Emily, Gone

by Bette Lee Crosby

  George’s words stayed with Rachel, and as she lay in bed, unable to sleep, she began to have less and less certainty of her conviction. The hours ticked by, and as bits of doubt crept in, she began to wonder what she really wanted to happen. The thought of the child she’d given birth to seeing her as a stranger was heartbreaking, almost as heartbreaking as the thought of never knowing. When the first light of morning edged the horizon, she climbed from the bed, dressed, and went downstairs.

  She’d expected to be alone, but Angela was already sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad in front of her.

  She looked up at Rachel. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Neither could I,” Rachel replied.

  Angela’s face was blotchy and her nose rubbed raw. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more understanding last night,” she said. “I realize this is as difficult for you as it is for me. I was up most of the night, asking myself the same questions you’d asked.”

  Rachel set the coffeepot on to brew, then lowered herself into the chair on the opposite side of the table. “And did you come up with any answers?”

  “No.” Angela shook her head dolefully. “But I did come to the realization that we both deserve to know the truth, whatever it is.” She slid the pad across the table. “I’ve made a list of places where Vicki lived before she came to stay with us. We need to find out where Lara was born, then we can see if her birth was registered.”

  Rachel began reading down the list. “What about the guy she lived with? Wouldn’t he know where she gave birth to Lara?”

  “His name is Russ Murphy,” Angela said. “I looked for him years ago but came up empty.” She went on to tell of finding Vicki’s letter, going to Wynne Bluffs, and calling the long list of Murphys she’d found in the telephone directory. “My sister lied about a lot of things, so it’s possible the guy’s name isn’t Murphy, but that’s what he went by when they lived together. The one thing I am certain of is that they lived in the apartment complex. The manager remembered them having a baby.”

  “Was Lara born while they were living there?”

  “No.” Angela shook her head. “I asked that same question, but the manager said the baby was about six or seven months old when they moved in. Apparently Vicki was only there for about a week. Murphy stayed on for a few months, then he took off and left with no forwarding address.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  Angela scrubbed a hand across her wrinkled forehead, looked at the list and then back to Rachel. “I’ve racked my brain trying to remember places Vicki might have mentioned in passing, but I couldn’t come up with anything. She bounced around a lot, but as far as I know she never lived anywhere outside of Kentucky.”

  “Kentucky?” Rachel groaned. “That’s a pretty big area to search, when we’re not even sure what we’re looking for.”

  “Not as big as you might think. Vicki didn’t have a car, so the likelihood is that when she had Lara, she was living somewhere in Wynne Bluffs or close by in the area where we grew up.”

  “We could call the county records department and ask—”

  Angela again shook her head. “I tried that years ago. To order a copy from them, you’ve got to know the baby’s date of birth and what hospital she was born in.”

  “Well, you know Lara’s date of birth, don’t you?”

  “Yes, it’s February 5. Vicki was still alive when Lara celebrated her first birthday, and I doubt that’s something she lied about.”

  “Okay then, maybe we could try calling all the hospitals and . . .”

  Angela hesitated, tracing her finger along the last name she’d written. This was the most difficult decision she’d ever had to make, but there was no longer a way to avoid it. After a moment she lifted her face and allowed her eyes to meet Rachel’s. “Yes, that’s what we have to do.”

  She’d toyed with the idea of telling Rachel about the orange wristband, but then pushed it aside. As a singular piece of evidence it was too condemning; she would wait and give the truth time to surface on its own. While she wanted the truth to be known, that didn’t mean she wasn’t praying it would turn out to be what she’d believed all these years.

  Rachel stood, filled two mugs with coffee, carried them to the table, and again sat across from Angela. As she scooped a spoonful of sugar into her cup she heard the thump of footsteps overhead. “The kids are up,” she said. “Let’s put this aside until they’re out of here.”

  Angela stuffed the notepad back into her tote and carried it off.

  The next hour was filled with a frenzy of activity as the household came to life. With George running late, Rachel wrapped two biscuits in a checkered napkin and handed him a thermos of coffee. As he hurried off, she called upstairs for the kids to get dressed and grab their bathing suits. By the time they were seated at the breakfast table, a lunch basket was packed and ready to go.

  Setting a platter of pancakes in the center of the table, Rachel said, “It’s going to be another scorcher, so I thought you kids would like to spend the day at the lake.”

  The twins cheered, and Lara glanced over at Angela.

  “You don’t look good today, Mom; would you rather I stay here?”

  “I’ll be fine, sweetheart. Go enjoy yourself at the lake. It’s just my allergies acting up.”

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s okay.”

  “Absolutely.” Angela forced a smile. “It’s a perfect day for the beach, and there’s no need for you to hang around.”

  Minutes later Rachel had the kids in the car and was headed for the lake. As she drove she eyed the three of them in the rearview mirror and noticed that overnight the similarities in the children had become even more pronounced. Although Hope had George’s coloring, all three appeared to be of the same family.

  George was wrong. He had to be wrong. She’s Emily.

  When Rachel returned to the house, Angela was again sitting at the table with the notepad in front of her. She’d added another name to the list.

