Seeking Carolina (27 page)

“It was very kind, but you know the rules. I’ll escort them back.” He looked her up and down. “Aren’t you supposed to be leading the afternoon yoga session?”

“Hell’s bells, yes, I am. Forgive me, ladies. It was so nice to meet you. I hope I have been helpful.” She waved as she scurried away. “Please come back to visit me. I will tell you more about your mother.”

“This way, if you would.” Darren gestured them ahead. “Forgive me for being so lax. I assure you, we are not in the habit of allowing strangers into the residence. We value our patients, and their privacy. I should have known how quickly gossip would spread, and leaving you to find the box was not a good idea. The other person at the front desk had to leave unexpectedly.”

“It’s okay,” Nina said. “And we’re the ones who should apologize.”

“Yes,” Johanna agreed. “Chalk it up to a very long car ride, and too much curiosity. We should have waited for you.”

“I hope Patricia didn’t upset you.” Darren held open the door leading back into the front lobby. “She’s very sweet, and quite harmless.”

“Patricia?” Julietta asked. “She said her name is Penny. Penelope…”

“…Pitstop,” they all said together.

“Like the old cartoon.” Johanna shook her head, more than a little sad that the story warming her heart suddenly chilled. “Was anything she said true?”

“I suppose it depends upon what she told you,” Darren said. “But if it was about Carolina and her ghost, and that he came from the grave to get her? That’s the lore I mentioned earlier. It’s the story the residents tell, anyway. If there is any truth to it, I can’t say. I wasn’t here then. But here.” He pointed to a plastic bin on the low table beside the abandoned herbal tea. “Your mother’s things. Take your time. Look through it here or take it home to do so. Her medical records are on a flash-drive in there somewhere, if you want to see them. Just please don’t wander off again. If you’d like to make arrangements to return and speak with Patricia or some of the other residents, we need a week to make it happen.”

“What about her doctors?” Emma asked. “Can we see any of them?”

Darren grimaced. “I’m pretty certain most of the staff here back then have since retired or moved on. They will be listed in the files on the flash-drive. Perhaps we can help you find them.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

Darren-from-the-desk returned to his station. Johanna looked from sister to sister, each of them doing the same. The bin sat untouched, waiting. She said, “Here? Or home?”

“Let’s take a quick peek,” Julietta gestured to the bin.

Johanna reached for it, her fingers tingling. Inside were things once belonging to her mother. Things she had touched, used, cherished. Cracking the lid, she set it aside. The sisters leaned in. Julietta was first to reach inside. She pulled out a small, square book.

The hard, white cover had no title, no art. The handwritten pages were fragile, the edges crumbling as Julietta opened it.

“What does it say?” Johanna asked.

“It looks like poetry.” Julietta carefully turned to the first page. “Oh.”

Half sob, half laugh, the sound caught in Johanna’s heart. She slipped her arm around her sister’s waist. “What is it, Jules?”

“Daddy must have written these for her,” she said. “See?”

Julietta held the book open wider, pointing for all to see the inscription.

My most precious Carolina. Eternity is not enough, but it is what I give to you. I love you to the moon and back.

~Johan

“That’s what Gram always said,” Emma murmured. “To the moon and back.”

“Do you think she knew?” Nina asked.

“Now that I think about it,” Julietta sniffed. “It really doesn’t sound like Gram, does it?”

Johanna laughed. “No, not really. Do you…could she have known him? Maybe even loved him?”

The sisters fell silent then, in the face of all they would never know. Johanna always assumed her grandparents would have despised the man who led their daughter through such a chaotic life, that they would try to keep them apart, but perhaps the true story was different. She had no idea how long her parents were in the same facility as young people in love. It could have been years. Maybe Gram and Pop hoped they would get well, be released, and have a chance at a good life. Maybe it wasn’t until Mom got pregnant and they became desperate that they disappeared. It would take a lot more digging into old, possibly non-existent records, and Johanna was not certain she even wanted to. The possibility of a different scenario to the one she’d assumed all her life was enough. For now.

