Flying Home

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “Well, how about going to one more place?” Jane asked after lunch.

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” Clarissa touched the side of her head. “Though I am grateful for the offer. I need to lie down for a bit. And besides, you’re supposed to be packing.”

  Jane laughed. “Okay, home it is.”

  “Thank you, Jane,” Liana said. “This has been a perfect day.”

  The children were waiting outside their hotel again, and when they recognized Liana and Clarissa, they came running. While Liana balanced two Indian rugs and three large bags of Indian tea, Clarissa gave them the light tan squares of Indian fudge called mysore pak that she had in her purse. “Good thing I bought these at the restaurant.”

  Inside, the manager of the hotel saw them and motioned them over. Not satisfied to wait for their approach, he met them halfway across the entryway. “I have been wishing to reach you,” he said. “You have a call—many calls—from America. It is your husband. He called once and then again and again. He says it is very urgent. You must call him.”

  “Thank you.” Worry instantly lined Clarissa’s face.

  Liana felt a twinge of dread as the meaning sank in. Why would Travis call in what was for him the middle of the night? What could have happened?

  They hurried to their room, where Clarissa immediately placed a call. “It’s probably nothing,” she assured Liana. “Maybe he just got lonely and then became worried when we didn’t call him back.”

  Liana said nothing. The dread in her heart was more pronounced now.

  “Travis?” Clarissa said into the phone. “We got your message. What is it?” She paused, listening. “What? No! Oh, dear Lord, please, no!”

  Liana knew something was very wrong; Clarissa didn’t often pray aloud. “What?” Liana asked.

  Clarissa held up her hand, still listening. “Okay, I’ll calm down.” She took a deep breath. “I’m fine. How are you holding up? Is Bret with you? Yes. I’ll call the airlines now to change our tickets. You did? Good. When? We’ll be there. What time will we arrive? Okay, see you tomorrow.”

  Liana sat on the bed, her fists clenched tight. She stared at Clarissa, whose face was pale and frightened. “It’s Christian,” Clarissa said, standing by the phone, a lost expression on her face. “He’s had an accident.”

  Liana gasped. “In his car?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “He fell out of a tree at Mount Charleston. The girl he was with had to leave him and hike out for help. Her cell phone didn’t have service there, and he hadn’t taken his. The rescuers barely made it back to him before dark. She called your father from the hospital.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Liana could barely voice the words.

  “They don’t know. He’s just got out of surgery. They can only wait now. Your father thinks—” She broke off with a little cry, holding out her arms. Rising, Liana stepped into them, feeling stunned and nauseated. “Your father thinks we should hurry home, just in case. He changed our return flight. Our plane takes off tonight at a little after seven, and we should get home at ten or so tomorrow night.”

  What if that’s too late? Liana didn’t say the words aloud. Instead she said, “I’ll start packing.” She drew back from Clarissa, holding in the tumult of emotions that threatened to sweep her away.

  “Good idea.” But Clarissa grabbed her hands before Liana could turn away. She looked deeply into her eyes. “Don’t lose hope. He has to be okay.”

  Nodding tearfully, Liana turned toward her suitcase on the bed and began to make room for the items they had found in Mamata’s attic.

  “Lara?”

  Liana turned to look at Clarissa, who was staring out the window. “Yes?”

  “It’s only three. There’s time to go to the cemetery before our flight. I mean, if you would like to go.”

  “I would.” Despite her worry about Christian, Liana didn’t want to leave India without at least seeing her parents’ graves.

  “Okay, then. After we pack, we’ll call a taxi to take us there and then to the airport.”

  * * *

  Clarissa gave Mridula’s paper to the taxi driver. “It’s the second address.”

  “Did you remember to call Jane and Mridula to tell them we were leaving?” Liana asked. The hour they’d spent packing had gone by in a blur, and she didn’t want to leave anything undone. Yet all she could think about was Christian and how at the airport in Nevada he had told her that the real reason he was going to Mount Charleston was for her birthday painting. “Yes, I called them.” Clarissa had been calm and efficient since the phone call, but Liana wonder if she felt that way inside. Perhaps she had let the teacher in her take over.

