The Midwife's Confession Read online

20

  Tara

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  I thought I was screaming. I woke up abruptly and bolted out of bed and only then did I realize it wasn’t my voice I was hearing but Grace’s. I raced down the hall to her room, imagining someone hurting her. I was ready to tear out the intruder’s eyes with my bare hands.

  But she was alone. Sitting in her bed in the half-light from the moon, she was doubled over, her hands covering her ears, and by the time I reached her, her voice had grown so tiny and strangled sounding that I could barely hear it.

  “Help, help,” she whimpered.

  “Grace!” I wrapped my arms around her like a cocoon. “Sweetheart. It’s okay.” I rocked her and she settled against me. “A bad dream,” I said. “Just a bad dream.” I remembered this. I remembered her letting me hold her this way when she was little, and while I hated that she was frightened, I loved the feeling of holding her without her pushing me away. “What was it, honey?” I asked. “Do you want to tell me about it?” She always used to tell Sam her dreams. She’d pour them out to him and he’d listen so carefully, as if he’d treasure every detail forever.

  I felt her shake her head beneath my chin. She clutched my arm, let go, clutched, let go, reminding me of the way she’d open and close her fist against my breast when she nursed as a baby.

  “Was it about Daddy?” I asked, then bit my lip. She hated my probing.

  “My fault Noelle died.” Her voice was so soft and muffled that I thought I’d heard her wrong.

  “Your fault?” I asked. “Gracie, no! How could it possibly be your fault?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Why would you think that?”

  She drew away from me, but only a little so that our bodies still touched. When I reached out to stroke her back she didn’t withdraw.

  “The day she died, she sent me an email,” she said. “It was the kind she always sent, trying to guilt me into volunteering.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “And Cleve sent an email, too. I was writing back to him, telling him how annoying Noelle could be…saying all kinds of negative things about her. About her being a whack job and everything. And right after I hit send, I realized I’d sent it to her, not Cleve.”

  “Oh, no.” I was glad it was dark enough that she couldn’t see my smile. I’d done that myself more than once. Who hadn’t? But I felt for Grace and I felt for Noelle being on the receiving end of an email like that from a girl she adored. “We all make that mistake at least—”

  “Then she killed herself.” Grace cut me off. “Like a couple of hours—maybe a couple of minutes—after she got my email. She read these horrible things I said about her and then she killed herself.”

  “No, Grace,” I said. “You can’t pin her suicide on yourself. Maybe she never even read your email, but even if she did, that’s not enough to send someone over the edge. Whatever was bothering Noelle was deep and had been going on for a long, long time.”

  I’d had my own problems sleeping in the two days since Emerson showed me the letter she’d found. I could think of little else. I kept picturing a baby slipping out of Noelle’s grasp. When? Where? How horrible she must have felt! I kept trying unsuccessfully to wipe the image from my head. I wished I could tell Grace about it to ease her mind, but the secret needed to stay between Emerson and me for now. Maybe forever.

  As usual, though, I couldn’t bear the silence and distance that began to open up between us again as she recovered from her dream.

  “There are some things I know about Noelle,” I said, needing to fill the silence and keep her engaged with me. “There were some reasons for her depression that explain her suicide, honey, and trust me, they have nothing at all to do with you. This would have happened whether you’d sent that email or not.”

  “What kind of things?” She looked at me almost suspiciously, her eyes glistening in the moonlight.

  “I can’t talk about them yet. Emerson and I are trying to figure out the reasons Noelle was so down. We think something happened to…with Noelle a long time ago that—”

  “Like she was molested or something?”

  “No. Nothing like that.” I shouldn’t have said a word. There was a good possibility I would never be able to reveal what I knew about Noelle to Grace. “I don’t even know all the details, but I’m just telling you this to put your mind at ease. All you need to know is that you had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to Noelle. Okay?”

  She gave a small nod as she lay down.

  “You going to be able to go back to sleep?”

