“No,” she said. “Jenny was born in the hospital, delivered by an obstetrician.”
She was lying. She had to be. My legs were rubbery, but I took two steps toward the night table and picked up the photograph of Haley with the Collier cousins in the Outer Banks. I held it with both hands as if it were very fragile and carried it toward the woman and girl in the doorway.
“This is my sister-in-law and her daughters,” I said, holding it toward the woman. “Haley’s cousins. Look at them.”
I knew what they were seeing in the photograph. Four girls with round dark eyes. Nearly black hair and fair skin. Chins that receded ever so slightly. Noses a hairbreadth too wide to be beautiful. I stepped away from them, back to Haley’s side, because I was afraid I would touch the girl. I would try to pull her into my arms. Right now, I had to settle for breathing the air she was in. Finally, I thought. Finally.
Tara and Grace moved next to the woman and Tara touched the frame where it shivered in her hand. “Oh, my God, Emerson,” she said when she saw the picture. “How can this be?”
“Tara,” the woman said, as if asking her friend to fix something that had moved entirely out of her control. “It can’t be,” she said. “It isn’t.”
I watched all four of them stare at the photograph. I watched as the truth sank in. I held Haley’s hand, waiting for the moment I could take my other child, my firstborn daughter, into arms that had ached to hold her for sixteen years. In that girl’s beautiful dark eyes, I saw confusion and fear and it broke my heart.
“Jenny,” I said. “Is that your name? Did I get it right?” I hadn’t really heard the introductions.
The girl slowly raised her gaze from the photograph. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
Grace looked at her mother. “I’m not…?”
It took Tara a moment to shake her head. “I don’t think so.” She touched the other woman’s shoulder. “Em,” she said, “is this possible? What do you remember?”
“I had her in the hospital,” the woman said again. “It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous.”
“When is your birthday?” I asked Jenny.
“August 31,” she whispered.
My baby, I thought, my eyes filling. She’d lain alone in a hospital for two days with no mother to hold her. No mother to talk to her. She’d been all by herself until the midwife stole her away, quietly, taking all records of her existence with her, erasing her so that I’d never be able to find her again.
“You’re my Lily, Jenny. I’m certain of it.”
“Stop it!” the woman snapped at me, tugging Jenny close to her, and I knew I’d said too much, too fast, but I hadn’t been able to help myself.
The girl pulled free of her mother and fled down the hallway. Grace took off after her. Tara grabbed the woman’s arm to stop her from following them. “Let Grace,” she said.
The woman looked terrified. “I don’t understand what’s going on!”
“She’s Lily,” Haley said. “She’s so Lily.”
Tara looked at me, her hands wrapped around the woman’s forearm. “Let me talk to Emerson,” she said.
I didn’t want them to leave. I was afraid Lily would vanish once more into thin air. But what could I do?
“All right,” I said. Emerson had already turned away, disappearing into the hallway, getting away from me as quickly as she could. “Please don’t leave, though,” I added, but they were gone and only Haley heard my words.
61
Noelle
Wilmington, North Carolina
1994
She awakened with a great start and couldn’t immediately figure out where she was. The odd, dim lighting in the room disoriented her. She blinked hard, trying to focus. The small sink. The bassinet. She turned her head to the right and saw the bed where Emerson slept. She felt something hard against her thigh through her skirt and glanced down to see a bottle next to her on the seat of the recliner. She’d been feeding the baby. What was her name? Grace? They’d wanted to name her Noelle. No, this baby wasn’t Grace. It was Emerson’s child. Jennifer. Jenny. She had the vaguest memory of getting up to return the baby to the bassinet, but the bassinet was empty. She tried to think. Had Jill come in to take the baby from her arms? She drew in a long slow breath, worried she’d feel dizzy once she got to her feet. She pressed her hands on the seat of the chair to keep her balance, but as she started to stand, her glance fell to the floor at her feet and she saw the baby who had slipped from her tired arms down the silky fabric of her skirt.
She couldn’t breathe. She bent over too quickly to reach for the infant and fell from the chair to the floor, landing hard on her hip. Grabbing the baby, she pulled her onto her lap but knew right away she was too late. Too impossibly late. The baby’s head was at an unnatural angle, her lips already blue and lifeless.
Noelle stared at the infant, eyes wide, horror filling her chest. You killed her, you killed her, you killed her! Her hands trembled as she attempted to straighten the little head on the broken neck. She leaned over to try to breathe life into the purplish lips and tiny nose, where a trickle of blood had already crusted.
She pulled herself to her feet, one hand on the edge of the sink. She felt as though she was wailing, but the sound was caught inside her chest and couldn’t come out. She picked up the baby and placed her in the bassinet, then stood stock-still, trying to clear her head. Trying to think.
The baby in the nurses’ station. The twin to this one. The one with the dying mother. The missing father.
How would she get Jill away? Quietly, she crossed the room and opened the door to the nurses’ station to find it empty. Jill wasn’t there, but the baby was still in the bassinet. Brown hair. Six and a half pounds. No time to waste. No time to think.