  Liana spent the taxi ride wishing she was still in Wyoming with Austin and Mercedes. Wishing she could curl up in the quilt she had helped stitch. Wishing she had never told Christian she wanted a painting for her birthday.

  “We’re here,” Clarissa said needlessly as they pulled up at a cemetery surrounded by a short white wall. “We’d better ask the caretaker where it is, though. We could be a long time searching.”

  Liana came from her thoughts with a start. While Clarissa made sure the taxi driver would wait, she looked out over the long stretch of graves.

  “Jane told me this is mostly a foreigner’s cemetery,” Clarissa said, steering her toward a small white building next to the graveyard. “The hospital actually owns a section that they make available for their employees when necessary. A nurse died last year, and Jane went to the funeral. She said the hospital’s section was in the back on the right, but we’d better make sure.”

  The caretaker in the office did not speak English, unlike most of the other Indians they had met. Clarissa wrote out the names on a piece of paper and the caretaker smiled, his teeth very white against his dark skin, except for the gap on the bottom where two teeth were missing. He gave them a map of the cemetery and highlighted the area where they needed to go.

  “Thank you,” Clarissa said. The man answered with a bow and a stream of words Liana didn’t understand.

  A few minutes later, Liana came across her parents’ graves, marked by a single rectangular stone, lying flat on the ground. She crouched down, feeling the muscles in her legs rebel from her time in the attic the day before and all the walking that morning.

  “I’m decades too late, I know,” whispered Clarissa, kneeling beside Liana. “But I’m here, Karyn. Your Clari’s here. And I’ve brought Lara.” Clarissa touched Liana’s hand and squeezed. Liana squeezed back, feeling a rush of love for both Clarissa and her birth mother. Tears gathered in her eyes but did not fall.

  Liana traced the carving of her parents’ names with her fingertips, letting the tears fall. These were her parents, the people who had given her life. They had loved her, perhaps more than anyone ever would—besides Clarissa and Travis. Liana had realized these past few days how much Clarissa did love her.

  “We should go,” Clarissa said after a long while.

  Liana began to rise, looking sadly at the rows and rows of headstones that marked the final resting places of people she would never know. She was glad she had come to pay her respects. As she gave a last pat to her parents’ stone, her eyes fell on the adjacent grave. She blinked away her tears, struggling to see if she had read the name right, or if her grief had caused her to see something that wasn’t there—something that couldn’t possibly be there. Crawling over to the stone, she brushed away a few dead leaves and grass clippings to see it better.

  Our precious daughter

  Lara Clari Schrader

  Born August 3, 1977

  Died January 5, 1978

  The five months you gave us were

  the best we have ever known.

  We will love you forever.

  Your parents,

  Guenter and Karyn Schrader

  Liana stared at her legal name on the stone. Time slowed, and small details called her attention: a curled leaf blowing across the engraving, a gnarled twig wedged betwe
en the grass and the stone, the last R in Schrader filled with sand, Clarissa down on her knees, holding her breath, her hands clenched in the grass.

  The same name, the same birthday, the same parents. But this baby girl had lived for only five months. Five months. Gravestones didn’t lie, did they?

  Beside her Clarissa gave a small cry. “It can’t be!”

  Liana’s feeling exactly. If the baby buried here was Lara Clari Schrader, who was she?

  CHAPTER 23

  Diary of Karyn Olsen

  Wednesday, November 23, 1977

  I am in Germany, holding Lara. She is dying. We have done everything we can, but her heart continues to fail. We scraped together every last bit of money we had to come here so she could see some of the best cardiologists in the world, but they can’t do anything for her. I sit here in the home of Guenter’s old uncle, the one who fathered a son in Ukraine and then abandoned him. He lives alone and is very ill himself. He still wants no contact with his son in Ukraine, though Guenter told him we have his address.