  “I’m fine.” She settled down under the covers and turned on her side, facing the wall. My body felt chilled where she’d been close to me. I didn’t want to leave. I touched her shoulder. Rubbed it.

  “You don’t work this afternoon, do you?” I asked.

  “No. Tomorrow.”

  “I can drive you home today, then.”

  “Jenny’ll give me a ride.”

  I hesitated. “I can tell you’re still upset,” I said. “You’re so much like your daddy, honey. You ruminate on things and it’s not good. Maybe tonight we could—”

  “Mom!” She rolled onto her back, and although I couldn’t see her face well, I knew she was staring daggers at me. “I want to sleep!”

  “Okay.” I smiled ruefully to myself. She’d given me an inch and I’d tried for a mile. I leaned over, kissed her cheek. “I love you,” I said. “Sleep tight.”

  I had to fight the urge to check on Grace the next day to be sure she was okay after her rough night. That was both the benefit and the curse of teaching at your child’s school: access to her was way too easy. She wouldn’t appreciate my interference, though, and I actually went out of my way to avoid seeing her during the day.

  When I walked into the house after school that afternoon, the message light was blinking on the kitchen phone. I punched in the pass code and lifted the receiver to my ear.

  “Hi, Tara,” Ian said. Then he chuckled. “I have to tell you, I get a jolt every time I hear Sam’s outgoing message on your voice mail. It’s nice, though. Nice to hear his voice. So I’m just checking on you. Hope you and Grace are doing okay.”

  I set down the phone.

  Well.

  I had honestly, completely, forgotten that Sam had recorded our outgoing message. Emerson mentioned it in the first few weeks after he died, but someone could have told me my house was purple back then and it would have sailed clear over my head. I guessed no one had had the nerve to mention it to me since. Except Ian, and he did it in a nice way.

  I pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed our home number. The phone on the counter rang four times while I bit my lip, waiting. Then the voice mail picked up.

  “Hey, there!” Sam sounded like he was in the next room. “You’ve reached Sam, Tara and Grace and we hope you’ll leave us a message. Bye!”

  I stared at the phone in my hand for a moment, then started to cry, hugging the phone to my heart. I sat on the stool next to the kitchen island and sobbed so hard my tears pooled on the granite. I’d thought I was done with this part of the grief—this sucking-down, soul-searing pain—but apparently not.

  It took me twenty minutes to pull myself together. Then I looked at the phone again, with determination this time. I needed to change the message. The thing was, I had no idea how to do it.

  I wondered, too, what Grace would say. I remembered her reaction when she walked into our bedroom to see that I’d packed all of Sam’s clothing in black trash bags marked for Goodwill. He’d been gone two weeks by then, and I’d felt an extraordinary need to get rid of the clothes he would never be able to wear again. I’d heard that some women hung on to their deceased husband’s clothing for years, but another piece of my heart chipped off when I saw those suits and shirts and khakis and tracksuits in the closet each morning.

  “You’re erasing him!” Grace had screamed at me when she saw the bags. I
’d tried to hold her—I’d wanted us to cry together—but she’d pushed me away and run to her room. I’d thought, Tomorrow she’ll talk to me, but now two hundred tomorrows had passed and she was as cut off from me as ever. Why had I gotten rid of Sam’s things so quickly? Was it normal? I’d thought it would help, not seeing his clothes in the closet each morning. I hadn’t thought about how hard it would be to see the emptiness in their place.

  I picked up the phone and pushed a few buttons, trying to figure out how to change the message. Grace would probably not even notice, anyway. She never used the house line.

  I was listening to the instructions when Grace walked into the kitchen. I jumped. I hadn’t realized that she’d beaten me home from school, and I hoped she hadn’t heard my breakdown. From the start, I’d felt the need to be strong for her. Now I turned the phone off quickly, not wanting to change the message in front of her.

  “What are you doing?” She stood on the other side of the island, eyeing the phone with suspicion.

