Seeking Carolina (21 page)

Johanna pulled the locket from underneath her shirt. She clicked it open, stared at her mother’s face. Gathering her thoughts swallowed the day before, she chose her words carefully. “Yesterday, you said if the wish was yours to make, it would be about Mom.”

“That I could know what happened to her. Why?”

“Because it’s Nina’s wish too.” Johanna clicked the locket closed, just in case. “And it’s always been mine. It made me think—what if it’s Julietta’s too?”

“It’s a good possibility. What are you getting at?”

What was she getting at? Thoughts sparked and swallowed the day before made their way up from her gut. Gram promising it to each of them, changing the story with each promise. Vanished. Dead. Erased. Happy. There was something there…

“I’m not sure,” she said at last. “I’ll figure it out, though.”

* * * *

“It was right, for a while, and then it was too late.”

“It is better not to know such things.”

“It is always best to know.”

Three French Hens

“We were able to obtain the accident report from the Danbury Police Department.”

Dr. Chowdary met the three of them at the door to Julietta’s room. His voice was hushed but clear.

Her sister slept on in the bed, as she had the last two visits.

“Computers, thank goodness, made this possible.” He held up the printout in a manila folder. “Before scanning capabilities, they destroyed everything after twenty-five years. But this is only the accident report. I’ve put in a request for any information about Carolina Coco Anker and Johan Anker with the hospital, and with the police department.”

Anker.

Then they had been married, after all. Which meant…

Johanna Anker.

Until that moment, she hadn’t even thought about her father’s surname. Her grandparents were Coco, she and her sisters were Coco. They had all been Anker once, at least in some respect. There had been no birth certificates until Gram and Poppy took them in. The name on hers was Johanna Elsbet Coco.

“Would you ladies like to look it over together?”

All eyes turned to Dr. Sam.

“Have you read it yet?” Nina asked.

“I have.”

“How bad is it?” Emma held out her hand, held the file against her chest when he handed it to her. “Should we sit?”

“There are some things that may come as a shock,” he answered. “I am happy to sit with you, even to summarize it for you.”

“No,” Nina said. “We can manage.”

“Julietta?” Johanna managed to croak.

“She is resting. She woke a little while ago, but did not stay awake long. It is the first time she did not require a sedative. This is good news. The nurse will come for you if she wakes again. Please, feel free to use the conference room. You will not be disturbed.”

* * * *

The conference room smelled of lavender, not the nauseatingly floral scent that never quite masked the hospital odors of urine and antiseptic. Johanna could not decide if it soothed or unnerved her. The file folder pressed tight to Emma’s chest confused whichever it might be.

They sat together at the small, round table. Emma slid the folder to the center. “We ready?”

Nina nodded, but she crossed her arms and slumped back in her chair. Emma made no move to open it.

Johanna reached out, relieved and surprised her hands did not shake, and pulled the folder closer. “There’s a whole lot of technical stuff.” Photos of the accident scene appeared three pages in. Her stomach heaved. Johanna closed her eyes tight, closed the folder. “And pictures.”

“I don’t want to see those,” Emma said.

“I’ll take a pass too.” Nina tapped the front of the folder. “There should be a narrative on the last page. Why not start there?”

Johanna waited for the gurgling in her stomach to subside. She could not unsee what she’d seen—the wreck, the blood, the broken glass, the empty car seat Julietta had been cut from, the crushed car. Tears welled. She brushed them aside, and slid her finger to the last sheet in the folder.

“On October 11, 1983, I was first responder to a motor vehicle accident on 4th and Valley View, Danbury, CT. Four-door (vehicle 1, V1) vs. semi (vehicle 2, V2.) Called in a Code 3. Called for ambulance. Fire Department had already arrived at that time. V1’s back end was half-way underneath V2. Truck could not be moved without risking further injury. Tried to make contact with vehicle occupants. Driver, Caucasian male (D,) approximately forty-five, non-responsive. First passenger, Caucasian female (P1,) approximately thirty-five, non-responsive. Caucasian male (P2) in back seat, non-responsive, age, indeterminate. Two little girls, approximately six (P3,) and two years of age (P4.) P3, non-responsive. P4 conscious, but non-responsive. Jaws necessary to extricate back seat passengers.