  I watch Lara every second. She rarely cries now as her heart grows weaker. She has trouble even nursing, and I have to feed her my breast milk with a spoon. It’s an all-day process, but what else is there for me to do? I won’t leave her for an instant. Guenter stays with us. He feels terrible that he can’t help her, even though he’s a doctor. All we do now is pray for a miracle. Why us? I ask. Why my precious Lara? There is no answer.

  Liana looked up from her mother’s journal as the captain of the airplane put on the seatbelt sign for landing in Nevada. How ironic that her birth father had fulfilled most of his wishes—he had lived with Karyn and loved her, she had borne his child, and they had died together.

  Borne his child.

  Yes, and that child was buried next to them. So who was Liana? So far, not even the journal had shed light on the matter.

  She looked over at Clarissa, who had woken up at the captain’s announcement and was staring out the window. There were new lines on the fine pale skin, or perhaps old lines grown deeper from her worry over Christian. They had talked to both Travis and Bret when the plane landed in New York and then again in St. Louis, but there had been nothing new. Christian had not awakened after his surgery, and the doctors didn’t know if he ever would.

  Liana and Clarissa hadn’t talked about what they had found at the cemetery, but it was all Liana could think about besides Christian. She felt lost. Who was she? Some orphan child Mamata had sent to America to give her a better life? But no, she remembered living with her parents—with Karyn and Guenter Schrader. She remembered calling them Mom and Dad. She remembered . . . but was her memory accurate? Or was it all imagination? She felt more intensely than ever that she didn’t belong—had never belonged anywhere.

  In only one small thing she did find satisfaction. Her name wasn’t Lara and never had been. She was Liana, though whether she had a birth certificate that stated her name was quite another matter.

  Her questions and conjectures surrounding the circumstances of her birth were not all filled with worry and fear. Perhaps her mother had conceived again quickly and given birth to another daughter. Maybe Lara’s birth certificate had been sent with Liana to America by mistake. That meant maybe Liana wasn’t nearly thirty after all.

  If only Liana had known the right questions to ask Dr. Raji before he had grown confused. It’s not too late, she thought. I can call and talk to Mridula. There have to be records somewhere. And there’s still my mother’s journal and the documents. She wished she had been able to read more, but she hadn’t with Clarissa awake most of the flight and worrying aloud about Christian. The closer to Nevada they came, the further Clarissa’s veneer of calmness slipped.

  “We’re here—finally.” The unhappiness in her adoptive mother’s voice made Liana feel guilty. She was spending too much time worrying about her own life when Christian was fighting for his.

  Clarissa put her hand on Liana’s shoulder and spoke, showing that she wasn’t oblivious to Liana’s turmoil. “It doesn’t matter what happened or how you got to us. You are part of our family, and we love you.”

  A warmth spread through Liana. She nodded, unable to speak through her threatening tears. “You go on ahead. I’ll get our carry-ons.”

  “We’ll do it together.” Clarissa smiled and pushed her way into the aisle where other passengers were crowding in their eagerness to leave the plane.

  When they finally arrived at the baggage carrousel, Liana was surprised to see Austin waiting for them. Dressed in blue jeans and a black leather jacket, he looked very different from the professional Austin she knew—more like the man who had taken her to the swing over the river. He shrugged at her inquiring stare. “Neither Bret or your dad wanted to leave your brother at the hospital.”

  “Has there been any change?” asked Clarissa eagerly.

  Austin shook his head, his eyes somber. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to introduce me?” Clarissa looked at Liana.

  “Oh, sorry,” Liana said. “This is Austin Walker, Christian’s friend.” Liana glanced at Austin. “How did you find out?”

  “I saw it on the news last night, and I went to the hospital. When I heard you were flying in tonight, I volunteered to pick you up.”

  “Thank you.” Liana was glad he was here. With the discoveries she had made during her two days in India, she hadn’t thought much about him, but now his solid presence made her feel more secure. He, at least, was real, and perhaps his feelings toward her were as well.

