by Erica Boyce
Annie reached up and touched John’s arm, draped across the back of the couch. “I wish I could’ve come to the wake,” she said. “I didn’t find out until months later.”
John waved her off. “Eh, don’t worry about it. The wake was mostly for the old folks. What you really missed out on was the after party.” He winked at her, and she laughed.
“He had a lot of life to celebrate, didn’t he?” she said, wiping at her eyes.
“Oh, yeah. I gotta say, I know you guys weren’t together for that long, but man, seeing you is really bringing back some memories,” John said.
Annie’s smile faltered, and she looked down into her lap.
“All good ones, of course,” he added.
“There’s actually something I need to talk to you about,” she said. She lifted her chin and turned toward Diane. “To both of you.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Diane saw John glance at her. “What is it?” she said when Annie didn’t continue.
Annie planted her palms on her knees. “Well,” she said, “the thing is.” She took a deep breath. “I had a baby. When I was seventeen. She was Simon’s.” She turned back to John.
His face was intent, patient, but his hand was gripping the arm of the sofa, the fabric rippling under his fingers.
“He didn’t know,” she continued. “No one did really. I know now that I should’ve told him before he… The fact is, I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better. I was scared shitless. Anyway, I gave it up for adoption. I gave her up.” She was no longer looking at either of them. She was staring off at something else.
Diane thought of Ella and the beeping L&D room where her tiny, wrinkled body was first laid on Diane’s chest. John had leaned over her shoulder, cooing, while Diane worried that the fabric of her hospital gown was too rough for their daughter’s brand-new skin.
“I gave her what I thought was best for her. A new mom, a new life far away. But apparently, her mom decided to move back to Devil’s Purse a few years back. Help her find her roots or something.” Annie’s eyes refocused, jumping between Diane and John. “I work in the teen rehab place a couple towns over. You probably haven’t heard of it. Anyway, I think I found her. There. She’s a client of mine.”
Diane began to shake her head. She felt terribly ill. John, for his part, had let go of the sofa and clamped one hand over the bottom of his face. It did nothing to hide the tears collecting in his eyes. She knew he was thinking of Simon.
Annie said, “She’s kind of in bad shape. I mean, obviously. She’s in rehab. But I think she needs help. She needs family.”
John nodded vigorously. “Of course she does. What can we do? Can we meet her?”
Annie sighed. “I don’t think so. Not yet. The situation is delicate. I don’t want to upset the balance when she hasn’t yet recovered. I haven’t even told her that she’s…what I think I am to her. I can’t believe I’m here actually. This breaks just about every rule in the book.” She laughed an empty laugh, and a miserable look flashed across her face before she brushed her bangs out of her eyes and adjusted her glasses. “Her insurance is only going to cover a couple more weeks of inpatient and six weekly outpatient sessions. I truly believe she needs at least twelve sessions after she checks out, but the clinic is not cheap. It’s highly inappropriate for me to say so, but I’m at my wit’s end trying to make sure this girl has a chance. I don’t think her mother can afford to pay out-of-pocket. Her adoptive mother, I mean.”
“We’ll cover it,” John said before she could go any further. “Whatever she needs, we’ve got it. She’s my niece. Right?” He looked at Diane. Diane, who watched it all from far away. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Oh, thank you,” Annie said. She clasped her hands in front of her chest like some Precious Moments figurine. “You don’t know what a relief that is.”
“What’s her name?” John said.
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you that—” Annie said just as Diane finally broke in.
“John,” she said.
He turned to look at her. It took a few seconds, but eventually, his eyebrows raised. There was only one girl in Devil’s Purse who fit the description. It was stupid of Annie to think they wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
“Oh, shit,” John finally said. “Lacey.”
Annie coughed, choking on a dry throat.
Diane closed her eyes.
And there it was. This town. This fucking town.
* * *
Later that night, when John had recovered, he explained the extraordinary coincidence to Annie. “I knew it,” he kept saying, though of course he hadn’t. “I knew there was a reason I trusted her on sight. Must’ve been because she looked so much like my brother.” He retrieved the photo of Simon from its place on the mantle and held it up next to an old picture of Ella and Lacey on his phone, showing them to Annie, though of course Annie already knew what Lacey and Simon looked like. The resemblance between Simon and Lacey was there, it was true, but it was the kind you only saw if you were looking for it. They had the same coloring. Simon got it from their mother—Lacey’s grandmother, Diane supposed—while John was a carbon copy of his father. Ella was a different matter altogether. She’d always taken after Diane.
At one point, John offered Annie a beer or a glass of wine, a toast to “newfound family.” She shook her head and asked for water, averting her eyes down and away. It was a look Diane recognized from John, in the early years, when their dates took them only to ice cream stands and small restaurants with no liquor licenses.
“How many years sober?” Diane asked, more harshly than she’d meant.
“Seventeen,” Annie said without hesitation, without having to calculate.
“Good for you,” Diane said sincerely.
