The Midwife's Confession

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I think Tuesday,” Jenny said. “Don’t tell her I told you, okay? My mother would kill me for snooping. I have to get these things back before she figures out I took them.”

  “What’s the other paper?” I pointed to the two sheets of printer paper on her lap.

  “It’s just nothing.” Jenny stuck both sheets back in the folder.

  “Let me see,” I said. Jenny was a terrible liar.

  She hesitated, then reached into the folder and handed me another paper printed from the Missing Children’s Bureau website.

  Missing Children’s Bureau director, Anna Chester Knightly, 44, has worked for MCB for ten years. Her infant daughter, Lily, disappeared from a Wilmington, North Carolina, hospital in 1994. She has one other daughter, Haley.

  I couldn’t speak. My mother? And a sister. “Where do they live?” I was finally able to ask. “Are they in Wilmington?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s director of this Missing Children’s place and I don’t think that’s here.”

  “She’s been looking for me,” I whispered. “All my life, she’s been looking for me.” I felt so much sympathy for her. Sympathy, and a longing so strong I felt it from the center of my heart to the ends of my fingers. “She probably thinks I’m dead.”

  Jenny took the paper from my hand and put it back in the folder. “Look, I’ve got to get home,” she said. “I told my mother I was just going to the store for cough medicine. She’ll be calling me any second.”

  “Leave the papers with me,” I said.

  “I can’t. She’ll notice they’re gone.”

  “Please, Jenny. I need them.”

  “I can’t.” She started to put the folder back in the grocery bag, but I grabbed it from her and hugged it to my chest.

  “Grace! I have to put them back!” she said.

  “I’m keeping them. They’re mine. They’re about me.”

  “Gracie. Please. She’ll kill me.” She grabbed for the folder but I turned around quickly, opened my dresser drawer and shut the file inside it.

  “Grace!” She tried to get to the drawer but I held her away. “You can find the same stuff on that website,” she said. “On that Missing Children’s website.”

  I held my hands out to my sides to keep her from getting to the drawer. She was right; I could find the information on the site, but I wanted those sheets of paper. Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t stand one more thing being taken away from me. “Let me keep them, Jenny,” I pleaded. I felt tears running down my cheeks. “Let them be mine.”

  She stared at me a minute, then pulled me into a hug. “Make copies,” she said into my hair. “Then give them back to me tomorrow.” I wasn’t sure which one of us was crying harder.

  I sat in my room for an hour after Jenny left, the two sheets of paper on my lap. I’d stared at the words on them for a long time before it got too dark to see them any longer, and it was like I didn’t have the energy to turn on the light. When my mother came home, she stopped in my room to tell me she’d picked up sandwiches for dinner. I turned on the light then because I wanted to see if she looked any different to me, but she didn’t. She wasn’t the one who had changed in the past couple of hours.

  After my mother went downstairs again, I logged on to the internet. I found the website for the Missing Children’s Bureau and followed the URL to the page about Anna Knightly. I caught my breath. A picture! Omigod, she looked so amazing. She had this open, beautiful face. You could tell so much from a picture. She looked gentle and full of love. She had green eyes, which had to be where my flecks of green came from. I didn’t think she looked anything like me otherwise, though. My own mother—at least, the mother who raised me—looked more like me than Anna Knightly did. I tried to find myself in her face, holding my hand mirror in front of me so I could look back and forth from my reflection to her photograph. My real father, I thought. I must look more like him. I shivered, creeped out by the thought of having any other father than the one I’d grown up with. The one I would love forever, no matter what.

  I read the one sentence over and over again. “Her infant daughter, Lily, disappeared.” How did they tell her that her baby had vanished? I pictured this pretty, soft-looking woman going into the hospital nursery to take her daughter home, and all the nurses scrambling to look for the baby, their panic rising as they realized she was gone. I was gone. I still couldn’t get it through my head that Lily was me. I could imagine how Anna Knightly felt when they told her. How she’d grieved for her. For me. I could have had a whole different life.

