Magdalena's Shadow Read online

  Magdalena’s Shadow

  E. E. Orme

  Table of Contents

  Magdalena’s Shadow

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A Place Among the Thistles

  About the Author

  Copyright & Publishing Information

  For Sierra

  Chapter One

  Morning crept unnoticed into the modern, minimalist expanse of Penthouse #2 where no clocks chimed or gonged to mark the hour. What threatened to be an ordinary morning of quiet routine was interrupted by the harsh sound of the usually silent buzzer. The noise erupted through the apartment like an attack. Coco stood frozen in the center of her bedroom still holding her mother’s yellow chiffon dress like a favorite stuffed toy. Her first thought was to hide, but hiding wouldn’t block out the noise; hiding wouldn’t stop the intrusion. Warily, she laid the dress across her bed and moved toward the intercom, the lit button on the side indicating that the call came from the ground floor lobby.

  Pressing the button, Coco heard the doorman’s familiar voice ring in the gloom of Penthouse #2.

  “Miss Rodriguez, there’s a woman here who says she has a delivery for Eva Clark? I told her Eva doesn’t work here anymore, but she says she spoke to her yesterday.”

  “She’s not here, Benny. You know she quit years ago,” Coco replied. Hearing Eva’s name brought back memories. Eva had been the good nanny, the last nanny, the one paid employee who had effectively stood in place of Coco’s absent mother, Magdalena.

  “She says this is the address Eva gave her.”

  “Well Eva isn’t here. I don’t know where she is.” Coco felt the lingering uneasiness begin to take hold of her. The Keeper could arrive at the apartment any minute now, and she didn’t allow Coco to touch the intercom.

  “She says Eva needs to sign for it,” Benny said. “She has to witness the signature. She says she talked to her yesterday? She’s adamant.”

  Coco bit her lip. “Eva’s gone. Just make her leave, okay, Benny?”

  “Who are you talking to, Coco?” the Keeper asked, standing behind Coco. Coco hadn’t heard her come in. Biting her lip even harder, Coco turned to look at her housekeeper. “Coco, go to your room and rest.” Coco left the living room. From behind her bedroom door, Coco heard the Keeper dismiss Benny and then apologize to the woman for Coco’s behavior, calling her a difficult and deeply troubled girl. “God alone knows how hard it is to care for a mentally challenged child,” the Keeper added before buzzing the woman up to their floor. Angry, Coco slipped silently out of her bedroom and into the large sitting room that had been her mother’s. Over the years when things had been broken, they were thrown away and replaced, but lately it seemed that items just went missing for no reason at all. Whole walls were empty of their photographs: unpublished proofs from one of Magdalena’s Prada shoots had gone last week leaving only the signed Lichtenstein print Gianni Versace had given her mother simply because she had admired it. What would Magdalena say if she knew her things were disappearing?

  Coco looked around the room. Would Magdalena even notice the empty places and blank walls if she did come home? The apartment was a mess, stacks of fashion magazines lined the walls and boxes of new clothes lay open and spilling over in nearly every room. Silk sundresses, linen jackets, and cotton designer tees lay tossed over the sofas, flung haphazardly across the matching chairs, left to spill in varying colors from the boxes of clothes sent to Magdalena – clothes that only her daughter would wear. Coco walked to the empty south wall where only her fashion collages now hung, letting her fingers trace silk swatches and couture evening gowns cut from Vogue and Elle. They lay one across the other, creating the framework of the life Coco hoped to someday inhabit. Through fashion she would find her freedom, her mother, and herself. She felt hope bloom in her chest, the bitter tears of loneliness stinging her eyes. Prada, Chanel, Valentino, Balenciaga: they were her haven, her home, and her hope. Coco walked toward her mother’s portrait, a black and white photo taken on a beach when she first had signed with Prada. Coco looked just like her, just as tall, as thin, and as beautiful. Magdalena was a fashion icon, and Coco desperately wanted to follow in her footsteps. Kissing the tips of her fingers, Coco raised her hand to her mother’s cheek.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said, her eyes fixed on her mother. “Please, Mama, I have to get out.” Hearing the Keeper leave the apartment, Coco slipped out of the room and headed to the front door.

  Standing just outside the light, Coco listened in shadow while the floor numbers above the elevator doors glowed one after the other, indicating the woman’s steady upward approach. Coco raised her hood to hide her features, hiding her tall slender form in the shadows of the dark apartment. She was almost a woman, yet life with the Keeper had kept her small and powerless, denying her the maturity she had hoped to feel at sixteen. That was why she stayed quiet and hidden.

  With a ding and a mechanized rumble the woman stepped out of the elevator. In one arm, she held a bundle of cloth with a document, in the other a paisley print cotton bag. Her eyes didn’t smile when she spotted the Keeper waiting by the entryway table.

  “Please sign here, Miss Clark.” The woman’s clipped syllables did not welcome argument. Coco watched the stranger place the bundle carefully on the sofa. On the table, she placed the document along with a pen, a pen the Keeper did not hesitate to pick up.

