Chapter 29

All About Constance

Alyndia sat weak and trembling at the dining room table with the hot cup of coffee before her as the first light of dawn shone through the large curtained window there. The ambulance had left just a short while earlier. By the time they’d arrived, Alyndia had already recovered, and she had refused transport to the hospital over the episode. Now, she stared despondently into her cup of coffee, the gloom she felt inside tempered by the intense pain in her right foot where Connie had stepped on the glass. James and Joy sat next to Alyndia, watching over her with a look of concern.

Joy placed her hand over Alyndia’s. “We were so worried about you,” she said. “I’m glad we were able to bring you back.”

“I suppose you believe me now.”

“I should have believed you earlier,” Joy said. “I’m sorry I doubted you when you tried to explain everything.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself. Magic does not exist in this world, so you had no pretext to believe me.”

James addressed his wife. “You were right about your sister, hon. If you don’t mind me saying so, I’m glad she’s gone. I’ve never met a more hateful woman in my life.”

“Connie has not changed one bit.”

“I fought her in the Wild,” Alyndia said.

“I’m glad you won,” James said.

Alyndia shook her head. “No, James. I did not win.”

Joy and James looked at Alyndia in surprise.

“She let me go.”

“You mean, she beat you?” James asked, sounding as though he’d just learned that his favorite football team had unexpectedly lost the playoff match.

“I cannot say she beat me,” Alyndia said, “but I was certainly losing.” She gazed deeply into her black coffee as if it were a portal into the Wild. “And there’s more to it than that. The spells that send Connie’s spirit back to this world were cast by a powerful sorceress from my city named Elenglea Vanexay. She’s the former apprentice of an old wizard named Calicus.”

Joy and James both nodded at the mention of Calicus’ name, having heard Connie say it.

“Elenglea must have realized that something had gone wrong with her spells when I didn’t return, and so she cast reversals of them. At least that’s what I think. But Connie’s spirit was so strong that she was able to resist the sorceress’s power to call her back, and by doing so, she remained behind to fight me. Connie’s anger toward me was so great that she actually began sapping away my soul energy before we separated.”

A worried expression swept over Joy’s face as she visualized the scene. “What would have happened if she hadn’t stopped?”

“I might have remained trapped in the Wild for a while longer, unable to leave. It would have been long enough for her body here to die.”

Joy knitted her brow. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain this as best I can for you. You see, a spirit’s life energy gives it presence in the Wild. If a spirit loses its energy while there, it becomes trapped and unable to move. Draining life energy from spirits is the way demons, vampires, and other monsters that wander the Wild can kill. If a spirit loses all of its life energy while in the Wild, it becomes a shade—a sprit with no presence. In such a state, even spells cannot affect it. In my case, Connie’s body would no longer have been able to attract me, and I would have been lost.” Alyndia looked up at Joy. “Your sister took mercy on me. By doing so, she saved us both.”

“Why do you think she let you go?”

“Because she’s still hurting too badly to see your mother today. But she knows I endeavor to do so. I believe this was Connie’s ultimate intention for releasing me—so that I will visit your mother on her deathbed in her guise to ease your mother’s suffering.”

Joy squeezed Alyndia’s hand. “I’d be eternally grateful.”

“But before I do so, I need you to tell me why Connie feels the way she does. Why is she so bitter toward you and her mother? Has it something to do with the death of your father?”

Joy shifted uncomfortably in her chair as this request. She withdrew her hand from Alyndia’s and stared at her husband. Her expression questioned him.

James responded to her non-verbal interrogative. “Yes, I think you should tell her, especially if she’s going to see your mother tomorrow.”

Joy returned her attention to Alyndia. She sighed. “Well, you must understand, Alyndia, that Connie and I come from a religious family. This was due mostly to my mother. She was very strict with us children. Dad wasn’t religious or strict on his own, but I think he kind of went along with it because he loved mom. Connie was always the rebel, the black sheep, the tomboy who hated wearing the flowery dresses that mom made us wear to church.

I think Dad had been hoping for a boy when Connie was born, but he loved her just the same. And Connie adored him. They did everything together. He even took her on camping trips. Just the two of them. I remember being so jealous. She was Daddy’s girl, and both of them liked it that way. Now that I look back on it, mom might even have been a little jealous of their closeness.

