The Dream Daughter: A Novel

by Diane Chamberlain

  I shut my eyes, gathering all the words I needed to explain what had happened. I told her about returning to 1970 without Joanna. “So Hunter sent me back to 2001 to get my baby, but when I arrived in New York this morning and went to the hospital to see her, I discovered it was 2013.”

  She stared at me, mouth open, clearly stunned. “Hunter wouldn’t make that gross an error,” she said. “Off by twelve years? It wouldn’t happen. He’s working with me in the program now and he’s very good. Better than me. He’s also married to a woman who is not your sister, so don’t go telling the neighbors he’s your brother-in-law, for Christ’s sake.”

  “But I’m here in 2013, so yes, he made a mistake,” I insisted. She didn’t seem to understand my desperation. I sat forward on the sofa, my hands in fists on my knees. “And now I’m stuck and I need to get back to my daughter. I have to—”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, getting to her feet, tapping her finger against her chin. She was clearly deep in thought and she paced the room. “Holy shit. It was this morning you landed in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were aiming for 2001?”

  “Yes, but—”

  She held up a hand to cut me off. “Do you know what happened in New York on September 11, 2001?” she asked.

  “I … people kept saying something about ‘9/11’ and those towers. The World Trade Center towers, I guess? A plane flew into them or something like that?”

  “Yes,” she said excitedly. “Oh, this is beyond fascinating!” She nearly ran back to the table by the front door for her briefcase. Returning to her chair, she pulled a laptop computer from the briefcase, flipped it open, and began tapping the keys. “It was an attack by this Islamic terrorist group called Al Qaeda,” she said. “Both towers completely collapsed to the ground. Thousands of people were killed.”

  I was stunned into silence. It sounded impossible.

  “The day the planes hit, the smoke and debris in the air was unbelievable.” She glanced up at me over the laptop. “Imagine those huge towers being suddenly vaporized, turned into a toxic plume of concrete dust.” She stood up and carried the laptop to the sofa. Sitting down next to me, she set the computer on my lap. On the screen, I saw a picture of people running from thick black smoke that seemed to be chasing them, the crumbling towers in the background. It looked like something from an end-of-the-world movie. I pressed my hands over my mouth.

  “My God,” I whispered. “Did they … we … ever catch the people who did this?”

  Myra brushed aside the question with a sweep of her hand. “Very long story,” she said, moving the computer from my lap to hers. “Back to your time travel. We’ve learned that it doesn’t take much to throw off our calculations when it comes to atmospheric disturbance,” she said. “Even a good rainstorm can do it. So I think we have our answer. I’m sure Hunter had the correct calculations, but he couldn’t—or didn’t—account for what was happening in the air around New York that morning. And it threw your travel off and you landed here.” She shut the lid of her computer, looking pleased with herself.

  “But what do I do now?” I asked. “I have to get back to 2001 and my baby!”

  “You can’t do that,” she said. “First of all, the last place on earth you want to be is Manhattan in September of 2001, trust me, and—”

  “Yes, I do want to be there,” I insisted. “No matter what’s happening, my daughter is there. I need to be with her.”

  “Also, if you go you’ll be stuck in 2001,” she said as though I hadn’t spoken. “That would be your fourth trip, right?”

  “Yes, but…” I imagined what it would be like to be stuck in 2001 with no hope of ever seeing Patti or Hunter or John Paul or my friends, ever again. Unbearable. But so was the thought of losing my daughter. “I can’t just leave my baby there.” My voice broke. “They thought I abandoned her and they turned her over to Child Protective Services.”

  “Think,” Myra said, a bit impatiently. “Your baby is no longer a baby. Your baby is now twelve years old. Most likely she was adopted by someone who adores her. You have to think about it that way and let it go. We don’t tamper with—”

  “Let it go?” I argued, annoyed she was making the same worthless argument as Celeste. “If you gave birth to Hunter and a couple of months later you couldn’t find him, would you just let it go?”

  She stared at me and I thought I’d gotten through to her. “I would accept the fact that I could do nothing about it,” she said in that matter-of-fact tone I’d come to associate with her. “The ship had sailed and I would hope he was being well cared for and happy.”

  “But what if—”

  “No arguments,” Myra interrupted me, opening her computer again. “I’ll find a portal to take you back to 1970 where you belong, and that’s that,” she said. “You can stay here until I come up with something. If you see any of my neighbors, tell them you’re a friend. No more information than that. All right?”

  No, it wasn’t all right. I looked down at my hands, fighting tears. I needed my baby. My body ached with the need for her.

  “Right now, you’re very emotional and not thinking clearly,” Myra said, as she tapped her keyboard. “I need you to look at this satellite image.” She moved the screen so I could see it once again. “The Outer Banks, right, if I’m remembering correctly? Where do you want to land?”

  I stared at the astonishing map. I was looking at Nags Head from outer space and the sight was breathtaking. I thought of trying to make out our cottage, but decided against it. I didn’t want to know if a storm had taken it in the last forty years. That was not only possible, but likely.

  “Come on, now,” Myra prompted. “Show me where.”

