Читать книгу Born of Darkness - Rita Vetere - Страница 9

Chapter 4

Dora stopped dead in her tracks as she took in the scene playing out in her living room, one worse than any nightmare she could imagine. What was left of her family, her only sister, lay on the floor, pale and unmoving, in a pool of blood. A paramedic was in the process of cutting into Lilli’s stomach.

“Stop,” she screamed, bolting for her sister. A uniformed officer stepped in front of her, holding her back.

“Please, that’s my sister,” she cried, alarmed to see the medic paid no attention at all to Lilli as he continued to cut into her. More blood gushed to the floor beneath Lilli. Her sister did not move or make a sound.

“Miss, stay back. There’s nothing you can do for her,” said the officer as he continued to restrain her. “She’s dead. They’re performing an emergency C-section to try to save the baby.”

A cry of despair escaped Dora. A moment ago, her taxi had pulled up in front of the house to the flashing lights of an ambulance, fire truck and police car. Her heart in her throat, cursing herself for having left Lilli alone, she shoved some bills into the driver’s hand and raced past the emergency vehicles into the house, only to be confronted with the terrible news this man had just imparted.

A hush fell over the room, and the air was thick with tension as the medic finished making the incision. Within seconds, he had the baby out. Dora could see, even through her frightened tears, it was a girl. The medic cleared the infant’s mouth, but the tiny body made no sound, not even when he slapped the infant’s bottom, twice. The slaps rang out loudly in the quiet room, but they were followed by absolute silence. The room was well-lit and Dora could not help but notice the bluish-gray pallor of the infant’s skin through the placenta clinging to it. One of the attendants uttered a single whispered word that pierced Dora like a dagger. “Stillborn”.

“No,” she sobbed, refusing to accept that both her sister and the child were gone. “Please, do something!” The medic turned to look at her.

Suddenly, the baby let out a keening wail, and everyone cried out in relief and surprise. Dora wept, for the sister she had lost, and out of relief that the child had been delivered safely after all. She watched as the attendants bundled up the baby to transport her to the hospital.

Still numb with shock, Dora could only look on as the ambulance attendants placed her sister in a body bag and put her on a stretcher to carry her out. She whispered a promise to her dead sister, hoping somehow Lilli would hear it. “I should never have left you alone, Lilli. I’m so sorry… I’ll take care of your baby, I promise. I’ll love her enough for the both of us.”

* * * *

As she sat in the waiting room on the third floor pediatric unit, anxiously waiting for confirmation that the baby had suffered no complications, Dora fought to keep her grief for her dead sister under control. She blamed herself bitterly for having left Lilli alone. She should have tried harder to persuade Lilli to seek medical help, even though her many attempts over the past months had been met with stubborn refusal. She recalled their last conversation about it, just over two weeks ago.

“You need help dealing with what happened, don’t you see that? You were raped, for God’s sake. You witnessed your husband’s murder. You’ve suffered a terrible trauma, and you need to speak to a professional, someone who knows about these things.”

Lilli had just looked at her. The dead look in her sister’s once-sparkling green eyes frightened her as much as the words that had come out of her mouth. “I’m not crazy, Dora. And there’s nothing a psychiatrist can do for me. In fact, there’s nothing anyone can do for me. Just leave it alone, all right?”

Then, last week, Dora had awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of Lilli’s raised voice. When she had rushed to Lilli’s bedroom to make sure her sister was all right, she found Lilli crouched in the corner, crying.

“Lilli, what’s the matter? Who were you talking to?” The sight of her sister cringing in the corner of the dark room, and the fact that she’d been too frightened to do anything but sob hysterically, caused Dora to bring up the subject of getting help again.

“No,” said Lilly, when she was able to speak coherently. “I had a nightmare, that’s all. It’s nothing. Go back to bed,” she said, her voice shaking.

Not knowing what else to do, Dora got into bed with her and remained there until Lilli had fallen back asleep, worried sick that her sister was becoming delusional. The signs were there, and I didn’t act. I should have found a way to get help for her.

