Chapter 8 Mariella
I jump to my feet and drag my fingers through my tangled hair.
I need to—I don’t know what I need to do.
My mother’s diary must be wrong. No length of time or medication could suppress my memory of the day she died.
It was Christmas Eve and I was sitting at Mrs Bensen’s dining table.
Meager red and green tinsel was draped around the room, and the tips of my shoes barely kissed the dark wooden floorboards.
People think children live in their own heads, oblivious to the world around them. But when Mrs Bensen lowered the phone, her mouth settling into a firm line, brows rounded and eyes dim, I knew.
The crushing sensation in my chest had begun even before she’d eased to the floor on stiff knees and taken my hands in hers.
“Mari, your mother is gone.”
Why is there an entry in her diary after that day?
I fan my pajama top against my chest. Was there a mix up between my mother and another patient?
Did my mother not die? I shake my head. She’s dead, I’m sure of it.
Maybe the hospital got the date of her death wrong?
Or was my mother confused the day she wrote her last entry?
But who would mistake any other day for Christmas? This is insane.
I reopen the journal and stare at the date, my hands tugging on the roots of my hair. My mother was unwell. I know this. I’ve known this since I was eight years old. Why did she seem perfectly healthy in my dream?
“I’d never leave you, Mari.”
Clutching the journal against my chest, I storm into Anna’s living room. I’m hit with blaring music, and the strong scent of golden toast, melted butter and sizzling bacon.
“Morning. How did you sleep?” Anna calls from her makeshift kitchenette.
She’s piling food onto two plates with her back to me.
She spins around, golden pants glimmering, the waist concealed by an oversized, vivid purple sweater.
Our eyes meet and the smile on her glossy red lips falls.
“Ella?” She grabs her phone and the music ceases.
“You’re shaking. When was the last time you ate? ”
“Last night… I think.” Food isn’t important. Nothing matters except uncovering how it’s possible my mother left a note in her diary the day after she died. “I have to go.”
Anna inserts herself between me and the front door, and I’m inundated with a whoosh of sweet, floral fragrance and strawberry lip gloss. I’d forgotten just how much my medication dampened my sense of smell.
“But—I made breakfast,” Anna says. “And you’re still wearing pajamas.
Come and sit down for a second.” She plants her hands on my shoulders and forces me to sit at her small dining table.
“Tell me what’s going on while you eat,” she says, sliding two plates of food onto the table.
She sits next to me and crosses her legs, her wide green gaze flickering from my face to the journal still clutched against my chest.
I’ve kept the details of my past a secret since the day I left school. What if I tell Anna the truth and I lose her? Isn’t that what happened with Silas? I inwardly cringe.
“My mother died in hospital when I was eight.” Anna’s eyes widen, her lips parting to draw in a small gasp. “But after the fire last night, I found some of her old journals. I was reading them this morning, and her last entry was after the date I was told she died.”
I open the journal to the last entry and slide it toward Anna. She picks it up and her contoured face momentarily dips behind the pages. “Let the current carry you,” she mutters, turning the page as if it’s fragile. “Is it possible you remembered the date wrong?”
“No. She died on Christmas Eve.”
“I’m so sorry,” Anna says, flipping to the front of the journal. She pauses on a sketch of my mother with my younger self. “Oh, Ella. She was beautiful.” Her eyes scan my face and drop back to the sketch. “You could be twins.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I think the hospital must have confused her death with another patient’s or something.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Anna says, returning the journal to me. “Have you checked her death certificate?”
I shake my head. “I never saw one.”
“You know, when my Aunt Gaye was searching our family tree, she entered some details into a website and all the information just came up.”
“Really?” My fork clangs on the tabletop. “Can we look up my mother?”
“You eat,” Anna says, and she jabs an acrylic nail at my plate. “I’ll get my laptop.”
While she ducks into her bedroom, I take a bite of food and groan. Did food taste this good before? “What’s in this?” I ask Anna when she returns.
“It’s just scrambled eggs and bacon,” she says, placing her laptop on the table. She pulls up a chair beside mine, finds an ancestry page, and tilts the screen toward me. I type Evelyn Adams into the search field.
“Hmm,” Anna says, frowning at the screen when the search comes back empty. “Try another one.”
I return to the search engine and open another ancestry site. Re-entering my mother’s details, I hit the return key. “It’s not here,” I say after another three attempts.
