6

Emerson


God, I felt like a zombie. The reception after the service was in my own house, but I could hardly find my way around the rooms. Faces and voices blended together into a jumble of sight and sound. Nearly everyone was wearing black except me. I had on my favorite green blouse and the green-and-tan floral skirt that was getting too tight in the waist. Just plucked them out of the closet that morning without thinking. Noelle would have hated all the black, anyway.

I was only vaguely aware of what was happening: Jenny and Grace going upstairs to escape the adults; the caterer Tara’d hired floating through the rooms with trays of bruschetta and shrimp; Ted keeping an eye on me from wherever he was. He knew I was a wreck. I was glad that Noelle’s mother had left with her aide after the service. I didn’t think I could bear to see any more of her sorrow.

Tara was doing her social-butterfly thing, but for the most part she stayed close to my side. Ted and Ian were holding their little plates and talking in the corner of the living room, probably about sports. I still hadn’t adjusted to seeing the guys together without Sam. Now Noelle was gone, too. Not only that, but my grandfather’s nursing home had called that morning to tell me they were moving my beloved grandpa into hospice. I was losing everyone. Nothing was going to feel right again for a long time.

A few volunteers from Noelle’s babies program had come over. I knew most of them, though not well. I tried to make small talk with everyone, nodding, smiling, shaking hands. People said nice things about Noelle. Nobody said, “Why did she do it?” At least, not to me. They asked me how the café was doing and I answered with my usual “Great! Stop in sometime!” But I heard their voices and my own through a thick fog. I kept searching the room for the one person who was missing: Noelle. When I’d catch myself looking for her, my body would suddenly jerk back to reality. I was losing my mind.

An hour into the reception—an hour that felt more like three—Tara finally pulled me away from a woman who was going on and on about knitting baby clothes. “Break time,” she said in my ear.

I let her guide me through the living room and out to the sunroom we’d added on the year before. Tara took me by the shoulders and lowered me to the sofa, then plunked down on an ottoman in front of me. The voices from the living room were a hum through the closed sunroom door. They sounded wonderfully far away. I looked at Tara. “Thank you,” I said. “I was drowning out there.”

Tara nodded. “I know. It’s hard.”

I scrunched up my face. “I keep looking for Noelle,” I admitted. “That’s insane, isn’t it? I mean, seriously, I’m not joking. I keep expecting her to walk through the door.”

“Me, too,” Tara said. “I still think I see Sam sometimes. I thought I saw him in the grocery store the other day. And there was a guy driving down Water Street and I almost turned the car around to follow him.”

“I don’t get why there weren’t more people at the service,” I said. The turnout—or lack of turnout—hurt me. “I honestly thought there’d be…that every mother whose baby she delivered…” I shook my head. “You know the kind of relationship she had with her moms. That closeness. I thought they’d all come.”

“I know.” Tara rubbed my hand where it rested on my thigh. “I thought the same thing, but maybe they didn’t see the article in the paper.” She’d written the piece about Noelle and she’d done a great job with it. A bit of melodrama in her description of Noelle, but that was Tara.

“Word would have gotten around, though, article or not,” I said.

“They’re probably so busy with their families,” Tara said.

I suddenly pounded my fist on my thigh. “I just don’t understand why she did it!” I sounded like a broken record. “What did we miss? What did I miss? How did we fail her?”

Tara shook her head. “I wish I knew.” She massaged her forehead. “It wasn’t financial trouble, right? She had that money socked away, so that couldn’t have been it.”

“She didn’t give a damn about money, anyway,” I said. “You know that.”

“I keep thinking maybe she was sick and didn’t tell us,” Tara said. “She didn’t have insurance and maybe suicide seemed like her only way out. Has the final autopsy report come back yet?”

“Not yet. I don’t think she was sick, Tara, I really don’t. I’m sure the report’s going to show a massive dose of tranquilizers and narcotics and that’s it.”

Tara leaned back on the ottoman. “She was terrible at asking for help,” she said.

“Or showing weakness,” I added. “She always had to be the strong one.”

The sunroom door opened a few inches and a woman poked her head into the room. “Is one of you Emerson?” she asked.

“I am.” I wanted to get to my feet, but my body had other ideas and I stayed rooted to the sofa.

The woman crossed the room like a drill sergeant, all sharp edges and quick movements, jutting her hand toward me for a shake. I actually recoiled. I felt like a balloon she could pop if I let her get too close. “I’m Gloria Massey,” she said. She was in her mid-sixties, with short, no-nonsense gray hair. Khaki pants. Navy blue blazer.

