The Girl Who Came Back

At first, it had been strange reading about places and people she remembered but hadn’t seen in so many years. But as the months went by, she began to feel a tenuous connection. She had even taken a chance and contacted her former foster mother, Maddie Oglethorpe. Maddie’s house in Maraville was the closest thing to a real home Eliza had ever had.

She thought about the old Victorian house on Poppin Hill, in her mind envisioning a weathered clapboard building standing in lonely splendor atop a small knoll on the outskirts of the sleepy southern town.

For a moment a kaleidoscope of images flooded her mind. The shock of losing her mother when she’d been only four. The uncertainty and fear when she’d suddenly been thrust into the foster home on Poppin Hill to live with strangers. People often said young children didn’t remember much, but she recalled every day at Maddie’s with her foster sisters.

April, Jo and Eliza. Wild girls with no place else to go, they’d carried chips on their shoulders the size of elm trees as they’d grown into rebellious teenagers. But they had ended up closer than sisters. There had been laughter and shared confidences, plans and dreams.

Jo had dealt with her anger at the world by challenging authority every chance she got. April had seemed vain and conceited to those around her, but underneath was a girl desperate to know her family. Eliza’s own insecurity had been covered by a brash bravado and clinging dependence. A jumble of images from those days—poignant, funny, bleak—flashed through Eliza’s mind now.

Their lives together had ended abruptly when Eliza was sixteen. In the space of two days, the world as she’d known it had changed. Nothing had ever been the same.

She shook off her somber mood and scanned the front page. Opening up the paper, she stopped in surprise. There in a sidebar column on page two was a report of Maddie Oglethorpe’s stroke and hospitalization.

For a moment, emotions swelled in Eliza. She felt like the uncertain sixteen-year-old she had been all those years ago—alone, adrift, afraid—after being forced from Maddie’s home. The last twelve years might never have been. She was transported back in time to the last day she’d seen her foster mother.

The older woman had seemed indomitable. She had been the strength of that household, caring for the girls, making ends meet on a limited income and the small stipend from Social Services.

Eliza had written to her frequently since that initial contact two years ago, sending her cards at Christmas, even calling her a couple of times to chat on the phone. They’d made tentative plans more than once about getting together, but Eliza hadn’t gone back to Mississippi and Maddie hadn’t come to Boston.

The news of her stroke shocked Eliza. She couldn’t imagine Maddie sick at all, much less gravely ill.

Checking the date, she saw the paper was only three days old.

She picked up the phone and dialed Information to find the number for the Maraville hospital. It was now after midnight, but a hospital was staffed twenty-four hours. There would be someone on duty who could give her an update on Maddie’s condition.

Several frustrating moments later she hung up. No one would give her any information. She was not a relative. Maddie didn’t have any relatives after her father had died. That had been one reason she’d opened her home to foster children in need of family.

There had to be someone in town who could find out how Maddie was and let Eliza know.

The first name that came to mind was Cade Bennett’s. The old hurt resurfaced. Eliza knew he wouldn’t give her the time of day. Not after those hateful words he’d said to her that last day in Maraville.

If April or Jo were still in town, she could have called one of them. The only person she could come up with was Edith Harper, Maddie’s best friend. But when she called Information, there was no number listed for her. Was her phone unlisted? Surely Maddie would have written if anything had happened to Edith.

Dammit, who could she call?

Not for the first time, Eliza felt the aching loss of her best friends. Sisters united, they’d called themselves. She rubbed the small scar on the tip of her index finger. She remembered the day the three girls had pledged undying friendship and sisterhood. Blood sisters.

It had been Jo’s idea. They had been thirteen at the time. Three girls with no family to call their own banding together. Eliza’s parents were dead. Jo’s mother was too caught up in drugs and abusive men to care about her only child. April’s parents were unknown.

To solidify their bond, they had each cut a fingertip and mingled their blood. What a mess they’d made, cutting deeper than necessary. Blood had spattered their clothes and the bedspread. Maddie had been upset with the mess they’d made, but the bond had never wavered until the day they were sent to different foster homes throughout the state of Mississippi.

It was all because of the accusations Jo had made. Angry at Maddie for reasons Eliza never knew, Jo had accused their foster mother of beating her, and she’d had the injuries to prove it. Social Services had stepped in immediately after the sheriff had interviewed Eliza and April the next morning, swiftly taking each of the girls from Maddie’s home and placing them elsewhere.

By the time her junior class in Maraville had held its prom that spring, Eliza had been living in Biloxi with the Johnson family. She never knew where April and Jo had been sent. In the twelve years that had followed, she had not heard from either of them. Nor, as far as she knew, had Maddie. She’d asked in earlier letters, but Maddie had said neither had ever contacted her.

