by Kate Hewitt
A Mother’s Goodbye
A gripping emotional page-turner about adoption and a mother’s love
Kate Hewitt
Also by Kate Hewitt
A Mother’s Goodbye
The Secrets We Keep
This Fragile Life
When He Fell
Rainy Day Sisters
Now and Then Friends
A Mother like Mine
Writing as Katharine Swartz:
The Vicar's Wife
The Lost Garden
The Second Bride
The Other Side of The Bridge
Contents
Prologue
Part I
1. HEATHER
2. GRACE
3. HEATHER
4. GRACE
5. HEATHER
6. GRACE
7. HEATHER
8. GRACE
9. HEATHER
10. GRACE
11. HEATHER
12. GRACE
Part II
13. GRACE
14. HEATHER
15. GRACE
16. HEATHER
17. GRACE
18. HEATHER
19. GRACE
20. HEATHER
21. GRACE
22. HEATHER
23. GRACE
Part III
24. HEATHER
25. GRACE
26. HEATHER
27. GRACE
28. HEATHER
29. GRACE
30. HEATHER
The Secrets We Keep
Hear More from Kate
Also by Kate Hewitt
A Letter From Kate
Acknowledgements
Dedicated to my father, George Berry, who caught his train on December 23, 2015, and to my wonderful husband, Cliff, for always holding my hand.
Prologue
Morning light slants through the hospital window as slowly I come through the door of the nursery, my body aching with both fatigue and fear. My heart is beating in a painful staccato as I approach the plastic bassinet. I am swathed in scrubs and latex, due to the possibility of infection, but my arms ache with the need to reach and hold, and then to never let go. But I can’t; I know I can’t.
A nurse smiles at me sympathetically and gestures to the bassinet, as if granting me permission to approach, or perhaps simply pointing out the right baby. But of course I know you, my child.
My child. The words buoy me inside as if I am filled with lightness, with air, so I feel as if I am floating. My child. How could I not know it? How could I not feel it? It inhabits every fiber of my being, every cell. I pulse with the knowledge, the fragile joy. Incredulously, I smile.
And there you are – small, so small, swathed in a white flannel blanket, a tuft of light brown hair under a little knitted cap, your fists by your face like flowers, your lips pursed like a tiny rosebud, cheeks soft and round. Perfect. I know every mother thinks the same, of course she does, but no one feels it like me. No one.
I stand in front of your bassinet, battling both tears and euphoria, because it’s too soon to feel this way, or maybe it’s too late. I reach out one hand and rest it on the plastic crib, longing to touch your soft, pink skin, your round cheek, already knowing how smooth it will feel. I love you. I will do anything for you.
I didn’t expect to feel it so strongly, flooding me with both need and purpose. I’d separated myself somehow, over the last few harrowing months, because I had to. Because it felt safer and stronger, a necessary element of this whole torturous process, to keep myself a little bit distant. But now…
Now everything has changed. Everything. I lean forward, willing your tiny eyes with their sparse, golden lashes to open. To see me for myself, a mother.
And then they do, and I fall into their deep blue depths. I fall and fall, everything in me swelling with love as my heart starts to break.
Part One
One
HEATHER
Six months earlier
‘Kev… I’m pregnant.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it at all. But it’s his problem too. And I know that’s what it is – a problem. As much as I wish it was something else, something that it should be. A surprise, a blessing, a miracle. The normal things. The right ones.
‘What?’ Kevin stares at me blankly, slumped in the La-z-Boy with the threadbare arms and the stuffing come out of the bottom. I hate that thing. Especially since Kev’s been sitting in it for the last three years.
I know it’s not his fault. It was an accident. Hurting his back at work and now this baby. Two problems, two accidents that have torpedoed our little lives, exploding right into the middle of them so everything feels wrecked.
‘Do you mind if I turn off the TV?’ I reach for the remote resting on the arm of the chair. Kev grabs it instinctively, and I fold my arms and wait. He hesitates, and then, with a big drawn-out sigh, he puts the TV on mute.
Now maybe we can finally have a conversation, except I don’t know what to say besides what I already have. Kev’s gaze keeps flicking toward the screen. Doesn’t he realize how important this is? We’re going to have a baby. Another one.
‘How can you be pregnant?’ he finally demands. This probably wasn’t the best time to talk, at the end of a long, pain-filled day, one spent in front of the TV, and then a tense phone call from the union lawyer. There’s a hearing coming up but Kev didn’t tell me about the call. I just heard his low voice, like a growl, and I knew it couldn’t be great news.
But I think I’m at least twelve weeks along and we need to talk. I hadn’t paid attention to the signs that now suddenly seem obvious. The sore breasts, the tiredness, the nausea, the nasty taste in my mouth. I told myself it was the usual PMS, but this morning I looked in the mirror and saw my thickened waist, my rounded belly, and realization clanged through me, an almighty alarm bell. I had to tell Kevin.
