“Then help me understand.” I caught her shoulders and held on tight as she tried to squirm out of my grasp. “Why can’t you and Cleve resolve this on the phone?”

She pried my hands from her shoulders. “I just wanted to go, that’s all!” She turned and headed for the stairs.

“Grace!” I called after her. “Don’t run off like that. Talk to me!”

But her footsteps skittered up the stairs and I lowered myself to a chair. I’d blown it again, yet I didn’t know what I could have said or done differently. This is normal, I told myself. Mothers and daughters fight.

I touched my cheek where I’d pressed it against her hair. I wanted to feel that sweet damp hair against my skin again. It had reminded me of when she was little and I’d hold her and rock her and she was so happy in my arms.

A long, long time ago.



40

Emerson


My plan was not going well so far. I hadn’t counted on Jenny feeling too sick to go out that afternoon, so I was anxious as I stood by the living room window watching for Ian’s car. The sky was gray and thick with clouds. We were going to get a downpour soon. In my hands I clutched Noelle’s record book and the thin file folder with her letter to Anna and copies of the information I’d printed from the Missing Children’s website.

I left the window for no more than a second to take the tray of leftover spanokopita out of the oven, and when I returned I saw his car out front but no sign of him, and I knew he was already heading up my driveway toward the side door.

People always just walked in my kitchen door without knocking, so I raced through the house to head him off, opening the door just as he was about to walk in. “Jenny’s home,” I whispered. “I was hoping she’d be out, but she’s sick, so just…play along with whatever I say.”

Ian frowned. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I put a finger to my lips. “I’ll tell you—”

“Hey,” Jenny said from the doorway to the kitchen. She was still wearing her pajama shorts and a tank top and her hair stuck out on one side.

“Hi, Jenny,” Ian said. “You’re not feeling well?”

“Too much wild party for me last night,” Jenny rasped, rubbing her throat. She gave me a confused what’s-Ian-doing-here? sort of look.

“Ian and I have some issues to talk about related to Noelle’s estate,” I said. I thought she was looking at the book and file in my arms with suspicion, but that might have been my paranoia. “What can I get you, Jen?” I asked her. “Some tea with lemon and honey?”

“I’m just going to crash again,” she said.

“Good idea. Want some juice to take up with you?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” She headed for the refrigerator, but I beat her to it. I set the record book and file on the kitchen table and quickly poured a glass of orange juice. Ian stood quietly next to the island, and I knew he didn’t know what was safe to do or say. I handed the glass to Jenny.

“Thanks,” she said. “See you all later.”

“She sounds miserable,” Ian said as we watched her head for the stairs.

“I know.” I moved the spanokopita from the baking pan to a plate. “We can nibble party leftovers,” I said, setting the plate on the kitchen table.

“Your hands are shaking,” Ian said, and then he lowered his voice. “Is this really about Noelle’s will or the…other things we’ve been talking about with regard to her?”

“Neither.” I rested my hands on the island and let myself simply breathe in and out for a moment. “I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said finally, glancing toward the hallway and the stairs. I’d really wanted no one home for this conversation. Especially not a sick kid who might need me. I motioned to the table. “Have a seat,” I said. “I have coffee? Iced tea? I can brew decaf if you like. Or you might actually need a glass of wine when I tell you what I have to say.”

“Coffee’s good.” He lowered himself to one of the kitchen chairs, his eyes never leaving my face.

I poured him a cup, then sat down at the end of the table, glancing toward the hallway again.

Ian looked at the book and file on the table, but didn’t touch it. “What’s this?” he asked.

I let out a long breath. “I’ve opened a gigantic can of worms and I don’t know how to get them all back in the can,” I said quietly. “I thought of just keeping it to myself, but I can’t. I don’t know who else to talk to.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “I need your help to know what to do.”

“It’s a legal matter?” he asked.

“Yes and no.” I pulled out the typed letter Noelle had written to Anna and set it in front of him. The color drained from his face as he read it.

“Holy…” He looked up at me. Shook his head. “What’s next? I mean, seriously. What the hell is Noelle going to dump in our laps next? And who is Anna?”

I explained how I’d stumbled across the letter and how Tara and I finally figured out Anna’s identity. “But to answer your question about what’s next, I can tell you exactly what’s next.”