Ambulance arrived to take D and P1. D awake and combative. Needed restraining. Minor injuries, TBD. P1 in and out, but cooperative, taken to CCU. P3 extricated first, slightly responsive. Minor injuries—to be determined. Second ambulance took her to ER. Approximately one hour necessary to cut and extricate adult male P2, dead at scene, decapitated—”

Her sisters gasped. The glands in Johanna’s jaw watered, preparing for the gurgling in her belly to spew out.

“I need to stop.” Emma bolted out of her chair but Nina held her back.

“Emma, what—”

“Let me go, Nina.” She yanked free. “You don’t get it. You weren’t there. Dad…” She closed her eyes tight. “He wasn’t the driver, Nina. Dad was P2.”

This time, Nina did not stop her. She sat down again, ashen and trembling. Soul-tearing sobs seeped through the closed bathroom door. Emma needed her. She needed them, but Johanna could not force herself to her feet.

Mommy. I didn’t mean to. I pushed him and it fell off.

“Are you okay, Jo?”

She blinked, forced her mind to close off the images forming so she could get through the rest, because avoiding it seemed worse than cowardice. It was betrayal. She opened the file.

“I can read to myself, if you prefer.”

“No,” Nina said. “Finish.”

“—decapitated. P4, injuries could not be ascertained at scene. Too much blood. Ambulance three took her to ER. Ambulance four arrived shortly thereafter for P2. Grisly. Just grisly. This officer has never seen such a thing, and hopes never to again.”

Nina slid a glass of water to Johanna. She took a sip.

“Witnesses questioned. Detail noted in report. Consensus the same. V1 was traveling at an excessive rate of speed towards intersection. Light was red. Showed no sign of stopping even as V2 came through the light. Last minute, D cut the wheel and slid backwards underneath V2’s trailer. P3 and P4 survived due to their size. P2 did not because of his.

“Driver of vehicle 2 was questioned and released—no fault, but will be further questioned. Respectfully Submitted, Officer R. José Ortiz.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it,” Nina said. “Not for me. It’s gruesome and sad and horrifying, but it didn’t happen to me. Jules and Emma…”

Nina looked to the bathroom door, where the hollow, heartbreaking sobs continued to pour out of their sister. Her jaw clenched. She pushed to her feet and banged on the door.

“Emma. Let me in. Now.”

Johanna was surprised but glad to hear the lock click open. And she was alone. With the folder. And the pictures.

She started at page one.

Facts, diagrams, witness statements. They all blurred, but she knew what they said. Officer Ortiz had been thorough. Her fingers shook, but she pressed them to the page, the one separating her from the grisly scene the responding officer hoped never to see the like of again.

“Perhaps that is not the best idea.” A dark hand came gently to rest upon hers. Dr. Sam sat beside her. “I know it feels like dishonor to shield yourself from their pain, but that is not a reason to subject yourself to something you cannot unsee, no matter how much psychotherapy you undergo, as you can observe quite clearly by Julietta’s current state.”

“Did you look at them?”

“I did. But I can do so with a clinical eye. You cannot.”

“Were there photos of…of him?”

“Yes. In a case of possible vehicular manslaughter, it is required. Because she was the last taken from the car, Julietta is in some of them, but only little legs and feet, a glimpse of her head.”

I pushed him and it fell off.

“Dr. Sam,” she began, but her mouth filled with saliva. She took another sip of water. “The report said Julietta’s injuries could not be ascertained at the scene because of all the blood. I know two things—one, she came to us with a bandage on her forehead, and a broken arm, and two…”

Dr. Sam touched her shoulder. “You don’t have to—”

“No, I do have to.” She took a deep breath. “In the other hospital, Julietta thought I was our mother.”

“Yes, Efan told me.”

“What he could not have told you is what she whispered to me. Knowing all this”—She placed her hand upon the folder—“I understand it now, and it’s something, as her doctor, you should know.”

“All right. When you’re ready.”