“Dad was in the Air Force when us girls were born.” Joy smiled. “Each one of us was born in a different part of the world. We moved around a lot while we were growing up. One year it was Japan; next it was Germany; then it was Greece, and so on. It was nice living in these countries, but because we moved every few years, we girls never had the chance to form any lasting friendships.

Dad retired from the Air Force after twenty-four years. We settled here in Wisconsin, which is where Mom is from originally. Dad found work as an aeronautical engineer. He loved his job. Unfortunately, he had a heart attack while working late one night. He would have died if not for a quick-thinking co-worker who knew CPR. I remember Dad was pretty shaken up by the experience. He retired for the last time shortly after that. From then on, he spent his days tending his vegetable patch and building these remote control planes. He and Connie would take the planes out on Saturday mornings. I also recall Dad holding a part-time job as a cross-guard at a local elementary school. Sometimes, he’d invite some of the kids he met there to fly the planes with him and Connie.”

Joy took a deep breath. “Anyway, by this time Connie was a teenager. She fell hard for a boy in her junior class. His name was Byron, you know, like the poet? When I first met him, I said to myself, “Gosh! He’s just like Dad.” Connie and Byron got pretty close. Closer than we suspected. Then in the summer, a few weeks before the start of her senior year, Connie called the family together into the living room. She said she wanted to make an announcement.”

Joy cleared her throat and took a sip from her coffee. “I remember that day very clearly. Once the family had been gathered together, Connie stood in the middle of the room and announced that she and Byron were going to get married. We were all flabbergasted, of course. She was only seventeen at the time. And with her good grades and possibilities for college, we thought she would have better sense than simply drop it all just to have a husband. But Connie was so very serious about this. My sisters and me, well, we thought she was acting kind of funny at the time, so we just laughed in her face. And oh, did she ever get so angry! Then mom started in on her, too. She thought the whole thing was a farce, especially since Byron wasn’t there to join in the announcement. We realized afterward why Byron wasn’t there.

“At this point, I want to mention that the only one who didn’t laugh at Connie was Dad. While we were carrying on, he just looked at her in a pensive sort of way. And it was obvious that she cared mostly what he thought. Finally, when we all settled down, he spoke. He told her flat out that she was hardly old enough to be married, and if she really loved the guy, she should wait until she finished college before marrying him. But Connie didn’t go for this. She persisted, speaking only to Dad, saying that she really loved this guy, Byron, and that they would make a wonderful couple. Still. Dad held his ground.

“Now comes the worst part. For as much as she loved him, Connie was not above being angry with my dad, and by this time, she was already bristling with anger at all of us. Finally, probably in exasperation, she blurts out that the reason she wants to marry Byron is because she is pregnant. Oh, God. You should have witnessed the silence in the living room after she said this. All eyes went to Mom. I cannot begin to describe to you the expression on her face. She has always been a devout, God-fearing woman. So, you can imagine how she felt on learning that her oldest teenage daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. After that day, mother got very hard on Connie. They couldn’t be in the same room without arguing.

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Plans were made for a wedding to take place at the end of the school year. Then one day, Byron came to the house when Connie wasn’t there. He was supposed to meet her there, but she hadn’t yet come home from school. I was home with the flu that day. From my bedroom, I overheard mom giving Byron the third degree about how and when he got Connie pregnant. She asked some really inappropriate questions. At first, he was reluctant to tell her about it, but then, I guess, he gave in and told her what she wanted to know. Mom then blew up and began calling him names like “sinner” and “fornicator.” Then she threw him out of the house. When Connie came home later and found out what happened, she ran away for three days.

“Well, from that day forward, Byron never came back to the house. The incident also caused some bad blood between his family and ours. A few weeks later, Byron broke off the engagement to Connie. She was heartbroken. She stopped going to school and stayed in her room all day. She came out only to get food from the refrigerator.”

Alyndia shook her head. “This is awful. What about your dad?”

Joy took another sip from her coffee. “Dad remained warm with Connie throughout the whole affair. He was very supportive of her. I think then, at some point, they had a long father-daughter talk. Then, Connie comes home a few days later and tells them she had an abortion. Mom flipped out over that. On hearing the news, she slapped Connie around the room, threw a bunch of things at her, and called her a murderer. She began beating on Connie so much that Dad had to pull her off of her. Connie ran up to her room in tears and locked the door. What an awful day that was. My dad had a sudden heart attack that evening. He died a day later at the hospital without regaining consciousness.”

