She hesitates only a moment more before joining me and Mrs. Sommers at the little sitting area.
I watch as Amaryllis wipes her eyes of their unfallen tears and turns to stare at me as we sit next to each other on the sofa.
“Why don’t I know about you?” she asks.
“It’s because I didn’t know about you. I didn’t know you had been born. I wish I had. I only just found out on Christmas Eve.”
“Who told you?”
I know I can’t explain the intricacies of how Amaryllis came to be in my life, nor would telling her about Celine be easy or helpful. “It seems like it might be important to know who told me, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is, as soon as I knew about you, I wanted to come find you. I wanted to find you and your mother. I haven’t found her yet, but I did find you.”
“My mama didn’t keep me.”
The five words are razor-sharp and yet somehow also delicate. Fragile.
“I think she wanted to,” I say. “But she wasn’t allowed.”
“Why?”
“We’ve gone over this, Amaryllis,” Mrs. Sommers interjects, and then she turns to me. “Amaryllis knows her birth mother was very young, she wasn’t married, and she didn’t have a home or a job and was living at a state institution, so she couldn’t take care of a baby.”
I let my gaze fall back on my niece. “I bet it was hard for your mother to let you go. I bet she did it because she loved you.”
“One of the older girls here says my mama was crazy. That I was born at the loony bin.”
“Amaryllis!” Mrs. Sommers exclaims. “I—”
“It’s all right,” I interrupt. “Please, Mrs. Sommers.”
The woman shuts her mouth on the words she’d been poised to say.
I turn again to Amaryllis. “I know for a fact your mother wasn’t crazy. And I’ve been to the place where you were born. It is not a loony bin. It’s a pretty building made of bricks on a grassy green hill, and there are two big oak trees in front that look as if they are as tall as the clouds. It’s... it’s a place that tries to help people.”
Several seconds of silence hang between us as Amaryllis appears to be picturing this image in her head and fitting it all in with what she knew before and what I am telling her. Then she speaks again.
“Do you think my mama remembers me?” she says.
“I am sure she does.”
“Why did she name me Amaryllis? You said you knew.”
I smile at her. “I lived far across the ocean for a long time, and I didn’t get home to America very often. But I met your mother when she was a little girl, and we were friends. She grew up on a vineyard my brother and his wife owned. The Christmas before you were born, I sent an amaryllis plant to your mother at my brother’s house, and I know for a fact she loved having it. Her name is Rosanne, but we all called her Rosie. Rosie worked as a maid at my brother’s house, and she liked keeping the letters I wrote to my brother’s family because of the pretty stamps. And that Christmas was her first without her parents and little brother, because they had died in a tragic accident. I hadn’t seen her for a few years, but I thought the amaryllis would cheer her. An amaryllis flower is very beautiful.”
I pause a moment to gauge how all of this new information is falling on the little girl. But her expression reveals only quietly intense interest. I continue.
“I told your mother you can always see an amaryllis bloom again. I wrote a letter with the instructions. All your mother had to do was put the amaryllis bulb in a quiet, dark place and then plant it the following autumn. I told her it would bloom every year if she did that, if she just took care of the amaryllis in a special way. I think maybe that’s why she gave you the name. She was taking care of you in a very special way, and she knew with every birthday that you’d celebrate apart from her, you’d be blooming, just like you are right now. And she’d be able to picture it.”
The child’s eyes are suddenly shimmering again, and this time two tears slide slowly down her cheeks. “I wish I could see her.” Her voice is full of longing.
“I wish you could, too.”
“I talk to her at night in my bed. I pretend she hears me.”
“I like that. I think I’ll believe she hears you, too.”
Amaryllis palms the tears away. “I talk to her because I’m still here. Lots of kids get new moms and dads, but not me.” The tenderness in her voice is gone and the observational tone back. “One mom and dad almost chose me, but they changed their minds.”
Amaryllis’s words are piercing, and again I keep my voice soft and gentle, as though I didn’t feel the prick. “That must have been sad for you.”
