Chapter 12

Jade woke up with thoughts of Russ. Picking orchids in some jungle with plump little genius Vin. What if he falls in love with her? 

“What if he does?” Great Aunt Lizzie said, tapping her fingers on the arms of her chair next to the dresser. “It would not be the end of the world.”

Dressed in a white flannel nightgown with tiny pink flowers and tiny planted embroidered on the bodice, Great Aunt Lizzie seemed to be preparing for bed. Long, delicate, almost translucent fingers braided her steel-gray hair.

I guess I don’t have to drink mildornia to see ghosts.

“I guess not,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. She smoothed a tiny wrinkle on her sleeve.

“So can you read my every thought?” Jade asked irritably, turning her face away. She could feel the ghost’s eyes riveted on her. “Are you spying on me?”

“Of course not. Angels don’t spy. That would be vulgar. Nor can I read your thoughts, unless specifically directed at me. Otherwise, your thoughts are safe.”

“What?” Jade said. “I wasn’t even thinking about you!”

“Oh, well…” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “It does get confusing, with all the voices everywhere. I cannot even hear myself sometimes, whoever that is.”

Jade threw the covers off. “Excuse me, I have to pee.”

“Of course!” Great Aunt Lizzie followed her into the bathroom. As did Willow B and Old Blue.

“Do you mind?” Jade almost shouted from the toilet seat.

“Not a bit,” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “Please continue!”

After splashing water on her face, Jade threw on some jeans and a t-shirt. Followed by the bathroom menagerie, Jade went downstairs. She made coffee, fed the animals, all the while Great Aunt Lizzie sat at the table, watching, smiling. She had changed clothes—from the flannel nightgown to an Early American ‘gunny-sack’ style of dress.

“Who are you, anyway?” Jade said when they were on the porch.

“I told you, I am your Guardian Angel,” Great Aunt Lizzie said, holding her coffee  mug with both hands. “But, who was I? Is that what you mean?”

“You were someone before becoming an angel?” Jade said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

 “Where do you think we come from?” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “Never mind, most humans are dreadfully misinformed and confused about angels.” 

“My husband thinks I am very confused,” Jade said. “He says I cannot distinguish between reality and my fantasies.”

 “Twiddle-twaddle!” Great Aunt Lizzie said, wrapping herself and Jade in her vaporous laughter. “I daresay your husband is a myopic old curmudgeon!”

Jade giggled. “He’s only 28.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Great Aunt Lizzy said. “Tis a pity, him being so young and so old.”

“So, who were you, before Angeldom?”

“Angeldom! That’s a good one!” Great Aunt Lizzie cackled with laughter, slapping her knee. “But seriously,” she said, the hilarity suddenly ended. “I was known for a time as Elizabeth MacLaren. And to my relatives as Great Aunt Lizzie.”

“Chloe’s great auntie!” Jade said, smiling in spite of herself. “She talked about you all the time!”

“That’s me!” Great Aunt Lizzie said.

“Where is Chloe?” Jade asked. “Is she a Guardian Angel too?”

“Well, no. Not yet anyway. It’s been too soon since she kicked. I’ll give her your love.”

“Oh! Please do!” Jade said. “By the way. Do you know who my mother is?”

“What a silly question, child!” Great Aunt Lizzie said. “Of course I do! Why do you ask?”

“Because I need to know for sure,” Jade said. “I think I know, but no one believes me. Except for Kate and Sam. Russ, I guess.”

“Why does he not believe you?” Great Aunt Lizzie said, frowning. “What proof does he have that she isn’t?”

“He doesn’t believe she exists at all,” Jade said. “Except in my own head.”

“So she doesn’t exist in his head so she doesn’t exist at all,” Lizzie said. “How very narrow-minded. It’s really about observation—seeing things. Some people need to be smacked repeatedly upside the head to see.”

Great Aunt Lizzie sighed. “You see what you see. Believe!”

Her mother’s face appeared everywhere. In the clouds, the patterns of leaves, the shadows between the cornstalks. She was everywhere. 

Jade cast her thoughts back to when she first started obsessing—that was Russ’s word—over her mother. She preferred to think of it as an intense interest. That it now consumed nearly every waking moment was not a sign of obsession, but a sign that her mother was seeking her as ardently. 