  Coco wanted to explain how Eva Clark had quit three years ago, and that Magdalena, her super-model mother, was too busy jet-setting around the world to hire a new nanny or a proper housekeeper. But the Keeper didn’t deal in truth like Coco did. She dealt in bruises, hard slaps, and gutting ridicule. Without hesitation, the Keeper signed the nanny’s name to the paper. “No.” Coco felt a spark of courage, her voice coming of its own accord. She pushed open the door, taking a step into the hall, “Eva…Eva….”

  “Yes,” the Keeper said. “Yes, Coco, I’m right here.” Both women watched Coco, the Keeper’s eyes narrowing to a look of warning. “It’s okay, Coco. I’ll be with you in a moment. Please go back to your bedroom like I asked.”

  “Did you I.D. her?” Coco
asked the woman. “How do you know she is who she says she is? She’s not Eva Clark. Eva is gone.”

  “Coco, you are having an episode. Please go in and rest. I’ll be with you shortly.” The two women stared at Coco. “Again, I’m so sorry. She’s bipolar and the drugs are having no effect,” the Keeper added when Coco turned back toward the apartment.

  “I’m not bipolar,” Coco yelled over her shoulder. “And I’m not having an episode.”

  Retreating again behind the crack in the door, Coco watched the Keeper return the document without reading it. The woman didn’t check her I.D. Instead she folded the document into her purse and dropped a copy next to the bundle on the sofa. Then she was gone.

  “Coco,” the Keeper said, “I know you’re still there. Get over here now.”

  Biting her lip, Coco walked into the hallway. “I said, get your ass here NOW,” the Keeper said, her voice rising. She ignored the bundle and bag on the couch, turning her full focus on Coco. “Don’t you ever question me when I’m doing business! If I say I’m Eva Clark, then I am FUCKING Eva Clark. If I say I’m your mama, then I am your FUCKING mama. If I say I’m God, then I am MOTHER FUCKING GOD! Are we clear?”

  “You don’t have the right to pretend to be my mother or her absent employee. You don’t have the right to forge other people’s names. Eva quit. Benny knows Eva quit. If I tell him you signed her name and pretended to be her I could get you….” The Keeper’s fist knocked Coco’s head into the wall behind her.

  “Don’t you threaten me! What I do and don’t do is between me and God and any little bitch who tries to interfere is gonna get her ass handed to her. You want your ass handed to you?” Coco didn’t answer. The Keeper stared at her for a while. When Coco still didn’t answer, she hit her a second time. “I asked you a question, Coco. You better answer me this time. I asked you if you want your fucking ass handed to you?”

  “No,” Coco whispered, holding her face where the Keeper had hit her.

  “Well, then you take what that bitch brought and don’t you let me see you or it again, not till tomorrow. And remember, that thing she brought is your problem, not mine.” Coco looked at the package and then back up at the Keeper. “Go on and get it,” the Keeper said, “and you better keep it quiet.” She left Coco bruised and alone in the hallway. Angry and hurt, Coco walked to the couch and grabbed hold of the multicolored bundle.

  Something heavy rolled out of the middle of the cloth, turning over once, twice, before landing with a soft thud on the fabric of the sofa. Black hair curled out from under pink fabric as the bundle became animated.

  The cloth-covered lump moved and then whimpered. Coco stepped back in surprise. Two huge black eyes stared up at her while a large red mouth opened to stretch like an O. The ensuing scream bounced across ornate mirrors to reverberate off the marble walls of the entryway.

  “You better shut that thing up,” the Keeper said, returning with her coat and purse. “She’s the only reason I came in today. You keep her quiet or you’ll get worse than you just got.” Coco stared at the baby, her head still ringing with the last punch, while behind her the Keeper stepped into the elevator and was gone.

  Babies weren’t wholly unknown to Coco. She had seen them on TV, smiling and looking sweet, but she had never been left alone with one.

  After Coco’s initial panic passed, she leaned over the couch. The baby looked up at her, its cry turning from a scream to a low whimper, accompanied by the rustling of fabric. Coco fixed her eyes on the baby, who stared up at her with a questioning expression.

  “Hello.” Coco reached out a tentative hand to stroke the child’s cheek. Its slight size, delicate features, and luminous brown eyes created a person too tiny and beautiful to be real. The baby stared at her, flailing its hands wildly and kicking its feet, its little body wiggling against the red patterned fabric where it had been dumped.

  “Hi, baby.” Coco’s words were a whisper in the spacious entryway. The baby sucked its fist and then flailed its arms again. Coco looked down on it in wonder, fresh tears stinging her eyes. “We need help.” Her mind turned again to her mother. I can’t call her. Coco had done everything she could to reach her mother, but her calls and letters, emails and IMs went unanswered. There has to be someone I can call. When Coco moved to find her unreliable cellphone, she heard an intake of breath followed by a tremendous shriek.