  At the top of the list was “Wynne Bluffs—hospital unknown.” Below that, “Madisonville and Bardstown.” “Marsden County General” was written next to both towns.

  Angela’s first call was to the Wynne Bluffs police station.

  “I’m thinking about moving to the area,” she said, “and was wondering if you can tell me what hospitals are nearby?”

  “Sisters of Mercy isn’t far,” the desk officer said, “ten miles west off I-24. If you’re looking for a sophisticated medical center, you’ve got Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, but that’s a good two-hour drive.”

  She thanked him, hung up, and dialed information for the Sisters of Mercy phone number. Minutes later she was talking to a woman in the records department.

  After an explanation of Vicki’s death and their relationship, she said, “My sister gave birth to a little girl on February 5, 1971, but I’m uncertain which hospital it was, and I need to get a copy of the birth certificate.”

  “What’s the name again?”

  “Vicki or Victoria Robart was the mother. The baby’s name was Lara. But she might have used her boyfriend’s last name for the baby.”

  “What’s his name?”

  After a moment of hesitation Angela said, “Murphy. Russell Murphy.”

  The clerk gave a huff of agitation. “Since you’re uncertain about which name they used for the baby, I’m going to have to check patient records first. Hold on.”

  Fifteen minutes ticked by before the woman came back on the line.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said. “We’ve got no patient record for a Victoria or Vicki Robart, and nothing for that name under Murphy either, so I can’t help you out.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Angela replied and moved on to the second name.

  She dialed the number for Marsden County General, gave the same explanation, and got the same answer: if she was unsure of the name on the baby’s birth certificate, she’d first have to check with patient records. This time she was transferre
d to another line, and a man’s voice answered.

  “Patient records.” His voice was quick and impatient-sounding.

  Angela ran through the explanation again. “So that would be Vicki or Victoria Robart, or it could be under Murphy. She gave birth to a girl, first name Lara, on February 5, 1971.”

  “Please hold.”

  Angela listened to the sound of computer keys clicking. A few minutes later he was back, his voice still sharp, only now it was bristling with agitation.

  “Ma’am, we don’t issue birth certificates for infants who were stillborn.”

  “That can’t be,” she said. “It’s a mistake. You’ve got the wrong record.”

  “I most certainly do not,” he snapped. “Ms. Vicki Robart delivered a twenty-seven-week fetal-death female on February 5, 1971. A stillborn registration certificate was provided for cremation.”

  A fiery pain shot across Angela’s chest, and several seconds ticked by before she was able to draw a breath. With her heart at a standstill and her voice quavering, she summoned her last ounce of courage and asked the final question. “Was the infant given a name?”

  “Yes. Lara Robart Murphy.”

  The telephone tumbled to the floor as Angela fell forward sobbing.

  Of all the reactions Rachel might have expected, this was not one of them. Something was terribly wrong. “What did they say?” she asked anxiously.

  Angela continued to sob. She didn’t even look up, just sat there with her face buried in her hands and her entire body trembling.

  “Oh my God! What did they say?” Rachel bolted from the chair and grabbed the telephone off the floor. “What did you say?” she screamed, but by then there was nothing but the hollow sound of a dead line.

  With a sense of desperation rising in her throat, Rachel squatted in front of Angela and pried her hands from her face. “Stop crying and tell me what they said,” she commanded. “Please! Look at me!”

  When Angela finally gathered herself together enough to speak, she did not lift her face or allow her eyes to meet Rachel’s.

  The words came between sobs, pieced together in rambling thoughts, intertwined with anguish, and barely understandable. “A thing like this never should have happened . . . I’m sorry, so sorry . . . I never—”

  Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Sorry about what?” she asked frantically. “What did they say? What happened?”

  Angela pulled her hands back and again covered her face. “Vicki stole things; I knew it! But it was just junk, glittery trinkets from the five-and-dime. She never took anything big—”

  Rachel’s voice suddenly became high-pitched and panicky. “What are you talking about?” she cried. “What was it they told you?”

  Oblivious to the question, Angela rambled on. “Especially not a baby. What reason would Vicki have for stealing a baby—that’s what I kept asking myself. Why a baby? Why?”

  With her eyes wild and her face growing more flushed by the second, Rachel stood, grabbed Angela by the shoulders, and shook her. “Talk to me! Tell me what they said!”

  Angela made a sound so agonized it could have come only from the very depths of her soul. “Now I know why,” she wailed.

  She began to repeat what the clerk had told her, spilling out the thoughts in crumbled words and broken sentences. She told how Vicki had given birth to a little girl on February 5 and named the child Lara, but then she stopped, hesitating so long that it seemed the story had ended.

  Rachel released her hold on Angela and stepped back with her arms hanging limply at her sides. In a voice weighted with eighteen years of sorrow, she said, “So Lara really is your sister’s baby?”

  Angela shook her head but kept her face buried. “No, Vicki’s child was stillborn.”

  Rachel gave a horrified gasp. “Oh my God . . . She pretended Emily was her dead baby?” Rachel stood there for a moment looking too stunned to go on, then dropped down in the chair and repeated the thought as if she were struggling to understand it. “She took our Emily to replace her dead baby?”