Russ had tried, unsuccessfully, to shake her conviction by planting seeds of doubt and watering them with her dependency on him. With him gone, she was free to immerse herself in the encounter, to fully believe in her own sight. That was a tremendous relief, not having to mount a defense that he would tear down with logic and science. 

Kate called, surprising her. “Hey! I’m in the neighborhood, mind if I stop by?”

“Come on over!” she said. “I’ll throw the kettle on and makes us some tea. I found the will, by the way…”

“‘Great!” A few minutes later, Kate’s car pulled into the driveway. Jade walked down the porch steps and the two women hugged. 

Kate followed her inside and took a seat at the big table while Jade poured their tea and cut them each a slice of chocolate cake. “Mrs Flanagan brought it. I’d rather paint than bake.” 

“Works for me,” Kate said, stirring sugar into her tea. “And speaking of ‘by the way’—I forgot to tell you at the Wake—but Gabrielle’s going to call you—she wants another painting. She knows Henry was behind the destruction of Wilder Island. Anyway, she’s planning to sell the mansion and buy something more to her liking, and a new painting to put in it!”

“Fabulous!” Jade said. “I’ve been trying to paint, but there’s so much to do! I’m sorting stuff in the house, and the tending to the gardens and mowing the lawn and —

Kate laughed. “Perhaps when Gabrielle gets settled in whatever place she moves to, things’ll settle down for you too. Russ will be back so you won’t have to do everything.”

Jade sighed. “I suppose so. I really miss him. I wake up afraid every morning.”

“Of what?” Kate asked. 

“That I won’t be able to manage all this without him,” she said. “I’m so—overwhelmed. And I don’t know if I can generate enough income to keep the place up.”

Kate put her hand over Jade’s and said, “But you are managing! For god’s sake, give yourself a chance. You’ve been here what—a week? Your father is gone, Russ is gone, yet the harvest is being harvested, you’re sorting out the house. You’ve even found time to paint. What is it you think you can’t manage?”

“I don’t know,” she said, fiddling with her napkin. “I’m just afraid, I guess. All the time, really.” Tears stung her eyes as she choked on her next words. “I’m afraid he won’t come back.”

“What?” Kate said, dropping her fork and frowning deeply. “Are you afraid he’ll get lost in the jungle and get eaten by whatever apex predator lives in Ecuador?”

“Well, no,” Jade said, getting a grip. “It’s Vinnie.”

“Who’s Vinnie?”

“She’s a bio-medical researcher that investigates cancer cures,” Jade said. She sighed and fiddled with her spoon. “And, she is investigating the orchid Russ found on Wilder Island that he named after me but gave to her to tear up.”

Kate tilted her head to one side. “She’s a scientist, right? So she tore up this flower to see if it might cure cancer?”

“Something like that. She’s a total brainiac, like Russ. They speak the same language. I’m afraid—”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. The dam broke and she sobbed into her hands. Kate moved her chair closer and put an arm around Jade. “So Russ has a geeky colleague who happens to be female. Is she cute?”

Jade shrugged. “He says she doesn’t hold a candle to me.”

“So…why are you afraid?” 

“He—he thinks I hallucinate,” Jade said, which started a fresh round of sobs. “And she—she—Vinnie never does.”

“How do you know that?” Kate said. “Where do you think scientists get their ideas, their inspirations from?”

Jade shrugged and mumbled something that sounded sort of like “I don’t know. She’s a brainiac.”

“Same place as you get yours,” Kate said, stroking Jade’s hair. “From a wild imagination that happens to travel a different pathway than you do. But Russ needs to be more respectful.”

Jade’s sobs subsided. “Yes, he does.” Her mouth formed a hard line.

“I’m afraid too,” Kate said. “By the way…”

“You? I can’t believe that! You’re such an ass-kicker!”

“Defense,” she said. “If you come out kicking, they lose the first chance to attack.” She pressed her finger on the errant crumbs of cake on her plate and touched her finger to her tongue. “Seriously, though. It takes some freaking courage to live, you know? Putting yourself out there every day. We’ve done away with all our food-chain predators. But there are other kinds. The human kind. And microbes.”

Jade smiled and cut two more pieces of cake and put one on each of their plates. “I’ll try to stop being such a weenie.”