Tara stood from the ottoman and offered it to her and the woman sat down in front of me, her knees pointy knobs beneath her pants. Gloria Massey. Her name was familiar, but God only knew why. I glanced at Tara, frowning, and I could tell she was trying to place her, too. Both our minds were mush. She seemed to figure that out.

“I’m an obstetrician with Forest Glen Birth Center,” she said. “Noelle used to be a midwife in our practice.”

“Oh, right.” I gestured toward Tara. “This is Tara Vincent. We were Noelle’s closest friends.”

“Yes, I remember,” Gloria said. “You went to UNCW with her, right?”

Tara nodded. “She was a few years ahead of us, but yes, we did.”

“Well, I’m sorry to get here so late,” Gloria said. “I had a delivery this morning so I missed the service, but I wanted to be sure to see you two and tell you how sorry I was to hear about Noelle. She was one of a kind.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I hadn’t seen her in…oh, it must be ten years now, but she’s the sort of person you never forget.”

Ten years? “Maybe I have you mixed up with someone else,” I said. “I thought she left your practice just a little over a year ago.”

Gloria Massey raised her eyebrows in surprise. “No,” she said. “I was actually confused by the article in the paper. It said she left us a couple of years ago, but it’s really been at least ten. Probably more like twelve. I’d have to think. It was around the time she started that babies-in-need program.”

I frowned, trying to remember. “I thought she’d worked with you all these years.” I looked at Tara. “Am I that out of it? Wasn’t she affiliated with Forest Glen right up until her retirement?”

Tara nodded. “I referred someone to her there just a couple of years ago,” she said.

“Well, we always had requests for her, that’s true,” Gloria said, “but we referred them on to the other midwife working with us.”

“So where was Noelle working, then?” I asked. “I’m confused.”

“I…” Gloria looked from me to Tara. “I’m quite sure she quit midwifery altogether when she left us,” she said. “I would have known if she’d gone to another practice.”

Both of us stared at her. I felt like I was slipping into a long dark tunnel. I didn’t think I could handle learning one more thing that didn’t fit with what I knew about Noelle. My brain hurt. I wanted to shout to the universe, “Noelle was not a big mystery! Stop trying to make her into one!”

“I think,” I said to Gloria, “for some reason, she didn’t want you to know she’d gone someplace else.”

With her sharp little machinelike gestures, Gloria pulled her cell phone from the purse slung over her shoulder. “Hold on.” She quickly dialed a number. “Laurie, it’s me,” she said. “Do you recall when Noelle Downie left us?” She nodded, looked at me and repeated what she was hearing, “Twelve years as of December 1,” she said. “This is my office manager on the phone and she says she remembers the date because it was the day her husband asked for a divorce. Which he didn’t get and it’s all patched up now, right, Laurie?” She smiled into the phone, while my mind scrambled to take in this bizarre information.

“Where did she go?” Tara asked.

“Did she go somewhere else?” Gloria asked her office manager. She nodded again. “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Okay, thanks. I’ll be in a little later.” She dropped her phone back in her purse. “Noelle let her certification lapse after she left us,” she said.

“What?” I said. “No way!”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.” Tara dropped down next to me on the sofa.

“Maybe this Laurie person has her mixed up with one of your other midwives,” I suggested.

Gloria shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She looked straight at me and I could practically hear her thinking what a shitty friend I was for not knowing what Noelle was up to. “I remember there being talk about it and everyone saying she just wanted to focus on the babies program,” Gloria said. “I know she was having a lot of back pain. I remember that. One of the other practices tried to get her to join them when they realized she’d left us, but she told them she was out of the business.”

“But she’s been delivering babies all this time!” I said.

“That’s true,” Tara agreed. “She’s been practicing as a midwife.”

“Are you sure?” Gloria tipped her head to one side. “Under whose supervision?”

I looked at Tara, who shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.

“She’d tell me she was with a patient sometimes,” I said, but I spoke slowly, suddenly unsure about what I was saying. Unsure about everything. Did she tell me that? I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Twelve years? This is ludicrous!” As far as I knew, Noelle had had three passions for the past twelve years: her local midwifery practice, the babies program and what she called her “rural work.” Every couple of years she’d spend a few months in an impoverished rural area volunteering her skills as a midwife. She grew up in an area like that and it was her way of giving back. Could twelve years of Noelle’s life have slipped past without us knowing what was really going on with her? “I know I heard her mention her patients,” Tara said. If I was crazy, Tara was, too.