  “How was your flight?” Austin picked up her suitcase in one hand and Clarissa’s in the other. It was plain he was trying to steer the conversation to a semblance of normalcy.

  She grimaced. “Long. But at least we regained the day we lost on the way over.”

  He grinned without real joy. “That always helps.”

  They fell into an expectant silence that lasted throughout their journey to the hospital. The fear in Liana’s heart grew with each passing mile. She prayed desperately that Christian would be awake when they arrived. He has to be all right, she said in a continuous silent litany. He just has to be all right.

  When they arrived at the hospital, Travis and Bret met them at the nurses’ station. Travis’s square face was haggard and gray above his brown polo shirt, and he appeared to have lost weight. He looks so old, Liana thought. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her good-natured adoptive father cry, but as he hugged Clarissa he began to sob, his big shoulders shaking convulsively.

  Liana stared, rooted to the spot. She tore her eyes from Travis and Clarissa and focused on Bret. His eyes were red, and his face stark white. His pale blue button-down shirt and dark blue slacks were wrinkled. His eyes held an agony Liana didn’t recognize. Or did she?

  “I’m so sorry, my little one. They are not coming home. There has been an accident.”

  “What do you mean, Mamata? Where is my mommy? My daddy?”

  Mamata took her in her big arms, her brown eyes sorrowful. “Oh, my little dear, the plane, it crashed. Your mommy and daddy cannot come home to you. They are in heaven now.”

  “No! No!” Liana’s little fists hit against Mamata’s solid body. “I don’t believe you! They’re not in heaven! They’re not! I hate heaven!” She pulled from Mamata and ran to her room, hiding under her bedcovers as violent tears wracked her small body.

  Clarissa pulled back slightly from her husband and voiced the question Liana could not. “How is he?” Travis swallowed hard and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. “Oh no,” Clarissa whispered. “He’s—he’s gone, isn’t he?”

  Travis nodded. He pulled Clarissa to him again, and together they wept.

  Liana’s eyes filled with tears. She held her eyes open wide so the tears wouldn’t spill out, as if not crying would make it all untrue. No! her heart screamed. No! She wanted to run fast and far. She wanted to hide from all of them.

  At that moment, Travis and Clarissa parted. Clarissa reached for
Bret, who was standing nearby, looking as lost and miserable as Liana felt, and grasped his hand. Liana felt her own hand being pulled by Travis, and into the circle of his arms she went. Clarissa and Bret were also in that circle, and they clung to each other as a family, crying and consoling one another.

  All thoughts of India and her questionable parentage were for the moment far from Liana’s mind. She was right where she belonged.

  Except.

  Except one thing was missing. Something vital. Something she could never replace.

  Her big brother Christian.

  They went in as a family to say good-bye. He was lying on the bed, his head swathed in heavy bandages.

  Please don’t be dead, Liana silently begged.

  People who fall out of trees have every right to be dead, he seemed to argue back.

  Then, still in her mind, she told him all about India. He didn’t answer, and she wondered if she was going insane to expect him to. For a brief moment she wanted to be alone with him, to shake him and make him wake up. Or at the very least hug him and throw herself weeping onto his too-still body.

  She did none of that. She clung to Bret’s hand, or Clarissa’s, or Travis’s, and wept softly, decorously with them. When the time came to let Christian go, she kissed his wan cheek once and let them lead her from the room.

  CHAPTER 24

  Diary of Karyn Olsen Schrader

  Thursday, January 12, 1978

  Lara died a week ago, just after turning five months old. We are back in India. I insisted on bringing Lara’s body in the little coffin so that I can bury her near us. India is my home now. I will never leave it or Lara. My heart is empty. There is no life, no love—not even for Guenter who is my only partner in this unending grief. Our Lara will never sit up, take her first step, or go to school. How can I go on without her? Nothing in my life has prepared me for such pain. I pray for the sweet release that can only come with death.