Another, deeper breath. “She said she was sorry. That she pushed him and it fell off. She must have been talking about our dad. He, or part of him, must have been on her and she pushed him off. When she did, his head—” Johanna put her own head in her hands, fingers pressed to her eyes. Within the sparkles there, her father’s headless corpse spurted blood on her baby sister, like a hose on a summer day. “She was covered in so much blood, Dr. Sam. So much the EMTs couldn’t see if she was injured or not. Can you imagine what happened? Can you imagine what she saw?”

Dr. Sam did not answer. He seemed to go into himself, his eyes staring. Then he picked up the folder, leaned back in his chair and opened it. Johanna watched his eyes dart back and forth. Something of the photos reflected in his glasses. Her brain conjured those hints and blurs into imagines assisted by the one photo she did see. He closed the folder again, and did not put it back onto the table.

“Thank you for that, Ms. Coco. I know it was difficult for you.”

“Johanna, please.”

He nodded acknowledgement and rose from his chair. “I will be back shortly. It is my hope more reports have become available since I got this earlier. For the time being, Johanna, I advise you not to mention this to your sisters. It may become inevitable they learn this grisly truth, but it may also be it is a detail they never need become aware of.”

“I don’t know that I could anyway.”

Dr. Sam left her with a grim smile and a firm squeeze to her shoulder. He could be no older than she, and was probably younger, but he exuded the sort of kind wisdom she associated with her grandfather. Poppy’s quiet love had come, at least partially, from being deaf in one ear. Until now Johanna hadn’t understood it also came from a sorrow so deep that silence was the only weapon against it. It made her wonder if Dr. Sam Chowdary had such a sorrow in his own life, or he absorbed what his patients gave him to hold.

* * * *

They should have been destroyed. They should never have been seen. They show surface truths of blood and horror and death. They speak nothing of the love. Did anyone record arms shielding? The hands reaching? Did anyone hear voices cry out? To slow? To mind the crying children, so frightened? Only recorded is the bad choice, the fear, the minds not quite centered in reality. Those are facts, and facts deal little with the heart.

It is ever the clearest moment. The smell of the tires burning on the asphalt. The taste of tears. The children’s cries and the mad laughter. ‘I love you’ moving heart to heart, through those hands reaching. And the impact that shattered us all.

* * * *

Julietta woke, confused but very much herself, at precisely six o’clock the next morning, just as she did every day of her life prior to New Year’s Eve. Johanna could barely understand a word Efan spewed into the phone, his accent suddenly heavy with those Welsh tones otherwise and usually tamed. He was there. He was not going to move from her side. That much she understood. After waking Nina and calling Emma, Johanna got in the shower and let the hot water fall.

Behind eyes closed against the running water, she glimpsed the photo images, and the conjured ones that taunted her through the night. She wished she’d gone out with Charlie, as he asked. Dinner and a movie would have done her good. Perhaps it would not let her unsee those things, but she might have forgotten for a while.

Johanna told herself she would see him later in the day, after visiting Julietta, even if it felt like a lie. Everything changed along the dark stretch of road on New Year’s Eve that not even baking cupcakes with his kids had soothed. Day followed day and the hollow place got bigger instead of smaller. She saw Charlie less and less. Until she figured it all out, Johanna simply did not know what to say to him.

Dried and dressed, Johanna scrunched her wet hair into tighter curls and slipped the locket over her head. As always, she started to tuck it underneath her shirt and only fleetingly wondered why she still did so. Not only did everyone know she had it, Johanna was close to certain she no longer wanted it. But for the wish…

I wish. I wish.

She clutched the cold metal in her hand, quelled the urge to speak the words. What would it hurt? If she spoke the wish, they all wanted and it came true, her sisters would be happy. And if she spoke the wish and it didn’t, then it was as big a lie as the stories Gram told about it.

Johanna tucked the locket into her clothes. Gram had a reason for what she did, for all the things she said. Now was not the time to test the boundaries of what might or might not be true. She had enough truth the last few days.

She and Nina picked up Emma and headed out to the hospital. Her older sister had to take a conference call with Gunner and the realtors at two-thirty. Emma had sent Gio to a friend’s house for the morning, but had to be home to get him off the bus by three. Johanna would stay at the hospital until four, when Julietta had her first official session with Dr. Sam.