Twice Cursed

by Marianne Morea

  ***

  Lily turned right at the end of the exit ramp, and merged onto the rural highway heading toward North Salem. This area of Westchester County was horse country, with miles of grazing pastures traversing multiple townships and two state lines, each separated by weathered, split rail fences and dotted with stables and equestrian jumping courses.

  She hadn’t been this way since August. As the road twisted, she watched the landscape unfold across her line of sight. Once lush acres lay fallow, buried under snow, and the surrounding trees seemed melancholy in their hues of gray and brown. Lily sighed, hoping the bleak colors weren’t an omen of how her visit would go.

  The road was rough from all the snow and ice as she turned onto the long common drive Terry’s parents shared with one of the local breeders. In the far paddock, a few horses pawed the frozen earth, their beautiful manes shining in the chilly afternoon sun, falling in a silken cascade across blankets covering their flanks.

  Beverly and Carl expected her over an hour ago, so she shifted into low gear and headed toward the private drive, almost hidden behind the leafless hedgerow across from the barn. A quarter of a mile later, she was at the house.

  Putting the car in park, Lily quickly checked herself in the makeup mirror, double-checking her dark circles were properly concealed. Beverly was part bloodhound when it came to sniffing out if her girls were taking care of themselves, and the last thing Lily wanted was for their visit to begin with maternal instincts blaring.

  As usual, Carl had cleared the driveway down to the blacktop. Lily knew the owners of the neighboring horse farm always plowed the roads, but Carl was a typical male when it came to his ‘toys’. Give him a reason to fire up his snow blower, and he was a happy camper.

  From inside the car, she could hear Cookie barking. The chocolate lab was a better lookout than Buffalo Bill, and that meant everyone knew she had arrived. Flipping the visor back up, she grabbed her purse and got out of the car.

  From her vantage point, she could see the entire yard. The large oak tree off to the side of the house still held the chair swing where she and Terry used to sit for hours, talking and laughing. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she was twelve years old again, helping Carl carve their names into the trunk of the tree.

  Beverly’s planters were still in their place on either side of the slate walkway, iced over and barren, but Lily knew come Mother’s Day they’d be overflowing with impatiens and begonias.

  The house itself was an old groundskeeper’s cottage, modest by comparison to the sprawling acres and large farm homes surrounding it. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in charm. Red brick, with a double peaked, grey slate roof, it looked as though it belonged on the pages of a fairytale. In the spring, an English wildflower garden graced both sides of the yard, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds by the score.

  On the outside, nothing had really changed. But Lily didn’t need her psychic ability to guess how things had changed on the inside, and that’s what worried her.

  Taking a deep breath, she shoved a few stray strands behind her ear and started up the front path. What was she going to say? Did she still own the right to just breeze in as if this was still her home, as if she still belonged here?

  With her hand on the brass doorknob, she bit her lip. Just one quick peek... She shook her head. No. The truth might hurt too much. With a deep breath, she reached for the doorknocker, instead. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Cookie barked madly behind the door, and Carl’s deep voice resonated from the other side for her to sit and be quiet. The front door swung open, and there he stood, unchanged and smiling.

  “What are you doing standing outside in the cold? Get in here and give me a hug!” he said, opening his arms.

  Lily’s breath hitched, and her throat tightened against a sudden urge to cry. She walked into his arms, breathing in the familiar scents of peppermint and cherry pipe tobacco that always clung to him. A million memories flooded her mind as he gave her a squeeze before leaning back to kiss her cheek, nuzzling his salt and pepper beard against her chin, as he did when she was a child.

  “How’s my wild girl?” he asked, when he finally stepped back, allowing her the rest of the way through the door. He scrutinized her as she shoved her gloves in her pocket and took off her coat and hat. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, Carl. How about you?”

  He slid his arm around her shoulder and steered her towards the kitchen at the back of the house. “Better now that we know you’re home and safe.”

  Lily cringed inwardly. It was about as close to a verbal admonishment as he would give her, but translated it said, ‘Your mother was crazy with worry, and I had to deal with her for months. Is a simple phone call too much to ask?’

