When I became a teacher myself, I vowed never to have a pet. I knew I’d have favorites, gravitating to the students who made my life easier with their dedication and who made me feel like a success through their achievements. But I promised never to treat any of them with favoritism, and I honestly thought I’d succeeded in reaching that goal. Somehow, though, even as I worked to hide the fact that Mattie Cafferty amazed me every time she took the stage, people knew. I didn’t even realize it until after the accident, when people would say how ironic it was that my favorite student had been driving the car that killed Sam. Worse, Grace knew. “And you thought she was so perfect!” she said to me when we’d learned it had been Mattie behind the wheel of that car. Mattie texting her boyfriend. I would have put Mattie in charge of the group in the auditorium in a heartbeat. I knew I could count on her.
My cheeks grew hot, thinking about Mattie, and when I walked into the teachers’ lounge, one of the science teachers was just leaving and she gave me a worried look. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine.” I smiled. “Just rushing, as usual.”
Grace had been right. I had thought Mattie was perfect.
I’d been teaching my Improv class when the police officer showed up in the doorway of the classroom. My first thought was that something had happened to Grace and my heart started to skitter.
“It’s your husband,” the officer said as he walked with me toward the principal’s office, only a few doors down from my classroom. “He’s been in a very serious accident.”
“Is he alive?” I asked. That was all that mattered. That he was alive.
“Let’s talk in here,” he said, opening the door to the principal’s office. The two administrative assistants looked at me with white, flat expressions on their faces, and I knew that they knew something I hadn’t yet been told.
One of them stepped forward, gripping my forearm. “Shall I get Grace out of class?” she asked.
I nodded, then let the officer usher me into one of the counselor’s offices, which we had to ourselves.
“Is he alive?” I asked again. My body was shaking.
He pulled out a chair for me and nearly had to fold me into it, my body was so frozen in place. “They don’t think he’s going to make it,” he said. “I’m sorry. As soon as your daughter gets here, I can—”
I stood again. “No!” I shouted. “No. Please!” I pictured the office staff looking toward the door. They could no doubt hear me, but I didn’t care. “I need to get to him!” I said.
“As soon as your daughter gets here, we’ll go,” he said.
The door opened and Grace stood there, her eyes full of fear. “Mom,” she said. “What’s going on?”
I pulled her into my arms. “It’s Daddy, honey.” I tried to sound calm, but my voice splintered apart. I was squeezing her so hard in my arms that neither of us could breathe. I knew I was frightening her. I was frightening myself. In the back of the police car, I held Grace’s hand in a death grip as the officer filled us in on the details. Sam had been crossing the Monkey Junction intersection when his new Prius was broadsided by a girl sending a text message. He didn’t tell us the girl was Mattie. He would have had no idea the significance her identity would have for either of us.
A month or so ago, I was looking through the school’s online newspapers trying to find a particular review from a play we’d put on last year, when I stumbled across a photograph that had appeared in one of the winter issues. There we were, Mattie Cafferty and me. The caption read Mrs. Vincent Directs Mattie Cafferty in South Pacific. Grace had seen this picture, of course. She worked on the news paper. She may even have written the caption. In the picture, I stood next to Mattie, my hand on her shoulder, her dark hair spilling over my wrist. I remembered how I felt, working with her during that play. I’d had the feeling I’d discovered the next Meryl Streep. I wondered how Grace must feel now when she’d stumble across a picture of Mattie as she worked on the paper. I wished I could delete all of Mattie’s pictures from the school files—or at least delete the moment captured in that particular photograph, when my attachment to Mattie was so evident, even to me.
Mattie’s parents pulled her out of Hunter immediately after the accident. They moved to Florida, and a month later, I received a heartfelt letter from her filled with grief and regret. “I can’t ask you to forgive me,” she’d written. “I just want you to know I think of you and Mr. Vincent and Grace every single day.”