  “I thought it was time I changed the outgoing message,” I admitted, “but I can’t remember how.”

  “To take Dad’s voice off it, you mean.”

  I tried to determine if there was an accusation in her words. “Yes,” I said. “I thought it was time.”

  She looked at the phone in my hand instead of at me. “I guess.” She reached for the receiver. “I can do it if you want.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  She deftly hit a few buttons, then said, “Hi, this is Grace.” She held the phone out to me and I stared at it, not certain what she wanted me to do. She gave me a look that said, You are a dork, and pressed a button. “I’ll say, ‘This is Grace,’ and you just add, ‘And Tara,’ and then I’ll finish it. All right?”

  “Yes. Good.” I moved closer to her, our heads touching. I could smell her shampoo. I was so lonely for that scent. It put a lump in my throat.

  “Hi, this is Grace.”

  “And Tara.”

  “Leave us a message,” she said, and then she hung up. “There.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled.

  “Anytime.” She picked up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and turned toward the hallway. I wanted to grab her. Keep her in the kitchen with me. Were you able to get back to sleep after your nightmare last night? I wanted to ask her. Tell me about your day! Who’s your favorite teacher this quarter? Have you spoken to Cleve lately? But I forced myself to keep my mouth shut, because what just happened between us, insignificant though it seemed, felt like magic to me and I didn’t want to ruin it.

  21

  Anna

  Washington, D.C.

  Bryan and I sat across the desk from Doug Davis, the transplant specialist at Children’s, as he leafed through Haley’s thick file. He pulled out one of the sheets of paper, set it on the desk and tapped it with his finger. “I have the report on Haley’s bone marrow,” he said, “and unfortunately she has a cell type that’s a bit more challenging to match but certainly not impossible, so there’s no reason to be pessimistic.” He was looking directly at me. Did I look pessimistic? I was scared out of my wits. Was that the same thing?

  It felt strange to be at Children’s without Haley. She was with Marilyn and the kids for a long weekend and I couldn’t wait to hear all about it tonight. I was glad she was having a getaway, but three days without her and I was in withdrawal. I missed my daughter. I hated that I’d have to bring her back to Children’s tomorrow for another dose of the maintenance chemo.

  She’d called me that morning and I could tell she was having a blast with her cousins. They’d skated at an indoor rink, cheered at Megan’s soccer game, camped out in the backyard, went to the movies and hung out for hours at the mall. I wasn’t crazy about kids hanging out in malls, but I felt like cramming as much fun into Haley’s life right now as possible. If she wanted to hang out at the mall and she was safely with her herd of Collier cousins, well, then, damn it, let her.

  “Can you test us today?” Bryan asked Dr. Davis. “I don’t understand why this isn’t being rushed. Why no one’s running in here right this second to swab our cheeks.”

  Dr. Davis smiled. He was so young. I woke up one morning and all the doctors I dealt with were suddenly younger than me. “We’ll see if you’re compatible,” he said, “but parents are usually the last resort. They’re rarely a good match. Best, of course, is a sibling. Does Haley have any brothers or sisters?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Bryan beat me to it. “We had another child.” He cleared his throat. Adjusted his glasses. “A girl,” he said. “She disappeared shortly after she was born. We don’t even know if she’s alive.”

  His words rocked me. They were my words. The ones I usually said. The ones that made my throat tighten up every time I said them out loud. He hadn’t mentioned Lily once since his sudden appearance in Haley’s hospital room two months ago. Had I thought he’d forgotten our lost child? There was real sorrow in his voice. There was agony. I’d thought I was alone with that sorrow all these years.

  “How tragic.” Dr. Davis took off his own glasses. “Both for that little girl and for Haley,” he said. “There’s a one in four chance that a sibling will match. When we get into the general population, it’s closer to one in twenty-five thousand.”

