Home Again

She looked at the sky above her, clutching the slim white memorial album in her cold hands. Did you know that, Francis, did we tell you?

“I don’t want to go up there,” Lina said quietly beside her.

Madelaine looked at her daughter, noticed the pallor of her cheeks, the haunted darkness in her blue eyes. She wondered suddenly what to say to this girl who wasn’t a girl and wasn’t a woman, either. She didn’t know whether to force a bright smile and pretend that everything would be okay, or to be honest and show her own pain. She didn’t know what would help Lina right now. If anything could.

Tentatively she reached out and caressed her daughter’s moist cheek. “There’s this place I go sometimes….”

Lina sniffed hard and looked up at her. “Yeah?”

“Maybe we could go there and sort of … say goodbye to Francis in our own way.”

Lina’s lower lip started to quiver. Tears filled her eyes. “That’s just it,” she said softly. “I don’t want to say good-bye.”

Madelaine didn’t know what to say to that, so instead of speaking, she slipped her hand around her daughter’s waist and drew her close. Lina resisted for a heartbeat, maybe not even that long, then slid in close to Madelaine’s side. Together, silently, they walked down the long black driveway, ignoring the cars that prowled past them in clouds of carbon-scented smoke and the headlights that shone in their eyes.

They climbed into the Volvo and slammed the doors shut, and for a split second Madelaine felt as if they were shutting the funeral away. But on the long drive out to her old neighborhood, she felt it coming back, flashing across her mind in bits and pieces—the sniffling sound that filled the church, the smell of hothouse lilies and smoke from a thousand votive candles. The archbishop’s low, droning voice talking about a man Madelaine barely knew—Father Francis. Pious, serious, always ready to lend a hand, the archbishop said.

The whole time, all she could think about was that eighteen-year-old boy who’d come to her rescue. Who’d heard her small, pathetic Help me, and answered softly, Forever, Maddy-girl Forever.

Shutting off the engine, she sat there for a minute, watching the first splashing raindrops hit the windshield. Through the blurred glass she saw her father’s house, sitting there against the gray clouds, amidst the bare trees, its windows as dark as they’d been in the long years since his death. The lawn was too long and brown and covered with dying leaves.

Finally she sighed. “Let’s go.”

Madelaine led the way past her father’s empty house—now her house, though she could never think of it that way. Her father had disinherited her in life and left her everything in death. The last grasping move of a sick man—leaving her saddled with the house and money that represented everything she despised about her childhood.

She strode up the brick steps, down the walkway, around the dead rose garden that once had been her mother’s pride and joy, and onto the brown carpet of the backyard.

The lawn led to a low-banked waterfront, where the sea spit across the gray rocks in gentle spurts. Madelaine’s high heels sank into the dead grass as she walked to the end of the creaking old dock and sat down.

Lina sat beside her, letting her bare legs swing over the edge.

They stayed that way for an eternity, both staring out at the clouds collecting above the tree line on the opposite shore. The rain picked up, splattered on the surface of the water.

“This is where my dad took me after my mom passed away,” Madelaine said at last.

“That’s your house, isn’t it, the one where you grew up?”

Madelaine shivered and drew her coat more tightly around her body. “Yes, it is.”

“There are bars on the upstairs window.”

The urge came swiftly to lie, to cover up. She forced it away and nodded. “That was my bedroom.”

“He locked you in?”

Madelaine gave a small laugh. “See? You don’t have the worst parent in the history of the world.”

Lina fell silent and turned to stare out at the sound. After a while she said quietly, “I keep… reaching for the phone to call him and then I have to stop myself.”

Madelaine slipped an arm around Lina’s shoulder and pulled her close. Rain fell all around them, slashed across their faces and pattered their clothing. “I talk to him every day, just like he was still beside me. Sometimes I think he’s going to answer….”

Lina nodded. “I want it to mean something, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just miss him so much.”

Madelaine stared at her daughter’s profile, so pale and fragile-looking. She ached for Lina, and wanted to help her through the pain, to give her something to believe in that would make it all a little easier to bear.

Angel.

The word came to her so suddenly, she straightened and looked around. She thought, crazily, she’d heard Francis’s voice. Then she realized it was only her own subconscious and she slumped again, staring down at the sea foaming beneath them.