Before We Were Yours

by Lisa Wingate

  “Only four.” The officer nods toward Camellia, who’s coming up from the river with a policeman holding her by the scruff of the neck. I don’t know what they’ve told her, but she’s not fighting anymore.

  Miss Tann frowns. “Well…that one didn’t get the looks in the family, did she? She’s rather common. I suppose we’ll find a taker for her, though. We almost always do.” She pulls back, putting a hand over her nose. “Good heavens. What is that smell?”

  Miss Tann isn’t happy when she sees up close what a mess my sister is. She tells the officers to put Camellia on the floorboard of the car and the rest of us on the seat. There are two other kids on the floorboard already—a blond-headed girl about Lark’s age and a boy who’s a little bigger than Gabion. Both of them look at me with big, scared brown eyes. They don’t say a word or move an inch.

  Miss Tann tries to take Gabion out of my arms before I climb in. She frowns when I hold on. “Behave yourself,” she says, and I let go.

  Once we’re all in the car, she holds Gabion in her lap, standing him up so he can see out the windows. He bounces and points and babbles, excited. He’s never been in a car before.

  “My, my, look at those curls.” She slides her fingers along my baby brother’s head, pulling his corn-silk hair upward, so it has peaks on the top like the baby dolls at the county fair.

  Gabion points out the window, cheering. “Ohsee! Ohsee!” He’s spotted a little girl having her picture made on a black-and-white pinto pony in front of a big house.

  “We just need to wash the stench of the river from you, don’t we? Then you’ll be a fine little boy.” Miss Tann’s nose crinkles up.

  I wonder what she means by that. Who’s going to clean us up and why?

  Maybe the hospital won’t let us in this way, I tell myself. Maybe we have to wash up first…to see Queenie?

  “His name’s Gabion,” I say, so she’ll know what to call him. “Gabby for short.”

  Her head turns quick, the way a cat’s does when it’s seen a mouse in the pantry. She looks at me like she forgot I was in the car. “Restrain yourself from answering questions unless you’re asked.”

  Her arm snakes out, fleshy and pale, and surrounds Lark, pulling her away.

  I look down at the two scared kids huddled together on the floor and then at Camellia. My sister’s eyes tell me that she’s figured out what I already know, even though I don’t want to.

  We’re not headed to the hospital to see our mama and daddy.

  CHAPTER 7

  Avery

  The retirement home lies bathed in soft morning sunlight. Even with the newly added parking lot on what was once a sprawling front lawn, Magnolia Manor speaks of a bygone era—of the elegance of afternoon teas, and glittering cotillions, and formal dinners at the long mahogany table that still stands in the dining room. It’s easy to picture Scarlett O’Hara fanning herself beneath the moss-draped live oaks that shade the white-columned veranda.

  I remember this place’s former life, if only a tad. My mother brought me to a baby shower here when I was nine or ten. Driving over, she shared the story of attending an important cocktail reception here for a cousin who was running for the South Carolina governorship. A college girl at the time, my mother had anything but politics on her mind. She wasn’t at Magnolia Manor for thirty minutes before she noticed my father across the room. She made it her business to find out who he was. When she learned that he was a Stafford, she set her cap.

  The rest is history. A marriage of political dynasties. My mother’s grandfather had been a North Carolina representative before his retirement, and her father was in office at the time of the wedding.

  The story makes me smile as I climb the manor’s marble steps and punch the code into the incongruously modern keypad beside the front door. Important people live here still. Not just anyone is allowed to enter. Sadly, not just anyone is allowed to exit either. Behind the manor, the expansive grounds have been carefully fenced in decorative iron too tall to climb over. The gates are locked. The lake and reflecting pool can be looked at but not reached…or fallen into.

  Many of the residents must be protected from themselves. That’s the sad truth of it. As they decline, they move from one wing to the next, slowly progressing to higher levels of delicately provided care. There’s no denying that Magnolia Manor is more upscale than the nursing home May Crandall lives in, but both places face the same underlying challenge—how to provide dignity, care, and comfort as life turns difficult corners.