  “No, no!” Coco soothed, hurrying back. “Don’t do that, I’m not going away.” The baby stopped screaming and stared up at her expectantly. “We need help.” Coco moved back toward the door, grief filling her chest, restricting her breathing. She gulped back a sob. “I’m going to get my phone; just wait here.” When she moved from sight the baby screamed again.

  “Okay. Okay. You can come too. Just don’t wiggle.”

  Coco slipped the baby carefully off the sofa into her arms. It weighed almost nothing. Coco felt the baby’s tiny hand grasp onto her thumb, its dark eyes still peering into her face.

  “Hi.” Coco smiled, her tears running freely down her face. She felt lost in the dark depths of this tiny child’s eyes, lost in the tender way the little stranger saw her and held her hand.

  Coco’s loneliness rose in her stomach, twisting her insides into knots while the baby kept staring, taking in every feature of her face until she felt that she was being memorized in the same way she had once memorized her own mother, Magdalena. Coco blinked away the thought, breaking the connection. How is it possible that I’m standing here holding a baby? With the break in eye contact, the baby began to cry again – not the harsh, high-pitched cries of abandonment but the soft whimpers of a person who is in some way disappointed.

  Coco looked down again. Again, she felt the instant connection when her eyes met and were held by the liquid brown eyes of the child. In that second, she kissed the baby’s head, breaking their gaze, her nose nuzzling the baby’s cheek while she walked into the penthouse.

  The Keeper came and went when she liked, doing as little as she chose to keep the penthouse in order. That day was no exception. Once, Coco remembered with bitterness, there had been cooks and maids, a nanny she loved, and friends to play with. Now there was just Rosa, the housekeeper, whom Coco called “the Keeper” because she was more jailer than maid. The Keeper never treated her like anything other than an inconvenient mental case that needed to be managed. She read Coco’s emails, deleted numbers from her phone, and ran surveillance using parent protection apps on every call and text she made. Even little conversations with old friends had become impossible. Coco didn’t know why the Keeper hated her or where so many of her mother’s things had gone and she didn’t dare ask. The Keeper was the only person who came to the apartment now. She was the only one who brought food, who kept the lights on and the apartment warm. Each time Coco had tried to tell anyone how the Keeper treated her, she was beaten and lied to until she actually believed she was as crazy and difficult as the Keeper told her she was.

  After hours of Googling how to care for babies, Coco’s resentment grew. How could she leave now with a baby to care for? She felt more trapped than ever. Worst still, the baby was crying and sucking its fingers. It looked tired and hungry and Coco didn’t know how to help it. Around dinnertime, Coco remembered the paisley cotton bag the woman had left on the couch in the hallway. Retrieving it, Coco found it contained a large tin of dry formula, a bottle, a pacifier, diapers, and wipes.

  Coco laid the baby on the sofa so it could watch her at the wet bar, a small kitchen with granite countertops where Coco made most of her food. She rarely entered the main kitchen where the Keeper spent her working hours eating and watching TV. The wet bar had a tiny fridge under the counter and a microwave, as well as dozens and dozens of bottles of alcohol with foreign labels, left over from the days when Magdalena still had lived there.

  Coco put three scoops of formula into the bottle (as directed by the neatly printed instructions on the label) before adding water. She shook the contents and microwaved the bottle for
a few seconds to warm it. While she worked, she could see the baby staring at her from the sofa, watching everything she did.

  When the microwave beeped, the baby kicked its feet happily. Coco twisted the nipple onto the bottle as hard as she could before lifting the baby into her arms. It cooed and shook its fists, its pink mouth puckered in anticipation. At first the baby felt awkward in her lap, but with some small adjustments Coco brought its head to rest in the crook of her arm and raised the bottle to its expectant lips.

  The baby latched on instantly, sending bubbles shooting up the center of the bottle as it fiercely sucked out the formula. Coco stared at the feeding infant and smiled. She was holding a baby, and she had actually managed to feed it. The baby drank and drank. Little bits of formula slid down its cheeks onto the red cotton of Coco’s hoodie, leaving a wet mark that would dry to a hard chalk if it weren’t washed out.

  Coco didn’t consider the shirt, nor the near silence that filled the room as Mozart played low in the background of a televised fashion show. For the first time in memory she was not troubled by the howl of the Chicago wind, a tortured sound that had frightened her since she had been a child. Instead, she considered the little person who ate with such hunger and looked with such contentment on her and the world she occupied.

  When the bottle emptied, the baby’s intense eyes slid closed. The milk that remained in its mouth ran down its cheek as the baby fell asleep. Coco stared silently, hardly breathing, hardly thinking, entirely enthralled by the person who had moved so inexplicably into her life.

  The door slammed at noon the next day, signaling the Keeper’s return to #2. Coco jumped at the sound, as did the baby who fell into hysterical screams.

  “What the hell? I told you to keep that brat quiet,” the Keeper barked, two bags of groceries hanging from her sausage-like fingers.