“Who are you?” I ask once we’re halfway across the green front lawn.
“My name’s Marg. We’ve met before. But you were much younger then. You look more like her now.”
My cringe is second nature. I’ve spent my life to date wanting to be the furthest thing from my mother. I even enrolled in psychology to try to diagnose her, to stop myself from following in her path.Has it all been for nothing?
“What’s your name, girl?” Marg asks.
“Mariella.”
Marg smiles, filling her face with deep crinkles. “Mari,” she says, and I wince. “That’s right. I worked nights while your mother was here.”
“Do you remember all of your patients?” I ask.
“No,” she says with a laugh. “But your mother was…unique.”
“How?”
“She had the highest number of escapes in the ward’s history. And she was only with us for a short time. Couldn’t count the number of times the east wing went into lockdown while they tried to find her.” Marg lets out a blunt, gravelly laugh. “She was smart, too. She talked about you a lot.” We walk past an elderly man in a wheelchair watching his grandson dig in the garden.
“Were you working the night she died?” I ask.
Marg’s voice drops. “No, but I remember it was Christmas Eve. Broke my heart, knowing she left you behind.”
I stop walking and turn to face her. “Do you believe she killed herself?”
The woman’s forehead crinkles. “I was told she did.”
“But did you believe it, at the time? Did she seem unwell enough to do it?”
The woman shakes her head. “It’s been so long. The mind has a way of selectively remembering some things and forgetting others. But I remember the change in her on the days you visited. You and that handsome fellow.”
“What?”A man visited my mother? Was it my father?“Who was he?”
“Couldn’t say. But the way the nurses would stare when he came in…” Her creased face tilts to the sky, and shelets out another harsh laugh. “A face like that doesn’t come along very often.”
“What did he look like?” I ask, tracing every wrinkle as if they might hold the clues I desperately seek.
The woman shakes her head. “I don’t remember, darlin’. Tall, dark and handsome?”
“Well, how old was he? Around her age or…?”
“Too old to be her son. Too young to be her lover.”
My shoulders drop. Not my father, then.
“Why are you here? Waving that around.” Marg dips her head to the letter clutched in my hand. “No mother would want their daughter suffering so many years past their death.”
“I don’t think she died here.” It’s the first time I’ve spoken the words aloud, and it loosens the band of tension wrapped around my chest for the past ten years, my lungs expanding a little easier with each breath.
The hospital doors open, and two security guards step outside. Holding them off with a stern glance, Marg encourages me to keep moving. “Mariella, your mother wanted the best for you, as any mother would. Don’t waste your life here searching for answers you already have.”
“But I don’t have answers. I haven’t even seen her death certificate. I’m going back to speak with records on level four.” I try to pull my arm from hers, but her iron grip tightens, her sharp gaze flashing to the front entrance.
“You step inside that hospital again and those security guards will be all over you.”
We reach the bus stop, and Marg turns to face me, wrapping her wrinkled hands around my own. “I’ve watched too many people wither inside those walls. Your mother’sgone, but you can live the life she didn’t. Don’t come back here.” Marg pats my hand. “Goodbye, Mariella.”
“Goodbye,” I say.
