"There was something different about Lily. I always envied you that you had her."
Jenna smiles. "Yes. She was different. And a bit of a dickhead at times."
"What?"
She laughs and shakes her head. "I say it affectionately. It was a joke between us. I was very tempted to write Here lies a dickhead on her gravestone. I know she would have gotten a hoot out of that, but I don't think the mission would have allowed it."
I smile. Only Lily could have found anything amusing about being called something that would have topped my mother's banned-words list. And our parish priest definitely wouldn't have been amused.
I look out around the cemetery at the nearby headstones. "Are your parents here too?"
She sighs. "No. They respected Lily's wish to be buried here, but they weren't the sort to bother with funerals and prayers or any kind of fuss once they were gone. Both donated their bodies to a medical school. Besides, they weren't Catholic."
Jenna places her hand on Lily's headstone and closes her eyes for a few seconds. Even if it didn't stick, I was raised Catholic from baptism to altar boy, but I never remember Jenna attending mass or even mentioning church, much less praying in front of me. Is that what she just did? Pray?
"Are you Catholic?"
She must hear the surprise in my voice, and she smiles and shrugs simultaneously. "I'm pretty much nothing that I can name--a work in progress--but still..." She stoops to push some tall grass away from the stone. "I do believe in some version of Lily's God. I have some sort of faith, even if I can't explain it."
My surprise at the mission suddenly clicks. I didn't picture a future that would have room for faith. I thought everything would be explainable by now, right down to the atom of every mystery, but the world has more mysteries for me now than it ever did. In fact, I am one of those mysteries. How does someone like me fit into this world now?
I turn and look at the marble gravestone next to Lily's, the moss-covered cross on the next grave, the worn plaque on the one after that, the hundreds of markers across the cemetery, and I wonder about my family. Where are they buried? Do they have gravestones? Or maybe they were cremated. Or maybe lost at sea. Or--
Mysteries. More now than ever. I will probably never have the answers. My family is forgotten by everyone but me. What happened to them? Did my parents live long lives? Did my brother or sister settle down? Get married? Have careers? Build any kind of life that could make my parents happy again? They're all gone. It shouldn't matter, but it does. They're still a part of me.
"Their ashes are interred at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Andover," Jenna says. "Your parents, that is. Your brother and sister both had their ashes spread off Brant Rock."
I look at her, startled.
"Don't worry. I can't read your mind, Locke. Mostly I can't. But my Bio Gel allows me to read a lot on someone's face. It doesn't take much to get it right most of the time. And most of it's just plain logic. It's natural to want to know."
I step to a low wall just behind Lily's gravestone and ease myself down like an enormous weight has settled in my gut. Sacred Heart. That's where my uncle was buried. And my cousin who died in the war. And my grandfather. I lean forward, looking between my knees. My parents are dead. Of course, I knew they were dead. I knew it. But everyone has to hear news like this for the first time, even if it comes two hundred years late for me.
Jenna sits next to me. "I'm sorry. I thought--"
"It's all right." I sit up and run my fingers through my hair, trying to pretend it doesn't matter. I mean, it would be crazy to think they were still around.
I look at Jenna. "Did they live long lives? Do you know?"
She nods. "Your father lived to eighty-six, and your mother was ninety-four." She lays her hand on my shoulder. "And your brother and sister lived long, good lives too. I kept track of them. I guess I wanted to make up for you not being in their lives. Your sister got a nursing degree and worked as a pediatric nurse for forty years. She never married, but her life was full and happy."
My sister, a nurse. The world holds more mysteries than I thought. "And my brother?"
"He took your accident, and what we thought was your death, very hard. Maybe it made him realize that the things he really cared about wouldn't always be there. If anything good came out of the whole situation, it was him. He moved back in with your parents to help them get through it, and he got a job--a real job--working at a local hardware store. Cory eventually married, had a daughter, and his daughter married a fe
llow named Derring, and then they had a couple of kids. I was able to keep track of his descendants up until the Civil Division. After that, so many records were lost, and people moved in droves--I couldn't find them anymore."
"Why would you keep track of them too?"
"It doesn't really matter. The point is, as painful as your leaving was for them, you can feel good about how your family went on." She squeezes my hand. "They went on."
It's a small thing. A tiny bit of information that is almost ancient history, but the weight that pressed on me grows lighter. I didn't destroy any of them. They moved on. They lived when I couldn't. My brother even stepped up to the plate. That in itself is a miracle.
Chapter 50
Jenna gives me a quick tour around the mission grounds, and then we walk down to the nursery at the bottom of the hill. She shows me what she calls a lavanderia that runs through the center of the nursery. It was the first project she took on at the mission. Water runs through a narrow canal that is flanked by banks of graduated stones, but she says the first time she saw it, the stones were only dry ruins, most covered by dirt. "I guess I have a little bit of my mother's passion for restoration." It's obvious she's proud of the lavanderia and the surrounding lush landscape. She spots a priest in the distance where a grove of orange trees begins. He's examining the leaves on one of them.
"There he is," she says, like I would know who he is. "Can you wait here? I'll just be a minute. I need to talk to Father Andre about something."