Annie and John clinked cans of seltzer while Diane sipped her tea. And then, when Annie’s can was empty, she went through a show of pulling out her phone and noticing the time. “I’d better get going,” she said. “Today was my day off, and showing up late the next morning is not a good way to make friends on the staff.”
At the door, John grabbed Annie into a hug. She met Diane’s eye over his shoulder, and Diane tried to smile at her. She knew the precise outlines of that hug, how John hooked his arm around the back of your neck so the crook of his elbow pressed your face close into his chest, how he placed his feet along the outer edges of your own. John didn’t do polite acquaintance hugs.
“We’ll all get together when Lacey gets out, eh?” John said when he released her.
Annie’s eyes widened. “Oh, please, you can’t tell her.”
John looked back at Diane, as if she could explain this.
“Just, it’s not the right time for me to let her know who I am. Not until she’s better,” Annie said. “I’ll call you as soon as I tell her, okay?”
John stared at her for a long moment.
“Helping out with her treatment is the best thing you could do for her right now. I promise.” Annie touched John’s elbow.
Diane wanted to smack her hand away. John nodded.
When Annie’s taillights had receded from view, John closed the door and put his arm around Diane’s shoulder, his disappointment hidden. “Isn’t that amazing?” he said. “We have a niece now. Simon had a kid.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said as he jiggled her back and forth.
She washed her face and changed out of her clothes with John puttering around in the background, humming some unidentifiable song. She slid into bed and could no longer hold it in. “So we’ll look at the budget tomorrow, then?”
“I guess so,” he said, pulling on a clean undershirt. “I wouldn’t worry about it, though. We’ll manage.”
“Will we?” She sat up, but he wouldn’t look at her. She bit her lip and thought about what John’s accountant had told her the last time he’d called.
>
“Sure we will,” John said. He got into bed and kissed the top of Diane’s head. “We always do, don’t we?”
“John, your business is not doing well,” she said.
He lay down and kicked the covers back.
“You’re on the verge of declaring bankruptcy actually. Which you didn’t even bother to tell me.”
“Lacey is family,” John said, his voice hardened. “And we will support our family. Period.” He turned his back to her. Within minutes, his breath was rhythmic with sleep.
* * *
Diane stayed upright in their bed. After a time, her jaw began to ache. She’d forgotten to wear the mouth guard her dentist had given her. At the rate she was grinding, he’d warned her, she would be out of teeth before she’d even retired.
Another family member. Another person for John to worry over and look out for and text Diane about while Diane cooked and cleaned and cared for and supported his actual family, his daughter. They’d both wanted more kids, a whole drop-leaf table full of them, but she couldn’t afford to quit her job for more than a year, and they couldn’t afford day care for more than one toddler. So John had looked elsewhere, stretching the fabric of their family just as far as it could go to cover anyone who needed it. Whenever Diane and Ella read that Jan Brett story, The Mitten, Diane secretly felt sorry for the mole who’d first found the mitten in the snow and eventually found himself crammed in there with all variety of woodland creatures.
It was only when the blue sunrise light began to fill the room and Diane’s eyelids began to droop that she thought of Maureen. Maureen, her very best friend, whom she was supposed to meet at the grocery store tomorrow—or rather, later today. Maureen, who’d called her in tears a year ago, saying something about how Lacey’s biological mother didn’t fill out a form and therefore wouldn’t tell them who she was. “It’s funny,” Maureen had said, sniffing. “My worst fear used to be that her birth mother would want to take her back from me. Especially when we moved here, I’d have nightmares about it. But now, I just want her to know her whole family, you know? I want the kid to know how loveable she is, how loved she is, by more than just me.”
“Don’t be silly. We all love Lacey,” Diane had said, and Maureen had sniffed and muttered that she was right. Later that week, Diane had taken her out on a spa day, picking up the tab for pedicures and hot stone massages at the overpriced resort in town that no local would be caught dead in.
She used to wonder what Maureen saw in her. Maureen laughed without covering her mouth. She danced in such elegant movements in the Staybrooks’ living room at every holiday party. She swept through the kitchen with equal grace and knew with a single waft what every dish needed. She always did the fearless thing and did it with a smile so wide and genuine that a trail of friends followed her there. The fact that it was always Diane she called, chuckling when Diane said the wrong thing and coaxing her into the right one, filled Diane with pride and confusion. Even waiters at restaurants looked a little disappointed when they turned away from Maureen’s flirtations to take Diane’s order. She felt so prim and buttoned-up in comparison.
But now, she understood. Her role was to clean up after Maureen’s storms. To murmur soothingly, to arrange escapes, to call the clinic. To pick up the slack, to be an adult. And now, apparently, to pay the bills as well.
John shifted awake with his usual groans, the mattress shaking with his movements. Diane pulled the covers up to her chin and pretended to sleep. In a few hours, she would text Maureen with an excuse as to why she couldn’t grocery shop today.
* * *
That night, John came home especially late. Diane had already told Ella it was time for lights-out and called through her door thirty minutes later to turn her flashlight off.
“There you are,” Diane said as John hung his jacket in the hall.
