The Orchid Sister

by LeClaire, Anne D.

  His instincts urged him to return to his journey. Leave behind whatever was happening in the field. He had not lived with only a few scars of history on his body by ignoring common sense. Taking foolish chances. Behaving in foolhardy ways. A stronger sense—beyond whim or curiosity—took hold, and he switched off the ignition. Jack was reaching into the compartment on the dash, groping inside. Looking for what? A weapon? He pulled out a flashlight. Probably with dead batteries, Víctor thought, knowing Felipe. Jack tested it. The beam of light lit up the cab.

  He opened the door, stepped out onto the road. “Wait,” Víctor cautioned. But Jack was already crossing the field. Don’t be stupid, Víctor told himself. It was idiocy. Again he thought of Tia Clara and the ancestors, and he walked to the edge of the field. Jack shone the light onto the expanse. Coming out of the shadows were three figures. One bent, one erect, and the third supported by the other two. Their faces were obscured by the night. But Víctor could see that they were women. They appeared like figures from a dream. A myth. A story not yet told. Past, present, and future, he thought, and snorted at the absurdity of this.

  As they drew closer he saw, impossibly, water dripping from their hair, their clothes. Yet they had not come from the direction of the sea. They froze in the circle of the light. Now he was close enough to see their faces. Not possible, he thought again. He recognized Graciela first. Called out her name. And then the scarred woman. “Mad-i-son?” he called, the word a question. Before the woman could even respond, Jack had taken off toward her.

  Víctor looked at the third woman but did not dare trust what he saw. Overhead, an explosion of colors zigged and zagged and pinwheeled across the sky. In their light, he saw her clearly, and at last believing what his eyes told him, Víctor tore across the field, running to the woman who had won his heart.

  MADISON

  Maddie stood at the window looking out to where the sun crept toward the western horizon. In the living room below, the others waited. Kat had already gone down, but Maddie wanted time alone before she joined them.

  Twice, Lonnie had knocked on the door, checking to see what the delay was. Lonnie, bossy as ever, had taken over the orchestration of the day as if she were totally responsible for it—which, in a way, Maddie had to acknowledge, she was.

  The notes of a Haydn trumpet concerto curled up the stairs and across the threshold into her room.

  Threshold. The point of beginning.

  But at this liminal moment, Maddie was thinking of not just this new beginning and what waited ahead but the past as well and how connected they were, like threads in a tapestry.

  She thought of all that had brought her to this moment—all the choices made and the events governed by frivolous chance. The night before that she and Kat had spent together. “Just the two of us,” Kat had said.

  “Seems funny, doesn’t it?” Maddie had said. “For so long we’ve only had each other and now, look, we’re part of a huge family.”

  “Well, not exactly huge,” Kat had said, “but certainly expanding.”

  “If it were possible to change just one thing in your life,” Kat had asked at one point during that night, “what would it be? What would you choose?”

  Maddie had considered all that had happened—things that for a long time they couldn’t talk about, like the fears and secrets they had kept from each other and the other things that only they had shared. The deaths of their parents, the hours they had spent together in the burn unit, the night they’d escaped through the underground river, the horrific media attention during the sideshow of the trials of Verner and Mercer. She thought about how all of it had brought her to this moment. All the pain, loss, and grief. Trust and doubt. Joy and discovery, risk and daring, fear and courage, despair and hope. What single event would she pick out to change? It was an impossible choice.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Nothing?” Kat said. “Not even—” Although neither said it aloud, Maddie knew they had both been thinking about their parents and how their absence was so keenly felt on this day.

  “No,” she said. “Because if we alter one thing, everything would change. It’s all of one piece. All of it.”

  “The good and the bad?” Kat said.

  “The good and the bad.”

  “And we made it. Through it all,” Kat said.

  “We made it. Yes, we did.”

  A knock on the door interrupted Maddie’s musing. “Okay, Lonnie. Hold your horses. I’m coming.”

  “It isn’t Lonnie. Can I come in?”

  Her heart caught and she smiled. “Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?”