“Just stop saying stuff like that,” Kate said, leaning back and smiling. “You are not a weenie and you do not hallucinate any more than Vinnie imagines how an orchid might cure cancer.”

Jade fell silent. After a few moment, she said: “How’d you get so wise, Kate?”

“School of hard knocks,” Kate said. “I also had an older brother who was a bully. I got trained early to stand up for myself.”

“Lucky you to have brother,” Jade said. “But—I had Chloe and Smitty and now I know who the mother who birthed me is. And, I know where she is. And…I’m going to find her.”

Kate beamed at her. “Yes! Like that! Sam and I will help you.”

“Alfredo won’t,” Jade said, her face darkened.

“He’s got himself into quite a pickle,” Kate said. “He lied when he denied you’d seen your mother on the island. But cut him some slack! Did you want him to blurt out that Charlotte was there and yes she is your mother? It’s highly illegal what he has done, liberating her from a mental institution. He probably didn’t want Russ to know.”

“I guess I don’t either,” Jade said. “Not yet anyway.”

“And that’s probably what Alfredo thought too.”

“Well, whatever.” Jade cleared the cake dishes away. “I guess you got my text that I found the will.” She handed Kate an envelope.

Kate opened it and scanned it quickly. “You and Charlotte are the sole beneficiaries of Chloe and Smitty’s estate. They referred to you as their beloved foster daughter. And they named Charlotte as their foster daughter as well. So there is no mother-daughter connection as far as they knew? Or were they keeping it hidden for some reason?”

Jade shrugged. “Can we both be foster daughters of theirs? Being that neither of them were biological parents to either of us, couldn’t they call us both ‘foster daughters’?”

Kate shrugged. “They could but hard to say why. According to Mrs Flanagan, Chloe was the midwife that delivered you—she would have known who your mother is. If we had your birth certificate, we’d know for sure. Charlotte would be listed as your mother. Whatever happened to it? Even if you were born at home, or on the highway, you’d still get a birth certificate.”

“Chloe and Smitty said the courthouse where it was stored had flooded and among the documents that were ruined was my birth certificate. We had to get an affidavit that I was a foster child and no one ever knew who my parents were.”

“Did she know Charlotte before you were born?”

“I don’t know,” Jade said. “Maybe she didn’t. Mrs Flanagan told me Chloe was a midwife there until I was born. She quit to take me home and take care of me. Mrs Flanagan said Chloe brought a lot of babies home from Rosencranz and found foster homes for them all. Except for me. ‘You were a keeper,’ she said.”

“Chloe just took babies from Rosencranz?” Kate said, shaking her head. “And no one missed them?”

Jade shrugged. “That’s what Mrs Flanagan said.”

Kate frowned. “Pretty strange story, Jade. I wonder why you were never officially adopted by Smitty and Chloe?”

Jade shrugged. “It never mattered to me.”

“This ‘foster-daughter’ business is a clue to something else,” Kate said. “And I’m going to find out what that is.”

Great Aunt Lizzie spent months hovering over the infant Stella, making sure no actual harm came to her. Her so-called mother Estelle treated this child like an unwanted vagrant that had shown up in a basket on the family’s doorstep—which was her actual story to the neighbors and the Church. 

The long-suffering Estelle reminded everyone that she was bearing it all as her Christian duty to give this ‘poor little orphan’ a home. In fact, it had been Casimir–Estelle’s husband that had refused to disown the child. “She’s our flesh and blood, Estelle,” he said.

The basket story worked well enough though, and little Stella had a nice little cupboard next to the kitchen where she slept. Estelle never bonded with Stella, who was ugly and looked like a crow; her shock of black hair looked more like feathers. Every time Estelle touched Stella, it seemed she broke into a squalling cry, as if in pain, or in great fear. Her first words sounded more like the yammering of crows outside the house. Estelle wanted an exorcism of the evil demon that had inhabited Stella.

But the old priest refused. “There are no demons in that child,” he insisted. “Take her to a speech therapist.”

Estelle did not take her to any therapist. She ignored Stella. Which allowed Lizzie to teach Stella about the crows, and about the plants and flowers that grew in the woods near her house. At night when Stella sobbed into her pillow, Lizzie soothed her with promises that one day she would know the mother who  really loved her.

