by Nicole Trope
Alice is drowning in guilt. Alice is suffocated by guilt.
A tone on my mobile lets me know I have a new email, and I glance down quickly as the line starts to move.
I know what you did. You took everything from me. You don’t deserve what you have.
‘Oh God,’ I moan. ‘Oh God, oh God.’ Is this the same person who just sent me the message on my blog? Is someone just playing with me? What on earth is going on?
The car behind me hoots and I look up, noting the space in front of me. I slide into position and the boys climb into the car while I squeeze the steering wheel, holding on for dear life as I summon the right questions to keep the boys from suspecting anything is wrong.
I think about the bottle of vodka that has languished in the freezer for months, since we had all the GPs at the practice over for dinner. I know it will take away the pain, erase the memories of what happened to me and what I did. It will numb the guilt. It soothed my mother for years.
‘I won’t give in,’ I whisper.
‘What was that, Mum?’ asks Isaac, and I realise I am at the high school already.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing.’
Fourteen
Molly
* * *
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ says Peter for the tenth time as he parks the car outside Molly’s parents’ house.
‘What if one of them is sick, Pete? Oh, I can’t bear it. I don’t think I would survive it.’
‘Whatever it is we can deal with it, I promise. We’ll deal with it together.’ Peter folds her hand in his and Molly takes comfort from his peaceful presence. He reminds her of her father with his pragmatic approach to life. Everything can be dealt with as long as it’s approached in a rational manner.
Her father opens the door and offers Molly his customary hug but he holds on too tightly and for longer than normal. Molly’s feeling of dread grows.
In the living room her mother is perched on the edge of the couch. That in itself is unusual. The family always sits in the kitchen unless there are too many people. Her mother prefers the kitchen, where they can all congregate around the old table, worn smooth with thousands of meals and swipes of a cloth, so she can keep getting up to put more food on the table or get someone a drink. ‘Please sit down,’ Molly and Lexie say over and over again while their mother fusses.
‘Mum,’ says Molly, running over to her mother and clasping her in a hug. ‘What’s wrong? Please tell me what’s wrong.’
‘Sit down, Molly dear,’ replies her father. ‘Can I get you a drink, Peter? Maybe a beer?’
‘I’m fine, thanks, Walter, maybe later. Molly’s a bit anxious to know what’s wrong so maybe we should get straight to it, but I want to let you and Anne know that we’re both here for you for whatever you need.’
‘Please tell me what’s wrong, you have to tell me,’ appeals Molly, eyes brimming with tears.
Her mother turns her pale face to her husband. ‘Walt, please can you?’
Molly’s father sighs deeply, his shoulders drooping with the effort of it. ‘Yesterday you told your mother about a blog you read.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean to upset her…’
‘And you felt a familiarity with this story?’
‘Yes, but I have no idea why… It’s just…’
‘Darling,’ says her father, sitting down next to her. ‘We never wanted to tell you this and it’s so very wrong of us but we just… I don’t… At first we wanted to wait and then it was… I don’t know, it just felt too late and we didn’t know if we should say anything because we didn’t want to upset you.’
‘Upset me?’ asks Molly, more confused than ever. ‘What could you say that would upset me? Wanted to tell me what?’
‘The world has changed a lot over the last few decades. We never considered that the internet would take over all our lives. We don’t know if the woman who wrote the blog has any connection to you at all, but since you told your mother about it, she has been worrying terribly that we’ve made a mistake in keeping things from you. We realise that it’s now possible for anyone to find you and we don’t want to—’
‘Wait a second – keeping things from me? What does that mean, and who on earth would be looking for me?’
Her father sighs deeply once more, his face pale, and she can see his hands shaking.
‘You are not our biological child, Molly,’ he says in a low voice, etched in pain.
‘Not your… what?’
‘We adopted you. We fostered you first and then we adopted you. I am so sorry that we didn’t tell you before, that you had to find out this way. It’s unlikely that this woman is connected to you but we thought it best to tell you in case anything ever… anyone ever—’
‘Fostered me?’ Molly cuts her father off.
‘We fostered you,’ says her mother slowly, ‘and then we adopted you.’ She dabs at her eyes with a tissue. ‘We are so sorry, love.’
The words don’t make sense, none of it makes sense. What her parents are saying is entirely impossible and Molly looks around the living room, waiting for Lexie to jump out with a camera, waiting for someone to laugh, waiting for the punchline of what is obviously a joke. But minutes pass and her mother’s eyes shine with tears as her father’s face loses what little colour it had. The silence stretches between them.
‘That’s impossible,’ says Molly. Her mouth feels dry and she swallows quickly. ‘I’m your daughter, I’ve always been your daughter. I don’t… What about Lexie? I look like Lexie.’
Her father slumps down into the couch and puts his head in his hands. ‘You’re right, there are similarities, and we were so grateful for that when Lexie arrived, but you have to understand it’s never been anything different for us. You are our daughter and Lexie is our daughter. That’s all there is to it. We didn’t think you needed to know because we had no real idea of where you came from so we just decided that you were ours from the beginning. We didn’t want to confuse you, not knowing your past. We thought we were making the right decision.’
