Yes, she had—but the Apple Festival is the last thing on her mind this morning. She hasn’t told Jessie about the DNA match. It can wait until things settle down around here—if things settle down. Maybe by then, she’ll have more information to share.
She checks her phone. It’s not yet nine o’clock. Still too early to call her cousin Lucky in Georgia.
Google had shown her living at the same address she’d had thirty years ago, presumably with the same phone number as long as she still has a landline. If not, she should be easy enough to locate in a town that size.
Or maybe I should go directly to her daughter?
Quinnlynn, after all, is the one whose DNA had matched Amelia’s. But she hadn’t provided a phone number, and anyway, this situation is far more complicated than a genetic connection.
Jessie sets a plate of pancakes in front of her.
“Thanks. Hey—they’re not smiling.”
“I figured you wouldn’t want a sugar overload.”
“I don’t, but the face ones are pretty adorable.”
“Diane always made them that way, so I did the same for my own kids when they were little. How do you think Chip got his nickname? He’d eat just the chocolate, and then he’d pound his high chair tray shouting, ‘Chip! More chip!’”
“I can picture that. He was the cutest little thing. Petty, too. The only time I ever questioned our decision not to have kids was when I came here and saw your two. Not that Theodore wasn’t also a cute little thing,” she adds quickly, “but I didn’t know him when he was that age.”
“Neither did we.” Sitting across from her, Jessie looks at the stove clock as they dig into the pancakes. “I don’t know whether to wish he’d wake up, or be glad that he hasn’t. I’m pretty sure he won’t be interested in hanging out with a little playmate today.”
“He was great upstairs earlier.”
“Because you made him want to be a hero. Thank you.”
“Child Psychology 101. You and Billy would have said the same thing.”
“Except that sometimes our patience wears thin, I’m ashamed to say. With Theodore, and with each other.”
“It happens.” She shrugs and gestures toward the sunroom. “Prewitt seems to be just fine entertaining himself for now.”
Bathed in early morning light spilling through the windows, the child is wearing new pajamas Billy bought him, the lavender silk draped like a lap robe. He’s absorbed in fitting puzzle shapes into their wooden trays. Jessie had offered him other toys, but he prefers to do the same thing over and over again. He hasn’t quite relaxed, and he isn’t exactly content, but he no longer seems as anxious as he had yesterday.
That makes one of us.
“Mimi?”
“Hmm?”
Jessie has set down her own fork, elbows on the table, chin resting on her fists, gaze fixed on Amelia. “What’s wrong?”
She opens her mouth.
“And don’t you dare say it’s nothing,” Jessie says, “because I know you, and I can tell when you’re stressing, and it’s never over nothing.”
“I appreciate the concern. You have way too much going on here to worry about me.”
“I always have a lot going on.”
“Not like this. Not with . . .” She gestures toward the sunroom.
“That’s no reason not to tell me whatever’s bothering you. And don’t say you’re fine, because you obviously aren’t.”
“Okay. I’m not.” Amelia leans back, arms folded and looks at her.
“I knew it.” Jessie nods, picking up her coffee. “I already figured something was up with you and Aaron the other day when we talked on the phone.”
“It’s not me and Aaron.” Maybe it had been then, but it isn’t what’s weighing on her in this moment. “I got a DNA match.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I matched my mother.”
“Your mother? That’s incredible!” Jessie plunks down her mug, ignoring the coffee sloshing over the rim. “I don’t care what’s been going on around here, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this the second you found her!”
“It just happened, and I didn’t find her. I matched her.”
“Same thing, as long as you can—”
“No, Jessie. It’s Bettina. The mother I already had.”
“Wait . . . what?”
Amelia explains, every word she utters widening Jessie’s eyes like another breath into a balloon about to pop.
“This is insane! Why would your parents make up a story about finding you if you were their own daughter?”
“I don’t know, but . . .” She stops, swallows hard, tears in her eyes. “It’s like I’ve lost something all over again.”
Jessie reaches across the table to clasp her hand. “Mimi, you’ve just found something. The one thing you’ve been searching for all your life.”
“No, that wasn’t me. It was you. You were searching all your life. I was pretty much an adult when I found out they weren’t my parents. Even though, apparently, they were.”
“Okay, but . . . what do you feel like you’ve lost?”
“My story. I’ve owned it for all these years. I’ve told it so many times to so many people, to myself—trying to figure out how it’s going to end, where it began.”
“Now you know.”
Amelia leans back, staring at the ceiling, where a delicate cobweb wafts from the vintage pendant light. A thought gnaws at her consciousness like a rat bent on short-circuiting her brain.
“Tell me what’s going through your head, Mimi.”
She doesn’t dare, saying instead, “I was horrified back when I found out that Calvin and Bettina weren’t my biological parents. But now there’s a part of me that’s just as horrified to find out that they were. I’d already forgiven them for lying to me for the first twenty years of my life, and I guess it would be healthy to forgive them—him, anyway—for continuing to lie until the end of his, but . . .”
“It would be healthy,” Jessie agrees. “And really hard.”