I had forgiven her. She’d been irresponsible and stupid, but it could have been Grace. It could have been me at her age. Grace would never forgive her, and I had the feeling she would never forgive me for once caring about Mattie. For connecting to Mattie in a way I couldn’t seem to connect to her.
I found a quiet corner of the lounge and reached into my purse for my phone. “Tara!” Emerson answered.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Meet me for dinner tonight?”
“Did you find out something about Noelle? Something about her baby?”
“I don’t want to get into it over the phone. I just…oh, my God, Tara.”
“What?”
“Henry’s at six, okay? I really… This will have to stay between the two of us.”
She didn’t sound at all like herself and she was starting to scare me. “Are you sick?” I felt panicky at the thought of losing someone else I loved.
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “Is six okay?”
“Fine,” I said. I hung up the phone, worried. She isn’t sick and nobody died, I told myself as I flipped my phone shut and returned it to my purse. Whatever it was, then, I could handle it.
15
Emerson
Henry’s was as familiar to me as my own living room. It always had this sort of amber glow inside. Something to do with the woodwork and the lighting and the mocha-colored leather seats in the booths. It usually comforted me, that space, but it would take a lot more than that to comfort me tonight.
I spotted Tara sitting near the window in the booth we always claimed as ours. “It should have a plaque with the Galloway Girls on it,” Tara said once, back when we were really good about getting together every week. Before life got in the way.
Tara stood to give me an unsmiling hug. She knew something serious was up.
Our waitress took our drink orders and since we knew the menu by heart, we ordered our meals at the same time. Tara wanted steak and a baked potato, and I ordered a house salad. I hadn’t been able to eat much of anything since discovering the letter and I doubted I’d be able to get through the salad, either. I was sure, though, that I could make quick work of a glass of white wine.
“That’s all you’re having?” Tara asked.
“Don’t have much of an appetite,” I said. “I’m glad to see yours is back to normal, though.” I tried to smile. Tara had always been one of those women who could eat what ever she wanted and not gain an ounce. After Sam’s death, though, she became almost skeletal. Noelle and I had worried about her.
“There is no normal for me anymore,” Tara said, and I thought about the bombshell I had in my purse. In a few minutes, there would be no normal for either of us. I felt my eyes begin to tear and even in the low amber light, Tara noticed.
“Sweetie.” She reached across the table to squeeze my hand. “What is it? Is it your grandfather?”
“No.” I pulled in a long breath. Well, I thought, this is it.
“I found something at Noelle’s house.”
The waitress set a glass of white wine in front of me and a red in front of Tara. I took a huge gulp while Tara waited for me to continue. My head already felt light.
“There was a box of letters…mostly thank-you cards and that sort of thing from patients and…just miscellaneous things.” I tapped my fingertips on the table. My hand was shaking. “I read through them all,” I said. “I just had to. I wanted to feel close to her, you know?”
“I know,”
Tara said. Of course she understood. She told me that after Sam died she read some boring legal briefs he’d written just to feel connected to him.
“Anyway, I found these two letters.” My palms were damp as I reached into my purse. I’d folded the two sheets in half. Now I unfolded them, the peach-colored stationery with its brief handwritten message on top. “They’re from Noelle, not to her. This one’s just one line.” I smoothed my fingers over the paper and leaned closer to Tara. “‘Dear Anna,’” I read, “‘I’ve started this letter so many times and here I am, starting it again with no idea how to tell you…’”
“Who is Anna?” Tara asked. We were both leaning so far across the table that our heads were nearly touching.
“I don’t know.” I took another swallow of wine. “But I do know what Noelle wanted to say, though I still can’t believe it.” I slipped the sheet of peach stationery beneath the white sheet. “Here’s the second letter,” I said. “She obviously wrote this one on her computer and printed it, but it’s unfinished and I just have no idea—”
“Read it,” Tara interrupted me.
“It’s dated July 8, 2003,” I said. Then I began reading, my voice close to a whisper.
“Dear Anna,
“I read an article mentioning you in the paper and knew I had to write to you. What I have to tell you is difficult to write, but I know it will be far more difficult for you to hear, and I’m so sorry. I’m a midwife, or at least I used to be.