‘Why didn’t you know about my past? Where did I come from? Who were my parents? How could you not know anything about me?’
‘If you just give me a moment, I can explain—’
But Molly cannot seem to stop her questions. ‘The pictures,’ says Molly, recalling the story of the lost album containing her baby pictures that pervaded her childhood.
Her father flushes. ‘Yes, well… when your mother got pregnant with Lexie, you were too little to ask questions, but when you were around four and Lexie was just one, you started to wonder where the pictures of you were. It seemed easiest to tell you that we’d lost the albums in a move between houses.’
‘Was there even a move? Have you always lived here? Did you really buy Foggy for me when I was three?’ Nothing is true, nothing is real. Molly leans down and touches the plush peach carpet with her foot, making sure it’s real, making sure she’s real. Is this actually happening? Has she really just heard what she’s just heard?
‘No, darling, not a move that we lost the album in,’ her mother says. ‘We did move from the inner city just after we adopted you. We wanted you to have a garden to grow up in, and I was pregnant with Lexie by then. We thought it best. And I did buy the stuffed frog for you. I did and I remember it well. I told you…’
Molly can feel her whole body trembling. Shock, she thinks, this is shock. She cannot process the words her father has uttered. It is completely unfathomable. She cannot be adopted. She and Lexie are her father’s two peas in a pod. How can they not be sisters?
‘I’m…’ she begins and Peter wraps his arm around her shoulders.
‘You’re shaking. Walter, I think a strong cup of tea is needed.’
‘No!’ yells Molly. ‘I don’t want a cup of tea. I don’t… I want you to explain this to me. How is it possible that I’m adopted and that you’ve never told me? How could you not have told me? What kind of a person hides something like that?’
/> ‘It was never done to hurt you,’ says her mother, her eyes filling up and spilling over. ‘We wanted to tell you, so many times we wanted to tell you, but we just couldn’t, we couldn’t.’
‘Why?’ shrieks Molly, standing up. ‘Why couldn’t you? There’s nothing wrong with being adopted. You could have told me from the beginning and it would have been fine.’
‘Please stop shouting, Molly,’ says her father. ‘We’re sorry, we––’
‘No, Dad!’ Molly raises her voice another decibel. ‘I will not stop yelling. This is my whole life you’re talking about. Everything has been a lie. Do you understand what you’ve just done? You’ve lobbed a grenade at me and exploded my entire life. Every single memory I have of my childhood is wrong; everything I thought or felt was a lie.’
‘Not everything!’ her mother yells back. ‘Our absolute love and adoration for you was never a lie. Please, please, darling, I know we’ve done the wrong thing, I understand, but we were afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘We were afraid,’ says her father levelly, ‘that you would go looking for your real family.’
‘But lots of adopted children do that, Walter,’ says Peter. ‘Sit down, Molly, please sit down and calm down.’ Molly wants to shout at her husband as well but allows herself to be tugged back down onto the sofa. Peter takes her hand, holds it almost too tightly so Molly wants to pull away, but at the same time she is grateful for the strength there. ‘Surely it wouldn’t have bothered you if she found her biological family?’ her husband asks, voicing the words she is unable to muster.
‘It wasn’t that,’ replies her father. ‘We weren’t worried for us or because we thought she would reject us. We were afraid for her because we didn’t know what she’d find, who she’d find.’
‘What? Who did you think I would find? Do you know something about my family you’re not telling me? Who are they? Do you know who they are?’
‘Now, you need to stop all this and just let me explain,’ says her father.
But Molly has no patience for any explanations. ‘I can’t believe you did this. I just…’
‘It was an error in judgement, a terrible error in judgement, and it has been something we’ve worried about for your whole life. There have been many, many discussions between me and your mother over whether we should tell you or not, but after a few years we decided that telling you would be the real cruelty. We didn’t want you to feel different to your sister.’
‘Does Lexie know?’ asks Molly, afraid to hear the answer. If her sister, her best friend, knows this awful secret, she doesn’t know if she will be able to forgive her or trust her ever again.
‘No, absolutely not,’ says her father, ‘and we won’t tell her if you don’t want us to.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ sneers Molly. ‘Of course, she needs to know. I needed to know.’
Molly looks between her parents, struggling to find the similarities in her own face that she always did. She had believed her whole life that she had her father’s nose and her mother’s eyes, but as she looks at them now their features seem alien. The power of suggestion led her to believe that she resembled them, and now that the truth has been revealed she realises that she looks nothing like Lexie either. She has no idea who she looks like, where she came from, who she is. The revelation winds her.
‘This is cruel,’ she whispers. ‘What you’ve done is cruel.’ She knows she cannot stay in the house for a moment longer. She gets up and leaves, almost running for the door.