“Yeah. Maybe not as hard if I at least knew why he did it. He had so many chances to tell me, especially at the end. It’s not like he didn’t know he was dying. It’s not like he wasn’t a God-fearing Christian. You’d think, after what had happened to me after Bettina died, he’d have wanted to confess the whole truth.”
“Maybe he didn’t think you’d ever find out after he was gone, so he thought it would be best for your sake to leave it alone.”
“Maybe. Or maybe . . .” She takes a deep breath. “What if he didn’t know it any more than I did? What if the lie was just Bettina’s?”
“You mean, what if she gave birth to you without him knowing? That’s . . . I mean, why would she do that? How would she do that?”
“Women have babies all the time without realizing they were even pregnant.”
Jessie gives her a look.
“All right, maybe not all the time, but it happens. It’s . . . I don’t know, denial? You hear about teenaged girls who go into labor and they’re so shocked, they don’t know what to do with the baby afterward. Or some of them might know they’re pregnant, but they hide it from their parents, and then afterward, they abandon the baby.” She shrugs. “Oldest foundling story in the book.”
“But your mother wasn’t a teenager. She had to have known she was pregnant. She’d already had your brother,” Jessie adds. “Plus, she was married, so she had no reason to hide it.”
“Unless . . .”
Jessie stares. “Unless you weren’t his baby.”
Amelia nods, relieved Jessie didn’t make her say it. The idea is upsetting, but it makes sense.
“I couldn’t have loved you any more if you were my biological daughter . . .”
Calvin’s words had brought such comfort over the years. How could they have been false?
“When he told me that they’d been longing for a child and couldn’t have one, I got the sense that . . . well, that it was his fault,”
she tells Jessie. “That he was the one who . . . couldn’t. At least, not anymore, after they’d lost my brother.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said, it’s the way he said it. It felt true. Just like when he told me about how he’d found me. I can’t believe that was a lie.”
“So if it wasn’t, and he was telling the truth as he knew it, and your mother somehow gave birth to you without him finding out, then you think she . . . what? Left you in the church for him to find?”
“It doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“Not at all.”
But now that the idea has taken hold, it’s as plausible as any other scenario she’s managed to conjure. Especially if Bettina had had some help.
She looks at Jessie.
“What, Mimi?”
“I’m just thinking . . . what if Marceline LeBlanc had something to do with it?”
“The old voodoo woman?”
“Not voodoo. She was a Gullah priestess, but wow. I can’t believe you remember some of this stuff.”
“You’re my best friend. Of course I remember.”
Does Aaron? He’s her husband.
But he’s a man, and men don’t remember details the way women do.
Even as the thought enters her head, she scolds herself.
Come on, girl. You know better than that.
“Why are you thinking about Marceline, Mimi?”
“Because when I got to know her, after Bettina died—it’s crazy, and they were so different, but . . . Marceline kind of reminded me of her, in a way.”
“She looked like her?”
“Not really, but she sounded a lot like her. She was from somewhere down south, too, so it’s probably just the accent and inflection, but the way she looked out for me . . . not like a mother would, exactly; that’s not why she reminded me of Bettina. It was like she cared about me, though. A lot more than the other neighbor women did.”
“Maybe that’s why your mother always wanted you to stay away from her. Maybe they’d been friends at one point. Maybe she knew something.”
“Something Calvin didn’t?”
“You could be wrong about that.”
“Wishful thinking? But if they all knew, except me, then the thing in the church—Calvin finding me there, abandoned—it never happened. And to me, it really feels like it did.”
She thinks of the basket, the dress, the ring . . .
Lily Tucker dances at the back of her mind.
“So let’s say the church thing did happen,” Jessie says. “Let’s say Bettina had you and didn’t tell Calvin for whatever reason. Where does Marceline fit in? Do you think she saw Bettina hide you in the church for him to find?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she was in on it.”
“It seems risky, though. What if he hadn’t found you? Or what if someone else had?”
“He’d been working that shift for years. He was always the only one there at that hour. I used to think that whoever had left me might have known that, and how badly he and my mother wanted children. I just never considered she could have had something to do with it herself, but now it seems pretty clear that she did.”
“You might never get the whole story, Mimi.”
“I know. And if I don’t, I can live with it. At least I know the truth now. But as soon as it’s a decent hour for a Saturday morning, I’m going to call my cousin Lucky, just in case she knows something.”
“Lucky . . . and her mom was your auntie Birdie, right? The one who died right before your wedding?”
“Wow. You’re like my family historian over here. What happened to the failing middle-aged memory?”
Jessie smiles. “Great nicknames, I never forget. I mean . . . Birdie and Lucky? How awesome are those names? Do you know what they’re short for?”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Good. And I don’t really know a lot about them—I kind of feel bad about that. I promised to visit them in Marshboro but then . . . I met Aaron, and he had this big, amazing family that welcomed me right from the start, so . . .”
“You didn’t need to look further.”
Amelia nods. “Between my in-laws, and you and Si, I guess I finally realized that family isn’t just about blood ties.”