“Years ago, I was taking painkillers for a back injury, which must have affected my balance as well as my judgment. I accidentally dropped a newborn baby, who died instantly. I panicked and wasn’t thinking straight. I took a similar-looking infant from the hospital where I had privileges to substitute for the baby I killed. I hate to use that word. It was a horrible accident.
“I realize now the baby I took was your baby. I’m terribly sorry for what I put you through. I want you to know, though, that your daughter has extraordinary parents and is loved and…”
I looked up at Tara, whose eyes were wide. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s all she wrote.”
PART TWO
ANNA
16
Anna
Alexandria, Virginia
I could kiss my daughter goodbye in the morning, and it could be the last kiss I ever gave her. So every time I left for work, every time I sent her off with friends, I embraced Haley as if it might be the last time. She never balked, although I knew that day was coming. She was twelve, rapidly pushing thirteen, and someday soon she would say, “Mom, just go.” That would be okay. I wanted Haley to live long enough to rebel and say, “I hate you!” in the healthy, normal war dance of mothers and daughters all over the planet. So when she left the house with Bryan, slipping on her helmet and forgetting to say goodbye to me as they wheeled the bikes out of the garage, I stopped myself from calling her back for a hug. For a “Be careful.” I just bit my lip and let her go.
Although Bryan had been back in our lives for nearly two months now, I wasn’t exactly relaxed when I sent Haley out the door with him. Today, he was taking her for a bike ride along the Potomac River. I knew there was plenty to celebrate in that fact. First, Haley felt well enough to go for a ride. This was week eight in her treatment. A rest week away from the hospital and chemotherapy when she could act and feel like a normal kid. That alone was worth celebrating. Except for the puffy face from the steroids and the occasional bitchy little outbursts (which I secretly applauded because I loved that feisty toughness in her), she seemed like her old self this week. Second, Bryan was playing Good Dad with her. I wasn’t used to it yet. Two months of playing Daddy didn’t make up for ten years of desertion and part of my heart was still hardened with anger toward him. Oh, he’d sent child support checks every month from the day he’d crapped out on us, cut by his bank in sunny California. He’d sent gifts on Haley’s birthdays—gifts that showed he had no idea what her interests were. Barbie dolls and jewelry? Not hardly. Get a grip, I told myself now as I watched them pedal toward the Mount Vernon Bike Trail. He’s here now. He’s trying hard and Haley’s loving it. Loving him.
I walked upstairs to my desk—my office away from the office. My desk overlooked the river, and even after living in the town house for seven years, it still took me a few minutes to tear my eyes away from the water and the distant tree-lined shore of Maryland. I was behind in my work, though, and I finally began answering the stack of email that had piled up in the past few hours. That was how I’d let Bryan know about Haley’s relapse: by email. I’d written to him three days after I got the news, when I was finally able to stop crying long enough to clearly see the screen. I’d thought we were safe, damn it! Ten years of remission should count for something. She was my kick-butt kid, active and smart and so much fun that I’d choose hanging out with her over my friends any day. You’d never know she’d been so sick as a little girl and she had only the vaguest memories of that eighteen-month nightmare herself. But the new bruises, the fevers and uncharacteristic malaise scared the shit out of me. I resisted taking her to the doctor, afraid of what he’d say. When I finally did, and he told me the ALL was back, I couldn’t say I was surprised. Devastated, yes. Surprised, no. I was surprised, though, by Bryan’s response to my email. It had been Haley’s first bout with leukemia that had sent him packing. Well, it had been more than that, but the leukemia had been the final straw. He’d moved from Virginia to California, as far from his sick kid and terrified wife as he could get, so I’d expected the news of Haley’s relapse to make him disappear from our lives altogether. Instead, he called me. He’d just been laid off, he said. I couldn’t remember exactly what kind of work he did. Something to do with software for a company in the Silicon Valley? Anyway, he said he was coming to Virginia. He wanted to help.