It had to be when the girls were in bed, because the last thing I need is Lucy demanding in her high, piping voice what I’m talking about, or Amy triumphantly informing her how babies are made – something she learned on the playground a few weeks ago – in terms I would never use or want her to hear. I also needed to tell Kev before he took his pain meds, since he’s out for the count about twenty minutes after he pops them. Although maybe this conversation won’t even take twenty minutes. What else is there to say?
‘I think you know how it happened. The usual way.’ I slump onto the sofa, too tired to stay on my feet. Last night I worked the night shift, cleaning an office building in Newark until three in the morning, and then grabbing a few hours of sleep before getting up for the girls, seeing them off to school through a haze of exhaustion. The thought of another baby, another need, makes everything in me churn with fear because I don’t know how I can do it.
This is the thought that keeps blaring through me like a car horn, palm flat on it, since I finally acknowledged to myself that I was pregnant: I can’t have this baby. We can’t afford it, not the space, not the time, and of course not the money. I need to start work full-time; that was the plan when Lucy went to kindergarten. We can’t make it without that money. I can’t have this baby. But I can’t see any way not to.
‘But…’ Kev narrows his eyes. His hair is rumpled, his face unshaven. He doesn’t see the point any more, and I understand why. He’s been out of work for two years and nine months. Lucy doesn’t even remember when Daddy had a job. When life was normal, when the electricity didn’t get
cut off on a regular basis, when my bank card didn’t get rejected at Stop & Shop and I fumbled through an excuse about changed pins while the cashier looked on in either pity or impatience. When Kevin wasn’t sprawled in that chair every hour of the day, staring bleary-eyed at the TV, the life sucked out of him. This is Lucy’s normal, and I hate that.
As for a baby… ‘It’s not like we do it that often,’ Kevin grumbles, and I don’t know whether to laugh or groan. What is this, a tenth grade sex-ed lesson? Or did he miss that, because we were busy cutting classes and making out behind the storage sheds; two shy quiet kids who broke the rules for each other? And look how that went. Pregnant at seventeen, Kev a year older, married three months later, happy for a while, and here we are.
I remember those hungry, hopeful kisses, pressed up against the concrete block of the shed wall, my hands fisted in Kev’s shirt. Feeling so excited, so happy, like anything was possible as long as I had him. I’d never had a boyfriend before Kev. I’d drifted through high school, keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed, and he was the same. We lit each other up, like we had candles inside. Fireworks. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that, all fizzy inside. It was a long, long time ago.
‘It only takes one time, Kev,’ I say, trying for a smile. ‘Remember?’ Emma was a one-time baby, both of us too shy and uncertain to attempt the mess of it again until we were married. We fumbled through everything, a hurried half hour in Kev’s basement, zippers sticking, noses bumping, soft laughter in the dark, embarrassment rushing through us along with the dizzying lust.
As for more recently… not so different, really. A drunken fumble on the sofa, wanting to feel just a little bit of that connection again. And now this.
‘Yeah, I know, but…’ Kev shakes his head again, making me think of a sleepy bear. One who’s thinking about getting angry. Because since the accident, I never know when Kevin is going to get angry. He can be so sweet sometimes, playing Guess Who or Connect Four with Amy, listening to Emma read her silly pony books, slipping his arm around my waist, surprising me.
Then all of a sudden he’ll lash out, pushing the book or game away, demanding dark and quiet, which usually means beer and TV and sometimes cigarettes, the smoke snaking through the rooms of our little house, staining the ceiling.
I try to be patient. I do. I take deep breaths, I keep my voice mild, I let it all roll over me. But this? A baby? This is meant to be our problem, even though I hate that it’s a problem in the first place. It’s a baby. Our baby, already curled up inside me, heart beating hard. I’m not seventeen anymore, tearful and uncertain, except that’s how I feel a little bit, inside. Like I’m not sure how this is going to turn out, or if Kev’s going to be there for me. For us. For this baby.
Kevin runs a hand through his already-messed hair and lets out a sound I don’t like. It’s part groan, part sigh, and it sounds like despair. ‘We can’t have another kid, Heather,’ he says in a low voice. He won’t look at me, his stubbly chin tucked toward his chest. ‘Things are tight enough as it is.’
He thinks I don’t know that? That I don’t realize we’re two months behind on the rent, and we have all of two hundred bucks in the bank account? We’re one teetering step away from destitution, and have been for so long that I’ve almost got used to living on that knife-edge. But you can only keep your balance for so long.
It wasn’t always like this. When Kevin worked our lives were completely different then. I try to remember the people we used to be. I try to hang on to the woman I was, because sometimes I don’t recognize this person I’ve become; this tired, stringy-haired, stressed-out woman who screeches and shrieks and bites her nails, whose pregnancy is a looming disaster rather than the joy I wish it could be.