  The sudden anger I felt at Bryan—at the world—surprised me, and I struggled to keep it in. If we hadn’t lost Lily, we’d have a one in four chance of saving Haley. It was that simple.

  “She has cousins,” I said, wondering how cousins would fit into the confusing picture of who would be a compatible donor and who wouldn’t. “Four girls. They’re Bryan’s sister’s children.”

  “We’ll test all of them,” he said. “But most likely we’ll be turning to the global donor database. If any of them are a possible match, they’ll be asked to give a blood sample. Donors are almost always found—” he nodded encouragingly “—it’s just a question of how quickly.”

  I thought of all the stories I’d heard of people who died while waiting for a transplant. I remembered a little boy who’d been receiving treatment here at Children’s when Haley was a toddler and how they’d been unable to find a donor for him in time. I began to shiver as if I were freezing.

  “We’ll keep Haley on the maintenance regimen until we find the donor,” Dr. Davis said. “The good news is that she’ll probably get some hair back.” He smiled. “At least for a while.”

  “Why just for a while?” Bryan asked, and I realized he hadn’t seen her hair since she was a year old. Back then, it had been downy and nearly blond. As a twelve-year-old, she wore it in a messy ponytail, long tendrils of it coming out of the elastic band and falling around her face. She didn’t care what it looked like. I wanted her to reach the age of caring. I’d never really reached that age myself—I was still a low maintenance sort of woman, not even wearing makeup unless I had a speaking engagement. I didn’t care if she was like me or not. I just wanted her to have the chance to figure out what kind of woman she wanted to be.

  “When we find a donor, we’ll begin preparing her for the transplant. She’ll have a couple of weeks of intense chemotherapy and radiation, and she’ll lose her hair again. After the transplant, she’ll have at least another month or longer in the hospital and about four months’ recovery at home.” He told us about the isolation area and the extreme hygiene measures we’d have to take in caring for Haley.

  “Whew.” Bryan sounded as overwhelmed as I felt. Nothing the doctor was telling us was a surprise to me. I’d done my research. I’d seen other kids and their families on the unit go through this ordeal. But the reality of the situation was only now hitting home for me. Now it was Haley I pictured enduring the ordeal ahead of us.

  Bryan and I were pretty quiet in the car on the drive back to Alexandria. We stopped in Old Town for lattes, carrying our cups to a bench on the waterfront. The day was spectacular. One of the white riverboats was docked to our left. It positively glowed in the su
nlight and the Potomac River was a sheet of silver in front of us. Everything I experienced in that moment, I wanted for Haley. I wanted her to be able to see that riverboat. To take a ride in it. To sit on the bench and marvel at the silvery water. To taste a caramel latte. I couldn’t seem to see or smell or touch anything without desperately wanting her to be able to do the same.

  Bryan and I sat in silence for a few minutes, taking in the view as we tried to digest everything we’d heard from Dr. Davis.

  “I’m scared,” I admitted finally. “Even if they find a match, it seems like there are so many things that could go wrong.”

  He didn’t say anything right away. He sipped his coffee and stared out at the water. I was about to prod him when he finally spoke.

  “Listen,” he said, “I want you to know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to take off again.”

  I supposed he was trying to reassure me, but instead his words pissed me off. “You’d better not,” I said. “Not after you’ve let Haley care about you again.”

  “I won’t.”

  I looked out at the water, getting my nerve up for what I was going to say next. “I was surprised when you mentioned Lily,” I said.

  “Why? Did you think I could ever forget about her?”

  “I frankly wondered.”

  “Oh, Anna. Seriously?”

  I turned on the bench to face him. “You ran off, Bryan,” I said. “You started a new life. You never talked about her. I mean, you talked to the police and the authorities back when it happened, but all these years, you’ve never talked to me about her.”

  “It was such a difficult time.”

  “‘Difficult’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  He took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I have regrets,” he said.

  And damn well you should, I thought. “Tell me your regrets.” I wanted an accounting. I wanted to make sure he didn’t miss any.