Haley had forgiven him for the way he’d treated her in the past, obviously. Maybe she’d never even been angry with him. He’d caught her in time. She didn’t yet have that pissy teenager’s attitude toward her parents, although the steroids could sometimes make her seem like it. I caught the brunt of her irritable moods. Not Bryan. She was sweet as sugar around him, and I knew she was afraid of losing him again.
I’d been working online for over an hour when I heard Haley and Bryan walk into the kitchen from the garage. I went downstairs and found them laughing. Haley was tying her blue bandanna back onto her head. She’d lost her hair over the course of a single day and she’d cried from sunup to sundown. As far as I knew, she hadn’t cried since.
“Have fun?” I asked.
“She’s like a machine on a bike.” Bryan touched her shoulder proudly, as though he had something to do with how she’d turned out. I honestly wasn’t sure how much I had to do with the person Haley had become, either. She’d been born smart and self-confident and independent. The independence was a problem, since I wanted to keep her chained to my side. I’d lost one child and I had no intention of losing this one.
“Dad hasn’t ridden a bike in a long time,” Haley said, “but he only crashed three times.”
“Twice,” Bryan corrected her, grinning.
I could tell how much Haley liked saying that word. Dad. She used it a lot, as though she was making up for all the years she’d never been able to say it.
“Stay for dinner?” I asked, but Bryan shook his head.
“Gonna give you two some girl time.” He drew Haley into a hug. “Want to do this again tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“You have homework?” I asked.
“Not much.” She was keeping up with her schoolwork even during the weeks in the hospital. I didn’t think I’d have her motivation if I were in her place. She didn’t want to fall behind her friends.
“Go do it and I’ll finish up my work and then we can eat.”
“Okay,” she said, heading for the stairs. She looked over her shoulder at us. “Bye, Dad,” she said.
“See you tomorrow.” Bryan waved.
We listened to her clomp up the stairs. “Thanks for your help today,” I said.
“It’s my pleasure. Believe me.”
“She’s enjoying getting to know you.”
“Not half as much as I’m enjoying getting to know her.”
I felt angry all of a sudden and I turned away from him to take two plates from the cabinet above the dishwasher. We’d had long conversations about Haley’s condition and treatment. Long talks about Haley. I’d shown him videos of her in ballet class and playing T-ball and beating the crap out of another swim team with her phenomenal breaststroke. But we hadn’t talked about the way he left. His cowardice. The sheer meanness of it. “I can’t handle the possibility of losing another child,” he’d said before he left us the first time Haley got sick. Well, neither could I, but that didn’t give me the right to walk out the door.
Neither of us had uttered a word about Lily. When I told him I’d been named the director of the Missing Children’s Bureau, I’d watched his face for a sign that he got it, but he acted like I’d said I was the director of a publishing company or a preschool, something that had nothing at all to do with our lives.
I’d have to talk to him about it at some point, because I’d burst if I didn’t and it was really pissing me off that he acted as though he could waltz back into our lives without consequence. Right now, though, I didn’t dare do anything that would hurt the relationship he was forming with Haley.
I set the plates on the counter, then walked to the garage door. “So we’ll see you again tomorrow?” I asked, pulling the door open.
“Right.” He walked to the door, then turned to face me, smiling. “She’s going to grow up to be just like you,” he said. “She already reminds me of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know,” he said with a shrug. “Just…pretty incredible.” His smile was sort of rueful. I could see the regret in his eyes. “See you tomorrow,” he said.
He left and I watched him walk through the open garage door to his car where he’d parked it on the street. Don’t you fall for him, too, I told myself. I wouldn’t. Too much water under that ol’ bridge.
I had salmon baking in the oven when the phone rang an hour later. I picked up the receiver from its cradle near the fridge. I always answered the phone, never bothering to look at the caller ID. That came from years of wanting the phone to ring. Of wanting answers. I always answered the phone with hope in my voice.
“Hello?” I turned the heat down under the rice.
“It’s Jeff Jackson.”
Oh, shit. Haley’s oncologist, calling at six o’clock. Not a good sign. I tensed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. She’s doing so well, I wanted to say. Please, please let her have this week in peace.
“Just got the lab reports,” he said. “Her blood count’s low.”
“Oh, crap.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Jeff, she looks great. She went for a long bike ride today and—”
“She needs a transfusion.”
I shut my eyes. “Now?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Damn it!”
“I’ll call Children’s and have them get a room ready for her,” he said, then added softly, “Sorry.”
It took me a few minutes to pull myself together before I went upstairs. I stood quietly in the open doorway of Haley’s room. She had no clue I was there and she was Skyping with one of her cousins. I could see one of the twins—Madison or Mandy, I could never tell them apart—on her monitor. Madison or Mandy was laughing and talking. She held a boxy little Westland terrier in her arms and was making the dog wave at the camera with its paw. Bryan’s sister, Marilyn Collier, lived an hour away in Fredericksburg and she and her four girls had remained a big part of our lives in spite of Bryan’s absence. Haley loved her cousins and they loved her. Tears burned my eyes as I listened to her talking a mile a minute to Madison/Mandy. I hated spoiling the moment.
