Finding Purgatory

by Kristina M Sanchez

  Switching the box back and forth from one hand to another, Ani couldn’t help but think she was missing something. “That was sweet of him,” she murmured. “Literally.”

  “West can be very kind when he isn’t being so obtrusive and annoying.”

  Again Ani studied the box. There was something niggling at the back of her mind, some reason why this was wrong somehow. Ani felt frustrated. The fogginess of her thoughts was not helping her make a connection. This was no more than a kind gesture; that was all. She’d had a hard week, and West might have known that if he talked to Shane. People did kind things for each other for no reason all the time.

  Then again, Ani wasn’t sure if she was comfortable with the implication Shane and West were talking about her. In what context?

  It was sweet of West to send along comfort food, but Ani couldn’t help but wonder if he had other motives. Tori was the one in the hospital. The sweeter thing would have been to send a care package to her, but his first instinct was to comfort Ani.

  “Shane?” Ani didn’t quite know how to formulate her question, but she was suddenly sure she needed to know. She had broken out in a cold sweat, nerves twisting her stomach. “Why is West being so nice to me? Why me?”

  Shane grinned and looked down a moment before he glanced back up at her. “You left an impression on him. My brother is a natural flirt. Helps in his line of work, you know? But it was different with you.”

  Ani couldn’t pretend she understood. “I don’t . . . we’ve hardly said two words to each other.”

  “Sometimes that’s all it takes, I guess.” He shrugged. “But don’t worry. He has some tact. Under the circumstances.”

  That eased the sick twist of her stomach, but it chafed. Circumstances. Putting the box on her lap, she rubbed her temples. Though she couldn’t pretend she wanted to be flirted with, she was also annoyed at the implication she was impaired somehow. The tone of her thoughts were disgruntled as she took a long look at herself, her circumstances.

  For some reason, Shane’s simple words forced her to acknowledge the loss of her family was a tangible thing. She’d found some relief when the people currently in her life didn’t know about her loss. If they didn’t know, she could almost convince herself for a minute or an hour at a time that none of it had happened.

  Ani stood. “I need to do a little research if I’m going to have the house ready for Tori tomorrow. I’m going to get my tablet. I left it in the car.” She searched for her keys as she rambled. “I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for Shane’s reply, she hurried off. She only got around the corner before she stopped and leaned up against the wall, the heels of her palms pressed against her eyes.

  She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. There was no reason. None. There was no changing what had happened to her family.

  Tori needed her. She was the one in the hospital.

  After a minute, it was easier to breathe. Ani rummaged again through her bag until she found her tablet where it always was in the side pocket. Breathing in and out a few more times to make sure she was steady, Ani headed back to the little waiting room.

  Chapter 12: Errors and Omissions

  “Wow, Tori. You look like hell.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Tori mumbled through a yawn. She almost hadn’t come to group. After being so sick, who wouldn’t understand if she chose not to subject herself to that mild torture? But Emily hadn’t been able to visit when she was sick, and Tori found she’d missed her.

  Emily came at her, making Tori jump. She was about to twist away when she realized what was happening. Just a hug, she admonished herself. An awkward hug because Emily was so big around the middle. She squeezed her friend before stepping back.

  “Kind of a worst nightmare scenario, isn’t it?” Emily looked anxious. “I mean, people try to play pregnancy off as great, right? And everything is so simple and easy, some women give birth at home. But the thing is it really wasn’t so long ago that women died of pregnancy all the time. There was a mortality rate to this ‘disease’ that was worse than a lot of cancers. Even now, the US has a stupid-high mortality rate, and—”

  “Emily.” Tori couldn’t take it anymore. “For fuck’s sake. I wasn’t dying, okay? I’m not going to die of this, and neither are you.”

  Her friend looked sheepish. “Yeah. I know. I’m sorry. When I heard you were sick I got scared and a little Google happy.”

  Tori was struck dumb by that comment. It hadn’t occurred to her anyone would be worried. Brook had freaked out, but that was what the girl did best. “I’m fine now.”

  When Emily got that look in her eye, like she was going in for another hug, Tori let her.

  They both ambled over to the snack table. Tori watched out of the corner of her eye, noticing just how ponderous Emily was. She didn’t walk, she waddled. “So, another week,” Emily said.

  “Yeah.” She might have been happy to see her friend, but Tori wasn’t looking forward to talking about pregnancy. This week, she didn’t want to be around other pregnant idiots like herself. She wanted to forget the condition existed.

  In Tori’s opinion, she now knew too much about pregnancy. The stories she heard at group combined with her doctor appointments were bad enough, but Raphe was obsessed with the topic. Since she’d let him back in her life the week before, he had signed up on every website that offered weekly baby progress based on the due date. He was forever texting her with little tidbits like:

  Did you know the baby is the size of a KitKat bar?

  He’s growing eyebrows. He probably already has that look of yours—you know, the bitch-brow.

  She’s practicing sucking, which is really gross considering her current location.

  It was an unsettling thought—some miniature being inhaling amniotic fluid. Any kind of fluid just floating around in her body sounded disgusting, but despite her distaste for the topic, Raphe continued to try to persuade her that the whole process was fascinating and beautiful.

