I look up at the nurse as I take it.
“We have to check incoming mail and packages,” she says. “It’s the rules.”
I lift the top of the small box. Inside is a tissue-wrapped bundle no bigger than a few saltine crackers stacked atop each other. Underneath it, there is a note on a folded piece of paper. I open it and read,Happy Birthday, Rosie! Hope you don’t mind I smoked the cigars. See you around...
I unfold the tissue paper and see that it isn’t ordinary tissue paper that the bundle has been wrapped in but a letter ononionskin paper. It’s Helen Calvert’s Christmas letter with the instructions on how to care for the amaryllis. I see her words to me and the words she penned to her brother, Truman.
I am right where I want to be.
Snuggled in the folds of Helen’s letter is my mother’s cloisonné pendant and the little silver key resting on the same chain. I clutch the necklace to my chest as tears prick at my eyes. Belle hasn’t forgotten me, nor has she taken what Truman left for me. Belle wouldn’t have sent the key if she had. I don’t care that the savings I had in the cigar box aren’t in the package, too. Belle needed that cash to stay free, to get to Santa Barbara. It is enough just to have my mother’s necklace and Truman’s key.
“We’ve a pretty good idea who that’s from, you know,” the nurse says.
I have nothing to say in response. It’s been three months since Belle escaped and there has been no word from her or about her. I am glad she can easily pass for someone over the age of twenty-one.
“Belle’s mother is concerned about her,” the nurse continues. “She shouldn’t be out on her own like this with no one to help her. She was getting good care here.”
“Was she really?” I say with only the slightest challenge in my voice.
“Yes. She was.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
The nurse exhales with a frown and shakes her head. “You should let me keep that necklace locked up for you in the administration wing. It looks expensive.”
I fit the clasp at the back of my neck and let the pendant and key slide on the chain down my throat to rest beneath the top button of my dress. “No, thank you. I’ll not be taking it off.”
“Suit yourself, Rosie. If it gets stolen, you can’t fault the hospital.”
“I’ll not be taking it off,” I say as I put Helen’s letter into my pocket.
The nurse shrugs and walks away with her little cart and her emptied mail basket.
I am not interested in eating anymore, and I do not want to head to my room, not now that I have the key and my mother’s necklace and Helen’s letter. I can see my future again, for the first time in too many weeks. A promise of a new life still awaits.
I go to the door that leads to the back lawn, even though an early autumn chill has settled over the yard.
As I step outside, I breathe in the cool air, drawing it into my lungs and relishing the tang of its wild taste. Air can’t be fenced or kept back or held in. It goes wherever it wants.
Air is free.
Someday I will be, too, though not soon enough. There doesn’t seem to be any way of getting to San Jose before my twenty-first birthday unless my next placement is with someone who will allow me some freedom. But that is not likely. I was caught trying to escape the state’s care. Freedom of movement is likely not something I’ll be trusted with again. Still, Truman Calvert has to know where I was taken. Has to know I still have his key and his secret. Celine and Truman both have to know I will not be stuck like this forever. Have to know the smartest thing Truman can do is leave that four thousand dollars in the safety-deposit box untouched. That money is mine. He paid for my silence with it. It is mine.
I now have five things that belong to me. The sun every morning, the cloisonné pendant, the silver key, Helen Calvert’s letter on how to care for an amaryllis, and the bargain I made.
Six things, actually.
I still have the colors.
18
OCTOBER 1939 TO OCTOBER 1940
I measure the long, bleak months between my eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays with little victories that most likely go unnoticed by everyone around me.
In February, I mark without despair the second anniversary of the accident that robbed me of my family, and in June, I survive the day of Amaryllis’s first birthday with only two short episodes of weeping, both of which I am able to hide from the staff. In August, I pass a proficiency exam that allows me to receive a modified diploma from the local school district.
There has never been another letter from Belle. No one mentions her name anymore. It’s almost as if she was never here. I’m thinking if she was caught, even if she was sent somewhere else, Dr. Townsend would tell me, if only to assure me that what he predicted—that she’d be found—did indeed happen. I miss her, but I’m glad she is still free, still in possession of everything inside her body that belongs to her and no one else. I want to believe she has found someone who truly loves her for who she is and not just her stunningly beautiful body. I want it so much I start to think it’s true.
