The Lies We Told

by Diane Chamberlain

  Every few minutes, Simmee let out a groan and I wasn’t sure if the sound was due to pain or anxiety—or insanity. She only stopped once or twice more, gasping for breath before she charged forward again. I pleaded with her to turn around, but she was completely ignoring me now.

  We walked for at least ten minutes, though to my aching legs it seemed much longer. The undergrowth grew tighter around my shoulders, stealing oxygen and whipping against my cheeks. Ahead of me, Simmee’s hair was a wild gossamer cloud around her head and down her back, and I could see scratches on her bare legs from the brush.

  When I felt as though I couldn’t take one more step, I spotted the glimmer of water through the trees.

  Oh my God. Had we walked all the way to the opposite side of Last Run? Simmee kept walking, parting the brush with her arms, and I had a sudden, horrible thought. Was she going to walk straight into the water? Drown herself? Was this mad dash across Last Run her attempt to end her life before labor became too excruciating? Did she see a quick death by drowning as preferable to the fate her mother had suffered? The thoughts spun quickly through my mind, but I knew my imagination was getting the best of me. There was deep water far closer to the house. If drowning was her goal, she didn’t need to cross the island to do it.

  “Where are we?” I asked as we neared the bank. “Why are we here?”

  Simmee only let out a sob and turned left, walking parallel to the water’s edge, though still deep in the undergrowth. All at once, she stopped and began flailing at the brush with her arms. If she had not already lost hold of her sanity, I knew she was losing it now. I rushed forward and tried to grab her hands.

  “Simmee! Simmee! Look at me! Look at—” I stopped, suddenly aware of what lay buried beneath the thicket of vines and branches in front of us: a boat. It was in the water, tucked beneath an outcropping of sandy earth and a network of tree roots and tied at bow and stern to saplings that arched over the water. I stared at it in shock.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I hid it.” Simmee leaned against the trunk of a spindly pine tree, winded. “Tully thought it washed away, but it didn’t. When he brung you to us, he said you was a doctor, and I thought, ‘I got to keep her here.’ Wasn’t so much ’cause you was a doctor. I just wanted an outsider. I needed an outsider. But I told Lady Alice I wanted you to birth the baby. Not to tell Larry you was here. I knew you could help me.”

  “Why?” I frowned. “Help you how?”

  “I brung the boat around this here side of the island and tucked it up here like this. Tully never comes this way and I covered her up good. You can’t even see her from the water.”

  “The boat has been here all along?” I felt a flash of fury.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she squeezed her eyes closed and opened her mouth wide as though she wanted to let out a scream, but she made no sound at all.

  “Take a deep breath,” I said again, and this time she did.

  “Okay.” I tried to sound calm. My flash of anger was only that—a flash. There was no time for more than that. All at once, I understood what was going on: this was the only way she could get to the mainland to have her baby. Tully wouldn’t take her. She needed me. The outsider. “Okay,” I said again. “I’ll…” I studied the boat, trying to figure out how to free it from its camouflage of vines and brush. “Should you get in first, or—”

  “What?” She looked at me as though I was the one who’d lost her mind.

  “You want to go to the hospital, right?”

  “No!” she wailed, slapping her hand on the side of the tree. “No, no, no!”

  “What, then?”

  “I just need to show you.” She turned and quickly tied the end of the ball of twine around the trunk of the tree. “We got to get back to the house,” she said. “Then you got to make this baby come fast. Fast, before Tully comes home.”

  She was already walking through the brush again, back the way we’d come, trailing the twine behind her. I stared after her for a moment, too stunned to move.

  “Come on!” she shouted, stringing the twine over a branch as she walked. “You need to be able to git back here on your own.”

  She was crazy. How had I lived with her for nearly two weeks and not picked up on it?

  “I don’t understand!” I hurried after her, shouting at her back, my frustration finally coming to a head.