  Sometimes, just sometimes, she got caught up in his excitement. That weekend he’d showed her how the baby grew from a tadpole-shaped creature and slowly became more human. She’d laughed when he read about how it was growing a sturdy neck and he’d walked around with his head hunched down closer to his shoulders. He’d looked like something out of The Addams Family.

  More than once, Tori told herself it wasn’t smart to let Raphe get close again. But he was the type that once he got his foot in the door, there was no pushing him back out. He was convincing that way. He got under her skin and lingered until the thought of not having him around made her more anxious than his being there in the first place.

  “What are you smiling about?” Emily asked.

  “Was I smiling?” Tori rubbed the back of her neck. “I wasn’t even thinking about anything. My brain is off.” She threw herself down into one of the chairs in the circle and grumbled. “I haven’t slept since I found out about the creepy dead people in my house.”

  “They aren’t creepy just because they’re dead.”

  Tori looked up, surprised by the edge to Emily’s voice. Her friend looked abashed. “I mean, just because they died there doesn’t mean they’re creepy, right?”

  “How is it not creepy? Come on. It’s not like I can just avoid that spot. They died at the bottom of the stairs. I have to pass it at least twice a day—usually more.” Tori shuddered. “And I can’t help thinking about it. How they must have looked. Like, you know on TV deaths are all clean, especially when there are kids involved. But that’s not the way real life looks. It’s not clean. Like what if they blew a hole—”

  “Stop!” Emily had her hands over her ears, and she was breathing erratically.

  In a heartbeat, they were surrounded by some of the others.

  “Sweetheart, are you feeling okay?” Dana asked, her hand on Emily’s arm. She looked over at Tori. “What’s going on here?”

  Before Tori could d
efend herself—she was dumbstruck, confused as to what she’d said wrong—Emily sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine.” She gave everyone a watery smile with a knowing look, shaking it off as another hormonal outburst.

  Dana didn’t look convinced, but she let it go, calling the group to order.

  The group was more trying than usual. Emily, obviously still huffy, had offered up that Tori missed group the week before because she was sick and had been hospitalized, so she got to tell that joyful tale. The way other girls groaned and hissed on her behalf was both sweet and annoying.

  When the group ended, Emily was about to head off without a second glance, but Tori got in her way. “You’re not going to go all drama queen on me now, are you?” she asked, getting straight to the point. “I didn’t know you were so squeamish. I wasn’t trying to upset you on purpose.” She remembered giving Raphe crap about upsetting her. “Delicate condition,” she said sardonically. “I guess I should know to be careful.”

  Emily looked uncertain for a moment before her expression softened. “I don’t want to picture it. I don’t want to think about things like that.”

  “I don’t either. That’s the problem.”

  Wrapping her arms around her big belly, Emily’s brow furrowed as she rocked back and forth in place. “Do you think it’s weird that your sister isn’t bothered? She saw them, right? They were her husband and daughter. She knows what they looked like when they died.”

  The thought had crossed Tori’s mind. Sometimes, the way her sister acted toward the dead—their parents and her family—was beyond what Tori could comprehend. For years, she had wondered where her parents were buried. To this day it was the one thought she had whenever she happened to pass a cemetery. Whenever she saw flowers on the sidewalk marking the scene of an accident, she wondered if anyone had marked her parents’ passing.

  Maybe it was understandable that Ani didn’t commemorate her parents’ death so long after the fact, but the way she was about her husband and daughter was just weird. There were no pictures of them in the main part of the house, but the little girl’s room was untouched—ready and waiting as if she would walk back in someday and want to play with all her toys. As far as Tori saw, Ani didn’t talk to anyone about them.

  Then again, Ani didn’t talk to anyone about much of anything.

  “He had a family,” Tori said, more thinking out loud than anything.

  Emily looked at her with wide eyes. “What?”

  “Her husband had siblings. A mother and father. A stepfather. I read it in that article I found. They had to have known Ani, right?”

  Her expression unreadable, Emily nodded. “Yeah?”

  Tori shrugged. “I don’t know. I wonder if it’s just too hard for them to see her.”

  Emily paused. “What if it’s the other way around? Maybe she ditched them?”

  “Ha.” Tori’s sentiment was humorless. “Yeah, actually. She’s good at that—just cutting people out of her life. I wonder if she did to them what she did to me.”

  Ani had been very patient with Tori’s string of complaints about the house. She’d had the house blessed. She’d had the house’s aura read. She’d done just about everything she could think of, but Tori was still bothered by what had happened, and she had no problem going over that point. Repeatedly.

  “Considering how many people have lived on Earth, don’t you think you’ve walked over spots where a lot of people have died?” Ani asked later that night when the topic came up yet again.

  “I don’t understand how you can stay here knowing they died here.” It must have been the thousandth time her sister had said the exact same thing.

  “It isn’t odd to me. Jett and I got a fabulous deal on this house because it’s built on an Indian burial ground.”

  It was the first time in Ani’s life that she’d ever seen a spit take in person. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Of course.”