  I wind my way to the Memory Care Unit—here, no one would even think of crassly calling it the Alzheimer’s Unit. I let myself through another locked door and into a salon, where the television plays a rerun of Gunsmoke turned up loud.

  A woman by the window stares at me blankly as I pass. Beyond the glass, the climbing roses are dewy and fresh, pink and filled with life.

  The roses outside Grandma Judy’s window are a cheery yellow. She’s sitting in the wingback chair admiring them when I walk in. I stop one step inside the door and steel myself before drawing her attention from the plants.

  I prepare for her to look at me the same way the woman in the lounge did just now—without a hint of recognition.

  I hope she won’t. There’s never any telling.

  “Hi, Grandma Judy!” The words are bright, and loud, and cheerful. Even so, they take a minute to garner a reaction.

  She turns slowly, leafs through the scattered pages in her mind, then in her usual sweet way says, “Hello, darling. How are you this afternoon?”

  It’s morning, of course. As I’d predicted, the DAR meeting ran late last night, and try as I might, I couldn’t get away from the wedding interrogation. I was like a hapless grasshopper dropped into a henhouse. My head is now full of suggestions, dates I shouldn’t plan on because someone important will be out of town, and offers to loan china, silver, crystal, and linens.

  “Wonderful, thank you,” I tell Grandma Judy, and cross the room to hug her, hoping the moment of closeness will draw a memory from her.

  For an instant, it seems to. She looks deep into my eyes, then finally sighs and says, “You are so very pretty. What lovely hair you have.” Touching it, she smiles.

  Sadness expands in my chest. I came here hoping for answers about May Crandall and the old photograph on her nightstand. That doesn’t look very likely now.

  “There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.” My grandmother smiles up at me. Cool fingers with paper-thin skin stroke my cheek.

  “And when she was good, she was very, very good,” I add. Grandma Judy always greeted me with this poem when I visited her house on Lagniappe Street as a child.

  “And when she was bad, she was horrid,” she finishes, and grins and winks, and we laugh together. It’s just like old times.

  I sit in the chair across the little round table. “I always loved it when you teased me with that rhyme.” In Honeybee’s home, little girls were expected to be anything but horrid, but Grandma Judy had always been known for having a spunky streak that bordered on impropriety. She’d spoken out on issues like civil rights and education for women long before it was acceptable for a female to have an opinion.

  She asks if I’ve seen Welly-boy, her pet name for my father, Wells.

  I fill her in on yesterday’s press op and the town hall forum, then the long, long, long DAR meeting at Drayden Hill. I skip over the wedding chatter, of course.

  Grandma Judy nods with approval as I talk, narrowing an eye and offering shrewd comments about the town hall meeting. “Wells mustn’t let those people run riot over him. They’d love to catch a Stafford meddling in the dirt, but they won’t.”

  “Of course not. He handled it beautifully, just like he always does.” I don’t mention how tired he looked or his seeming mental lapse under questioning.

  “That’s my boy. He’s a very good boy. I don’t know how he could’ve given rise to a girl who can be horrid.”

&nb
sp; “Pppfff! Grandma!” I slap a hand over hers and squeeze. She’s actually cracking jokes and drawing connections between us. It is a good day. “I think it skipped a generation.”

  I’m expecting a quick-witted retort. Instead, she says blandly, “Oh, many things do.” She sinks back in her chair, her hand pulling away from mine. I sense the moment fading.

  “Grandma Judy, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Oh?”

  “I met a woman yesterday. She said she knew you. May Crandall. Does that sound familiar?” The names of old friends and acquaintances she can often recall with ease. It’s as if her memory book has fallen open, a persistent wind tearing out the most recent pages first. The older the memories are, the more likely they are to remain intact.

  “May Crandall…” As she repeats the name, I can tell immediately that she recognizes it. I’m already reaching for my phone to show her the photo when she says, “No…it doesn’t ring any bells.” I glance up from my purse, and she’s looking at me very directly, thin white lashes narrowed over seawater eyes that suddenly seem strangely intense. I’m afraid we’re about to have one of those moments where she stops in the middle of a conversation and without warning starts the visit over with something like I didn’t know you were coming by today. How have you been? Instead, she says, “Is there a reason you would ask?”