  Carl was a big man, about six foot, three inches, and Lily looked up at him across the wide expanse of his flannel shirt. “Yeah…I’m sorry, about that. I guess I should have called.”

  “Hmmm. Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters,” he said, depositing her at the kitchen table and moving toward the coffeepot and mugs Beverly had obviously set out. “You want to warm up with a cup of coffee or do you want to head upstairs and see Beverly first?”

  Lily instinctively glanced through the kitchen door towards the hall stairs. “Why is she still upstairs? It’s almost noon, is she sick?” There was nothing upstairs except the two bedrooms, the upstairs bath and the tiny staircase that led to the attic.

  Beverly was never one to lie down during the day, and she always made sure the beds were made, and the rooms picked up before she came downstairs in the morning. Immediately worried, Lily pushed herself up from the kitchen chair.

  “Sit down, Lily. Bev’s fine. She’s just in the attic looking through some things she thought you might want to have. That’s all.”

  He wasn’t telling her everything. The attic was as cold as hell this time of the year, and there was no way Beverly would be up there unless…

  She didn’t wait for him to elaborate. Guilt slashed across her chest making it hard to breath. It was obvious. Beverly was losing herself in the attic among the things she had saved from Terry’s life, from her life. Hence, the memory box left for her in the apartment.

  Beverly was stuck, and Lily had left her alone in her grief, with no one to cling to, no one to help ease her pain except Carl. Lily had taken herself out of the family equation, too obsessed with her own selfish quest for revenge. Shame, heavy and suffocating, descended on her, and Lily’s mind replayed the same words over and over again. Thoughtless, Self-centered.

  Lily took the hall stairs two at a time, purposely ignoring the family pictures hanging on the wall. At the top, she headed straight for the attic door, left partially ajar. As she climbed the narrow stairs, the wind whistled, low and moaning through the attic eaves, and the temperature dropped significantly the closer she got to the top.

  “Beverly?” she called out gently. “You up here?”

  “I’m here, dear…in the back by the trunks. Watch your step, Carl still hasn’t gotten around to fixing those loose boards.”

  Lily walked over to where Beverly sat cross-legged on an old remnant of carpet, a thick throw blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and fingerless gloves on her hands as she sorted through items in one of the trunks.

  “Bev, for Christ sake, it’s got to be twenty degrees up here. What are you doing sitting in the freezing cold?”

  The older woman looked up, waving Lily off with one of her gloved hands. “Oh, honey, I don’t feel the cold when I’m all wrapped up like an Eskimo. And let’s not forget about my hot flashes. So, don’t worry. I’m as toasty as can be up here in my little perch.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled up from her spot on the floor, but the telltale signs of where she’d grown careworn were there, despite her attempt at humor. The light had gone out of her eyes, and Beverly’s voice had lost the lilt of easy laughter.

  “Why didn’t you make Carl carry
all this downstairs for you? If you’re worried about his back, between the two of us I’m sure we can shimmy it down the stairs. We’ll put it in the old bedroom, that way you can look through everything without risking frostbite.”

  Beverly just blinked. “No. I like the solitude up here.”

  “Well, Carl doesn’t like it and neither do I. You may think you’re fine sitting up here in the freezing cold, but even in this dim light, I can see your fingertips are blue. This is nuts! You’ve had time enough for solitude…”Lily stopped herself, suddenly conscious of the annoyed tone to her voice. This was not the time for her habit of masking concern with anger. When it came to appropriate ways of dealing with emotions, who was she to talk?

  Her chin sunk to chest, her cheeks hot with self-reproach. “…and so have I,” she added softly. “We’ve both been alone in this for too long. I’ve been alone in this for too long.” Her voice caught, and she looked away, not wanting to upset Beverly any further.

  The older woman stood, pushing down on the lid of the trunk with her hand to steady herself. “Oh, sweetheart…don’t. You did what you had to do,” she said, taking a step towards Lily. “We all deal with grief differently. I found my place of peace up here with my memories.” She paused, as if afraid to ask. “Have you found yours?”