  I saw the white blanket of sand that had to be Jockey’s Ridge. For a long moment, I stared numbly at it before I touched the screen with my hand.

  “What is that?” she asked. “Sand?”

  “Dunes.”

  “Excellent.” She shifted the computer back to her own lap. “I’ll get something worked out for you, hopefully very soon. We use the roof of a hotel here in Old Town for the stepping-off, so—”

  “It needs to be over water.”

  “What?”

  “I have to step off over water. I can’t do it over … a street or concrete or—”

  “What does it matter?” she asked. “It’s not like you’re going to land on the street.”

  “It’s psychological,” I said. “I need it to be over water.”

  She sighed. Closed the computer. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.” She stood up. “Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator or pantry and let me show you the guest room. I keep it made up because I frequently have visiting physicists passing through, so it’s all set. It has its own small bathroom and there are toiletries in the shower.”

  I stood up. My body felt as though it weighed two thousand pounds as I followed her up the narrow staircase.

  “Maybe no one wanted to adopt a baby that had heart problems,” I said from behind her. “Maybe she’s spent her entire life moving from one crappy foster home to another.” I pictured my little girl poor and struggling—struggling in every way possible. No parents. No friends. No money. No love. “What if I could find her?” I said. “Then she could go back with me.”

  “Oh, no.” Myra gave her head a vigorous shake as we reached the top of the stairs. “You need to move past this. We don’t tamper with people’s lives. Accept that she’s most likely fine and healthy and happy. Think positively. And let it go.”

  “Please, Myra,” I begged as we reached the second story.

  “Wherever that girl is, you can’t mess with her life,” she said, guiding me down a hallway. “It’s best if you pretend none of this ever happened. Pretend she never existed. She was a glimmer of your imagination. I won’t help you do anything other than get back to 1970.”

  * * *

  The guest room was sterile. Nothing on the white walls.
A few plastic hangers hung in the otherwise empty closet. The double bed was covered by a thin, plain gold spread, the corners crisp. There was one night table. A small TV, the only frivolous trapping in the room, sat on the dresser. A frameless mirror above the dresser revealed how long and hard this day had been. My eyes were rimmed with red, the skin around them swollen and damp, and I was pale, my summer tan completely gone. My limbs felt as though they were moving through mud as I set the backpack on the dresser and pulled out my nightgown and brush. A glimmer of my imagination. How dare she refer to Joanna that way?

  I brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face, then I drank two glasses of water and climbed into the bed. There was a remote for the TV on the night table, and I turned it on. It was set to CNN and I realized I was in the middle of a program that recounted the events of 9/11, twelve years ago. In horror, I watched a film of the towers coming down, so much more real than that still image on Myra’s computer. The loss of life was impossible to comprehend.

  But the World Trade Center had been far from Lincoln Hospital, I thought. I would have been safe there with Joanna. Shaken by what was happening, yes, but we would have been safe. I would have been holding her as I had every day since her birth. I’d touch the silky skin of her cheek. Hold her tiny hand and sing to her. I’d watch for her smile, waiting for it to light up my heart. I wanted my baby back. I needed her back.

  I turned off the TV, crawled under the covers, and cried myself to sleep.

  38

  I slept far more deeply than I would have thought possible. When I got up in the morning, Myra was gone but she’d left a note on the kitchen counter next to the stove, promising to bring me a portal that would take me home to 1970.

  I ate an orange from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table only because I knew I needed to have something in my stomach besides tea. I had to find a phone. I had to call Child Protective Services in New York to find out what they’d done with Joanna. I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew what had happened to my daughter. Carrying my cup of tea from room to room, I hunted for a phone without success. Even Myra’s small home office had no phone. It was a remarkably pristine room, the shelves filled with books on astrophysics. The only sign that a human being ever used the room was a framed photograph on Myra’s desk: Hunter and a dark-haired woman I guessed to be Rosie, both of them smiling. Looking happy. The picture made me uncomfortable and I couldn’t give it more than a glance.

  Bright sunlight filled the living room and I looked out the rear windows to the small brick patio and the river beyond. I spent the rest of the morning sitting on the sofa, staring at that water. Kayakers passed by and birds flitted through the trees at the water’s edge, but my mind wasn’t truly on the river. It was in grimy foster homes. I imagined tasteless food and terrible nutrition. I imagined the lonely heart of a child who thought her mother had abandoned her way back in 2001. I had to find that child. If I was going home, I thought, she was going with me.

  Shortly before noon, Myra returned to the house with two sandwiches and bottles of Coke. We sat at the kitchen table, unwrapping the thick white paper from the sandwiches.

  “Turkey and cheese,” Myra said.

  “Fine,” I said, though I knew I could only pick at the sandwich.

  “So,” she said, reaching into the briefcase next to her chair. She pulled out a small phone and a driver’s license bearing the picture she’d taken of me a few months ago. “If you’re willing to step off the hotel, I can get you a portal on Saturday.”

  “No,” I said stubbornly. “I can’t do that.”

  “That’s what I figured. So, I was able to get you a portal off the Arlington Memorial Bridge. It’s going to be tricky because there are always people on that bridge, even at night, but it should be workable. Unfortunately, the soonest date I could make it work is over a week away, on the twentieth. And if you’re going to be here that long, I thought you’d better have an ID and a prepaid cell phone, unless you want to stay cooped up in the house.”