For days after that call, my mood jumped all over the place. Haley’d started her massive doses of steroids and it was hard to say which of us was acting crazier. I was angry at how late Bryan’s help was in coming. We could have used him during the past ten years. Now, though, Haley and I had become a team. Our favorite saying when she was helping me fix the plumbing in our town house or raking leaves with me in the yard was “We don’t need no stinkin’ man!” so I was worried how he’d fit in. Would he suddenly decide he wanted a say in her care? Forget that! And how would Haley react to him? She didn’t remember him and never seemed to care much about the cards and gifts he sent. Living in Old Town Alexandria, Haley had friends from single-parent families, blended families, gay families, black families, Hispanic families, Muslim families. You name it. So I didn’t think she ever felt as though she stood out by not having a dad.
I guess I’d convinced myself that she didn’t care about Bryan, but she surprised me. When I asked her if she wanted him to come, she said, “Hell, yes! It’s about time.” I’d laughed. She had a mouth on her for a twelve-year-old. I knew where she’d gotten it from, so what could I say?
Bryan showed up two weeks after we spoke on the phone, and it shocked me how easily Haley welcomed him into her life. It made me proud of myself—I’d done a better job than I’d thought of not turning her against him, which had been a challenge. I told her she got her computer skills from him. She sure didn’t get them from me. She’d created a website for siblings of missing kids practically by herself. I’d made excuses for his complete absence from our lives. “He loved you so much that he couldn’t bear to watch you suffer,” I’d said, when I explained about the divorce. “And then he got a job in California and it’s hard for him to travel across the country.” I was sure that she’d figured out that was B.S., but it didn’t seem to matter to her. She wanted her father.
She didn’t remember him at all. It was a stranger who showed up in her hospital room during her third week of chemo. He’d held the basin for her while she got sick. He sat frowning at her bedside, his hands knotted beneath his chin, as she slept fitfully after an aspiration of her bone marrow. He brought her lemon drops when she co
mplained about the nasty taste in her mouth from the chemo. He bought her bandannas in a rainbow of colors because she hated her baldness. But he didn’t recognize Fred, the tattered stuffed bear who was her constant companion, as the gift he’d given her on her first birthday.
She seemed comfortable with him from the start. More comfortable than I was, that was for sure. She looked nothing like him. Her resemblance to me had been strong from the day she was born. She had my light brown hair and green eyes, while Bryan was very dark haired—or at least he used to be. He showed up now with George Clooney–like salt-and-pepper hair. He still had those long-lashed brown eyes behind rectangular-framed glasses and a nose that looked like it came out of the Roman Empire even though he was of English and German descent. He’d been thirty-five when I last saw him and he’d been a good-looking guy back then. Now at forty-five, he looked a little softer all over and the skin around his eyes was beginning to wrinkle—like my own—and I had to admit to myself if to no one else that the anger I’d felt toward him had done nothing to dull the attraction I’d once had for him.
He rented an apartment not far from Old Town and began looking for work, but he hadn’t yet found a job and I thought all three of us were glad. The truth was, he was a help. An enormous one. I’d been up for the directorship of the Missing Children’s Bureau when Haley relapsed, and I’d really wanted that job. I’d worked for MCB for years, frustrated by the organizational structure that needed changing. I wanted to be at the helm. When Haley got sick, I thought I’d have to let someone else take the appointment, but with Bryan’s help, I’d been able to accept the job. Haley was spending most weekdays at Children’s Hospital in D.C. and most weekends at home. I could bring work with me to Children’s, but when I needed to attend a meeting or whatever, Bryan took my place at her bedside. He’d brought her to the doctor twice this week, both times for routine blood work. Taking her out for something fun, like he was doing today, though, was the biggest help of all. He was treating Haley like a normal, healthy kid. Like his daughter. Yet I didn’t completely trust him. I kept waiting for him to get his fill. To pack his bags and escape to the West Coast again. I’d kill him if he hurt Haley that way. Just slaughter him.
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