Left at the Mango Tree Read Online Free Page B

“She’s very beautiful, dear. Very beautiful,” he said.
    I just didn’t look one iota like my mother Edda or my father Wilbur. “It’s just that, well, Edda dear, she doesn’t look a bit like you or Wilbur,” he told her.
    “Doesn’t she?” Edda laughed. “But she’s so small, daddy, how can you tell?”
    What’s more, I looked very much like someone else on Oh. “She doesn’t remind you of anyone?” Raoul persisted.
    “Daddy, don’t be silly.” Edda rubbed her thumb over my cheeks, one of which was nearly completely covered by a mole. It was (and still is) dark brown, an upside-down teardrop covered in soft blond down.
    “Edda, you can tell me. I won’t be mad. All I want is to know the truth—and to know you’re happy of course—and I can see that you are. Do you have anything to tell me? I won’t breathe a word to Wilbur. You can trust me.”
    “Look at this birthmark, Daddy. It’s like a broken heart, like only half of a heart. Do you know who has the other half ?”
    Oh, thank God! Raoul thought, jerking his body and nearly sending the cup, saucer, and prognosticative cookie crumbs to the floor. An answer at last. “Who? Who has it? How did this happen?”
    “I do. Her heart and mine will always be connected, Daddy. I’ll always be with her, for as long as she lives.”
    Raoul’s muscles relaxed and he fell back into the sofa. His own heart felt broken just then, for he knew that Edda wanted to be for me what her own mother hadn’t been for her.
    Poor Raoul. He had always done his best to fill the void that Edda’s mother—my grandmother—left behind: he taught Edda tocook and to sew (after teaching himself with books he got at the library); he taught her manners and good posture (they spent hours in the garden with his library books on their heads); he even taught her to braid her hair (he and Bang stole a horse for a whole afternoon once so they could practice on its tail); she had three of the most doting uncles a young girl on Oh could want, too. And Edda loved all of them dearly for it. But it hadn’t been enough. That was the truth Raoul finally saw, and the realization of it pained him.
    My grandmother, Emma Patrice, disappeared when Edda was less than three. The family was on their first real holiday, a ski holiday in Switzerland, and Raoul and Emma Patrice had decided to descend the tallest slope at the resort. Raoul skied with Edda in a pack on his back, and Emma Patrice skied alone. They all descended the hill together, but Emma Patrice soon picked up speed and gained an advantage over Raoul. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t see her in front of him at all, and when he got to the bottom there was no sign of her either. He searched for hours with the help of a dozen skiers and a handful of Saint Bernards with barrels of brandy around their necks, but no one ever found a trace of Emma Patrice. Perhaps she picked up so much speed she lost control of her skis and crashed deep in the snow. Or perhaps she picked up just enough, enough to elude Raoul and Edda and a lifetime of laundry and pineapple preserves. Either way, Raoul returned to the resort with Edda, fed her mugfuls of steaming hot chocolate, and told her her mother was gone.
    It was a long time before Raoul could stop looking for Emma Patrice in his line at the airport, stop hoping for her handwriting when he picked up the day’s mail. And it was a very long time before Edda could drink hot chocolate again, a sweet reminder of her bitter past.
    Your eyes are like the sea, full of mystery.
    Edda sang to me. My eyes were full of mystery, indeed. They were a purple shade of red, and there was only one man on Oh with the same red eyes. One man with red eyes and white skin marred by a broken-hearted mole. But Edda seemed not to notice the way my skin paled against her own. Raoul watched her and felt re-open in his heart the lacerations from so many years before, when instead of letters from Emma Patrice that he could