Seeking Carolina (23 page)

“Did Gram leave a will?”

Nina and Julietta looked her way. Emma still searched her tablet.

“I haven’t found one,” Julietta said. “Nina?”

“Nope, me either.”

“What about a bank account?”

“She had one,” Julietta answered. “The book would be in her desk, I guess.”

“Gram had a desk?”

“Well, not a desk. The drawer in the kitchen. It was her desk. Kind of. Why?”

“Because if Gram and Pop got anything of the settlement from that Bruce Johnson person, there has to be—”

“Uncle Boo…”

All eyes turned to Emma, her fingers frozen mid-tap above her tablet.

“Emma?” Johanna asked.

“Bruce Johnson. We called him Uncle Boo. Do you remember, Jules?”

Julietta frowned. She shook her head.

“He was a friend of Dad’s. He used to bring us those strands of lollipops with the smiley-faces on them. Oh, wow. I never realized that was him. I never thought of it at all, really.” She shook herself out of memory, closed the cover over her tablet. “It’s getting late. I have to go home and get my boys off the bus.”

“Dammit.” Nina looked at the clock on the wall. “I missed the conference call. I have to call Gunner.”

Emma gathered her things while Nina fished her phone out of her purse, cursing over the number of voice messages and texts she found waiting.

“Aren’t you going with them?”

Johanna sat on the bed next to her youngest sister. “Nah. I’m going to hang here with you a while, if that’s okay. Charlie’s coming to get me at four, when you have your session with Dr. Sam.”

Julietta went silent, head bowed and picking at her fingernails. Emma and Nina whirred about, gathering coats and papers and clearing garbage. The excitement and energy upon gaining news of their mother had not abated even a little since Dr. Sam first told them.

“I’ll be back in the morning.” Emma kissed Julietta’s cheek. “I’ll keep trying to find out about Cully Mountain.”

“Gunner and I will be by this evening.” Nina kissed her next. “Any books you want? Games? Your laptop?”

“All three.” Julietta smiled. “But I might come home tomorrow.”

“You’ll still want those things tonight. Have a good session with Dr. Sam, and I’ll see you later.”

In moments, Johanna and Julietta were alone in the hospital room.

“She’s only humoring me.”

“Who is?”

“Nina. She doesn’t think I’ll come home tomorrow. She thinks I need to stay here.”

“She’s just overly protective. You know that.”

“But I feel fine,” Julietta insisted. “I’m not stupid. I know I’m not, and I need Dr. Sam’s help to work through it all so it doesn’t happen again, but I feel like…me.”

“Jules.” Johanna shifted closer, nudged her with her knee. “You were out of it for six days. It’s going to take a little longer than a few hours for everyone to feel safe.”

“I suppose.” She sighed. “I’m scared, Jo.”

“Of remembering?”

Julietta looked up. “No, not really. I mean, yeah, but that’s not it. I’m afraid nothing will ever be the same again.”

“Was it so great before?”

“Maybe not, but it was safe. It’s what I knew.”

Johanna heard her own thoughts, once again, from her youngest sister’s mouth. They could not be more different from the outside looking in, but from the inside looking out…

“Is that why you won’t you speak to Efan?”

Julietta shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Honey, don’t be embarrassed. He’s been waiting since—”

“I mean it, Jo.”

“All right, Jules. Fine. Don’t get upset.”

“And don’t talk to me like I’m some wild dog about to bark itself mad.”

“Hey, what’s this about? I didn’t—”

“I want to rest.” Julietta leapt off the bed, went around to the other side. “See if you can catch Emma and Nina before they leave.”

“You kicking me out?”

“I just want to rest, Jo.” Julietta hit the nurse-call. “Please!”

Johanna gathered up the papers. The nurse came in as she left, folder clutched to her chest and uninterested in catching up with her sisters. They would only worry that Julietta was still too fragile to be released, and argue it come morning. The nurse’s hushed voice, her sister’s shrill but subdued one, barely reached her ears.

She had an hour and some to wait until Charlie got there. Johanna thought about calling him. Instead she bought a soda from the machine in the conference room and sat at the round table with the thrown-together folder of printouts.

