I’d have to talk to him about it at some point, because I’d burst if I didn’t and it was really pissing me off that he acted as though he could waltz back into our lives without consequence. Right now, though, I didn’t dare do anything that would hurt the relationship he was forming with Haley.

I set the plates on the counter, then walked to the garage door. “So we’ll see you again tomorrow?” I asked, pulling the door open.

“Right.” He walked to the door, then turned to face me, smiling. “She’s going to grow up to be just like you,” he said. “She already reminds me of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” he said with a shrug. “Just…pretty incredible.” His smile was sort of rueful. I could see the regret in his eyes. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

He left and I watched him walk through the open garage door to his car where he’d parked it on the street. Don’t you fall for him, too, I told myself. I wouldn’t. Too much water under that ol’ bridge.

I had salmon baking in the oven when the phone rang an hour later. I picked up the receiver from its cradle near the fridge. I always answered the phone, never bothering to look at the caller ID. That came from years of wanting the phone to ring. Of wanting answers. I always answered the phone with hope in my voice.

“Hello?” I turned the heat down under the rice.

“It’s Jeff Jackson.”

Oh, shit. Haley’s oncologist, calling at six o’clock. Not a good sign. I tensed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. She’s doing so well, I wanted to say. Please, please let her have this week in peace.

“Just got the lab reports,” he said. “Her blood count’s low.”

“Oh, crap.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Jeff, she looks great. She went for a long bike ride today and—”

“She needs a transfusion.”

I shut my eyes. “Now?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Damn it!”

“I’ll call Children’s and have them get a room ready for her,” he said, then added softly, “Sorry.”

It took me a few minutes to pull myself together before I went upstairs. I stood quietly in the open doorway of Haley’s room. She had no clue I was there and she was Skyping with one of her cousins. I could see one of the twins—Madison or Mandy, I could never tell them apart—on her monitor. Madison or Mandy was laughing and talking. She held a boxy little Westland terrier in her arms and was making the dog wave at the camera with its paw. Bryan’s sister, Marilyn Collier, lived an hour away in Fredericksburg and she and her four girls had remained a big part of our lives in spite of Bryan’s absence. Haley loved her cousins and they loved her. Tears burned my eyes as I listened to her talking a mile a minute to Madison/Mandy. I hated spoiling the moment.

I knocked lightly on her open door.

“Whoops!” Haley quickly turned off the screen. She swiveled her chair to face me, all innocent green eyes. “I finished my math, Mom, so I was just Skyping for a minute with Mandy.”

I couldn’t have cared less if she was lying. Let her Skype. Let her do whatever she wanted.

“That’s okay,” I said, then sighed. “Dr. Jackson just called, honey. He said your blood count’s low.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t say shit.”

“You say it all the time.”

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t want to go in, Mom.” Her eyes pleaded with me to let her stay home and my heart cracked in two.

“You’ve got to, honey. I’m sorry.”

She dragged herself to her feet. “This totally sucks.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Does this mean I won’t be able to get chemo next week?”

I couldn’t tell if she was hoping she wouldn’t have to have chemo or if she was worried the weeks of chemo would have to be drawn out that much longer.

“It depends on how your blood work looks by then,” I said. “Get what you need and we’ll hit the road.”

She frowned at me, her hand gripping the arm of her chair. “Mom?” she said. “Don’t tell Dad, okay?”

Maybe another mother wouldn’t have understood, but I did. She was scared. It was her illness that had caused Bryan to turn tail years ago. Now they’d spent a healthy, happy few days together, and she was afraid of appearing sick to him again.

“He won’t leave, honey,” I said, and I walked out of her room, hoping against hope that I hadn’t just told her a lie.



17

Emerson


Wilmington, North Carolina

“My God,” Tara breathed. She grabbed the letter and read it through in silence.

I felt my heart beating in my ears. I touched the paper in her hands. “I don’t know what to do with this,” I said.

Tara looked up from the letter. “I can’t believe Noelle would do something like that,” she said.

I shook my head. “Neither can I. It seems impossible.”