I knocked lightly on her open door.
“Whoops!” Haley quickly turned off the screen. She swiveled her chair to face me, all innocent green eyes. “I finished my math, Mom, so I was just Skyping for a minute with Mandy.”
I couldn’t have cared less if she was lying. Let her Skype. Let her do whatever she wanted.
“That’s okay,” I said, then sighed. “Dr. Jackson just called, honey. He said your blood count’s low.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t say shit.”
“You say it all the time.”
“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t.”
“I don’t want to go in, Mom.” Her eyes pleaded with me to let her stay home and my heart cracked in two.
“You’ve got to, honey. I’m sorry.”
She dragged herself to her feet. “This totally sucks.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Does this mean I won’t be able to get chemo next week?”
I couldn’t tell if she was hoping she wouldn’t have to have chemo or if she was worried the weeks of chemo would have to be drawn out that much longer.
“It depends on how your blood work looks by then,” I said. “Get what you need and we’ll hit the road.”
She frowned at me, her hand gripping the arm of her chair. “Mom?” she said. “Don’t tell Dad, okay?”
Maybe another mother wouldn’t have understood, but I did. She was scared. It was her illness that had caused Bryan to turn tail years ago. Now they’d spent a healthy, happy few days together, and she was afraid of appearing sick to him again.
“He won’t leave, honey,” I said, and I walked out of her room, hoping against hope that I hadn’t just told her a lie.
17
Emerson
Wilmington, North Carolina
“My God,” Tara breathed. She grabbed th
e letter and read it through in silence.
I felt my heart beating in my ears. I touched the paper in her hands. “I don’t know what to do with this,” I said.
Tara looked up from the letter. “I can’t believe Noelle would do something like that,” she said.
I shook my head. “Neither can I. It seems impossible.”
“Here we go!” The waitress appeared at our table again, this time with my salad and Tara’s steak. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted your dressing on the side or on the salad,” she said as she set the plate in front of me.
“This is fine,” I said, looking at the little cup of dressing. I wasn’t going to eat the salad either way, so it didn’t matter. I just wanted her to put the food on the table and leave.
“Is there anything else I can get you right now?” she asked.
“No,” Tara said. “Thank you. We’re fine.”
The waitress walked away and Tara pushed her plate to the side of the table, her appetite apparently gone, as well. “Maybe this is why she stopped being a midwife,” she said.
Of course. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.
“I feel like I didn’t know her,” I said. “I know I’ve said that a lot lately, but now I really, really feel that way. I don’t know whether to hate her for this or feel sorry for her that she was holding on to this hideous secret all these years.”
“Is there a chance this is…just not true?” Tara asked. “I mean, maybe she was writing a novel or…a short story or something and this was just a literary experiment.”
“I love that idea, Tara,” I said. “But do you really believe it?”
Tara gave a small shake of her head. “She killed a baby,” she said slowly, quietly, as if trying the words on for size. “Some poor woman didn’t even know that her baby died.”
“And that she was raising another woman’s child.”
“And this woman’s baby was kidnapped.” Tara held the letter in the air. “Do you think she might have written another email or letter to Anna?” she asked. “One that actually made it to her?”
“I’ve wondered that myself,” I said. “But wouldn’t we know? Wouldn’t it have come out? Wouldn’t there have been a monumental lawsuit?” I reached for my wineglass, but the room was beginning to spin and I lowered my hand to my lap.
“Did you find any documents in her house that might be related to a suit?” Tara asked.
“No, nothing like that,” I said.
“Maybe she did actually mail a letter, but made it anonymous so Anna couldn’t figure out who she was.”
I nodded. “It sounds like she was planning to make this letter anonymous,” I said. “She just talks about the ‘extraordinary parents’ to reassure her—Anna—that her daughter was being taken care of, not that she planned to reveal who they were. So I don’t think she was going to reveal who she is…who she was…either.”
“What did she mean about the article in the paper?” Tara asked.
“No idea,” I said.
“What does Ted say?”
“I haven’t told him.” Maybe I never would. I’d thought of telling no one at all, trying to forget what I knew, but I couldn’t live with the secret. I couldn’t live with it alone, anyway. “What do we do with this, Tara? Do we ignore it?”
“I don’t think we can,” Tara said.
“Oh, Tara, this is horrible! Ted didn’t even want me to bring the box of cards home, and I wish now that I’d listened to him. If I’d just thrown it away, I wouldn’t know any of this.”
“But you do know. We know.”
“I hate this,” I said. “If we go to the police…I don’t want a media frenzy. And Noelle…her legacy. All the good she’s done. She’ll be dragged through the mud.”