She read again the lawyer’s letter, highlighting those events handled by the firm. For how much more information she had now that she never did before, Johanna’s brain bubbled with more questions than she ever thought to ask. Were her paternal grandparents still alive? Did they even live in America? She remembered her father having an accent. Perhaps he was the first to leave Norway. What college did Johan attend? Why did he drop out? What had he been studying? Question begat question, all of them about her father. For how much she now knew about him, Carolina remained a big mystery.

She pulled the lawyer’s letter from the pile, and read it again. Sunlight coming through the window showed writing on the other side they had not noticed earlier. Johanna turned it over, and found a handwritten endnote.

But for the final transfer of funds from the estate of Bruce Johnson in 1993, the records for this family end when Carolina was committed to Cully Mountain. I have done a rudimentary search but can find no such facility at this time. If this office is able to attain any more information on that matter, we will forward it on to you.

I remember this case well. It was one of my first. If I can be of any assistance, feel free to call my personal number…

A cell number. A name—Willa Germaine. Someone who had details Johanna was not certain she wanted. She set the paper down, pulled her cell from her pocket. Fingers poised. Breath held. Instead of dialing the number, she looked up Bruce Johnson. The number of hits was overwhelming. She narrowed the search. Danbury, 1983. Vehicular manslaughter. 4th and Valley View.

She found newspaper coverage of the accident, and a headline reading: Eccentric Computer Genius To Be Tried For Murder. Johanna was able to follow a trail, both forward and back, chronicling Bruce Johnson’s rise to fame in the early days of modern computers. Eccentric behavior once excused as genius became speculation about his mental health. And then all news of Bruce Johnson vanished along with the man, popping up again in 1983 when he appeared as the driver in an accident that killed a man.

Johanna skimmed through the news coverage more concerned with sensationalizing a computer-genius-millionaire-gone-mad than it was about her family tragedy. In the end, he’d been tried in criminal court, and again in a civil proceeding. Bruce Johnson died in a psychiatric correctional facility in 1992, and according to the obituary, “Though his contributions to computer science continue to impact the field, he left not a single living soul behind.”

Johanna set her phone down and slumped back in her chair. She pulled the locket out, clicked it open.

Carolina Valentine Coco.

Gram and Poppy had honored their Italian heritage when they named their only child, while keeping it American. It was
Carolina
, like the state, not
Caroleena
.
Valentine
, like the holiday, not
Valenteena
.

When had she started showing signs of mental illness? Was she once wild Carolina, like Johanna and her sisters had always been the wild Coco sisters? Was she involved in drugs? Was that why her parents first put her into a psychiatric facility? Her mother never lived in Bitterly. Gram and Pop bought the house when they suddenly had two little granddaughters to raise, but where had they lived before? Where was Carolina’s hometown? Did Gram and Pop buy the house on County Line Road because Bitterly was a nice small town? Or so their daughter’s daughters would not grow up in the shadow, with the stigma, of a girl gone wrong?

There was no one left to ask, and for the first time, Johanna was angry. Tracing her mother’s face when it was smiling and young and free of all things still to come, Johanna refused to cry. Not this time. No way. But she did anyway.

The nurse came out of Julietta’s room, gestured to Johanna that her sister was sleeping. Reaching for the box of tissues, Johanna nearly jumped out of her skin when one was handed to her.

“My apologies.” Efan scooted onto the chair beside her. “I thought you saw me enter. Are you all right, Johanna?”

“Thank you.” She blew her nose. “I’m just a bit overwhelmed at the moment. And Julietta kicked me out.”

“You too? Why?”

“I tried to get her to see reason about you.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you.”

“She’ll come around, Efan. Give her time.”

He moved some of the papers on the table without reading them, his eyes unfocused and his mouth chewing on words he was not speaking.

“My name isn’t Efan,” he said at last. It took a moment for his gaze to shift from the papers. “I should say, it is, but it’s pronounced more like Ivan, not Evan. Ee-van.”

“It is?” Johanna sat up straighter. “But Julietta made it a point to correct us when we called you Evan. Efan, she said.”