  Tori blinked, her eyes wide, uncomprehending for a moment before they narrowed. “Goddammit, I’m pregnant. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to freak me out like that.”

  She sat down, looking grumpy. Any other day Ani might have thought her technically-adult sister pouting like a three-year-old was funny. As it was, she was too tired and angry to think anything was funny.

  “Why doesn’t it bother you?”

  Ani sighed. “Tori,” she said with warning in her tone.

  “No, I’m serious.” Her sister crossed her arms and slouched. “Don’t you feel like you’re walking over their bodies or something?”

  “Their bodies are in the cemetery,” Ani said by rote.

  This was what she told herself every single time she passed that space. Of course it bothered her, but she didn’t want to acknowledge that. It was something she was used to, a chronic condition. Every time she passed that spot, she held her breath because an invisible pick, cold as ice and sharp enough to rend her in two, buried itself right in her gut and another hit her straight in the heart. Every single time. If she could have justified burning the house to the ground, she would have. But that was melodramatic and irrational.

  She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said after a long moment. “I want to know everything that happened to you in the foster homes, and I want to know who the father of the baby is.”

  “What the hell?” Tori scoffed. “What the heck are you going to give me for that?”

  “I’ll sell the house.”

  Tori’s eyes were so wide, she looked much younger than she was. “You’re shitting me. That’s stupid. Who does that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying.” Ani’s tone was dry. She took a deep breath. “But I do want you to be comfortable, and I’m not attached to this house.” Not anymore at least. “And I want to help you. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

  “You don’t want to help me. If you wanted to help me, you wouldn’t have left me there.”

  Ani’s heart ached, and she looked down at the table, aggravated at her sister and at the constant guilt she carried over what she’d done. Part of taking responsibility for her actions so many years ago was accepting Tori had a right to be angry. Still, Ani was getting very tired of apologizing.

  “If I tell you what you want to know, you sell the house and you answer my questions,” Tori said.

  She should have known selling her home wouldn’t be enough. Jerking her head, Ani nodded. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but so be it. If she could get through it once, maybe they could agree not to talk about it again. “Fine.”

  Ani got up and went to the fridge. She poured a glass of wine for herself and made chocolate milk for Tori.

  “Really?” her sister said when she set the drink down in front of her.

  “You used to like it.”

  “When I was three.” But even as she said it, Tori reached for the milk.

  Sitting across from her, Ani took a long drag of her wine. “You start.”

  Chapter 13: Hell

  Throughout her story, Tori’s voice was flat and perfunctory. The emotional toll she’d paid was only hinted at in the lulls in her speech. She stared straight ahead, mindlessly stirring and stirring and stirring her chocolate milk.

  Ani could only listen in abject horror.

  The Welches were nice. Tori remembered them well. She remembered them better than her real parents, which, given the circumstances, made her feel like crap from time to time. Sometimes she thought losing them was a punishment. She would have been happy. They would have been her only momma and daddy, and maybe that was too much. Maybe the universe knew their eldest daughter would try to forget Eric and Chelsea Kane as soon as she could, so it wouldn’t let Tori go, couldn’t let her be happy.

  So though the Welches had been trying for children for five years, without success, it was only after they decided to adopt Tori that they became unexpectedly pregnant. Tori promised sh
e would be a good girl. She wanted to be a big sister. She vowed to help with the new baby. None of it mattered. The Welches were done with foster children and over the idea of adoption, and so Tori was shifted on to the next surrogate parents.

  After the Welches came Maria Veracruz. She was a nice woman who gave a home to two girls and a little boy in her three-bedroom house. Though she was with the woman for a year and a half, Tori barely remembered her. She had vague memories of the boyfriend Maria had let stay over at the house for what may have been days or may have been weeks. At five years old, time wasn’t very concrete to Tori. Either way, since the boyfriend wasn’t sanctioned by the foster agency, Maria had lost her foster care license, and the three kids in her home had been relocated.

  From six to eight, she lived with Barbara and Stephen Bui. When they divorced, they stopped fostering children. They were strict and all but impossible to please, allowing very few luxuries and even less in the way of affection.

  Her next foster family was where she lived the longest—nearly four years. It had its moments. She wasn’t miserable. She wasn’t happy. She just was.

  Until Zachary Rocklin came into the home. He was twelve, like her. None of the kids knew why he was in the system, and he didn’t talk about it. He was silent, withdrawn, and always angry. He yelled at everyone.

  Except Tori.

  Who knew why. There wasn’t usually a logical reason for these things. Tori was a child. She didn’t know why their social worker—the one she had before Shane—was so pleased when she heard they got along. Tori didn’t get along with all the kids, but it wasn’t that rare.

  Everyone encouraged their friendship. It was good for him, they all said. She was doing a good thing. They said she was helping him.

  He started to hug her a lot, and while she was a little shocked about it, everyone liked hugs. She let it happen.

  But then he started to try to touch her.

  At twelve, growing up in the system as she had, Tori knew all about bad touch. She knew what was appropriate, and she knew that even if she were going to participate in inappropriate behavior, she should at least be comfortable with the person touching her. She wasn’t. She grabbed his wandering hands and pushed them away.