  Lily hesitated, and then slowly nodded. What else could she say? It was the truth, even if the truth was more farfetched than any legend or folktale. She had found peace with Sean, with his entirely unreal reality.

  Would she ever be able to tell Beverly about Terry, and how she stayed for a while as an earthbound Shade? Probably not. It would hurt the woman too much if she knew she could have said goodbye to her daughter, yet not been given the chance. No. This was one secret that needed to stay buried.

  “Come on. Let’s both get warmed up, and then Carl and I will bring whatever you want downstairs,” Lily said, changing the subject.

  “I…”

  Lily took her elbow, steering her toward to stairs. “Sorry, but I’m not giving you a choice. I want a nice, long visit, and I’m not doing it up here in the tundra. You’re coming back downstairs, and I don’t want t hear another word about it.”

  Chuckling, Beverly slid her arm around Lily’s waist. “When did you get to be so pushy?”

  Lily leaned in to her, the warmth of being home flooding her body with peace. “I learned from the best.”

  ***

  Lily and Beverly sat on the floor of the spare bedroom, sorting through the trunks Carl had dragged, one after the other, down the stairs. He refused any help, yet red faced and out of breath, mouthed the words, ‘thank you’, to Lily as he left the two women to their task.

  The room had changed so much in the four years since she and Terry had moved out. But the feeling of belonging, of coming home, permeated the walls and a weight lifted from Lily’s chest. No matter where she went, this was home. Reaching into the trunk, she took out a stack of photographs and flipped through them. Most were of Terry as a baby, but one picture stopped her and left her staring.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “Where did this come from?” Lily asked, holding up a picture of Beverly at their town’s Halloween parade. Terry was in her stroller, in a pink onesie with bunny ears and eyeliner whiskers. In the background was Lily’s own mom, with Lily in her arms dressed as a bat.

  Beverly peeked over Lily’s arm and chuckled. “Carl took that picture our first year in North Salem. It’s funny that the four of us are in that picture; I didn’t even know your mother at that point. You know the story—we didn’t meet until we enrolled you girls in the community center’s Mom and Tot music class. You and Terry were just two years old at the time.

  “Your mom and I took one look at each other and knew we’d be friends. She was the only down-to-earth woman in that entire group! Talk about your bunch of wannabes.”

  Lily held the photo, running her thumb over the curve of her mother’s face. In the photograph, her mother was about the same age as she was now.

  “You look just like her, you know,” Beverly said softly.

  Lily nodded, and with a sniff, placed the photo back in the trunk. “Lucky me,” she said with a shrug.

  “Sweetheart, you should keep the photo. It was a good luck omen then, maybe it’ll be a good luck omen now,” she said, placing it back in Lily’s hand.

  Lily shrugged again. “Stranger things can happen. It’s funny though. Even as babies, Terry was all in pink and I was all in black.”

  Beverly smirked. “Only you would think of that.”

  Lily opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped, watching Beverly pull a blue and white receiving blanket from the last trunk. “What’s that?” she asked. “I don’t remember seeing that before.” The blanket looked old and worn, and it certainly didn’t look like anything Beverly would have put on Terry as a baby. It had an institutional feel about it.

  “This is the blanket that Terry was wrapped in when the nuns brought her to me.” Beverly held the blanket up and Lily saw the Good Samaritan Hospital stamp across the back.

  “Nuns? Don’t you mean nurses?”

  Beverly shook her head. “No, sweetie. They were nuns.” She lifted her eyes, and they were full of nostalgia and regret. “We never told her, or you.” She paused. “Terry was adopted.”

  Lily was speechless, but her face must have spoken volumes because Beverly’s crumpled a bit.

  “Oh, honey, I don’t defend not telling her. We always thought the right moment would present itself, that we had all the time in the world to find a way to break it to her gently.” Beverly’s eyes misted over, and her voice cracked. “I even wrote her a letter. I bet you think that’s pretty chicken shit, huh?”

