Chapter Seven
Nana pulled the light blanket up over Linnea and reached up to brush a lock of her fine blonde hair away from her forehead. The woman’s eyes were closed but Nana could see them twitching slightly beneath her lids, and she ran her hand gently down Linnea’s arm to try to soothe her into a deeper sleep. Of everyone that Aubrey and Jonah had brought to her house, Linnea had seemed to have the most difficult time recovering from what she experienced in the facility. Her pregnancy was not as far progressed as those of Ilya, Sable, or Maeve, which meant that she hadn’t spent as much time in the laboratory as the other women and hadn’t been exposed to as many of the horrors that Ryan enacted against them.
Nana wondered if it was actually this fact that made it so that it was harder for her to cope with the chaos of everything that was happening. She had had the opportunity to talk some with Ilya and knew that she had gone through a challenging time when she was first brought to the facility, but then was able to assimilate and survive the ordeal by not allowing it to get into her mind. Though this sounded almost outlandish to Nana as if the woman was creating memories of what she had gone through so that she didn’t have to think about what had really happened. Now that she was spending more time caring for Linnea, however, Nana was beginning to think that there might have been more truth to what Ilya had said than she thought. It seemed that Linnea was going through the same heightened awareness and panic that Ilya had described, but that she was beginning to feel less anxious and more willing to accept the freedom that had been given to her. Nana hoped that she would be able to continue to support and nurture Linnea until she was at a point when she felt safe and confident enough to move forward.
Closing the door of Linnea’s bedroom behind her, she walked back down the stairs and through a door that she hadn’t opened in many years. It was still painful to walk through it, remembering the smile on her mother’s face the last time that she had seen her alive. It was in this room, a drawing room that she had always kept pristine. Her mother had felt such pride in this room and when Nana was younger she had delighted in inviting guests over and entertaining the ladies in this room while Nana’s father had brought the men into his study before they would all go together into the dining room for a lavish dinner and decadent dessert. Nana had watched from around the corner, knowing that children were not supposed to interfere with adult parties but being drawn to the beauty of the home and of her parents. They had loved each other so much, the adoration between them visible no matter what they were doing or where they were. More often than not her father would catch a glimpse of her and crook his finger at her, luring her out from her hiding place until she walked toward him. He had never been angry. Instead, he would scoop her into his arms and carry her into the party, sitting her on his lap and presenting her to the guests as if she was just as welcome as any of them and the frilly pajamas she wore were just as grand and elegant as their evening clothing. She would cuddle with him until the smell of the electronic pipes that the men smoked became too much for her and then she would slide from his lap and make her way into her mother’s drawing room. Nana would slip through the room and sit on the floor at her feet so that she could rest her head on her mother’s lap. Mama would run her fingers through her hair and pat her back until Nana felt her eyes drifting closed. The next thing she knew, she would wake up in her own bed, wondering if it had all been a dream.
As she got older, this room took on a different meaning. They entertained less, but her parents still clung to one another, often going into the drawing room in the evening and closing the door, not to emerge for hours. She would sometimes hear them whispering, but other times it was quiet, almost as though they were simply sitting silently together. Though Nana always wondered why they went into the room and spent this time together, she never felt left out or as though her parents were neglecting her. Even then she understood that her parents needed time alone, and when they would eventually emerge, they would always have something for the family to do all together.
After her father died, sitting in this room became a refuge for Mama. She would carry the book about Nyx 23 into the room with her and sit in her favorite chair, running her fingers across the picture. She had always shown a tremendous fascination with Nyx 23 and Nana had seen her looking through it and even touching the picture many times before throughout her life, but it became increasingly more frequently after her father’s death. Nana would sit beside her, trying to soothe and comfort her even though she didn’t understand what she was thinking or going through. Mama had never explained to her why she spent progressively more time alone in the drawing room with the book, but Nana had never tried to stop her. This was where she was relaxed, where she seemed the calmest and peaceful. The last time that she saw her mother alive, she was sitting in the drawing room. Unlike nearly every other time that she had seen her in the months leading up to that day, the book was sitting on her lap, closed, and her hands were folded on top of it. When Nana had walked into the room, Mama had looked up at her with a look of calm on her face that was as if she knew something that had taken away any nervousness, anxiety, or sadness from her. She had taken Nana’s hand and kissed it, pressing it over her heart.