She stands breathless in the garden at the front of the house, looking at the street she grew up on, finding the familiar strange, unsettled by everything. She takes in deep, icy breaths of air, trying to calm herself. Small drops of rain begin to fall, but she doesn’t move. Who am I? Where do I come from? How could they do this? she thinks. She feels her body shudder and wraps her arms around herself. A cold wind pushes against her, making her shiver. She would like to cry, to scream, to do something, but the whirl of emotions inside her cannot find a way out. She could be anyone. Why was her father so worried about who her family was, and if they were scared of where she came from, how on earth could they really love her? Were they scared of her too? When she was little, did they worry about who she might grow up to be? Was that why she was always such a ‘good big sister’? Had she realised, on some level, that she was not the same as Lexie, not connected to her parents the same way her sister was? Was she always trying to make up for that by being good, by always doing the right thing? One after another the questions slam into her and she steps backwards as though trying to avoid the onslaught. She wants to clamp her hands over her face and shout, ‘Shut up, just shut up.’ Who was her mother? Who was her father? Why didn’t they love her? The questions keep coming.
After hours or only minutes pass, Molly feels Peter wrap his arms around her from behind. He warms her body, and she leans back into him. ‘Perhaps you should come back inside. The rain is getting heavier and it’s freezing. Your parents are completely devastated. They’re both in tears. We should talk about this.’
‘How could they have done this?’ asks Molly. She turns around in her husband’s arms and rests her head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The cold drops of rain dampen her hair, run down her cheeks, mingling with her tears.
Peter lets go of her and then takes her hand, pulling her to the front steps so they are under cover. He holds her gently by her shoulders. ‘Listen, I know they’ve made a distressing misjudgement, and they know it too, but it wasn’t done with any malice. They never meant to hurt you.’ Everything Peter says is logical as it always is – but logic won’t work here. This is not a column of numbers he can correct and explain. This is an awful, tragic mess.
‘I can’t think about them now. Can you just take me home? Please? I need to go home.’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure you want to leave it like this?’
Molly nods silently. The rain is getting steadily heavier and the wind is picking up, but she finds that she doesn’t mind standing outside. It’s better to concentrate on being wet and cold, better to feel than to think.
‘I’ll get my keys and let them know we’re going.’
‘Tell them,’ says Molly as Peter turns towards the front door.
‘Tell them?’
‘Tell them not to contact me.’
Peter nods sadly. Molly knows the words are calculated to hurt her parents but she feels the need to lash out right now – she is capable of nothing else. She is in turmoil. She is angry and sad and almost giddy with disbelief. She knows she needs some time and space.
At home she shows Peter the blog, lets him read the story.
‘Do you think she’s your sister?’ he asks.
‘No,’ says Molly flatly, exhaustion and despair robbing her voice of emotion. ‘I asked her about her sister. She says she’s dead. She died in a car accident.’
‘Dead?’ repeats Peter.
‘Yes,’ says Molly, ‘dead.’
Fifteen
14 January 1987
Margaret
* * *
She lies with her eyes open in the dark. The alcohol does this to her sometimes – wakes her up without warning, hands her a galloping heart and a mind that won’t stop going over the past. She cannot help but feel betrayed by the beautiful liquid whose job it is to keep her floating in her Adam dreams.
The house is silent, heavy with heat but blissfully silent. Next to her he grunts. ‘You are such a waste of space,’ she murmurs and she knows she’s not talking to him but to herself. The clarity that comes from these moments is hideous. Her heart beats so quickly she finds it difficult to take a deep breath. She thinks she may be having a heart attack and is mildly pleased about this. If she dies, right here and now, that’s fine.
But what about the girls? She needs to be here for them. You’re not here for them now, her inner voice whispers. You are a completely useless mother, a failure of a human being,
and all you’re good for is being Vernon’s punching bag.
After Mr Henkel died, she thought they had put the worst behind them. They had lost babies and they had lost a father but she was sure that things could only get better. She could never have predicted what was to come, could never have foreseen the terrible tragedy that would take her wonderful husband.
Adam shouldn’t have been working in the storm: electricity and rain don’t mix. Everyone said it had been a stupid thing to do, no matter how desperate his client was, as though by placing the blame on his shoulders for his own death, they would keep misfortune at bay for themselves. Lightning striking a house was uncommon, so uncommon that Adam hadn’t even thought about it. It was a freak accident – but it happened to Adam.
Suddenly, she was a widow. Margaret couldn’t make sense of it. Now it was just her and a six-year-old child. She wanted to die with him, to be with him. He was her everything. He was her husband, her friend, her lover and the father of her child. He was her words and without him she had no idea how to speak, no idea how to exist in the world. But she couldn’t just close her eyes and join him because she had Alice. A girl who had grown up used to love and attention, chatting to all who would listen about herself and her feelings. She couldn’t leave Alice alone and she knew that. She had looked at her daughter and felt a slight edge to the love and responsibility she felt for the child, a small flower of resentment that Alice was keeping her from being with her beloved Adam. She pushed the thoughts aside. She was a mother and she had to be a mother. She wouldn’t let her down; she wouldn’t repeat history.
‘We’ll be fine together,’ she whispered to her little girl that first night as they curled up in bed together, but Alice didn’t seem to believe the words, and in truth, Margaret didn’t believe them either. Adam and his father had anchored her in the port of her own life. With both of them gone, she knew she would not be powerful enough to stop herself drifting away.