Back then, before his accident, Kevin smiled and laughed and tossed the girls up in the air. He kissed me in the kitchen, and we walked around the block on a summer evening, the girls on their rusty trikes in front of us. Small, simple pleasures, but that’s what happiness is, isn’t it?
We had money – not a lot, we’ve never had that, but enough for birthday presents and take-out on Fridays and the occasional splurge – a trip to a theme park, a dinner out. I didn’t hold my breath when I paid for the groceries, or wince when I checked the bank balance on the ATM, at least not often. Life didn’t feel like a minefield, and now I’ve just stepped on one, everything exploding around us.
I can’t have this baby.
I can’t have an abortion, either. That might seem obvious to some, and sometimes it does to me, but I’ve felt my babies kick, I’ve seen them curled up tight or wriggling like crazy on the ultrasound screen. What makes this one so different? Just a little bit of money, or even a lot? Besides, we’re Catholic. Not so much with the church going, not every Sunday, but still… It’s the way I grew up; it’s what I know.
And then of course there are other people to think about: Kev, my family, my neighbors, my friends. What if someone found out? What if I was seen? The gossip would never stop, along with the pity and judgment. I don’t know which would feel worse.
This part of North Elizabeth, New Jersey, is like a small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. We gossip on our cracked front steps and out on the sagging back porches. Kids whisper in the schoolyard. Women lean across grocery carts. Men talk in bars. Someone would know. Someone would figure it out, and then what?
But am I tempted? Yes. I’ve looked up the number of the local Planned Parenthood clinic and sat there with the phone in my hand while Lucy played around me, chattering to herself, with no idea what was going on in Mommy’s mind. I’ve told myself to call. No one would need to know, no one would find out, and it would solve everything.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Kevin asks, and I blink, stung by the ‘you’. We’ve been married for eleven years, we have three kids, he’s the only man I’ve ever kissed or done anything with, but it’s my problem. Of course it is.
‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’ I ask, and for once I let him hear my irritation. I’m always so careful with Kevin, but right now I don’t have it in me. ‘What are you saying, Kev?’ I ask, and I know I’m daring him to say what he means, even as I realize he won’t.
He’s a good man, Kev. Underneath the pain and the bitterness, that good man is still there. He’s still the one who stammered when he asked me out, who asked if he could kiss me that first time, and then bumped my nose with his. We both laughed, and it was okay. It’s always been okay, until the accident. Until a fall from a forklift turned Kev into a man I don’t feel I know and sometimes I don’t even like.
Kev stares me in the face for a full minute. I hadn’t realized how faded his eyes have become. They used to be such a warm hazel, glinting with gold, but now they just look muddy. He’s thirty years old and he looks more than forty, but then so do I. Three babies, no sleep, no money. It adds up – and then it takes away.
‘My workman’s comp ends in six weeks,’ Kev says, and for a few seconds I just stare back at him.
‘You mean you have the hearing.’ That’s what the lawyer called about this morning. Three years of disability payments and then it comes up for review. But Kev will keep getting it – he was injured on the job, something went wrong with the controls of his forklift and he ended up flat on his back on the concrete floor, a fall from fifteen feet.
I got a call at home, someone from work, and then the union, telling me the company would cover the hospital costs; that the company owed us. I could barely take it in; my mind was buzzing and blank, and everything in me felt gray and numb. I didn’t know if Kev had hurt his brain along with his back, if our lives were changed forever. And it turned out they were.
He was in the hospital for three weeks and nearly three years later he’s still on heavy meds. He can’t lift anything more than ten pounds. He certainly can’t go back to his old job. Of course he’ll get the disability payments renewed.
But Kevin is shaking his head. He won’t look
at me. He picks at a threadbare patch on the chair with a ragged fingernail. ‘The lawyer said today that they won’t renew it. They’re saying I’ve had maximum medical improvement’ – he sneers at the words – ‘and that I can resume light duty, the dicks.’
I stare at him, hardly able to take it in. ‘So you mean there will be no more money…?’
‘The lawyer says I can get permanent partial disability, but it won’t be much. And the company doesn’t have any light duty for me. What a fucking surprise.’ He sounds so bitter, and I can’t blame him. But we have to have more money coming in, baby or not. We can’t survive otherwise. We’ll lose the house, we won’t be able to eat, never mind another baby.
I swallow hard, blinking back the dizziness. ‘But can’t you appeal…?’
‘The lawyer says it’s not worth it. This is the best I’m going to get.’
The lawyer, the lawyer… I don’t even know his name. Someone the union sent, someone with a loud voice, shiny shoes, buttons straining against his belly, a smell of sweat. I never liked him. I didn’t trust him. I don’t think he once looked me in the eye.
‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ My voice is a squeak. Even after all the crap we’ve had thrown at us, I can’t believe it. I make two hundred and twenty dollars a week maximum, and doing that many nights just about kills me. Our rent is eight hundred, never mind all the other expenses.