  “You need to find your way back here with the baby,” she said. “I told you how to go once you’re out on the water, remember? Up the creek and then you just keep going left. Left at the fork and left into the river by the old shed. Remember? I told you!”

  “I’m not taking your baby!”

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” She hunched over with another contraction. They were coming faster now. She pulled in long, gasping breaths while I looked on helplessly. “You have to,” she said through the pain. “Please, Maya. Please, please.”

  I thought I saw a brief moment of sanity in her eyes as she pleaded with me. Either way, I wouldn’t argue with her now.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking whatever. “Let’s just get back.”

  She ran out of the twine long before we reached the path.

  “Break the branches!” she said, one hand braced under her belly now as she walked. With the other hand, she grabbed the branches of saplings, yanking at them, grunting with the effort. “You need to leave a trail for yourself.”

  I did it. I snapped branches. Trailed vines from one tree to the next. Anything to humor her. To hurry our way home.

  By the time we reached the house, she was clearly in agony. I didn’t have to tell her to go to her bedroom. From the bassinet in my room, I grabbed the Easter basket, where I’d stored the sterilized scissors and other supplies. By the time I’d scrubbed my hands and put on a pair of gloves from my backpack, I found Simmee already lying on her bed, underwear stripped off, legs bent and spread above a layer of towels.

  “Make it come fast!” she said.

  “It’ll come when it’s ready, honey.” I spoke quietly to try to calm her down. I gently felt the baby through her belly. “Head down. Bottom up,” I said, hoping to reassure her. “Perfect.”

  She started to push. I wished I had some idea what was going on inside her, but I didn’t want to do an internal exam and increase the risk of infection. With her water broken, her wild trek through the woods and the less than pristine environment the baby would be born into, the fewer risks I took, the better. All I knew was that there was virtually no time at all between her contractions now.

  “Swear to me you’ll take the baby,” she moaned.

  “We can talk about it later,” I said. Simmee would be saner later, when the pain and fear had worn off.

  “Now!” she said, and it came out like a howl.

  I saw the baby’s head crowning. “Don’t push!” I said. “Pant.” I demonstrated. I didn’t know if she obeyed me or not, I was so intent on carefully delivering the baby’s head without tearing her. Simmee started to scream, the first truly violent sound she’d made, and she turned her head into her pillow to catch it. Within moments, the baby’s head was cradled in my hands, and the little body still inside its mother rotated a quarter turn as though it had been born a thousand times before. After one more ferocious contraction, the baby slipped into my hands. He was big and loud, already crying, and suddenly everything—everything—made sense. Wiping the infant’s face clean with the damp cloth at my side, I took in his full, perfect lips, his broad nose and black, curly hair and understood all too well the source of Simmee’s desperation.

  Simmee reached for him, and I laid the baby on her belly. Crying quietly, she held him close—so close that for a second, I was afraid she was hurting him.

  I tied off the cord, feeling the warmth of the infant’s skin against the back of my fingers. The warmth of Simmee’s skin. I love this baby with my complete heart, she’d told me.

  “Let him nurse if he will,” I said to her after I cut the c
ord. She wept as I helped her raise her dress above her breasts. She wore no bra, and I watched in awe as instinct took over and the baby latched on with ease. Simmee gasped, then leaned forward to press her lips to his head. The familiar surge of envy I always felt when witnessing intimacy between a mother and her child swept through me.

  She looked at me. “I didn’t think he’d be so…this color,” she said.

  “He’ll get darker,” I said. “It’s hard to say how much.”

  She ran her hand over his hair. “Tully’ll kill me,” she said softly. “He’ll kill the baby.”

  “No, Simmee, I’m sure you’re wrong.” But I wasn’t sure at all.

  She lifted her head from the baby, but looked down at him as he nursed. “Sweetheart,” she whispered, “you look just like your daddy, an’ I love you. You gonna have to forgive me.” Abruptly, she pulled him from her breast and held him toward me. “Take him now,” she said, as the baby whimpered. “Put him in the basket. You gotta take him now before Tully comes back.”