He said nothing. He sat next to her on the couch, kneading his fingers into his scalp. “I ran the numbers today,” he said.
She laid her book down on the arm of the couch.
“You were right. There’s not much wiggle room.”
Diane nodded, though she knew he couldn’t see it.
“That check,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “The one your parents give us for Christmas each year.”
“It goes toward Ella’s summer camp.”
“What, all of it?” He dropped his hands.
“And then some.”
“Jesus.” He fell back into the couch and sighed. “Okay, so I’ll buy a snowplow rig for the truck. Get some extra income in the winter. There’ll be snow on the ground before we know it.”
“Those things cost at least a couple thousand dollars.” Carol Zane down the street had spent last Christmas without her husband while he plowed out peoples’ driveways in time for their holiday suppers. John had insisted on inviting her and the Zane boys, nightmarish eight-year-old triplets, over for a meal. Ella’s bedroom door still bore the marks of Nerf gun fire.
John growled with frustration and yanked a pillow out from under him.
“I really think we’ve done more than enough already,” Diane said quietly. “It’s not our place to—”
“Of course it’s our place.” He shook his head. “She’s our niece, not to mention a close friend of the family. What’s wrong with you?” At last, he looked at her, his face twisted with disgust. Like she was nothing.
She stood. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just happen to think that our family, the three of us, should be your first priority. Not this girl you’ve just discovered you’re related to. Who, by the way, already has her own mother. Two of them, in fact.” She turned and left the room, her eyes burning.
In the end, they hadn’t been able to pull together the money. Lacey was released. And John was desperate to find some way to help Lacey. Diane knew he needed to make up for the fact that he couldn’t so much as walk up to her and tell her who he was. He wanted to find the money to pay for additional treatment, though how he planned to explain the donation to Maureen, Diane didn’t know.
So when the opportunity arose to do something dangerous but potentially lucrative, he had seized it. Diane could picture exactly how it had happened, despite her initial denial. She could see the light and relief in his eyes. He could finally solve a problem for this person he loved. For Lacey.
Chapter Thirty-One
Annie recited the whole story, or her side of it at least. Diane stared out the window at the roof of the hospital building next door. The HVAC exhaust fan whirred and blurred. Still, she felt Maureen turn to face her when Annie finished.
“You knew,” Maureen said with a wrenching incredulity. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me? After everything we’d talked about? After I—”
“It wasn’t my job to tell you,” Diane said, looking pointedly at Annie, who was studying the pulse readout on one of the machines by Lacey’s bed.
“Bullshit. You were my friend, my best friend.”
Diane’s heart sank a little at the past tense.
“Of course it was your job. Or were you worried it’d mess with your perfect little life?”
“And it did, didn’t it?” Diane said.
Maureen bit her lips closed.
“I think we all know now why John went out on that boat. We were stretched too thin as it was, but he was bound and determined to pick up your slack when you couldn’t do your job as her mother.”
“If I may.” Annie cleared her throat, her eyes bouncing back and forth between the two of them. “I understand that this news is upsetting for both of you, but I really think we should focus on—”
“Oh, honey,” Maureen said in a voice that actually made Annie gasp. “I haven’t even gotten started on you. You’re a recovering alcoholic, right?” Maureen crossed her arms. “I saw that quote on your employer’s website, out there for anyone to see, but you refuse to t
ell the one person who really matters. Addiction is hereditary, and if only you hadn’t been too chickenshit to respond to us when she turned eighteen, we would’ve known. We could’ve—”
“What?” Annie said. “Given her the life she was supposed to have? A safe life, a healthy life, far away, one that made giving her up worth it for me?”
Maureen’s shoulders slumped.
Annie swallowed. “Genes are one factor, yes. But it’s complicated. We don’t really know if an alcoholic can pass down an addiction to something else. And there are a whole host of other factors. It’s impossible to know in any given case what contributed—”
Maureen wasn’t done. “And you tried to get to know her, didn’t you?”
Diane wanted to cheer as her friend pulled herself back up.
“You tried to sneak around and become buds with the girl you abandoned and become important to her. You couldn’t even manage to explain yourself to her, your own flesh and blood.”
“You think it was easy for me?” Annie said. “I got to hand my baby over and then go on my merry way, right? Right?” She had shed her caseworker voice and was close to shouting, close to tears. “Why do you think I started drinking in the first place?”
“There are plenty of birth mothers who manage not to become alcoholics,” Maureen hissed. “Who go on to have functional relationships with their biological children.”
The two women stared at each other, tensed, coiled. Diane reached out and touched Maureen’s shoulder, ever so gently. Maureen didn’t move away.
* * *
None of them noticed when Rebecca slipped out of the room. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Her head spun with everything she probably shouldn’t have heard. Annie. Lacey. Maureen. Diane. John.
“Hey, Rebecca,” came a small voice to her right.
“Ella!” Through it all, Rebecca still smiled at the sight of the girl’s face. Then, she remembered that morning. The boot. She crouched down next to Ella and said cautiously, “How are you doing?”