He looked as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

I leaned toward him. “I believe the baby Noelle dropped was Tara’s,” I said quietly.

He jerked back as if I’d stung him. “What the… Why would you think that?”

“I found the date Anna Knightly’s baby disappeared on the Missing Children’s website,” I said. “Or, at least, the date she was born. The only baby Noelle delivered during that time was Grace. Or the baby who…the real Grace.” I pulled a sheet of paper from the file on the table. “This is from the Missing Children’s website. It says that Lily Ann Knightly was born on August 29, 1994, and disappeared from a Wilmington, NC, hospital shortly after her birth.”

He still wore his frown as he looked up from the paper. “Wasn’t Jenny born around the same time?”

“Jenny was born on the thirty-first and Grace on September 1, but I had Jenny in the hospital and Noelle wasn’t involved at all. Tara was in labor while I was having a C-section.”

Ian looked up at the ceiling. “I distinctly remember the night Grace was born,” he said. “Noelle and I were engaged back then, remember?”

I nodded.

“She called me a few times from Sam and Tara’s, telling me how rough going it was. She was really worried. She’d talked about getting Tara to the hospital, but in the end, it worked out all right.” He abruptly shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense, Emerson,” he said. “Tara would have known if another baby was suddenly substituted for hers.”

“I don’t remember it all that well since I was busy having a baby myself, but I do remember Tara telling me she was so zonked after the delivery that she barely remembered even holding Grace until the next morning.”

“But Sam was there,” Ian said. “He would have been awake and alert and known if his baby was suddenly dead.”

“Don’t say it like that.” I shivered.

“Well, that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?” Ian sounded suddenly angry. I wished he would lower his voice. “Noelle killed a baby and somehow got rid of it and then she came up with this—” he waved at the letter “—this lamebrain plan and went to the hospital and found an appropriate substitute and brought it back and all that supposedly happened when? While Sam and Tara were sleeping on the most exciting night of their lives? It’s hard to swallow.”

“We know it happened, though,” I said. “We have it in Noelle’s own words.”

“Maybe there were babies Noelle delivered that she never recorded in her logbook,” Ian suggested.

“Then I think there would have been torn-out pages and there are none from 1994.”

“You and Tara should have come to me right away with this,” he said.

“We… Honestly, Ian. We had no idea how deep this was going to get. I think we were hoping we’d find out it was all a mistake somehow.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “How much of this does Tara know?”

“She has no idea it could be Grace,” I said. “Noelle quit practicing in 1998, so we naturally assumed the patient whose baby was…lost was from around that time.”

Ian reached for the logbook. “Let me see her record of Grace’s birth,” he said.

I had the pages marked and I opened it for him. I watched as he scanned the account of Grace getting stuck during Tara’s labor. “Posterior arrest,” Noelle called it, and it was followed by hours of manipulation and excruciating pain that put me in awe of both Noelle and Tara. Reading the account, I’d thought Noelle had been a miracle worker to be able to deliver her at all.

“This sounds ghastly.” Ian winced. “But there’s nothing here about a dropped baby,” he said.

“She didn’t write that part, obviously,” I said. “She falsified what happened. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, my sister Noelle was pretty good at lying.”

“Where’s the baby?” Ian asked. “Tara’s real…the baby she gave birth to?”

“I don’t even want to think about that.” I felt my eyes burn. Tara was more sister than friend to me, and I was haunted by what might have happened to her baby. Did she end up in a shallow grave? A Dumpster somewhere? What happened to the baby we should have been allowed to love and grieve? I put my hands to my face. “What do I do, Ian?” I asked.

“Well, first off, Tara needs to know,” he said.

“Oh, God,” I said, because of course she did. I knew that, but I’d needed to hear someone else say it. “It seems so cruel,” I said.

I thought I heard the faintest creaking sound from the direction of the stairs and I glanced toward the hallway, but Ian didn’t seem to notice.

“Let’s say Tara and I knew that Jenny wasn’t your biological child,” he said, “would you want us to tell you?”

“Yes, of course, but I would….” I shut my eyes, trying to imagine getting that news. “It would kill me to know my own child had died and I’d known nothing about it. And that Jenny had been stolen from some other woman.” I shook my head. “Oh, my God. It would just kill me.”