  “I met her yesterday…at the nursing home.”

  “Yes, you said. But many people know of the Staffords, dear. We must always be careful. People look for scandal.”

  “Scandal?” The word jolts me.

  “Of course.”

  The phone suddenly feels cold between my fingers. “I didn’t know we had any skeletons in the closet.”

  “Gracious. Of course we do not.”

  I scroll to the photo, look into the face of the young woman who reminds me even more of my grandmother now that I’m right across the table from her. “She had this picture. Do you know the person in it?” Maybe these are woodpile relatives? People my grandmother doesn’t want to acknowledge as part of the family tree? Every clan must have a few of those. Perhaps there was a cousin who ran off with the wrong sort of man and got pregnant?

  I turn the screen toward her, watch for her reaction.

  “Queen…” she murmurs, reaching out to pull the phone closer. “Oh…” Moisture wells up in her eyes. It beads and spills over, sketching trails down her cheeks.

  “Grandma Judy?”

  She’s a million miles away.

  Not miles, years. Years away. She’s remembering something. She knows who that is in the photo. Queen. What does that mean?

  “Grandma Judy?”

  “Queenie.” Her fingertip trails across the image. Then she turns my way with an intensity that bolts me to my chair. “We mustn’t let people find out….” she says, her voice lowered. She glances toward the door, leans close, then adds in a whisper, “They can never know about Arcadia.”

  It’s a moment before I can answer. My mind swirls. Have I ever heard her mention that word before? “What? Grandma Judy…what’s Arcadia?”

  “Sssst!” The sound is so sharp she spits a fine spray across the table. “If they ever found out…”

  “They? They who?”

  The doorknob rattles, and she sits back in her chair, folds her hands neatly one over the other. An eye flash silently instructs me to do the same.

  I pretend to relax, but my head is cluttered with possibilities—everything from a Watergate-style cover-up involving my grandfather to some secret society of political wives acting as Cold War spies. What has my grandmother been involved in?

  A friendly attendant enters with coffee and cookies. At Magnolia Manor, residents not only have meals, they also have snacks and drinks in between.

  My grandmother jerks a secretive backhand toward my phone, her head turning to the server. “What do you want?”

  The attendant isn’t flustered by the uncharacteristically gruff greeting. “Morning coffee, Mrs. Stafford.”

  “Yes, of course.” Grandma Judy again covertly indicates that I should put the phone away. “We’ll enjoy a cup, certainly.”

  I glance at the time. It’s later than I thought. I’m supposed to join my father for a luncheon and ribbon cutting in Columbia. A golden opportunity to be seen rubbing elbows in the home state, as Leslie put it. Press will be there, as will the governor. With the recent rumbles about Washington insiders and career politicians, these local events matter. I get it, but what I really want to do is stay with Grandma Judy long enough to see if I can gain some clarity on this May Crandall issue and find out what Arcadia has to do with it.

  Maybe she’s talking about a place? Arcadia, California? Arcadia, Florida?

  “I really have to go, Grandma. I’m scheduled to accompany Daddy to a ribbon cutting.”

  “Heavens, then I shouldn’t be holding you up.”

  The attendant moves in and pours two cups of coffee anyway. “Just in case,” she says.

  “You could take it to go,” my grandmother jokes. The coffee is in a china cup.

  “I probably don’t need any more this morning. I’ll be bouncing off the walls. I just stopped by to ask you about May—”

  “Tsst!” A hiss and a raised finger stop me from finishing the name. I’m given the snake eye, as if I’ve just cursed in church.

  The attendant wisely gathers her cart and leaves the room.

  Grandma Judy whispers, “Be careful, Rill.”

  “W-what?” The intensity is once again startling. What’s going on in that mind of hers? Rill. Is that a name?

  “Ears”—Grandma Judy points to hers—“are everywhere.”

  Just as quickly, her mood changes. She sighs, tips up the tiny china pitcher, and pours a dab into her coffee. “Cream?”