When Estelle would burst through the door and demand who Stella was talking to, she would look up and say, “My Guardian Angel.”

Great Aunt Lizzie laughed and laughed—as even Estelle could not argue that a child praying to her Guardian Angel before she went to sleep was a bad thing.

“You must be patient, my Stella,” Lizzie murmured as the little girl’s dark eyelashes fluttered over her cheeks. “And,” she whispered as Stella fell into the pocket between wakefulness and dreaming, “do not let anyone know the secrets of the crows.”

Stella had run away from home several times in her teen years. The last time was when she was 17, when Estelle in full-blown anger and outrage that Stella was pregnant.  She hadn’t ‘shown’ until almost the 7th month, so there was no secret abortion to be had by the wealthy Majewski family. Instead, they whisked her away to Rosencranz.

“Thrice mis-carriaged son of a—,” Lizzie had raged at Thomas from the Continuum. 

She thought he had heard her more than once, as he had looked up startled and stared straight at her. Of course, he could not see her, being that she was of the spirit world and he of the material. But he had sensed something, that was obvious. He was, after all, a carrier of the Patua’ gene—from Estelle’s side of the family. So amusing it all would be, had it not all been so harsh on dear little Stella. She had borne it all amazingly well. 

Such a brave heart. She was never afraid of ghosts.

Stella had arrived at Rosencranz barefoot, dressed in dirty clothes and rather largely pregnant. Dora Lyn at the front desk told Chloe that it was her brother, a priest, who had come in with the EMTs delivering Charlotte.

“Yes,” Dora Lyn had said, “he said she had run away from home, and they found her this way.” She shook her head. “All filthy and pregnant. Bless her heart. But he came with the money, so we let her in. Her name is Charlotte Steele.”

Charlotte was drugged so that she could be undressed, bathed and prepared for birth. Chloe, the attendant midwife, helped the nurse undress Charlotte and put her into a hospital gown. She wasn’t in labor, but the doctor wanted to examine her—after she was bathed. 

Charlotte wore no jewelry, but a leather cord around her neck. The chord held a black carving depicting a fan of feathers curled around human fingers. Chloe stared at it — she has a hazja! Chloe took it from the nurse and put it into her pocket—for now. Charlotte had no other belongings except her dirty clothes. 

Chloe hovered over Charlotte until the sleeping drug wore off. Speaking to her quietly in the Patua’, Chloe said as she extended an open hand to her: “The doctor said you will deliver soon. I will be your midwife. My name is Chloe.”

After Jade was born, Estelle had committed Stella committed to Rosencranz, under the name Charlotte Steele. She didn’t want the world to know of the shameful disgrace Stella had brought onto the family. Still, she should not be allowed to escape the responsibility for what she had done—even after the baby had been adopted out, or died, or something. So Estelle merely used Stella’s middle name and rearranged ‘Estelle’ to ‘Steele’—there would be nothing else to connect her to the family she had disgraced.

Chloe had given Charlotte a small dose of mildornia wine before Jade was born,  which made both mother and baby sleep. Chloe spirited the sleeping baby home in a basket of laundry, while Lizzie established the Graying around Charlotte—for her protection.

As long as Charlotte stayed in the Graying, she would not remember anything prior to her existence at Rosencranz—or even that she was in a place called Rosencranz. She would be compliant as the white coats led her to and from the dining hall, the great room, her own little cell.

One day out of the blue, years after Charlie had jump-started Charlotte’s awakening, Jayzu  showed up at Rosencranz, which got Great Aunt Lizzie all in a fluff.

“He seems to care about her,” Chloe mused as they watched the priest and Charlotte engaged in conversation on the patio of the asylum. “And he is Patua’. Maybe he can help her get out of there.”

“Hmmmph,” Great Aunt Lizzie snorted. “Whatever does he want with her? Unless he’s another minion of the Church—did they catch wind of Charlotte and now they sent someone to check her out.”

“Perhaps this Jayzu is the One…” Chloe offered hopefully.

“That is highly doubtful,” Great Aunt Lizzie disagreed. “I know what the old stories say. A Jesuit, though? Do not forget their stinking betrayal of us way back when. They fooled us once; leave us not be fooled again, just because they dress like crows.”