I love you
She said those words countless times throughout Nana’s life, several times every time that she saw her, but this time it was different. There was something different about the way that it sounded that time and Nana hadn’t known what to think of it. She offered her mother a cup of tea, the same ritual that she completed every time that she visited her, and her mother smiled at her. It was a wide, genuine smile, more pure and beautiful than any that Nana had seen since the day that her father died. That was the last time that she would see her mother alive. When she returned from getting the tea, her head was rested back against the chair, her eyes closed and the smile still on her lips.
Going back into the room had been difficult after that. Though she was an adult, losing both of her parents had left her feeling like an orphan, and she didn’t cope with it well. Closing the door and pretending that the room wasn’t there had been the only thing that she could do to help herself move on. Over the years others had entered the room and put boxes of storage and other items inside, but it had been decades since she had actually entered it herself.
As Nana approached one of the boxes that she had wanted to go through, she felt the difficult emotion tightening in her throat again. She opened the first box and immediately felt the sadness ease. She reached inside and withdrew a stack of pristinely pressed baby gowns. Each had a delicate “A” embroidered in pale pink or pale lavender on the front. Nana smiled and traced her finger along the letter, remembering when she had purchased the gowns. Aubrey coming to live with her daughter and son-in-law had been so unexpected and so wonderful. They had given up on the idea of ever being parents, and truly of ever being completely happy. Aubrey had come at exactly the right time. And yet, she had also come at the wrong time. As much as they loved her and wanted her, Aubrey’s adoptive parents had never really gotten into the proper rhythm of caring for her. It wasn’t that they didn’t want her or that they didn’t want to be involved with her. It seemed more that they had become so accustomed to filling the emptiness of not having a child with other things that when they did have the baby they had so desired, they didn’t know how to change what they had worked so hard to create in their minds.
This had been hard for them, but it had given Nana the chance to raise and love Aubrey, and in her heart, she knew that that was the most important and meaningful thing that she had ever done. Nana put the baby gowns back into the box, closed it, and carried the entire box out of the drawing room with her. She returned a few minutes later and took a box that contained memorabilia from her parents’ wedding, including her dried and preserved bouquet. Nana brought the box into her bedroom and placed it on the bench at the end of her bed. Lowering herself to her knees, she opened the top and pulled out the scrapbook. Her hands trembled slightly as she opened the thick ivory-colored cover and looked at the wedding invitation that had been placed in the front. It was an incredibly unusual invitation, written in a language that she didn’t understand. The names and date were depicted in what looked like symbols rather than words, and the rest was written in complex-looking words comprised of letters that she didn’t recognize.
Her parents had never explained to her why their invitation was so strange and Nana had never asked, feeling like the mystery somehow made their union even more romantic, as though it had occurred in a storybook. Now, though, she wished that she had found out more about it. She wished that she could understand what the invitation said so she knew when and where they got married, or the words that they had chosen to share the news with the guests who they invited. She would have loved to be able to visit the spot where they had exchanged vows and see what they had, possibly figure out the reason why they would have chosen that specific place for something so precious as their wedding day.
The thought of their wedding made her think of her own wedding. In all the preparations and celebration, she had never taken the time to stop and talk to her mother about her own wedding. Nana regretted that now. Looking back, she could appreciate how important that time of her life was and how much it would have meant for her to be able to sit down with her mother and hear stories of her engagement and wedding, to absorb the lessons of love and devotion that she had learned over the many years that she had spent with her husband. All that she had was the scrapbook of pictures from their wedding and it showed little but the two of them posed in their wedding clothes, gazing adoringly at one another, and then at what looked like an elegant party to celebrate their union. She could only tell herself the stories that she wanted to know, making up the details to fill in the gaps that she didn’t know.
A smile came to Nana’s lips as she turned the page of the scrapbook and saw the picture of her parents, newly married, kissing on the stone steps of a building that she couldn’t see. She loved that picture. It made her feel as though it made her know them better. She had spent so long wondering about her mother’s seeming obsession and devotion to Nyx 23 and now that she had met Jonah she felt she would soon understand.