Joy wept softly as she recalled the experience. James fetched her a dishtowel from the kitchen counter to wipe her eyes. “We were devastated by all that happened, but no one took it worse than Connie. She was inconsolable. She cried alone in her room for days. Then, to make matters worse, our mom started telling everyone that Connie had killed Dad, because he was devastated over her murdering her baby, his grandchild. The rest of us kids, feeling bad about what happened to Dad and looking for someone to blame, sided with our mom. Poor Connie! How cruel we were to her!” Joy wiped her eyes again. “Connie retaliated by saying that it was Dad’s suggestion that she have the abortion. He wanted her to have an education and a career. Mother would not believe this for one minute and focused the blame of his death squarely on her shoulders.

“After things had settled down a bit, Connie changed. Before she had been outgoing, but then she became very introverted. Her seriousness turned into a kind of strange, obsessive determination about things. She never laughed or joked anymore. Her friends stopped coming around. Eventually, she went back to school, then she just threw herself into her schoolwork. Though she had gotten behind earlier in the school year, she made up for it and then some. She graduated months early at the top of her class. She also picked up a few college grants and scholarships along the way. That summer, she took a job at a bookstore. She used to bring home all these crime and spy novels. She’d lock the door to her room and read them until the wee hours of the morning. Then, early one autumn day, she packed her bags, got on a bus, and left the house for good.

“In time, us girls got over the grief of losing our dad. We came to our senses and realized it wasn’t Connie’s fault he passed away. We tried to get a hold of our sister again. We found out she was attending a college in another state. Though we tried contacting her, she never returned our calls. Then on her twenty-first birthday, the three of us decided to pay her a surprise visit and throw a little party for her. She somehow figured out we were coming and made herself scarce. We never did see her. We expected that she might come home after she graduated, but she never did. Instead, she simply vanished. None of us saw or heard from her again until the CIA called and said an accident had occurred and she was in a coma.”

“So, Connie never again contacted you in all those years?”

Joy nodded. “I think maybe once. Many years later, after I had gone away to college, the phone rang back at home in the middle of the night. Felicity, who still lived there at the time, answered it. The operator asked if she could accept a collect call from Nepal for my mother. Felicity accepted. A woman was then put on the line. She didn’t give her name, but Felicity says the voice sounded like Connie’s. Anyway, mother picked up in the other room. A few minutes later, she heard her mother shout something awful into the phone, then she slammed the handset down. When that happened, Felicity immediately picked up the handset and held it to her ear. Felicity says that for a few seconds, she heard a woman’s sobs. “Connie?” she asked into the phone. “Is that you?” Felicity says the sobbing abruptly stopped and the line went dead.”

* * *

Alyndia and Connie’s three sisters, Joy, Faith, and Felicity, entered the private hospital room while the husbands, children, and extended family waited outside in the hall. The four daughters, attired in somber-colored dresses, stood in silence, two to a side, at their mother’s bed. Alyndia peered at Pamela Bain, who lay on the bed, her ashen pale face sunken into the starchy white hospital pillow. The woman’s breathing was unsteady, belabored by the cancer that invaded her body, appearing very close to death. When they arrived, she was either sleeping or comatose. Alyndia stood at the head of the bed. Joy opened the window blinds to let the early afternoon light shine into the room. Faith took her mother’s emaciated hand and cradled it gently in both of hers. Felicity gazed at her mother from the foot of the bed, tears streaming down her face. As Alyndia gazed into Pamela Bain’s face, distant memories of her own mother entered her mind. Now her eyes became moist.

Joy rejoined the others at the bed. She rested her hand gently on her mother’s forehead.

“Mom?” she asked the woman gently.

The woman’s eyelids fluttered at the sound of her name, but she did not rouse from her drug-aided slumber.

“Mom?” Joy repeated. “It’s me. Joy.”

“Joy?” the woman asked. Awoken from her sleep, her face tightened with pain. Her body arched, then half-curled in the bed. She looked as though some demonic phantom were twisting a dagger into her belly.

“Mom!” Felicity spoke, her voice nearly a cry.

