Page 119 of Only the Beautiful

“She has been wanting this from the moment I met her,” I say, and then I head for the elevator.

My heart is pounding with both anticipation and amazement as I ride up to the twentieth floor. When I walk into the room, Amaryllis is out on the tiny balcony reading, and still wearing her pleated skirt and coral-hued blouse from our flight to Los Angeles hours earlier. She’d asked if I wanted her to come with me tonight, but because she’s already heard me give this talk dozens of times, I told her to enjoy the view of the city lights from twenty stories up. Now she comes into the room, smiling and asking if it was a good evening.

“It was definitely a good evening,” I answer. “The best.”

“Oh yes?” she says, smiling wider. “How come?”

I pat one of the two beds. “There’s something you need to know.”

When I tell her that her mother came to see me at the bookstore, she doesn’t seem incredulous or even overly surprised. It’s as if she’s been expecting news like this all her life, and now it has finally come. Amaryllis merely closes her eyes for a moment, as if needing to make sure the moment is indeed real, and then opens them to ask where Rosie is.

“She’s here. In the lobby. Waiting for you.”

We head to the elevator.

As Amaryllis expectantly paces in place waiting for the car to arrive, I am suddenly aware that everything is about to change. The minute Rosie and Amaryllis are reunited, I will be giving my girl back to her real mother, this precious child whom I love as my own daughter.

With giving, there is cost, isn’t there? There is always cost. Sometimes it is an easy sum to hand over.

And sometimes it exacts from you the whole measure of your heart.

I will pay it, though. It is the right thing to do. And in a way, I will be righting a wrong the only way I can. I am at last returning to a mother the child that was taken from her.

Beside me, Amaryllis takes a long breath, her eyes on the half circle of numbers displaying the elevator’s ascent. I want to tell her so many things in these seconds before the double doors open and the time for saying them is gone. I want to tell Amaryllis how proud I am of the young woman she has become, especially in light of the heartaches she had to endure far too young in her life. I want to tell her that she will always have a home with me, and that no matter what happens after tonight, I will forever be no farther away than a phone call at any moment of the night or day. I want to tell Amaryllis that no single thing I have ever done in my life has brought me as much joy and delight as taking her home to the house in Laurel Heights and now bringing her to this moment in time. I want to tell her that I love her. But the elevator car is suddenly here, and Amaryllis is dashing inside the second the doors open. And which of these things does Amaryllis not already know?

Amaryllis takes in another deep breath as the car begins descending.

“You all right?” I ask.

“I am. I just want this part to be done.”

I think I know what she means. It is absurd for a mother andher child to be virtual strangers to each other. She wants the absurdity of that to be gone.

Seconds later, we are in the lobby and walking toward Rosie. She sees us, stands, and takes a step in our direction. The next instant, Amaryllis is running to her, and I know, as I have always known, that the two of them have never been truly and completely apart.

Robert and I watch in awe as Rosie and Amaryllis embrace, all the years and distance seeming to fall away like fractured shackles.

Rosie and I will likely not talk today about all that has transpired in the last sixteen years. Perhaps not tomorrow, either, or the next day. In time, though, I will tell her, if she does not already know, of Truman’s passing. I will tell her about learning from Stuart of her attempt to escape, and his regret, and that he was the one to tell me where Amaryllis had been sent. I will tell her of every milestone of Amaryllis’s that I got to witness.

Mother and child part to look at each other, happy tears streaming down their faces. Rosie looks past Amaryllis to where I stand a few feet away and mouths the words “Thank you.” Then she turns her attention back to her daughter, stroking her hair and touching her face.

“Oh, Mama. I’ve missed you so much,” Amaryllis says.

At these words—the first she has ever heard her daughter say—Rosie tips her head back in wonderment, her eyes glittering with delight.

I can very nearly see what Rosie is surely seeing at the sound, finally, of her daughter’s voice—the bursts of color, the whorls of perhaps magenta, cerulean, and goldenrod, tumbling about like jewels from heaven.

I can almost see them.

And they are beautiful.