“You mean, Grace walks in and they see her as a bunch of cells instead of a person?” Jenny asked. “Oh, Mom, drive faster.”

“No one’s going to touch her without my permission, so don’t worry about that,” I said.

My phone rang and I saw Ian’s cell number on the caller ID. “Ian!” I nearly shouted into the phone.

“Tara, I’m so sorry you found—”

“Look, I’m mad at you, but right now just help me, all right?”

“This Knightly woman,” he said. “Don’t talk to her, Tara. Just get Grace and go. Have Knightly’s attorney contact me and we’ll deal with it from there. I’m going to call some people I know at the police department in Wilmington. But for right now, you just want to make sure Grace is safe.”

Get Grace and go. “Okay,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I know you must be—”

“I don’t want to tie up the line in case Grace calls me back,” I said.

“Okay, we’ll talk later.”

I hung up the phone and wiped my hand across my forehead. I was perspiring. “He said just to get Grace and go,” I said, as if that hadn’t been my plan all along. I thought back to how Grace had sounded on the phone. “She has to be so scared,” I said, then turned to Jenny. “What did I do wrong with her, Jenny?” My own vulnerability bubbled to the surface. “Why can’t I ever seem to reach her?”

“It’s just typical kids-not-getting-along-with-their-parents stuff,” Jenny said kindly.

“No, it’s not,” I argued.

“Oh, it is!” Emerson insisted.

I kept my gaze on Jenny. “You and your mom have a better relationship than Grace and I do,” I said. “I know that. I feel like I screwed it up somehow.”

“I don’t think you screwed anything up,” Jenny said. “Grace is just deep. She just feels everything more than most people and it makes it hard to get close to her sometimes.”

I still thought she was being kind. Sam had never had a problem getting close to her. I remembered Noelle’s eulogy at Sam’s memorial service. “Sam was a champion listener,” Noelle had said. “That’s what made him such a good lawyer. Such a good husband and father.” Her voice had broken in the hushed church. “And such a good friend.”

Such a good father, I thought now. He knew how to be still with Grace. Not like me. I always needed to be talking, moving, doing.

“There’s a sign for the hospital.” Emerson pointed ahead of us. “Once we get inside, do you want Jenny and me to come with you, or would it be better if we found the cafeteria and hung out there while you find Grace? Having us underfoot might just add to the confusion. What do you think?”

I would have loved to have Emerson with me for moral support, but I was only going to get Grace and go, as Ian had advised. We didn’t need any big scene with all four of us. “You go to the cafeteria,” I said, “but keep your cell on and I’ll call if I need you, okay?”

The hospital came into view in front of us, a huge geometric collection of glass and metal. My daughter was in there. I couldn’t believe she’d had the courage to set foot inside. To actually drive herself there. She was just deep, Jenny had said. Yes, she was. I wanted to know every millimeter of that depth. I wanted it not to be too late for us and I was so afraid it was.



54

Grace


Anna moved around Haley’s hospital room, rearranging books and remote controls and tissue boxes and drinking glasses, and Haley chattered about a movie she’d seen and I kept looking at the doorway. We were all waiting for my mother to show up. It would change everything, having Mom here. She would take charge, and I realized how much I depended on that—on my mother taking charge of things.

The three of us were talking about the most unimportant things—my school and Old Town Alexandria and what Wilmington was like, as though I was just someone who’d dropped by for a visit, not their daughter or sister.

I jumped every time I saw someone in the hallway. Finally, there she was. My mother. She barely looked like herself, she was so pale and frazzled. I jumped up from the couch, the blanket falling from my shoulders, and ran into her arms.

“Mom,” I said, and suddenly everything I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours—Jenny showing me the letter, the horrible drive through the dark rain, the search for Anna Knightly—hit me all at once. My leg muscles felt like mush, and I knew I was only able to stand because my mother was holding me up.

“Sweetie,” Mom said, her voice quiet in my ear. “My sweetheart. It’s okay. I’m here.”

I held on to her. “I’m sorry I left like that,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. Her eyes were wet. “None of that matters.”

I could have stayed like that for the rest of my life, wrapped safely in her arms, but I could feel Anna behind me and Haley staring at us from her bed. I pulled away from my mother.