Things might have been different, though, had she realized Bettina’s Southern family had been her own biological relatives.
“What does Aaron have to say about all of this?”
“I haven’t told him yet. But I guess I need to, before I talk to Lucky.” She pushes back her chair and picks up her phone. “He might have legal advice.”
“Legal advice?”
“Or . . .”
He might share in her excitement. Lend emotional support. Offer suggestions on how to handle the conversation.
Anything but indifference.
Avoiding Jessie’s questioning look, her gaze falls on the little boy in the sunroom. She thinks of the wistful way he’d said Maman, and of the homme dangereux.
If his mother had taken good care of him, and he loves and misses her, then where is she now? If he has someone like that in his life, then this could only have happened to him if something had happened to her.
“Jessie?” She turns back. “I thought about what you said last night, and you were right.”
“I’m always right.” She pauses. “About what?”
“About testing Prewitt’s DNA. When it comes to following rules versus helping a child . . .” Amelia gives a decisive nod, mind made up. “The child wins.”
The sun rides high in a bright blue Saturday morning sky as the Angler drives into Ithaca. It’s much larger than the surrounding towns, a small, hilly city of old architecture and older trees, with two campuses rising above it in the east and Cayuga Lake sparkling to the north. College students mill the downtown sidewalks as they do back in his neighborhood, wearing school hoodies—Cornell kids in scarlet and white, Ithaca College in blue and gold.
He passes the broad Commons, where vendors are setting up tables and awnings. He parks in a garage, buys a couple of local newspapers, and finds a diner. It’s crowded—a good thing. He won’t be conspicuous amid the bustle, and he can eavesdrop on the other customers. He dismisses the college kids, always caught up in themselves and each other and, mostly, their electronic devices.
Some of the locals are like that, but many greet each other and the waitstaff by name. They talk about the weather, the festival, the avocado toast, even each other, once certain people are out of earshot.
He orders a hearty bacon and egg breakfast and buries his face in a newspaper, searching the articles for information about where he might find the boy. And he listens.
He learns that Andy Cooper’s family is looking for an au pair, that Beth Griswold’s Bikram yoga class was canceled, that the Hylands are moving to Arizona.
But nobody mentions the child who’d been found and is being fostered somewhere in their midst. Nor do they mention that an Amish farmer has been brutally murdered about twenty miles outside of town.
That’s the good news.
The bad is that sooner or later, he knows, someone is going to miss the man and go looking for him. When they do, they’re going to find him pretty quickly. The Angler had considered hiding the body out back, but that hadn’t gone very well with the boy, now had it?
At least Stoltzfus is good and dead, shot through the head and then stabbed so many times his light blue work shirt had been blood-blackened to match his suit.
Panting from exertion, the Angler had surveyed his bloody handiwork one last time before trekking back through the woods to the clearing where he’d parked the stolen car.
The Angler’s breakfast arrives. The ponytailed waiter, a college kid with a pierced nostril and stoned, watery eyes, is already turning away as he asks, “All set?”
“No, I ordered toast and scrambled.”
The kid peers at the poached eggs on an English muffin. “Oh, yeah. Be rig
ht back.”
The Angler grits his teeth and toys with his place setting. The fork and butter knife are water spotted.
It had felt good to release the rage this morning, but it’s building again.
Maybe it would be different if he’d killed the boy, or Cecile. Or even if Stoltzfus had fought back. But to execute a man who was waiting for it . . .
The two middle-aged couples in the booth behind him are still talking about the Hylands. “Dave Carver just listed the house.”
“They’re asking two hundred and fifty thousand. They’ll never get it.”
“Sure they will. It’s huge, and it’s brick.”
“Yeah, but it’s right across from the Hansons’ house.”
“Is that a house? I thought it was a school bus.”
“Or a yellow submarine.”
Laughter from some, but not all.
“The Hansons are lovely people. Who cares what color they paint their house?”
“Dave Carver cares. But it’s not just the color. Did you hear about the livestock ordinance meeting last week?”
The ponytailed waiter is back. He deposits a fresh plate on the table in front of the Angler and again starts to turn away after a murmured, “Toast and scrambled. All set?”
“Wait!” He examines the offering. “I wanted white toast.”
“I thought you said whole grain.”
“I said, white.”
Watching the kid carry the plate back to the kitchen, he clenches the butter knife, thinking of the blood-encrusted filet blade he’d again stashed in his tackle box on the seat of the stolen car.
Behind him, the couples are talking about a teenager and a backyard rooster.
“Is this the older son?” one of the women asks. “I thought he was away at college.”
“No, he is, he’s up at UVM. This is the crazy foster kid.”
Foster kid?
The Angler’s ears perk up.
“How many fosters do they have now?”
“Just the one, but they adopted him years ago. They don’t foster anymore.”
“Yes, they do. I heard they just got another one a few days ago.”
“That’s Jessie and Billy. Saving the world. They just can’t help themselves, even though they have their hands full with the house and the rooster and the crazy adopted son.”
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