Anna huffs at the screen. “I don’t understand why it’s not showing up.” She leans her shoulder into mine. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Thank you for helping me.”
“Of course.” There’s a wrinkle between her brows, and she’s biting her lip.
“What?” I ask.
Anna’s gaze finds mine. “How did she die?” she asks softly.
There’s a flash of white walls and sterile floors. Nurses. And light glinting off sharp, beveled needle tips. A bead of sweat forms over my brow. She killed herself. Say it. The words huddle on the tip of my tongue. Don’t lie about this.
Anna stares at me, waiting.
“She had a heart attack,” I blurt. The lie burns the back of my throat.
Tears brim in Anna’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ella,” she says. “I can’t imagine losing a mother so young.”
“Thanks,” I say, lowering my gaze to the table.
“Wait a sec.” Anna’s fingers fly over the keyboard. She pounds the return key and leans forward, the light from the screen reflecting in her green irises. “It says here if someone dies in a hospital, the attending doctor issues the death certificate. What’s the name of the hospital?”
“Massachusetts General,” I say, already on my feet. I’ll go to the hospital and request a copy of my mother’s death certificate. Then I can deposit my memories of my mother back in the past where they belong.
Anna clears the plates from the table and follows me to the front door.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Coming with you,” she says, bending over to fasten the buckles on her cream ankle boots. “Obviously.” She grabs her handbag from the entry table and shifts her weight to one side, eyeing me up and down. “You’d better get dressed, nerd.”
The beige, knee-high boots I borrowed from Anna click against the shiny hospital floor. We cross the spacious foyer, passing under a large red sign pointing toward the ER, and my pulse jumps. It’s warmer than outside, but the heated space is tinged with bitter antiseptic and lavender air freshener.
“Are you okay?” Anna asks, and I’m thrown back in time. Silas is carrying me through the same hospital doors as if I’m dying.
“Are you okay?” Silas asks.
“Yes. And I can walk, Silas,” I say, shifting in his arms to reach up and brush the deep groove between his dark brows. “Hey. I’m fine.”
He pulls away from my touch. “You’re not fine. Nothing about this is fine,” he says through gritted teeth, a subtle tremble in the strong arms cradling me. “I did this to you.”
“Don’t say that. We were messing around, and I fell. Please don’t blame yourself.”
He shakes his head and my heart sinks. Why did I have to trip and ruin the most perfect day of my life?
We enter the ER, and I suck in a breath, but my lungs expand less with each inhale.
Silas lowers me onto a plastic chair in front of the triage nurse and spots cloud my vision.
My uninjured hand reaches out to grip his strong forearm and his muscles tense beneath my fingers.
“I—I don’t like hospitals. After everything that happened to my mom.
” There’s a flash of limbs secured to bed rails and my heart jumps. “Don’t leave.”
Silas’s large, warm hand slips into mine, his touch firm. “Never.”
“—Ella?” Anna pulls me from the dormant memory, awakened in the absence of my medication. I’d forgotten. All of it. The strength in Silas’s arms as he’d carried me into the hospital. The tension in his clenched jaw. His pained stare.
Why did he push me away? I scrunch my eyes shut. I’d always believed the amnesia-like side effects of my medication were a curse. Now they seem like a cruel blessing.
I clear my throat. “I’m fine,” I say to Anna, feigning a smile.
We turn right and line up at the front desk in silence. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, and my head whips from the hospital entrance to the mezzanine overhead. My arms wrap around my chest. No one is following you.
“Next,” the receptionist at the front desk calls, and adrenaline pulses through my veins. Her spectacled gaze is fixed to her computer, fingernails tapping on the keys.
Anna and I step toward the glass partition, and I hunch to speak into the circular patterned holes. “I’d like to request a copy of my mother’s death certificate.” My voice seems to reflect off the glass, the sound dampened. “She died here, ten years ago.”
“Okay,” the woman says, eyes trained on her computer. I mutter my mother’s name and date of birth, and the woman types something on the keyboard. The printer behind her hums to life.
“That was easy,” Anna whispers in my ear.
The woman’s arm flings over her head to the printer behind her, and she snatches the freshly printed paper from the tray. “There you go,” she says, sliding the paper through a rectangular opening in the bottom of the glass.
I pick up the paper. “Request for access of medical information,” I read aloud.