  “I’m not superstitious,” Jack said. “Are you?”

  In answer, she opened the door.

  “Wow.” The word was no more than a whisper. “You look—” It took him a moment to find the word. “Awesome,” Jack said. “You look awesome.”

  “Awesome and fat,” she said, pressing her hand against her swollen belly.

  “Awesome and maternal,” he said. “Beautifully maternal.”

  Below, someone had changed the music from Haydn to a mariachi band.

  Maddie laughed. “I guess it’s Víctor’s turn as deejay.” She imagined her new brother-in-law taking control of the room, giving Lonnie a run for her money. Her new brother-in-law. Kat and Víctor had been married only a month, and Maddie was still getting used to the idea. “You don’t mind?” Kat had asked when she’d told her their plan.

  “Why would I mind?” Maddie had said.

  “We’re getting hitched first,” Kat said. “I mean, I don’t want to upstage your wedding. And we’re only having a small ceremony. It’s just that we don’t want to wait.” Maddie didn’t need further explanation. Kat seemed to be responding to the new therapy that had begun to reverse her aging, but as the doctors cautioned, there was no guarantee.

  A light ribbon of female gaiety floated up to them. Both recognized the voices. “I love to hear them laugh,” Maddie said.

  “Mom thinks all this has been the best medicine for Olivia,” Jack said. “She and Graciela have been inseparable.”

  “I know. For a while both Kat and I thought Graciela wouldn’t recover.”

  “Graciela’s young. And strong.”

  “We weren’t sure it was the right thing, arranging for her to come here.”

  “And now? Any doubts now?”

  She smiled. “Now I can’t imagine life without her here.”

  The sound of the mariachi band grew louder.

  “I think the gang’s getting impatient,” Jack said.

  She hesitated and bit her lip.

  “Not getting cold feet, are you?” he said.

  “Oh, I think that ship has sailed.” The baby moved, and she reached for Jack’s hand and pressed it against her belly.

  “Active little guy,” he said.

  “Or girl.”

  “Guy or girl, it looks like someone else is getting impatient.”

  She swallowed and blinked back tears. “I wish—I wish they could be here,” she whispered.

  “I know.” He kissed her forehead. “You know what Víctor would say about that?”

  She tried to imagine what he would come up with. “What’s that?”

  “He’d say that they are here. He’d say all the ancestors are here.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to picture their faces. She leaned into the shelter of his arms. “What are they doing?”

  “Laughing,” Jack said. “No doubt about it. They are laughing and cheering.”

  “All of them.”

  “Every one.”

  She felt it then, filling the room as surely as the music Víctor was playing. Felt the joy and the hope. And the love. All the love circling them. “Then we’d better not keep them waiting,” she said.

  Together they crossed the threshold.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One again, my gratitude:

  To my outstanding agent, Deborah Schneider.
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  To the entire team at Lake Union: production manager Nicole Pomeroy; the marketing side of the house, which works miracles; and most especially to my brilliant and kickass editors, Alicia Clancy and Tiffany Yates Martin. And if they awarded a Nobel for copyediting, Bill Siever would lead my list of nominees. I feel beyond fortunate to have landed in all of their care.

  To my family and friends and members of the team that keeps the vessel afloat, I offer my love and gratitude for sharing the voyage both on and off the page.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2018 Kim Roderiques

  Anne D. LeClaire is the bestselling author of The Halo Effect, Entering Normal, and The Lavender Hour, as well as her critically acclaimed and award-winning memoir, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence. A former op-ed columnist, she’s been published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Redbook, Yoga Journal, and Yankee Magazine.

  A distinguished fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, she teaches creative-writing workshops around the globe and leads popular seminars and workshops exploring silence, creativity, and deep listening. She has been a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College, the University of Tennessee, and Columbia College and was a featured speaker at the Lincoln Center.

  A former reporter, print journalist, radio broadcaster, and private pilot, she is the mother of two and lives with her husband on Cape Cod, where she leads silent retreats, practices yoga, and plays the washboard. For more information, visit the author at www.anneleclaire.com.