Alyndia looked over at Felicity, from whose eyes tears flowed freely. She thought Felicity was ready to bolt from the room at any moment. Alyndia looked to Faith, who showed no outward sign of grief but only gazed into her mother’s face without emotion. Alyndia surmised that Faith, just as Joy, had made peace with the fact their mother would soon leave their lives. Only Felicity could not accept her mother’s act of death as an inevitable, though unpleasant, part of life.

“It’s all right,” Joy sighed gently, keeping her hand on her mother’s forehead.

“Joy, you have come to see me,” Pamela said, her eyes remaining closed.

“Yes, all of your girls have come to see you.”

The woman weakly shook her head. “No, not all of my girls,” she said slowly.

Joy drew very close to her mother and whispered something in her ear. Then she withdrew to check the result. A few moments later, Pamela blinked and opened her eyes. Hazily, she looked at those standing around the bed. When her eyes rested on Connie’s face, they brightened.

“Constance? Is that you?” she asked.

Despite her best intentions, tears flowed freely down Alyndia’s face. Now she was Constance Bain. She took her mother’s hand. “Yes, Mom. It’s me. I’ve come to see you.”

At those words, Pamela rallied her strength, and though she was in enormous pain, she sat up in her bed. The two women embraced. And both began to cry while rocking each other, the mother and the child. Now Felicity cried openly. Even the stoic Faith became misty-eyed.

Pamela drew back to have a look at her wayward daughter. “Look at you! You’re a woman now!”

“I’m thirty-four years old, mom.”

“Has it been that long?” she asked in wonder. Then, acting as if someone had struck her, she fell back to the bed. Alyndia caught her and lowered her the last few inches. Now, as she lay writhing in agony, Felicity panicked. “Mom!” she cried out. “Someone get a nurse!”

“No!” her mother said, her voice taut with pain. “No. It will do me no good. They can’t help me anymore.”

“But we’ll get you something for the pain,” Joy said.

“No. I don’t need anything at all,” she managed a weak, bittersweet smile despite her pain. “I have all my daughters back.” She looked up at her oldest daughter. “Constance, I have longed to speak with you again for so long. The Lord has answered my prayers by bringing you here to me. But now he calls me to come home. My heart compels me to speak to you before I go.”

Pamela took Constance by the hand. “Please, daughters. I want to be alone for a moment with your sister.”

Joy, Faith, and Felicity looked to each other. Then, one by one, as though it were choreographed, they embraced their mother and exited the room. Joy left the room last. Just before she did, she turned and gave Alyndia a solemn nod before quietly shutting the hospital door behind her.

The three sisters waited in the hallway for about fifteen minutes before Alyndia emerged, her face streaked with tears. She shut the door behind her.

“How is she?” Faith asked.

Alyndia didn’t answer. Moments later, a nurse appeared at the end of the corridor and began walking quickly, almost trotting to where they all stood. At once, the sisters knew that their mother had passed away.

Joy spoke first. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Alyndia.”

“Thank you,” Faith said.

“There is no need to thank me. It was something that needed to be done.”

The women moved aside so that the nurse could enter the room. She left the door open. The girls watched through the doorway as the nurse quickly checked Pamela Bain’s vital signs, at last covering the woman’s face with the sheet. Another nurse was now coming down the corridor toward the room. Felicity began to weep softly. Faith pulled a tissue from her purse and handed it to her.

“If there is any consolation to you, she died peacefully,” Alyndia said. “She died believing that her daughter Connie had forgiven her.”

“It was a deception, but a necessary one,” Faith said.

“Our intentions were good,” Joy added.

“So, what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I suppose there’s some paperwork we need to fill out, or something.”

At that moment, the phone in Joy’s purse rang.

“That’s probably James,” she said.

She pulled out her phone and checked. “Unknown Number” was the caller shown. She answered it and held it up to her ear.

“Hello?” she said cautiously.

Joy listened to the caller. Alyndia and the sisters paused to listen. They could hear a voice coming from the phone, but not what was said. Joy’s eyes suddenly widened. She looked at Alyndia.

“It’s for you.”

“For me?”

“The caller is asking for Alyndia. That’s you. Right?”

Joy gave Alyndia the phone. After looking at the device to make sure she was holding it correctly, she held it up to her ear. “Hello?”

“Alyndia?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Oh, thank God. This is Gerald. I’ve finally found you.”