  “I can’t stay.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I wish you had time for a visit. It was lovely of you to pop in.”

  At this point, we’ve been chatting for at least thirty minutes. She’s already forgotten. Arcadia, whatever it is, has disappeared into the mist.

  She gives me a smile as blank as a freshly washed blackboard. It’s completely genuine. She’s not sure who I am, but she’s trying to be polite. “Come again when you don’t have to rush off.”

  “I will.” I kiss her on the cheek and walk out of the room with no answers and even more questions.

  There’s no way I can let this thing drop now. I need to find out what I’m dealing with here. I’ll have to unearth some other source of information, and I know where I intend to start digging.

  CHAPTER 8

  Rill

  The shadow of the big white house slides over the car, swallowing it whole. Tall, thick magnolia trees line the curb, making a leafy green wall that reminds me of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It hides us from the street, where kids play in yards and moms push prams along the sidewalks. There’s a baby carriage on the front porch of this house. It’s old, and a wheel is missing, so it leans. It’d likely dump the baby out if you put one in it.

  A little boy squats in one of the magnolia trees like a monkey. He’s about Lark’s size—maybe five or six. He watches us drive in but doesn’t smile, or wave, or move. When the car stops, he disappears into the leaves.

  A second later, I see him crawl from the tree and squeeze under a tall iron fence that circles the backyard of this house and the place beside it. The little building next door looks like it might’ve been a school or a church once. Some kids are playing on the teeter-totters and swings there, but the doors and windows are boarded shut, and there’s hardly any paint on the wood. Brambles grow over the front porch, which makes me think of Sleeping Beauty again.

  Camellia stretches upward from the floorboard to see. “This the hospital?” She gives Miss Tann a look to let her know she don’t believe it for a minute. My sister has rested up on the drive, and she’s ready for another fight.

  Miss Tann turns her way and shifts Gabion, who’s gone plumb asleep on her lap. His
little arm flops down, chubby fingers gripping and ungripping. His lips move like he’s blowing kisses in a dream. “You can’t go to the hospital looking like that, now, can you? Stinking of the river and infested with vermin? Mrs. Murphy will take care of you, and if you are very, very good, then we will see about the hospital.”

  A hope spark tries to catch fire in me, but I can’t find it much tinder. It snuffs out when Miss Tann looks my way.

  Fern crawls up my chest, her knees poking into my belly. “I want Briny,” she whisper-whines.

  “Hop to. Time to go inside. You’ll be just fine here,” Miss Tann tells us. “If you’re good. Am I understood?”

  “Yes’m,” I try to answer for all of us, but Camellia’s not giving up so easy.

  “Where’s Briny?” She ain’t happy about this whole thing and she’s working up to a blind-mad fit over it. I can feel it like a storm blowing in.

  “Hush, Camellia!” I snap. “Do what she says.”

  Miss Tann smiles a little. “Very good. You see? All of this can be quite simple. Mrs. Murphy will take care of you.”

  She waits for the driver to come around and open the car door. Then she climbs out first, taking my little brother and pulling Lark by the hand. Lark looks at me with wide eyes, but like always, she won’t fight. She’s quiet as a kitten in the hay.

  “You next.” The woman wants me, and I scoot across, my knees knocking into the brown-eyed boy and girl on the floorboard. Fern wraps her arms around my neck so tight I almost can’t get a breath.

  “You two, now.”

  The kids who were in the car before us clamber out onto the driveway.

  “Now you.” Miss Tann’s voice lowers when she looks at Camellia. She turns Gabion and Lark over to me and stands right at the car door, her legs braced apart, her body blocking the way out. She’s not a small woman. She towers over me and she looks strong.

  “Come on along, Camellia.” I’m begging her to be good, and she knows what I’m asking. So far, she hasn’t moved an inch. She’s got her hand around behind her back, and I’m afraid she’s planning to try the other door. What use would there be in that? We don’t know where we are or how to get back to the river or find the hospital. Our only hope is that, if we’re good like Miss Tann says, we really will get to see Briny and Queenie.