She could not say who moved first, but they were taking things from the box—a porcelain fairy, a net bag of seashells, a leather pouch full of pretty stones and crystals, a deck of tarot cards. Among the various trinkets and mementos, they found the flash-drive. They also found a plastic zipper-bag marked:
Personal effects. Carolina Valentine Coco. November 9, 2005
.

Johanna opened it, tumbling the contents onto the table. Two wedding rings, a tiny diamond engagement ring, a gold horn on a thin, golden chain, and a pair of pearl earrings.

“Mom must have been wearing these when she died,” she said. “I wonder why Gram didn’t take them?”

“Probably for the same reason she didn’t have this box stored in the basement,” Emma answered. “So we’d never find them.”

“We should each have something,” Nina said. “Jules, you should have the wedding rings, if you want them. You’re getting married soon. Is that creepy?”

A sob burst from Julietta and was quickly quelled. “It’s not creepy, but…does anyone mind?”

Julietta took the wedding rings, Emma, the engagement ring, and Nina the pearls. Johanna reached for the golden horn—a
cornicello
—and remembered she still wore the locket. She lifted it out of her clothes, over her head, and put it into the now-empty zipper bag. Its magic spent. Its origins unclear. A lie that brought the truth, and granted their wish nonetheless. Johanna didn’t know what else to do with it.

“Ladies?” Penny—Patricia, hurried into the lobby, a towel around her neck and flip-flops hooked over her fingers. “I was afraid I’d miss you. Darren, oh, Darren!”

He came scurrying out from behind his desk, but Patricia did not give him a chance to scold her.

“I wanted to make sure you direct Carolina’s daughters out to the cemetery. They should know where their mother is buried.”

“Oh, well,” Darren flustered. “I didn’t know she was buried in the Lodge cemetery. Thank you, Patricia.”

“Penny,” she wagged a finger at him, then to the sisters, “Patricia is long gone, but he forgets. It’s all right. He has so many of us to remember.”

It took some time, but Darren was able to give them a plot location, and directions to the cemetery a few miles from Wolf Moon Lodge itself. The sisters took the box, and got back in the car. They found it without incident, but it was getting quite late. A sign on an otherwise deserted guard station said it closed at sunset. The heralding pink and purple dusk gave just enough light to find their mother’s resting place by. They stood before the simple stone with, not one, but two names engraved on the face.

Johan Finn Anker

March 26, 1953 ~ October 11, 1983

*

Carolina Valentine Coco

January 6, 1953 ~ November 9, 2005

“They buried them together,” Nina said. “Gram and Poppy did.”

“They must have loved him to do that,” Julietta muttered. “Don’t you think?”

“This is right,” Emma added. “It’s perfect. I’m glad we came.”

Johanna could not speak her own thoughts jumbling and jumping through her head. She could only stare at the names, the dates, thinking the old saying about a lifetime existing in the dash between. Her father’s brief one. Her mother’s sorrowful one. Lives impacted by mental illness, but a love not defined by it, a love that eclipsed all, including the children love brought into the world. Standing at their grave, knowing some of what existed in the dash between, Johanna understood her grandparents and the decision they made. She not only understood, she was grateful.

She bent to the stone, traced her father’s name, then her mother’s. She traced the dates they were born, and when they died, realizing that until recently, she hadn’t known her father’s birthday, and until today, hadn’t known her mother’s. Her fingers memorized the feel of the inscription, punctuated it at the end. Not a period or an exclamation point, but a question mark she was content to let stand. Rising, she kissed her fingertips and touched the stone.

“Oh,” she gasped. Her sisters quieted. “I just realized…Mom was born on January 6.”

Silence but for their breathing that drifted as clouds over their heads.

“Little Christmas?”

Her sisters gasped.

“That’s why we stopped celebrating,” Emma burst. “It was the year she died.”

“The cake, the gifts.” Nina shook her head. “No wonder Gram and Poppy made such a big deal about it. We celebrated her birthday every year and didn’t know it.”

“But knowing it now changes everything,” Emma said. “In a good way. Like, she wasn’t completely absent from our lives, or us from hers.”