  Missing children turned up dead. That’s the way it always was on the news, and after all this time that had to be what Anna Knightly expected. She only knew I disappeared. She didn’t know the rest of my story.

  “I’m alive,” I said to the picture on my monitor. “I’m right here.”

  Where did she live? Could I find a phone number for her somehow? Could I call her right now? Right this second? I wanted to tell her I was alive. She could die tomorrow and we never would have known each other.

  There was a phone number for the Missing Children’s Bureau and I wrote it down. There was an address, too, in Alexandria, Virginia, one state away. My mother—my biological mother—was only one puny state away.

  I couldn’t sleep. I kept picturing a map. Alexandria was in the northern part of Virginia, wasn’t it? Near Washington? Washington was only like five hours away. I needed to meet Anna. I needed to find out who I really was. I could call her at the Missing Children’s Bureau early in the morning, but it would be so much better to meet her in person. I sat up, totally wired. I had to meet her now, I thought, as soon as I possibly could. Life was short. Tomorrow Anna could get killed driving to work. It happened.

  I grabbed my phone and speed-dialed Cleve’s number and when he picked up—he picked up!—I burst into tears.

  “Don’t hang up. Don’t hang up!” I said. “I have to talk to you. It’s not about us. Don’t worry. I just have to talk to you or I’ll go crazy.”

  “Grace, it’s nearly midnight.” He sounded wide-awake. I heard people talking in the background. A girl laughing. “We can talk tomorrow, okay?” he asked.

  “I just found out I was stolen from another woman when I was a baby!”

  He was quiet. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I explained everything: Jenny overhearing the conversation between her mother and Ian. Noelle’s letter to Anna Knightly. The stolen baby. The Missing Children’s Bureau.

  “I don’t believe this,” he said. “Are you making this up?”

  “No,” I said. “Talk to Jenny tomorrow if you don’t believe me. They’re going to tell my mother Tuesday. She already thinks I’m…” My voice broke, catching me off guard. “I’ve never really been the daughter she wanted. The other baby, the one who died, probably would have been just like her.”

  “Hold on a sec,” Cleve said. I heard him moving around. A door opening, maybe. “I had to go out in the hall,” he said after a minute. “My roommate’s got company. Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but your mom loves you. Everyone has issues with their mother, Grace. I’d love to disown mine half the time. But she’s my mother and she loves me and yours does, too.”

  “That’s the difference. Suzanne is your mother. My mother isn’t. I want to meet my real mother and tell her everything. I’m going there.”

  “Where?”

  “Virginia. I’m going to go meet her.”

  “When? And how do you plan to get there?”

  “I’ll drive. Tomorrow.”

  He laughed. “Don’t be so twelve years old, Grace.”

  His words stung. “You don’t know how this feels,” I said.

  “Look, tomorrow you tell your mother what Jenny told you, and—”

  “I’ll get Jenny in trouble. She’s not supposed to know any of this.”

  “Jenny’ll get over it. You tell your mom. If what you’re saying is true—and I doubt it—you and your mom need a l
awyer. Ian’s a lawyer, right? There’s all kinds of legal stuff that’ll need to be sorted out.”

  “Lawyers screw everything up,” I said. My father had been a great lawyer, but he always slowed things down when it came to his clients’ cases. I bet Ian was the same way. Daddy wanted everybody to take their time. Not rush into things. If he was alive, I wondered what he would do with this mess. “Oh, Cleve,” I said, “my dad’s not really my dad!”

  “He’s your dad and your mom’s your mom. Even if this other lady had you, your parents are still your parents.”

  “I’m really freaked out, Cleve,” I said, but my mind was moving away from our conversation. I walked over to my computer, sat down and clicked on Google Maps.

  Cleve sighed again. “Look,” he said, “promise me you’ll tell your mother tomorrow and that you won’t do anything stupid. I care about you, Grace,” he said. “That’ll never change. So, promise?”