Noelle lifted the infant into her arms. She grabbed the thin chart attached to the bassinet and slipped back into Emerson’s room. Her hands shook wildly as she placed the motherless baby next to Emerson’s child in the bassinet. Then she wrapped a flannel blanket around the lifeless infant, Emerson’s little Jenny, and slipped her gently into her huge leather purse.
The wristbands! She reached into her purse and worked the band from the baby’s wrist, then exchanged it for the one worn by the infant in the bassinet, but not before she noticed the name: KNIGHTLY, baby girl. She dropped that baby’s record and wristband into her purse. She’d burn the records. She could already picture the fire in her fireplace.
She stole out of the hospital, passing a couple of nurses and one obstetrician she knew, but they barely acknowledged her as they raced down the hall. The unit was an uncalm place tonight. As uncalm as she felt inside. As uncalm as she would feel for the rest of her life.
It was three-thirty in the morning by the time she got home and by then she was operating on sheer adrenaline. Almost without thinking, she found the shovel in her shed. She selected the corner of her yard farthest from the house and, in the darkness, she dug and dug and dug, the earth soft from August rains. She made the hole deep and narrow. She wrapped the baby in her favorite skirt, because it was beautiful and because she needed to sacrifice something she loved. She lay flat on the ground and carefully lowered the baby deep into the ground, then she shoveled the earth over her, finally letting her tears come.
When she was finished she sat on the ground above the baby, above Emerson’s Jenny, not moving even when a misty rain started to fall. She sat there until the sky began to lighten with strands of pink and lemon and lavender, like a bouquet of flowers for a baby girl. That was what she would do this morning, she thought. She’d go to the garden shop and ask them what plants would bloom into a lush blanket of pastel blossoms that even a stranger would not be able to look at without thinking, This is a garden that’s filled with love.
62
Tara
Washington, D.C.
2010
We found Grace and Jenny in the little room at the end of the hall. They sat on the floo
r, leaning against one of the love seats and my daughter—my daughter, I was sure of it—had her arm around her best friend. They looked up when Emerson and I walked into the room.
“Mom,” Jenny said. “Please tell me I’m not her daughter! Just because I look like those girls doesn’t mean anything.”
Emerson sank onto the love seat. Every trace of color had left her face. She smoothed her hand over Jenny’s head, gently squeezing a fistful of her hair as if she could hold on to her that way. “I don’t understand how you possibly could be her daughter,” she said. “Noelle had nothing to do with your birth.”
I saw the doubt in Emerson’s eyes as she spoke. We’d both seen the picture of those girls. You could exchange Jenny for one of them in the photograph and no one would know the difference.
“The letter Noelle wrote to Anna,” I said. “It didn’t say where she was when she dropped the baby, did it?”
Emerson jerked her head toward me, a look of betrayal on her face. “Do you actually think Jenny could be the one?” she nearly barked at me. “Tell me how that could possibly have happened.”
I sat down on the love seat opposite them, wondering how much to say. How to say it all without being cruel because what happened now seemed so clear in my mind. “Noelle was upset you were alone when you were in labor.” I felt all their eyes on me. “Ted was trying to get a plane home and Noelle was with Sam and me, remember? But once Grace was born, she had a doula come over so she could go see you at the hospital.”
“She never came to the hospital,” Emerson argued.
I looked down at my lap, where I was twisting my wedding ring on my finger. “That’s what she told us later,” I said quietly. I lifted my gaze to Emerson again. “Of course, that’s what she’d tell us—that she never made it there. That she was so tired, she just went home and went to sleep. Didn’t that seem unbelievable at the time, Em? That she wouldn’t come see you?”
Emerson looked away from me. In her hand, she still held a fistful of Jenny’s hair.
“Mom.” Jenny put her hands over her ears as though she could somehow block out what was happening. “I can’t stand this!”
I felt such relief to know that Grace and I were free from the nightmare, yet I was now reliving the emotions of this long day again, reliving them through the friend I loved so much. Tell Jenny she’ll always be yours, I thought, leaning forward, and Emerson seemed to get my unspoken message.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Jenny,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. But I don’t care who gave birth to you, your dad and I raised you and you’re our daughter.”
“Haley needs a bone marrow transplant,” Grace said, unhelpfully. “I was going to get tested to see if I’m a match. They only need to swab your cheek.”
“Grace,” I said more sharply than I’d meant to. “Give Jenny and Emerson a chance to figure out what’s happening, honey. Remember how you felt a couple of hours ago?”
Grace looked contrite. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.” She had grown up today, I thought. Driven hundreds of miles alone. Walked into a hospital. Agreed to endure medical treatments to help a sister she didn’t know. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been the day before.
“I want to go home,” Jenny said. “Don’t make me go back to that room, Mom. Please just take me home.”
Emerson looked at me. “I think we should leave,” she said. “I need to talk to Ian.”
I stood. “I’ll go back and tell them we’re leaving,” I said. “I’ll have to give them your contact information, Emerson, all right? And get theirs for you?”
Emerson shook her head. “I don’t want them calling me,” she said.
Of course not. “I’ll just give them Ian’s number.”