  I hesitated, absolutely frozen, as she held the baby toward me.

  “You need to deliver the placenta,” I said finally, gently pushing the baby toward her breast again. “The afterbirth. The nursing will help it come out.” I didn’t know what Tully would do, but I knew what Simmee needed from a medical perspective—and that felt like the only thing I knew at the moment. I would focus on that and that alone. Otherwise, I would go crazy myself.

  Simmee hugged the baby to her breast again with a sob. “You don’t understand, Maya,” she said. “Tully kilt Jackson!”

  “What?”

  “He made up that lie about it bein’ an accident. He knew Jackson was sweet on me and he kilt him.”

  “No,” I protested.

  “He told me exactly how he done it. And the reason he won’t go to no hospital? The reason I’m the one who goes to the store with Larry? The reason Tully come out here in the first place, livin’ in that tent and all? The reason he don’t never leave Last Run? It’s ’cause the police want him, ’cause Jackson ain’t the first person he kilt.” She leaned over again to press her lips to her baby’s curly dark hair. “He done this to me, too.” She touched the scar on her eyebrow. “He said I was too beautiful and he just took the butt of his rifle and whacked me.”

  “Oh, Simmee.” I leaned back, horrified.

  “He saw me kiss Jackson. I said it was just a friendly kiss, on account of us knowin’ each other all our lives, but that was a lie and he knew it. He already ’spects this baby is Jackson’s even though I told him no way that could happen. That we never done it. We done it a zillion times, though. I loved him so much, but it was all wrong.” She let out a whimper so soft that at first I thought it had come from the baby. “He said he’d kill it if it come out black,” she said.

  Fear overwhelmed me, a fear so old it felt ancient. It was the fear from that horrible night in my childhood driveway and from the restaurant in Durham. For a moment, I thought of myself instead of the woman and baby in front of me. By now, surely everyone thought I was dead. No one would miss me if I were to simply disappear.

  “He’ll kill me, Maya. Please.” Simmee hugged the baby, rocking him back and forth. “I’ll tell him the baby was sick, and the boat washed back up and you took him to the hospital.”

  “I…he won’t believe that,” I said. “And I can’t leave you here if there’s a chance he might hurt you.”

  “He won’t hurt me if you go now. Go now!” She started to pull the baby from her breast again, but I held him in place with both hands and she didn’t fight me. I saw the war inside her. The desire to hold her baby close as long as she could, and the longing to protect both him and herself from danger.

  “How would you explain the boat coming back?” I asked.

  “I’ll think of something.” She stroked her baby’s skin, trying to squeeze a lifetime of touches into a few brief minutes. “He probly already left Lady Alice’s by now and is out huntin’. Don’t make too much noise. He can hear a rabbit munchin’ weeds a mile away.”

  If I hadn’t already been caught up in her panic, I was now. Don’t think about it, I told myself. Don’t think about Tully.

  “The pains are comin’ again,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “That’s the afterbirth. Go ahead and push.”

  “Please, Maya.” She groaned with the effort of pushing. “Just go. I’m all right.”

  “I need to be sure the placenta—” Even as I spoke, I saw her belly contract. “Push,” I said.

  She did, and the placenta slipped onto the towel. I scooped it and the towel up and carried it out into the yard. Into the trees. I placed it on the ground, and my gloved hands shook as I checked to be sure the placenta was whole. Then I left it and the towel to the animals and rushed back inside.

  When I returned to the bedroom, she was again holding the baby out to me. “Go! Go!” she shouted.

  I stared at the baby. Her perfect, beautiful son. “I’ll get him back to you,” I said. “I promise. Somehow.”

  “No! Don’t ever try. He’ll kill him. I planned this perfect. You got to leave!” She held the baby in the air between us, and after two seconds’ hesitation, I reached for him. Even so, she didn’t let go at first. She clung to him, her face drenched with tears. “Love him for me,” she said.