“Here we go!” The waitress appeared at our table again, this time with my salad and Tara’s steak. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted your dressing on the side or on the salad,” she said as she set the plate in front of me.

“This is fine,” I said, looking at the little cup of dressing. I wasn’t going to eat the salad either way, so it didn’t matter. I just wanted her to put the food on the table and leave.

“Is there anything else I can get you right now?” she asked.

“No,” Tara said. “Thank you. We’re fine.”

The waitress walked away and Tara pushed her plate to the side of the table, her appetite apparently gone, as well. “Maybe this is why she stopped being a midwife,” she said.

Of course. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.

“I feel like I didn’t know her,” I said. “I know I’ve said that a lot lately, but now I really, really feel that way. I don’t know whether to hate her for this or feel sorry for her that she was holding on to this hideous secret all these years.”

“Is there a chance this is…just not true?” Tara asked. “I mean, maybe she was writing a novel or…a short story or something and this was just a literary experiment.”

“I love that idea, Tara,” I said. “But do you really believe it?”

Tara gave a small shake of her head. “She killed a baby,” she said slowly, quietly, as if trying the words on for size. “Some poor woman didn’t even know that her baby died.”

“And that she was raising another woman’s child.”

“And this woman’s baby was kidnapped.” Tara held the letter in the air. “Do you think she might have written another email or letter to Anna?” she asked. “One that actually made it to her?”

“I’ve wondered that myself,” I said. “But wouldn’t we know? Wouldn’t it have come out? Wouldn’t there have been a monumental lawsuit?” I reached for my wineglass, but the room was beginning to spin and I lowered my hand to my lap.

“Did you find any documents in her house that might be related to a suit?” Tara asked.

“No, nothing like that,” I said.

“Maybe she did actually mail a letter, but made it anonymous so Anna couldn’t figure out who she was.”

I nodded. “It sounds like she was planning to make this letter anonymous,” I said. “She just talks about the ‘extraordinary parents’ to reassure her—Anna—that her daughter was being taken care of, not that she planned to reveal who they were. So I don’t think she was going to reveal who she is…who she was…either.”

“What did she mean about the article in the paper?” Tara asked.

“No idea,” I said.

“What does Ted say?”

“I haven’t told him.” Maybe I never would. I’d thought of telling no one at all, trying to forget what I knew, but I couldn’t live with the secret. I couldn’t live with it alone, anyway. “What do we do with this, Tara? Do we ignore it?”

“I don’t think we can,” Tara said.

“Oh, Tara, this is horrible! Ted didn’t even want me to bring the box of cards home, and I wish now that I’d listened to him. If I’d just thrown it away, I wouldn’t know any of this.”

“But you do know. We know.”

“I hate this,” I said. “If we go to the police…I don’t want a media frenzy. And Noelle…her legacy. All the good she’s done. She’ll be dragged through the mud.”

“Look.” Tara leaned back in the booth. “We have very, very slim evidence here. And maybe she was writing a short story, for all we know. I think the first thing we should do is try to figure out who Anna is. If we discover there really is an Anna and this looks like something that really happened, then we can figure out the next step.”

I felt both relief and guilt that I’d dragged her into this. “I’m sorry I told you, Tara. It’s the last thing you need right now, but I didn’t want to be alone with it.”

“You’re not alone with it, sweetie.”

“So—” I turned the letter to face me again, the words blurring a bit in my vision “—how do we try to figure out who Anna is? Noelle said she read an article about her in the paper, so we could…I don’t know. Check old newspapers, I guess?”

“Maybe the baby that died—” Tara shuddered as she said the word “—maybe that was the last baby Noelle delivered.”

I felt a chill. “I have her record books,” I said. Could I be that close to knowing whose baby Noelle had dropped?

The waitress neared our table and I could see her checking out the uneaten food. “How are you doing over here?” she asked.

“We’re fine,” I said, and Tara made a little whisking motion with her hand that said, Please leave us alone, as clearly as if she’d spoken the words.

“I can read the last entry in her record books,” I said once the waitress was gone. “If it was a girl, well…” I looked at Tara and shrugged.

“If it’s a girl,” Tara said, “then we’ll figure out what to do next.”