  “I promise,” I said, but I was already typing in the address for the Missing Children’s Bureau.

  42

  Anna

  Washington, D.C.

  “What do you think of this look, Dad?” Haley asked Bryan as he opened the curtain around her hospital bed. We’d gotten her settled into the room a few hours earlier and it was very late, but she only now seemed to be winding down from a steroid-induced high. She’d lifted the top of her tray table to check her reflection in the mirror and she ran her hand over the dark stubble of hair that had sprouted up this past week.

  “Very cool.” Bryan stood next to her bed, running his hand over the short, soft bristles. I knew how her hair felt beneath his palm. The tickle of it beneath my own hand could give me a false sense of security. I had to keep reminding myself that the little bit of stubble was simply the lull before the storm.

  Tomorrow she’d receive another dose of her maintenance chemotherapy and that regimen would continue until a donor was found. Once we had a donor, the chemo and radiation she’d receive would destroy far more than her hair as it readied her body to receive the transplant. I refused to think a donor might never be found before the disease claimed her. Would not even go there. And tonight, I wanted her simply to enjoy her stubbly reflection in the mirror and our last few hours with Bryan. I’d be staying overnight with Haley, but he’d head back to his apartment shortly. Tomorrow he’d be on a plane for San Francisco, where he’d have the interview for the D.C. job. I wasn’t happy to see him go. I’d taken care of Haley by myself for most of her life, so it wasn’t that I needed his help, although his help had been wonderful. It was that I’d grown attached to him and so had Haley. We wanted him around.

  “There’s our girl!” Tom, Haley’s favorite nurse, came into the room. “I have your nighty-night pill.”

  Haley took the little paper cup from his hand.

  “I knew you were coming in tonight,” Tom said while she swallowed the pill, “so I cut this out in case you wanted an extra.” He handed Haley a copy of the article about the bone marrow drive that had appeared in the Washington Post on Friday. Haley’d been great with the journalist from the Post and even better with the reporter from WJLA. She’d talked about what she remembered from her first bout with leukemia. “I just thought all little kids had to be hooked up to killer drugs all the time,” she said simply. “I didn’t know any different.” She talked about Lily in a way I never would have been able to. “My mom lost my sister,” she said. “I don’t want her to lose me, too.” I cringed inside when she said that, hoping no one would think she was being disingenuous. I knew she meant every word and I was touched. So apparently were many others. The car dealership showroom filled with people the following day, all of them volunteering to have their cheeks swabbed.

  Once Tom had left the room, Haley lowered the head of her bed until she was lying nearly flat. “Okay,” she said to Bryan, “you’re coming back Wednesday?”

  “Wednesday at four o’clock.” He clicked off the bright light on her night table. I was at the foot of her bed, and I watched the movement of flesh and muscle beneath the back of his polo shirt. This week, I’d discovered it wasn’t only certain celebrities who could leave me weak in the knees. If anyone had told me the man I’d held in contempt for so many years could have the same effect on me, I would have said they were crazy.

  “What do you want me to bring back from San Francisco?” he asked Haley.

  “Just you,” she said, and I saw the wave of emotion pass over Bryan’s features. Haley was so open with her feelings these days. She never wore the mask that so many of us hid behind. She left herself vulnerable, as though she realized there was no time to waste with pretense. We had no promise of tomorrow. None of us did. I was learning so much from my daughter.

  “You’re sweet,” Bryan said to her. “But seriously. How about some Ghirardelli chocolate?”

  She made a face. “That sounds good right now, but I probably won’t feel like eating it by Wednesday.”

  “We can save it for when you do want it, then.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better run.”

  “I’ll walk you down,” I said, then turned to Haley, who had curled up beneath the covers with Fred cuddled in her arms. “Are you okay for a little bit?”

  She yawned, nodding. Bryan bent down to kiss her on the cheek and she wrapped one arm around his neck. “Don’t forget about us,” she said softly.