  “I’ll keep him safe,” I whispered, and she released him gently into my arms.

  41

  Rebecca

  THE BATHROOM IN THE TRAILER WAS INSANELY SMALL, THE shower nearly claustrophobic, but she wished she had the time—and a large enough water supply—to stand under the spray for the rest of the day. She was on her lunch break and she’d dropped off a list of supplies to Dorothea, then taken a much needed run. The clinic had been crazy all morning and even though she’d only had two beers the night before, she’d been battling a minor hangover. Or maybe it was just that she and Adam and Dorothea had stayed up too late talking the night before. They’d talked about DIDA and Maya and Louisa and nothing and everything, the conversation often bittersweet, and Rebecca had been glad for Dorothea’s presence. It wouldn’t have been a good night to be alone with Adam. She’d felt too close to him and entirely too vulnerable. Although they’d switched to iced tea and bottled water once the beer had run out, she’d felt as buzzed as if she’d been drinking tequila, and this morning had passed by her in a fog.

  She stepped out of the shower and was toweling off when the bathroom door suddenly burst open and Adam took one step into the room.

  “Whoops!” He backed out quickly, and she heard him chuckle on the other side of the door. “Didn’t know you were here,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Rebecca stood in the tiny bathroom, the towel clutched in her hands. He’d seen her for two seconds, maybe less, but that had been long enough for her to feel the quick sweep of his gaze over her body. She leaned back against the wall, holding the wadded-up towel to her chest, her mind spinning back to the conversation she’d had with Dorothea less than an hour ago. She’d found Dot in the kitchenette of her trailer, up to her elbows in paperwork, and Rebecca felt as though she was looking at her future. It was not a pretty sight. Maybe she and Brent should direct DIDA together, she’d thought as she surveyed the mess on the table. She would give him all the paperwork. She’d go out of her mind if she had to shuffle papers all day.

  “Brent told me you turned him down,” Dorothea had said when Rebecca handed her the list of supplies.

  “Oh,” she said. “How’d he sound?”

  Dorothea shrugged. “He’ll live.” She glanced at the list of supplies, then set it aside. “It was the right call on your part.”

  “I know.” She reached for the doorknob. “I’m going for a run and then head back to the school.”

  “Did you feel this way about Adam even when Maya was alive?” Dorothea asked.

  Rebecca’s hand froze on the doorknob. She turned back with a frown. Dorothea was innocently pushing papers around on the table.r />
  “What way?”

  Dorothea raised her head, giving her a look that said it all.

  Busted.

  Rebecca had sighed. She’d walked the two steps to the table and sank onto the settee. “No,” she admitted. “Not like this. I was always crazy about him—you know, as Maya’s husband. Who wouldn’t be? But I—”

  “It’s not a crime, babe.”

  Rebecca had lifted one of the papers from the table and looked at the text without reading it. “Well, it feels like one. Maya’s body hasn’t even been found,” she said, then added quickly, “And we have not slept together, so don’t even go there.”

  “Who was going there?” Dorothea tried and failed to look guileless.

  Rebecca dropped the paper to the table and let out a breath. “It’s way too soon and it’s one-sided, anyhow,” she said. “I think I’m just—”

  “What makes you think it’s one-sided?”

  “Well, for starters, he’s grieving for his wife.”

  Dorothea had shaken her head. She’d folded her arms and leaned hard on the table. “You’re so busy looking at him,” she’d said, “that you haven’t noticed how he’s looking at you.”

  Well, now she had noticed. She’d felt his eyes sweep over her. He may as well have been touching her. She wanted him to touch her. It still felt wrong, though. Whether it was wrong or not, she couldn’t get past the way it felt.

  Stop thinking, then. She wrapped the towel around her body, tucked it in above her breasts and left the bathroom.