“This is my mom,” I said to Anna.

My mother walked over to Anna, her hand outstretched. “I’m Tara Vincent,” she said.

“Anna Knightly,” Anna said. “And this is my daughter, Haley.”

My mother looked at Haley. “Hi, Haley.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “I’ve spoken with my attorney,” she said to Anna. “He’ll be in touch with you.”

Anna tilted her head to the side and I knew she didn’t like my mother’s attitude. “Could we talk for a minute?” she asked. “Please? Mother to mother?”

“We can’t just leave, Mom,” I said. I knew she didn’t get exactly what was happening. She didn’t realize there was a life-or-death situation going on in that room.

My mother looked from me to Anna. “All right,” she said, “but I want to talk to my daughter alone first.”

Anna nodded. I could tell she was afraid my mother would take me away. I wanted to leave. I did. But I wouldn’t. “There’s a lounge at the end of the hall,” Anna said. “It’s usually empty. Go ahead.”

My mother held my hand as if I were a little girl as we walked down the hall. As if I were her little girl.

If only I could be.



55

Tara


There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to ask her a thousand questions about her fears and her confusion and to know everything she was thinking and feeling. I wanted her to know that she would always be my daughter, that I would never allow her to be taken from me and that her body was hers. She didn’t have to offer a single one of her cells to see if she was a match for the stranger in the hospital bed.

But I said none of it as we sat on the two love seats in the tiny room. I asked her no questions. I felt Sam in the room with us, holding me back. He would have listened to her without prodding. Without picking her brain. He knew how to love our daughter.

“I love you,” I said, and it turned out to be all I needed to say. She began to cry.

“I’m so sorry I just left like that,” she said again. “It was so stupid.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that matters is that you’re safe.”

“I wish I never found out you’re not my mother.”

“We’ll need a DNA test before I’ll believe that,” I said, “but a blood test will never change how I feel about you, Grace.”

She wound the end of her hair around her finger. “I get so mad at you,” she said. “I even hate you sometimes. And today I can’t even remember why I ever felt that way. I wanted to go see Cleve and you said no and I got so angry and now that seems really stupid.”

I nodded, just to let her know I was listening.

“Right now I’m not even thinking about Cleve,” she said. “He’s like the last thing on my mind.” She let go of her hair and leaned toward me. “I don’t know who I am, Mom.”

I wanted to tell her who she was. She was the sensitive writer in the family, the quiet girl who had so much to say on paper. She was the apple of her father’s eye and the thread that had always connected Sam and me, biology be damned. She was the beauty who, truth be told, looked like neither of us. She was the girl I wanted so much to get to know.

I struggled instead to find the most open-ended thing to say. The Sam thing to say. “You’re still Grace,” I said, and knew at once it had been exactly right. She wore a small frown as she stared at me, and I could nearly see the wheels turning in her mind.

“I don’t want to lose Grace,” she said. “Even though I spend so much time wishing I was…not me. Wishing I could be more like you.” She did? I had never once thought she wished she could be like me and I wanted to ask her why, but managed to keep my mouth shut.

“I always wished I could be more like Jenny. Everybody loves Jenny. I never know what to say around people and I just… I’m so different. I’m weird.”

No, you’re not, I wanted to say. How could I let that comment go unchallenged? But she kept going before I had a chance to respond.

“But it’s like all of a sudden I want to just be me, Mom,” she said. “I don’t want to be somebody else’s daughter. Haley is nice. She’s cool. But I suddenly feel like everybody wants me to save her life and—” She shook her head. “Please…can you make this all go away?”

I moved next to her on the love seat, my arms around her. “You and I share the same wish, Grace.” I smoothed my hand down the length of her hair. How long since she’d let me do that? “I wish I could make this all go away, too, but I don’t know that I can.” I was the one who fixed things. Who controlled things. Never had anything felt so out of my control. “The one thing I can promise you is that I will slow this train down, okay?”

“She could die if I don’t give her my blood marrow.”

I nearly corrected her but let the mistake stand. She seemed so small in my arms, a child who didn’t know bone marrow from blood marrow, and I would allow her to be that child for as many more hours as possible.