  Lily just blinked. Hadn’t she used those same exact words to chastise herself for not calling? Guess emotional avoidance was a learned behavior. In this family, anyway.

  Except for Terry…

  Beverly reached into the trunk and pulled out a flat rectangular jewelry box. She lifted the lid and took out a small stack of papers and official looking envelopes. “It’s in here, along with her adoption papers,” she said, handing Lily the stack. Lily took them from her hand and placed them on the carpet next to her.

  “Can I see that for a moment?” she asked, extending her hand toward the receiving blanket.

  Beverly nodded. To anyone else it may have seemed an odd request, but not in this house. The girls had kept Lily’s secret just between them until they graduated from college. When they decided to open a paranormal investigation company, they knew the idea would raise more than just eyebrows. Beverly and Carl were going to want an explanation. And boy did they get one.

  Lily took the blanket from Beverly’s hand. The woman’s grief, mixed with her apprehension at what Lily might see, passed along, as well.

  She gave the woman a reassuring smile, and then closed her eyes, wrapping her fingers around the faded fabric. Images formed slowly, incongruous at first. Lily focused her concentration on Terry’s essence, her strong life force, willing the hazy images to clear and align.

  Frames resembling an editor’s reel, choppy and flickering, played across her mind—a woman straining, her feet in stirrups, nurses by her head and one next to the doctor at her feet, counting down the contraction time.

  “Push Teresa…come on, work for your baby. One more big push!” Lily’s lips curled in a soft smile as she watched the scene play out. “It’s a girl,” the doctor said, as the baby slipped into his hand, covered in blood and a white, cheeselike substance. Wailing, her tiny puckered face turned red and purple as nurses took her, cleaned her and wrapped her in a blanket, before placing her in her mother’s arms. “Seven pounds, two ounces and nineteen inches long. She’s perfect. But don’t get too comfortable, Mommy, you’ve got one more to go!”

  The mother placed a kiss on the baby’s head, but her weak smile suddenly turned agonized as an unexpected contraction tore through her. Her back arched, and s
he screamed, blood gushing from between her legs.

  “Take the baby!” the doctor yelled.

  “Christ, that was fast…” one of the nurses said, but before she could finish her sentence, another painful contraction hit right on top of the previous one.

  Nurses scrambled back and forth, one taking the first baby, and the other trying to keep the mother quiet and immobile.

  “Keep her still,” the doctor commanded.

  “Teresa, I know it hurts, but you need to stay calm so Doctor Bennett can see what’s happening. Squeeze my hand, small breaths…”

  “My baby! Save my baby!”

  “The placenta separated, she’s hemorrhaging,” Bennett said, pushing the instrument table aside, shouting instructions to the nurses.

  “Blood pressure is 60/40 and dropping,” one of the nurses said. “Respiration weak and thready. FHR variable.”

  “Start an I.V… saline, lactated ringers and get an oxygen mask on her! Call the O.R.! Tell them we’re on our way, stat! Tell them to have a supply of O Negative ready…and somebody notify the NICU. You—get that other baby to the nursery!”

  “She’s crashing! I can’t find a pulse!”

  “We’re losing her! Move people, move!”

  Lily opened her eyes and exhaled, her fingers relaxing their hold on the blanket.

  “What did you see?” Beverly asked, unease lacing her tone at Lily’s daunted expression.

  Not sure where to begin, Lily folded the blanket and placed it on the floor next to her. “Bev, did the adoption agency ever tell you Terry was a twin?”

  “What?”

  The look of disbelief on Beverly’s face said it all, and Lily simply nodded. “Based on what I just saw, it’s true. Although I can only assume the other baby died along with Terry’s birth mother. I believe her name was, Teresa.”

  Beverly hand went to her mouth. “It’s true then.” Hands shaking, she picked up one of the envelopes from where Lily had put them on the floor next to her. Opening it, she removed a sheet of paper and unfolded it, handing it to Lily. “Terry’s birth mother’s name was Teresa Garcia.”