  He stood, holding her hand between both of his. “No,” he said. “Never.”

  We walked quietly to the elevator and rode down to the parking garage, which was nearly empty this late. I walked him all the way to his car. I didn’t want to see him go. Maybe I felt some of Haley’s trepidation. Some of that Don’t forget about us. But I didn’t think that was it. I wanted to be with him every moment that I could. I was going to let go of my own mask.

  He unlocked his car door, then turned to me.

  “Hurry back,” I said.

  He smiled, then pulled me into a long hug that brought memories flooding back to me. They were the good memories, the ones from when we were young and the future held nothing but promise.

  “Hold on,” he said, letting go of me. He opened the rear door, then climbed in and tugged me in after him. I laughed, practically falling next to him on the bench seat. He kissed me and we made out like the kids we once were, laughing at first at how ludicrous it seemed to be two forty-something people, fooling around in the backseat in a parking garage, but after a while, our laughter stopped and the car filled with our breathing, our touching and the sweet new beginning of a complicated love.

  43

  Grace

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  I was still awake at three in the morning, lying in bed, planning my next move. The more I thought about going to Alexandria, the more I knew I had to do it. I’d already printed the directions to the Missing Children’s Bureau and it looked pretty easy. Almost a straight shot from Wilmington to Alexandria, though I couldn’t picture myself actually driving that straight shot, and it was a longer drive than I’d thought. According to Google Maps, it would take five hours and fifty minutes to get there. Five hours and fifty minutes to find my biological mother. When I thought about it that way, it sounded like no time at all.

  I’d have to leave as soon as the sun came up. My mother didn’t have school tomorrow because of the holiday, but she never slept in. Getting up before she did would be hard. I’d set my phone alarm for six, but now I changed it to five. I should leave while it was still dark. If I left at five-thirty in the morning, I’d be there by lunchtime. My heart thumped at the thought of walking into the Missing Children’s Bureau and announcing my identity to the woman who was my mother.

  What if she went out to lunch, though? One of those long business-type lunches like my father used to take? I picked up my phone from the night table again and pressed the display to see the time. Three-ten and I was wide-awake. I’d never been so awake. I felt like I’d drunk a bucket of coffee. If I left right now, I could be at the Missing C
hildren’s Bureau way before lunch. But it was so dark outside and I could still hear the rain thrumming against my window. I’d only driven a few times in the rain before I’d lost my nerve behind the wheel altogether.

  “Do it,” I said out loud.

  I got up quickly and put on the same cropped pants and blue sweater I’d worn that day. I dumped my textbooks and notebooks out of my backpack onto my bed and replaced them with clean underwear, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and the folder Jenny’d left with me. I was moving fast, as if I was in a race. In a way, I was. I was trying to beat the part of me that thought my plan was not only stupid but dangerous. I hadn’t driven since before my father died, and I’d never driven alone and never more than a couple of hours at a time. I grabbed the directions I’d printed out, lifted my backpack to my shoulder and quietly walked downstairs. I took the keys to the Honda from the key cupboard by the back door and left the house before I could change my mind.

  I did okay driving for about an hour. I knew I was going way too slow, but it was hard to see. The rain made the road as shiny as a mirror and I kept picturing deer zipping out of the darkness in front of my car. I nearly had the road to myself, though, and that was both good and spooky. Then all of a sudden, the rain got unbelievably heavy. Heavy wasn’t even the right word to describe it. It fell in blinding waves against my car, pounding so hard on the roof that I couldn’t hear the radio. The wipers were set to their fastest setting, but it was still impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. I slowed down to forty miles an hour, then thirty, sticking really close to the shoulder. There were more cars on the road by then and none of those drivers seemed to be having any problem with the rain as they zipped past me. One of them honked at me, probably because I was driving so slowly. My hands were sweaty, but I kept them glued to the steering wheel and I was leaning forward like I could somehow see better if my face was closer to the windshield.