Losing touch with Jo and April had been devastating. Eliza had tried to find them but ran into brick walls at every turn. She’d kept to herself at her new school and was grateful her second set of foster parents had invited her to remain with them when she’d turned eighteen. They had helped her far more than she’d deserved.

It wasn’t until she’d left Maraville that Eliza realized how much living with the other girls meant to her. Maddie, too, though at the time Eliza had often thought her rules excessive. As time passed, however, she recalled happy memories. Laughter as well as tears.

The three girls had made plans to go to college together, to get a large apartment in New Orleans. They’d been united in their desire to leave Maraville and take their chances in the world.

Homesickness grabbed hold of Eliza, surprising her. She suddenly yearned to see April and Jo with a fierceness that startled her. How could they have let the years go by without finding each other? Had April or Jo learned of Maddie’s stroke? Would either of them consider returning to Maraville?

Eliza sat on the sofa for long moments, lost in memories and indecision. But the idea forming in her mind grew stronger the more she thought about it. She had not left town under the best of circumstances. But time healed old wounds. And she owed Maddie.

She could make a quick visit. See Maddie. Reassure herself her former foster mother was going to recover.

Eliza rose and went to the window. The rain continued its assault. The Charles River glittered in the distance, light reflecting from the choppy surface. The asphalt below gleamed beneath the streetlights. The few cars on the road splashed through the puddles, coating the sidewalks with their spray.

She leaned her forehead against the cold pane. She wanted to go back. She wished she could see the other girls, discover what they’d done with their lives. Maybe she could recapture that ephemeral feeling of family she’d had so long ago.

Her fear for Maddie grew. What if she didn’t recover? What if the stroke put an end to the Maddie she knew? Eliza was filled with a sense of impending doom. She had to get to Mississippi. She’d let things go far too long without making a real attempt to reconnect with Maddie and revisit her childhood home. It was too bad it had taken a tragedy to prompt the thought.

Eliza had spent so many years alone. It was one thing to vow to remain aloof, to protect her heart from further bruising, but the reality had led to a solitary existence. She had made a mistake as a teenager and it had left her wary of getting close to anyone—afraid of hurting and of being hurt herself.

Maddie had done her best for her girls. Eliza appreciated her even more now that she was on her own. She couldn’t imagine taking in three young girls and raising them alone as Maddie had done.

Was this the end? Was Maddie alone in the hospital, living her last few days with no one to visit, to talk to her, to love her?

Eliza couldn’t allow that. It was said that you could never go home again. But for her entire childhood, Maddie had given Eliza her best. She was the only mother Eliza remembered. And now she needed Eliza.

What was she waiting for?

She flipped through the city directory and lifted up the phone and punched in the number of an airline.

CHAPTER TWO

ELIZA’S HIGH HEELS CLICKED on the polished linoleum floor the next day as she followed the directions the nurse had given her to the ICU waiting room. She looked neither left nor right, but focused on getting to the end of the corridor.

She tried not to breathe deeply; she didn’t like the smell of disinfectant and sickness and fear. She hoped by this time Maddie was out of immediate danger and on her way to a quick recovery.

Eliza’s dove-gray suit, dark-gray shoes and soft white silk blouse looked out of place among the gaily colored uniforms the nurses wore. It had still been raining in Boston, with the temperature in the low fifties, when she’d decided to wear the wool gabardine suit. How could she have forgotten that here in Mississippi it would be pushing the high eighties, with humidity to match?

She wanted to strip off her panty hose, tear the sleeves from her blouse and drop her suit jacket in some trash can. Then bundle her hair up on top of her head to cool her neck. Instead it was tied back neatly, primly, at the nape with a clip. The last time she’d been in a hospital… It had been for Chelsea. They’d arrived too late. She’d already died. Eliza shivered at the memory, fervently hoping that would not be the case today.

Now as she reached the ICU nursing station, she asked where she would find Maddie Oglethorpe.

“Are you a relative?” the nurse asked.

“Sort of, I was one of her foster children.”

“You’ll have to talk to the doctor to get an updated prognosis.”

“Will I be able to see her?”

“I guess that relationship is close enough to visit. Rules are one person at a time every two hours for a few minutes.” She glanced at her watch. “No one else has been to visit Miss Maddie so you can come with me.”

Eliza followed the nurse, sad to hear no one had come to see Maddie. So glad she’d made the trip. As they walked through the doors into the unit, the nurse took a folder from a rack. Scanning the notations, she glanced at Eliza.