Arms around one another, the sisters stood together before the grave, alone in their thoughts. Johanna closed her eyes and tipped her face to the darkling sky, breathing deeply of the January cold. Her head felt suddenly light. Her heart followed suit. Amid all the sorrow the weeks since leaving Cape May for Bitterly bestowed, she had also found great happiness. She found her parents, answers to questions she never realized she had, and the peace that came from knowing. She found her sisters again, home again.

And Charlie.

A chill streaked up her back, became joy bursting in her brain and trickling through her body. Charlie. Charlie-freaking-McCallan. Like she could not mourn the decisions her grandparents made, neither could she lament her own. They took her on the journey of her life, and brought her here, to this present. For the first time in all the years she could think back upon and remember, Johanna Elsbet Coco did not regret a thing.

* * * *

He had no idea how long he’d been waiting.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty hours.

Twenty days.

Twenty years.

Charlie leaned his head to the steering wheel, closed his eyes. When Johanna called and told him what happened in New Hampshire, she sounded…different. She bubbled, the same way she did back when they were kids. He’d bubbled too, in a thirty-something-guy-way, of course. She hadn’t asked him to meet her at home, but she did make it a point to tell him when she’d arrive. Charlie took it as a sign, a good sign.

He shaved his beard. All of it. Charlie saw his face for the first time in over a year, astounded by the transformation facial hair had hidden. The face that looked back at him was older, but somehow closer to who he had been before the years of responsible apathy changed him. He could not go back to being the young man who first loved Johanna, but neither would he return to who he’d become when he married Gina. Between the two versions of himself was who he wished most to be—the man who loved Johanna, and the father devoted to his children. Even Gina had a place in that man’s life, as a friend who had once been his wife, the mother of his children, and essential as anyone else he cherished.

He checked the dashboard clock, the rearview. Three o’clock and still no sign of her. And he’d drunk a whole thermos of coffee.

The key-alarm dinged as he got out of the car. Charlie pulled out the keys and tossed them onto the passenger seat. He dodged behind the garage but couldn’t bring himself to take a piss at the side of the building like a stray dog marking territory. Instead he trudged into the woods where the snowdrifts made the going a bit tougher. Instinct or memory took him to the little clearing where he and Johanna used to spread their quilt and make out for hours, the place where he’d nearly lost his virginity, the place she’d run away from and set them both onto separate paths.

Charlie moved further into the woods, relieved himself in some bramble no one would accidentally trudge through. He thought about avoiding the clearing—no good could come of dwelling on the past—but once again found himself there, remembering all those extraordinary days before that last one.

Johanna hadn’t just been the girl he was in love with, she was the person he most enjoyed spending his time with. That was how they started out—pals exploring the woods and building forts while their schoolmates played video games.

They had been seventeen, and it was the best summer of his life.

The sound of snow crunching underfoot jarred him out of memory. Johanna stepped into the clearing, a bundle in her arms. She smiled a tired smile, dropped the bundle, and closed the space between them.

“You shaved.” She took his face in her small hands.

“Like it?”

“I do. I like the beard too, though. I wouldn’t care if you dyed your hair green and tattooed your cheekbones.”

“Tempting,” he laughed. “But I’ll pass. How’d you know I was out here?”

She shrugged. “You weren’t in your car. I just…knew.”

Charlie held her a little closer. “Good trip?”

“Amazing trip. I have so much to tell you.”

“Then let’s go back to the house and—”

She placed a warm finger to his lips. “Not yet. First—”

Johanna kissed him softly, her lips teasing his, her arms reaching around his neck. Charlie held her closer. He met each kiss, matched her tenderness, and then her hunger. Backing up without leaving their embrace, Johanna let him go only long enough to grab for the bundle she had earlier dropped.

“I came prepared,” she said, and spread a blanket onto the snow. “Just like old times.”

Kneeling on the blanket, she smiled up at him, waiting. Charlie’s blood surged, his body prickled desire like electrical charges along his skin. He knelt on the blanket. He took her into his arms. “Not like old times, Johanna. I want now. I want new. I want the rest of my life making memories that have nothing to do with the past.”

“The past is part of who we are,” she said. “But just a small part. I love you, Charlie. I’m scared of how much I do, but going back to the life I was living before all this isn’t going to make me love you less. It’ll just mean I don’t get all the good stuff that goes with it.”