember, I remember … the house where I was born.…

She’d grown up in a Bronx tenement, a railroad flat with a kitchen so cramped that the bathtub by the stove had doubled as a table when covered with a folding screen laid flat. There had been just the two of them, she and Mama, who each night before bed had regaled little Sylvie, in her thickly accented voice that seemed to lend drama to the most ordinary of anecdotes, with tales of the museum where she worked. Describing works of art that had survived centuries of war, massacre, floods, famine: Egyptian vases dug out of tombs, along with mummies wrapped in rotting cloth; precious carvings from the Orient imported by tea and silk merchants in wooden sailing ships; hundred-year-old portraits so lifelike you’d have sworn their subjects were breathing.