“It was not without Patua’ participation,” Chloe reminded her. “We were sold out by our own as well—”

“Trying to escape the unjust wrath of the Church,” Great Aunt Lizzie boomed. 

Their entire history lay before them on the Continuum; they had only to tune in to the time and place of interest and the story of the Patua’ unfolded all around them.

“But maybe it is time,” she sighed. “Many signs are here. The Jesuits appear in our midst again. Charlotte awakening…”

 After outliving nearly everyone, Great Aunt Lizzie had died when Chloe was but a teenager, at the amazing age of 105. She looked it too. As wrinkled as an old apple, but her face was full of the joys and sorrows, and the wisdom of a long life, well-lived. 

A Seed Keeper for over a hundred years. Great Aunt Lizzie had never married, born but one child, a daughter who had died when she was a moment old. Her ancient grandmother told anyone who would listen, that a flock of crows had swept up the infant and flown to heaven.

That was standard Continuum operating procedure—the soul accompanied by an army of crows was the official notification that someone on Earth was checking out. Some souls hung around for a century or so, trying to run interference in hapless human affairs by appearing in dreams and visions. Many others gratefully embraced death as a permanent sleep state, and some ended up in the abyss that comprised the Grzhk—the Soul-Eater.

The remainder joined the Continuum. In Mergement with Everything Else.

Hobart Rosencranz had made a laughably feeble and naive deal to live forever. Such vanity! Rosencranz was so useful to the Ghrzk, whose sibilant whisperings had lured many a soul into the abyss. Especially those already on the fringes of human sanity. An asylum was perfect. A continuous supply of souls. Fresh souls of the just born. 

Rosencranz was out of the way enough that the Ghrzk could work without anyone noticing or particularly giving a damn. And the donors—unwed mothers with rich daddies. 

Not that the world would miss Hobart Rosencranz; not in the slightest. He had bought every depravity known to humans—an extensive dataset compiled over the eons of their history—until at last the combination of greed, lust, and consumption did him in. The Ghrzk had promised him what he had wanted most—to continue his life unabated by the nuisance of Death.

Beyond the curtain, the Ghrzk had told Hobart, is life everlasting. Without the putrefaction of the flesh. Like many stupid humans who think they can avoid the laws of the universe, Hobart handed himself over to the Ghrzk, expecting an eternity of sex, drugs, alcohol, and endless food. All without consequence, of course.

Eat to your heart’s desire! the Ghrzk had breathed warmly into Rosencranz’s dying brain inside the enormous hulk of his decaying body. He had many years prior removed all the interior doors in the house and expanded the doorways to accommodate his every increasing bulk. His younger sister Edith could wheel him out onto the patio through a set of very large, very elegant double doors, but he otherwise did not leave the house.

After his death, the family either had to cut a hole in the house somewhere to remove his dead carcass, or to remove him in pieces. Without hesitation, Edith had chosen the latter, and had him cremated as well—though that had been expressly against his wishes. He had been promised eternal life, in the body. Edith had ruined it all.

He had also been opposed to her turning his party palace into an asylum, but she had not cared a twit for that either. And he could not very well stop her, not being able to get out of bed in those later years. 

Edith had other plans for the house, too. Unwed mothers—whose wealthy families would be willing to pay scandalous fortunes to keep their daughter’s indiscretions secret. Doubling dealing was part of Edith’s business plan: There were somewhat fewer wealthy couples unable to conceive a child of their own. Rosencranz had a service for that: a forged birth certificate showing them as the true and biological parents. While the shamed mother was told her baby was dead.

It was a boon for Hobart. He could not have made the deal with the Ghrzk without suppling it with new souls.

Fortunately for Charlotte, Edith had hired a Patua’ cook to prepare the meals for the residents of Rosencranz—which in the later years were the very old in varying stages of dementia, but without physical ailments that required extensive health care intervention. Their souls had also fled their bodies, so were of no interest to the Ghrzk

Except for Charlotte. She was still in her body. That is why Great Aunt Lizzie had wrapped her in the Graying….where no one, especially the Ghrzk, could ever find her. Charlotte would be safe and hidden—until someone awakened her. Which might never happen in this life, but just in case.