A heavy-set nurse in rubber-soled shoes came walking toward her, interrupting her sad thoughts. In her arms, she held Lilli’s daughter, all cleaned up and wrapped in a pink blanket.

Dora took the tiny infant carefully into her arms. The baby’s eyes were open and staring directly at her. The child resembled Lilli, she realized, causing tears to flow again. Dora searched the child’s face for any signs of resemblance to Charlie, but found none. Not for the first time, she wondered whether the child was Charlie’s or whether it had been fathered by the man who had raped her sister in Morocco. She decided it didn’t matter. She’d made a promise to her dead sister and she intended to keep it. She would raise Lilli’s daughter as her own and would give her all the love she had.

“Have you thought of a name for her?” the nurse asked, not unkindly.

“Jasmine,” Dora said softly, not taking her eyes off the infant. “It’s the name my sister had chosen for a girl. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

The nurse smiled and nodded. “I have to take her back now. If you want to stay for a while, she’ll be in the last bassinette on the left in the nursery.”

Dora spent the next couple of hours in front of the glass partition separating the nursery from the visitors, studying the little miracle that had entered her life and wishing with all her heart that her sister could be here to see the beautiful child she had given birth to.

* * * *

On the following day, as she prepared the house for the baby’s homecoming, Dora went about her work with a heavy heart. She had done her best to remain stalwart throughout the ordeal of her sister’s passing, but unanswered questions remained about the manner in which Lilli had died. Even though the cause of death was listed as heart failure, Dora picked up on the fact that bruises had been found on Lilli’s body, and she overheard one policeman speculate that they had been self-inflicted. The police had conducted a thorough investigation and found no signs of forced entry to the house. The doors and windows were all locked. Neither had they found any injuries or evidence to indicate her sister had been trying to defend herself against an attacker. Dora refused to believe Lilli would try to harm herself, even though her mental state had not been the best since Charlie’s death. Lilli would never have risked harming her baby; of that, Dora was absolutely certain.

It wasn’t until she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing her dead sister’s blood from the living room floor, that Dora finally broke down. The act proved more than she could bear. She sat back on her haunches and sobbed, letting out some of the emotion she had held back until now. She cried for a long time, and when her outpouring of grief was over, she felt cleansed of the worst of it, at least.

Wiping away the last of her tears, she was about to turn back to her repugnant task when she caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off something on the side table. She got to her feet to investigate, and found a striking-looking antique silver necklace resting there. Must be Lilli’s. She picked it up to examine it, although she could not remember ever having seen her sister wear it. Even so, once she looked more carefully at the piece of jewelry, something about it struck her as familiar, and then she realized why.

She went upstairs to Lilli’s room and, in the closet, located the box where her sister kept her photographs. Dora flipped through them and found what she was looking for near the bottom, the photographs of her sister’s fateful trip to Morocco. Only two pictures had been taken in Marrakesh, where Charlie had died. One of the snapshots showed Lilli and Charlie on a terrace overlooking a square. The other was of the two of them in a marketplace. The second photo had been shot fairly close-up. Sure enough, in the picture, Lilli was sporting the pendant Dora now held in her hand. Why had her sister taken the necklace out after almost a year of never having worn it? It made Dora shiver to think Lilli had been wearing the pendant on the day Charlie died and had not taken it out again until the day of her own death.

Doubt began to creep in again. Had Lilli tried to kill herself? Was that why she had taken out the pendant? Had she planned the whole thing?

Dora understood she would never know for sure what had happened to Lilli, and the thought sent sadness flooding through her. Not knowing the truth just made everything worse. She decided to put the pendant away for now and placed it in the box, along with the photographs. When the time was right, she would give the necklace to Jasmine, along with the other things that had been important to her sister.

Back downstairs, she completed the odious task of scrubbing the living room floor of her sister’s blood, and then placed calls to the people she and Lilli were close to, to deliver the sad news of Lilli’s death. The last call she placed was to Tom. Dora knew Tom had been in love with her sister at one time, and thought he would want to know.