Chapter Six

Jane's POV

I awoke in a shuddering, antiseptic hospital bed from the black, desolate warehouse horror ripped from me. The even rhythm of the heart monitor and distant whine of the ceiling fluorescent light my only witnesses to my fleeting sanctuary.

My body and psychic barriers were broken, and respiratory rate informed me too of something I'd just learned. I remained steadfast for what seemed like an eternity, gazing blankly at the white ceiling as pieces and crumbs of Mae's words gradually began filtering into my mind.

Her speculations—that maybe my mother's untimely death when we were kids hadn't been an accident, that it had been something Damien's boozy, irresponsible driving had accidentally caused, worst of all, something my own dad Zack had been privy to some kind of conspiracy—had destroyed the gossamer strands of faith I did have. Betrayal grief seeped into bone marrow with pain from wounds.

The door groaned and Nate pulled himself through it with a gentle insistence already taking up some of the space in my emptiness. Hard, hot eyes wandered over me with a worried expression that seemed to place the emptiness of the room with a gentle promise of protection.

"Jane," he panted, pushing a chair up against my bed. "How are you?

I tried to grit a miserable smile, but the shake in my voice betrayed my anguish. "I. I don't know if I'm hanging on, either," I admitted, my syllables heavy with grief and exhaustion.

Nate sat beside me and encircled my hand with his, pushing a errant strand of hair out of the way behind my ear. "We'll make it," he breathed. "I'm here with you, always."

He patted the bulge in his jacket pocket as he continued to speak. "Mae left something behind," he said, putting the envelope beside me on the bed. My heart sank, for I knew that even in death, the dark figure of Mae still haunted me. I shivered, and I tore open the envelope to find a yellow, smudged piece of paper which was crumpled. In handwriting so poor that it was unreadable was the cryptic message—a tangle of letters and numbers intertwined which would be impossible to decipher as a whole.

I'd read the page, the puzzle in my palm on an airplane with buzzing in my head. What was this? The answer to the mystery of my mother? All I'd ever been told by Mae loomed over me now, twisting memory into something tainted. I recalled the little sweet things I'd shared with my mother—her soft laughter, how she'd comb through my hair when we'd sit and whisper in the middle of late nights. These quiet-strong, warm memories of the past now carried the stain of suspicion.

Nate noticed the pain in my eyes and let go of his gentle grip on my hand. "I know it hurts," he panted. "But this could be the solution to all of this."

I leaned back, shutting my eyes, as flashbacks began to form—snippets of my childhood that I had forgotten long ago. I remembered the flash of wit at the edge of my mother's eye when she smiled, the light that would drive winter from life. I remembered the soft reprimand, the pink flush of pride when she discovered me trying to be a better person, and the stories she told of valour and devotion.

These things I remembered. But there was a hint of something suppressed in what she was saying to me, a hint of things that she could not say. Was she to be told about the crash? Was she to be told that something was more or less amis with the facts of her death?

Fascinating too, I pressed my finger on the torn page and looked in wonder at the enigmatic group. It wasn't trash garbage rubbish—it was sense, but created in a shape that would have to be decoded by an individual who would eventually untangle its coded sense. The page was filled with words that are sequentially related, acronyms, and numbers that perhaps could be rearranged to add up to addresses or dates. All the information was mouthfuls that brought me nearer to a mystery which haunted me since the day that I learned my mom had died.

Nate hesitated for a moment, or two, the strain gathering between us like the potential of a resolution. "We'll get it fixed," he ultimately said, his tone steadfast. "I have contacts—people who might fix something like that. We'll fix it, Jane. I promise you."

I nodded purposely as determination settled in. With all the strangulation betrayal and sorrow, I knew I couldn't keep going on with all of this in the dark anymore. All the circumstantial evidence, all the twisted suspicion in Mae's face over the phone line, were fragments of a puzzle I couldn't help but begin piecing together now. "I want to know what's real, Nate," I said to him, my voice braver than I was. "Not my mother, but something." I was not going to let go until I could see why I was there.

He wrapped my hand in his, his own eyes locked steadily with mine in unbreakable hope. "We'll go through it together," he promised. "You don't have to get through all of this alone, Jane. I'm here, step by step."

With each passing hour, our quiet chat and their quietness among themselves took shelter in the hospital room. I zoned out huge sections of Mae's yelling monologue to myself, her shaking accusatory finger directed at Zack and Damien, a rosary of lies as lost as they were able to tell. I wasted all those years worrying about having been so mistaken about what is real and whether my starved, desperate love-starved heart had actually simplified reality to a cartoon for me.

I was just sitting in the room, and once again my mind wandered to those few, very tender memories of my mother. I recalled how she would sing lullabies to me in a soft voice as she rocked me gently into bed, the sparkle of cunning in her eyes as she plotted and schemed beyond our existence of poverty. Despite that, in this shroud of deceit above my head, these were reassuring—memories of such unadulterated love a part of my life one day, uncorrupted and untainted by greed and bribery later my calling card.

I opened my eyes and rolled over to Nate, whose face had been a comfort to me during the pain days. "Think she knew?" I managed to ask. "My mom, of course?" "Did she know something was going on wrong that night?"

Nate's voice dropped, his own level, even whispered. "I don't know, Jane," he whispered. "But the loved ones you love have secrets in their eyes—things you do not learn through living. Perhaps she gave you clues, in case one day you'd need to be told."

They trembled too, and hope and despair swept over me like a wave. I recalled her veiled, coded messages in her own diary, the encoded signals she'd been more than society permitted her to be. Now such shreds of her secret double life were reaching out for me, urging me to abandon illusions and uncover secrets beneath.

I picked up a notebook from the bedside table, where it was littered with my doodles, and scribbled out the day or so preceding in rough notes. In the midst of this whirlwind of feeling, I was writing down whatever Mae had told me and all the scribbled script that was on the ripped piece of paper. Writing was exorcism, a way of finding myself in the midst of the whirlwind of rememberings and knowledge.

Nate watched me quietly, his eyes soft with empathy. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Every detail matters. We’ll analyze every word, every number. There’s a pattern here—something that connects all of it.”

I shook my head in disbelief at efforts to re-make my history and reality that faced me. "I cannot believe that all that I had thought was a lie," I muttered. "That the man I loved, and my daddy who raised me up, would be so able to do such a heinous act."

His fingers were stretched across mine. "Sometimes the truth hurts more than the lies we cling to," he said, his own voice charged with determination and sorrow. "But being forced to confront it is the only thing to come back from and to—and to build anything on."

I'd only glanced at the crumpled sheet of paper, the mysterious marks further proof of the grand enigma that had entered my life. Every splattered letter hummed with some pent-up force, an urgings to shatter open the things willfully withheld from me. As if Mae herself had planted this lead, this final roll of the dice to make me hers and make me move.