  I stared hungrily at the phone. As soon as I had a moment alone, I would call Protective Services.

  “Do you have to go back to work this afternoon?” I asked. I took a bite of the sandwich. The thought of making that phone call, getting some answers, piqued my appetite.

  “I can work here,” she said, disappointing me. I needed privacy.

  Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes. “Where is Hunter?” I asked, making conversation. “Does he live nearby?”

  “You don’t need to know about Hunter. I don’t want you to look for him.”

  “He told me I don’t see him again in the future.”

  “Good. So let’s not talk about him.”

  “Can I go for a walk?”

  “Of course,” she said, deep frown lines between her eyebrows. “You’re not my prisoner. Old Town has a lot of charm, so enjoy it. Just be careful what you say to people. Do you need money?”

  I shook my head. “Hunter gave me some before I left.”

  Myra picked up the phone. “My number’s already programmed in here,” she said. “And your number’s here, too.” She flipped open the phone to show me her number as well as my own. Then she stood up abruptly, wrapping the uneaten half of her sandwich. “These are huge,” she said. “We’ll finish them for dinner.”

  “Good idea.” I began wrapping my sandwich as well, glad this lunchtime chat was over. I couldn’t wait to get outside with the phone.

  * * *

  I supposed Myra was right about Old Town having charm, but it was lost on me as I walked past the small shops, hunting for a quiet place to make my call. I found an area on the riverfront where people sat on benches, eating or talking, and I walked past them until I spotted an empty bench. Sitting down, I pulled the phone from my jeans pocket. I dialed information, and in a few minutes, I was connected to Child Protective Services in Manhattan. The woman who answered the phone sounded both bored and annoyed with her job.

  “I hope you can help me,” I said, my heart thumping. “Back in 2001, I had a baby at Amelia Wade Lincoln Hospital and the baby had to stay in the nursery for a few months. I was with her every day. When September eleventh happened … 9/11 … I was injured and unable to get back to my baby. It took a long time for me to recover, and I only recently learned that my baby was turned over to Child Protective Services. So I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”

  There wasn’t so much as a peep from the other end of the line. I stared anxiously toward the river where a small boat, its motor sputtering, sailed by.

  “Hello?” I asked. Had I lost her?

  “I’m not following you one bit,” the woman said. “You left your baby in the hospital on 9/11 and only now remembered?”

  “I was injured. I didn’t intentionally leave her there. And it was a head injury, so I had amnesia for a long time and I thought it was still 2001. That my baby was still a baby and I—”

  “Hold on,” the woman said.

  I closed my eyes, waiting. I knew I sounded like an idiot. Worse. I sounded insane.

  Another woman came on the line and I went through the whole explanation again, trying to the best of my ability to sound like a normal, healthy woman who had simply lost twelve years of her life to a now-resolved injury. Finally, the woman broke in.

  “So what is it you want?” she asked.

  “I want to know what Protective Services did with my baby,” I said.

  “We can’t tell you that.”

  “But I’m her mother. I didn’t abandon her.” How I hated that word! “I couldn’t help what happened. I just want to know if she … if she’s in a foster home, or…” I couldn’t bring myself to ask if she was still alive. “If I tell you her name, can you at least tell me what happened to her? Just generally?”

  “No, ma’am, we don’t do that. You want any information on her, you’ll have to get a lawyer, but we don’t just give out information to someone who calls in, twelve years after the fact, or even twelve days
after. Sorry.”

  She hung up. I stared at the phone in my hand, tempted to heave it into the river. Instead, my mind filled once again with images of Joanna in her isolette, waiting, waiting, waiting for her mother to come and take her home.

  * * *

  When I returned to Myra’s, I found her in her small office on the second story. She looked up from her desktop computer and I knew she could tell that something had shifted in me.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

  I clutched the new phone in my hand. “I called Protective Services in New York to find out what they did with my baby,” I admitted, “and they wouldn’t tell me anything. I didn’t abandon her! They made me feel like I was lying.” I looked at the ceiling, letting out a sigh. “Well, I was lying,” I said, “but not the way they think.”

  Myra stared at me, her thin lips in a tight line, her fingers tapping on the arms of her chair. I waited for her to chew me out.

  “I’m worried about you being here a whole week, stewing over this,” she said finally. “It would be best if you took the Saturday portal from the roof of the hotel. I need to get you out of here.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re just torturing yourself by staying in 2013.”

  I looked away from her. My eyes lit on that photograph of Hunter and Rosie again.

  “You need to find a way to spend your time,” Myra said. “Go into D.C. Go to the museums.”

  “I’m not the least bit interested in the museums!” I said. “Don’t you understand, Myra? I’ve lost my baby!”

  She let out a weary sigh. “I get it,” she said. “And I also get that there’s nothing you can do about it. So go find a book to read. Or here—” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out the laptop computer, handing it to me. “Read the news. Surf the internet.” She jotted a long password on a small yellow square of paper. “You just click on Safari.”