“It’s what everyone calls me here in the States. I never correct them. You see, I was instantly smitten with your sister.” His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I was introduced to her as Efan and by the time I noticed, I didn’t have it in me to correct her. It used to bother me, no one getting it right. Outside of Wales, people call me Efan and believe they’ve done me the honor of pronouncing it correctly. I do appreciate the effort, truly, and life has been so transitory since I left home. What did it matter the name I was called by people I would only know for a little while and never again? But with Julietta, with you and your sisters, it matters to me, Johanna. Very much.”

Johanna. Like he did the
tt
in Julietta, Efan enunciated the
h
in Johanna the way only those in Bitterly did. Customers and acquaintances in New Jersey mostly called her Joanna. She never corrected them, like Efan never did, and only now did she understand—Cape May was a place she never meant to stay.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t relent.”

Johanna blinked.

Efan, head in hands, disheveled as the papers on the table. Adorable.

She leaned forward to rub circles between his shoulder blades.

“She will.”

“I have never loved anyone before, Johanna.” His voice was thick and catching in his throat. “And I truly mean never. I believed I would be one of those infamous bachelor scholars Great Britain seems so fond of producing. Perhaps I’d marry when I was an old man too afraid of dying alone to put it off any longer. I actually looked forward to it. No wife. No children to take me from my pursuit of knowledge. But then I met Julietta.”

He sat up straight, wiped his eyes and sniffed loudly and took the tissue Johanna handed him.

“I was hers, whether she wanted me or not, from the moment I saw her in the school library, knocking books off the desk and nearly toppling a shelf more trying to help the librarian pick them up. She struck me so dumb I didn’t even realize I had no way of contacting her. The day I got your note? I nearly burst. I did. Ask young Steven, who handed it to me.”

“What would you have done if I didn’t get to you first?” she asked.

“I have no idea, Johanna. None. But I would have found her. Somehow.” He blew his nose. “I cannot live without her. I know it sounds trite and dramatic, but it is true. She is perfect and precious and has cast all the things I ever thought I wanted so far away I can barely remember what they were. She is all I want. Julietta, and however many children she would consent to give me.”

“What if I don’t want children?”

Both Efan and Johanna spun in their chairs to see Julietta standing in the doorway of her hospital room. Arms wrapped tight around her middle, hair spilling from her braid, cheeks pink and eyes wide, she was more fairy than woman in that moment, and Johanna’s love for her sister seeped out of her heart. Gripping the arms of her chair so she would not fly across the room, she stayed back so Efan could instead. Julietta pressed her hands to his chest, but did not push him away.

“Then I will spend my life worshipping only you.”

“Did you mean all that?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, Julietta. To everything.”

“Even after—”

“If your troubles could scare me away, I would not be worthy of you to begin with. I beg of you,
cariad
, never ask me again.”

Julietta lifted her gaze. “I’m never going to be normal.”

“Normal doesn’t exist,
cariad
. It is simply the middle point between two extremes. You are Julietta, and that is far more extraordinary.”

Long moments passed while Julietta studied Efan’s face, while he waited patiently, while Johanna held her breath.

“I love you, Ee-van.”

He gathered her close and kissed her tenderly. “Marry me,” Johanna thought he said, her hope confirmed by Julietta’s eager nod. Her sister backed through the door to her hospital room, taking Efan with her. The door closed. The lock clicked. Johanna glanced at the clock and hoped they had enough time to…celebrate…before Dr. Sam arrived.

* * * *

The short drive from Bitterly to Great Barrington did not give Charlie the time necessary to gather all his thoughts. Johanna’s manner towards him had definitely changed since New Year’s Eve, though he could not pinpoint exactly how. They talked. They saw one another—less and less, but they did.

Charlie was no fool, and he did what a considerate man should and gave her the space she needed to deal with her sister’s episode. In the days between then and now, he began to fear he’d backed too far off, given her time to rethink what was happening between them, given her anxiety room to spread and grow. By the time he reached the hospital, not only did his thoughts remain ungathered, Charlie had added to them.

He parked in the lot, grabbed the flowers he bought for Julietta and got out of the car. He tried to tell himself, as he had since finding her nearly frozen in the cemetery, that whatever happened, happened. He and Johanna would finally make it, or they wouldn’t. One way or another, he would survive. He had five great kids, and a good life he existed in for many years before she blew back into it.