  Angela slumped back in the chair and continued to sob.

  For a while they remained that way, not speaking but sharing a sorrow that belonged to both of them, two women, victims of the same crime, laying claim to the same child.

  When the tears subsided and she could again find her breath, Angela spoke.

  “I can’t begin to imagine what drove my sister to do such a terrible thing. I can only guess Vicki was too sick at heart to understand the magnitude of what she’d done; she had to have been . . . There’s no other reason why—”

  “Sorrow does strange things to a woman,” Rachel said, her tone not accusatory but touched with compassion.

  As she spoke she could feel her heart slowing, returning to its normal rhythm. “No one understands what it feels like to lose a child until they live through it. I know how your sister felt losing her baby: I felt it too, only my heartache was a thousand times worse because I didn’t know who had taken Emmy or what terrible thing they might do to her. Over the past eighteen years I’ve said a million prayers asking God to give my child to a mother who would love her—love her the way I loved her.”

  Angela lifted her head the tiniest bit and looked at Rachel from beneath hooded brows. “I can’t even begin to imagine the heartache you went through . . . To say I’m sorry seems so very meaningless, but I am sorry, truly, truly sorry. If I had known . . .”

  In the humility of Angela’s words, Rachel sensed the same brokenness she’d once known. It was the kind of ache that splintered a woman’s soul and robbed her heart of whatever happiness it had once held.

  “What would you have done?” she said sadly. “You were Lara’s mother. You loved her just as I loved Emmy. Would you have given up your child so that I could have mine?”

  Even as the words came from her mouth, she knew there was no good answer. For Angela to say yes, she would have returned the child, would mean Lara was loved less than Emily. Rachel never wanted that. To say no would be pouring salt into the wound created by years of separation.

  Without letting her eyes meet Rachel’s, Angela said, “I wish I could tell you the answer is yes, that I would have sacrificed my happiness for yours, but the truth is I don’t know.”

  Rachel gave a nod so slight it was like the blink of an eye or the flicker of a shadow, then the two women sat there, close enough to hear the thunder of each other’s heartbeat, but with a wall of silence separating them.

  Angela thought back over the years, wondering where she’d gone wrong. What sign had she missed? How had she not known that in the same way she’d yearned for a child, Vicki had yearned for a family? She’d lost the mother she idolized; she’d been abused by her father, had no place to call home, no sister coming to her rescue, no husband to love her, and the final blow came when she lost the one thing she could have called her own—her baby. Although it didn’t lessen the wrong of such an act, Angela now understood the why. Vicki had taken Rachel’s baby because she was desperate to love and be loved. As the weight of that realization settled in her chest, tears overflowed her eyes.

  It was several minutes before she gave voice to her thoughts. “I can never undo the harm that’s been done, and I can never expect you to forgive Vicki for the heartache she caused your family. But I can tell you this: there was never a moment in Lara’s life when she wasn’t cared for and truly loved.”

  Angela turned and looked into Rachel’s eyes, expecting to see anger, but there was none. In its place was a look of compassion, an understanding far beyond what was deserved.

  “I realize that I have no right to ever expect forgiveness, but . . .” Angela continued on, telling of Vicki’s life and how fate had taken far more than it had given back to her.

  Rachel said nothing as she sat there replaying the last eighteen years in her mind. She pictured Mama Dixon sitting across from her, offering a ball of yarn and talking of how God makes things right in His own time. She remembered the birth of the twi
ns and the years of them growing up with Bruno by their side. They weren’t bad years; they were happy years. Year after year, she’d asked God to watch over Emily, to give her the same kind of happiness, a loving mother and a place to call home. Now, after all this time, she knew that her prayers had not fallen on deaf ears. He’d answered in His own way. At first she hadn’t understood this strange new feeling pushing its way into her chest, but now she knew: it was gratitude.

  Angela had taken a motherless child and loved her—was that really such an unforgivable sin? Rachel reached across and took Angela’s hand in hers. “Perhaps forgiveness is the one thing that can make our families whole again.”

  CREATING A FAMILY

  Later that afternoon, after Angela had spent hours talking with Rachel, discussing how they might move ahead and how they would tell Lara, she called Kenny with news of all that had transpired.

  “You’re kidding?” He gasped. “Lara’s been with us for eighteen years! She’s our daughter! They can’t just expect—”

  “Actually, they can,” Angela replied. “They’re struggling with this, the same as we are. They’re good people who suffered a great deal because of what Vicki did, and given the circumstances, I think they’re being extremely gracious. We’re trying to make this as easy as possible for Lara.”

  “Have you told her yet?”

  “No, I’ll do it tomorrow. Rachel is going to take the twins to the lake, and I’ll speak with Lara privately.”

  For several moments Kenny said nothing, and Angela felt the weight of his silence.

  “I understand if you’re angry,” she said solemnly, “but it should be with me, not the Dixons. I’m to blame for believing Vicki’s story.” She sniffed back the tears that were threatening. “Then I made things a thousand times worse by not doing as you’d asked. If I had taken the car in for service and stuck to the route you mapped out, we’d be in Daytona, and this never would have happened.” The sound of regret was wound around her every word.