She gave me a reluctant nod. I stood, then bent over to hug her and kiss the top of Jenny’s head. “Love you, Jen,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I found Anna sitting on the edge of Haley’s bed and it was clear they’d both been crying. I could imagine how they felt, suddenly so near the girl they’d feared they would never find, yet unable to touch or even talk to her.
Anna jumped to her feet and rushed over to me. “How is she?” she asked. “Is she okay?”
I nodded. “She and Emerson have a lot to think about,” I said. “They’re not sure…well, you can imagine how over whelmed they are right now. I came to tell you that we’re leaving and to—”
“No!” Haley wailed. “We need to talk to Lily!”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Haley,” I said. “Jenny wants to go home and, right now, I think that’s best. But Emerson will talk to her lawyer and he’ll get in touch with you and your mother very soon. Tell me the best way for him to contact you.”
Anna picked up a briefcase from the floor near the sofa. I could tell she was fighting tears as she pulled out a business card. She added some other phone numbers to the back of it and I wrote Ian’s number on a slip of paper from my notepad.
“We don’t want to hurt her. Lily. Jenny,” Anna said, as she handed me the card. “We want to do this the right way. But Haley needs—”
“I know,” I said. “Jenny’s in shock right now. So is Emerson.” I tried to smile. “So am I, actually.”
“Us, too,” Haley said. “Seriously.”
As I turned to leave the room, Anna caught my arm. “Grace is beautiful,” she said. “When I saw her, I thought, What a beautiful girl, but I felt nothing…here.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “When I saw Jenny, though, I knew. Even if she didn’t look exactly like Haley’s cousins, I would have known. It was like a missing piece of my heart suddenly appeared in the doorway. Can you understand that?”
I nodded. The missing piece of my own heart was in the room at the end of the hall, and on this difficult day, I felt that piece slipping slowly, cautiously back into place.
63
Grace
Jenny and I rode in the backseat, while my mother drove. We’d had to leave Emerson’s car in the parking garage at the hospital. We didn’t have a choice. Only one of the four of us was in any shape to drive and that was my mom, and even she wasn’t doing all that well.
Everything had reversed itself in the weirdest way. It was as if you had to do one of the worst things you could imagine, like walk barefoot across burning coals, and suddenly your best friend was going to do it for you. You know just how your friend feels because you felt the same way, and it hurts to watch your friend go through it all.
I’d thought before about how love could sneak up on you. One day when I was eleven years old, I suddenly realized I loved Jenny the same way I loved my mother and father. We’d been on the beach at Wrightsville, hanging out together in the sun and jumping in the waves, and I’d felt so happy. I looked over at Jenny and thought, I love you, just like that. It was a revelation, really. About a year later, Jenny said, “Love you,” when we talked on the phone, the same way our mothers said those words to each other, and it was like there was suddenly more color in my life. Love came with some hurt, though. When Jenny broke her ankle two years ago, I sat with her on her porch steps while we waited for the ambulance, and it was as though my own ankle had been broken. That’s how bad I felt.
Now, sitting in the back of the car with Jenny, I felt the same way again.
“What are they like?” Jenny asked me. “That girl and her mother? I didn’t even get a look at them, really.”
“They’re nice,” I reassured her, although a couple of hours earlier, I’d felt nothing for them. I thought of Anna’s coolness. “It’s hard to tell because I just, you know, popped into the room and said, ‘Hi! I’m your daughter!’ so they were obviously freaked. And you freaked them even more.”
Emerson and my mother were talking quietly in the front seats. From where I sat, I could see a tissue wadded up in Emerson’s fist. For the first hour of the drive, I’d heard words like I refuse to believe it and This will kill Ted and Where is my baby? They were whispered words I didn’t want Jenn
y to hear, so I tried to talk over them. I heard Emerson speak to Ted on the phone, so quietly I couldn’t understand what she said. How would she tell Ted their daughter was probably not their daughter, after all?
“So…tell me about this disease Haley has,” Jenny said after a while.
“It’s leukemia,” I said. “I only talked to her for a little while, but she’s cool.” I felt a tiny bit of jealousy: if Jenny was really Anna’s daughter, then she had a sister. “She seems really strong. She doesn’t seem like she’s going to die tomorrow or anything, but she could.” I couldn’t help myself. I knew my mother thought Jenny couldn’t handle this, but she needed to know the truth. “She is going to die if she can’t get a bone marrow transplant,” I said.
“Now they’ll want me to do it, won’t they?” she said.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “But I think you should. A sibling has a one in four chance of being a match.”
Emerson must have heard me. She turned in her seat. “Jenny, don’t even think about this now, all right? We have no idea what’s going on yet, really, and even if you turn out to be the baby Noelle took, you don’t need to decide a thing right now. Not about being a part of their lives, and absolutely not about donating bone marrow.” I didn’t think I’d ever heard Emerson sound so firm. “You don’t need to ever decide, if you don’t want to,” she added.
Jenny didn’t say anything, but when Emerson had faced forward again, she turned to me. “What does it take,” she asked. “Being a donor?”
“Cheek swab first,” I said. “Then if you’re a match with the cheek swab, they do a blood test. If you’re a match after that, they have to take some of your bone marrow. I don’t know exactly how they do it. If you need to do it, though, I’ll go with you.”