“Look.” Tara leaned back in the booth. “We have very, very slim evidence here. And maybe she was writing a short story, for all we know. I think the first thing we should do is try to figure out who Anna is. If we discover there really is an Anna and this looks like something that really happened, then we can figure out the next step.”
I felt both relief and guilt that I’d dragged her into this. “I’m sorry I told you, Tara. It’s the last thing you need right now, but I didn’t want to be alone with it.”
“You’re not alone with it, sweetie.”
“So—” I turned the letter to face me again, the words blurring a bit in my vision “—how do we try to figure out who Anna is? Noelle said she read an article about her in the paper, so we could…I don’t know. Check old newspapers, I guess?”
“Maybe the baby that died—” Tara shuddered as she said the word “—maybe that was the last baby Noelle delivered.”
I felt a chill. “I have her record books,” I said. Could I be that close to knowing whose baby Noelle had dropped?
The waitress neared our table and I could see her checking out the uneaten food. “How are you doing over here?” she asked.
“We’re fine,” I said, and Tara made a little whisking motion with her hand that said, Please leave us alone, as clearly as if she’d spoken the words.
“I can read the last entry in her record books,” I said once the waitress was gone. “If it was a girl, well…” I looked at Tara and shrugged.
“If it’s a girl,” Tara said, “then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
18
Noelle
UNC Wilmington
1988
Noelle was happier than she’d ever been in her life. Her classes and clinicals were going well and she loved her work as a Resident Assistant. The girls on her floor turned to her easily with their concerns, and it wasn’t unusual to find her sitting with a group of them on the floor at the end of the hall, chatting about their boyfriends or their professors or their relationships with one another. The gathering had the feel of a mini support group, a relaxed get-together with meat at its heart. Noelle made sure everyone felt welcome, though. She didn’t want her end-of-the-hall group to turn into a clique.
The other RAs thought she was overly involved with the students. “You should just be there in case they need something,” they said, but Noelle felt protective of her charges. She wanted to be their safe harbor. The night one of them nearly died of alcohol poisoning, she wept because she should have seen it coming. But she did recognize another student’s bulimia, intervening before it was too late, and she counseled yet another girl as she decided what to do about an unwanted pregnancy—even though she was privately heartbroken when the girl decided to have an abortion.
All in all, she loved her girls. The fact that she loved one of them more than the others was something she was learning to hide.
She’d gotten her emotions at least somewhat under control when it came to Emerson McGarrity, doing her best to treat her like all the other girls on her floor. If anyone noticed that she paid a little more attention to Emerson, that she lit up each time she saw her, that she questioned her more than the other girls about her adjustment to campus life, her classes, her family, no one said a word about it, at least not to her. She no longer needed Emerson to know their relationship. Being close to her, being a part of her life, was enough. It was clear that Emerson knew nothing about her mother’s teenage pregnancy, and clear that Noelle’s existence had been swept under the rug. Noelle made a conscious decision to leave it there forever. She wouldn’t hurt Emerson or her family, but one way or another, she would always be a part of her sister’s life. She wouldn’t lose her now that she’d found her.
She was coming to like Tara, too. Tara’s exuberance was a good counterbalance to Emerson’s gentle, calm nature and she was far deeper than Noelle had originally guessed. For most of Tara’s life, her mother had spent her time in and out of psychiatric hospitals. It was not something she talked about easily, and Noelle felt touched when she finally revealed that part of herself to her. Noelle came to see Tara’s love of theater as her escape from a childhood and adolescence that had been difficult to endure.
; There was, however, one small, niggling problem in Noelle’s life: Sam Vincent.
Plenty of guys on campus were intrigued by Noelle, but Noelle herself had been drawn—seriously drawn—to only two men in her life. Sam was number three.
She met him the second week of school when she stopped by Tara and Emerson’s room to offer them a couple of granola bars. He was there alone because Tara and Emerson were baking cookies in the dorm kitchen, and he was stretched out on Tara’s neatly made bed, writing something in a notebook. He looked up and gave her a quick, easy smile and that was all it took. The smile slayed her. She felt her internal organs melt and her heart thumped as hard as it had the first time she’d walked into this same room and laid eyes on Emerson.
“You’re Sam,” she said, glancing at the long-haired guy in the picture on Tara’s dresser. This Sam looked different. The guy in the picture was a boy. The short-haired guy on the bed, a man. He was slender. Not overtly masculine; macho had never appealed to her. Thick, jet-black lashes framed his blue eyes, and his lips were full and a little pouty. It was only the broad cut of his chin that saved him from being too pretty.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m waiting for Tara. You live in the dorm?”
“I’m the RA. Noelle.”
“Oh, yeah.” He sat up a little straighter, his back against the wall. Setting his notebook on the bed beside him, he folded his arms across his chest. “Tara told me about you. She thinks you’re cool.”
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