The Midwife's Confession

by Diane Chamberlain

  “You were going to do it?” she asked.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “But you’re such a wimp. And you were going to do it.”

  I was amazed by that myself. “She could die,” I said with a shrug.

  Jenny wrinkled her nose, then leaned forward and tapped Emerson on the shoulder. “Mom?” she said. “I need to find out if I’m a match for her. For Haley.”

  Emerson turned around again. She looked at Jenny. Then she looked at me. Her face was a pasty-white mess, smeared with mascara. “All right,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Jenny’s phone rang and she checked the caller ID. “It’s Cleve.” She looked at me. “I talked to him while we were driving to Washington and told him what was going on. Should I answer?”

  I took the phone from her. “Hey,” I said.

  “Grace! You’re with Jenny? Where are you? I’ve been worried about you! I’ve been going out of my freakin’ mind, wondering what’s going on.”

  I smiled. He’d been worried. Going out of his freakin’ mind. “I’m fine,” I said, “but it’s too long to go into right now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Just tell me you’re all right,” he said.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Cleve wasn’t a part of this. He’d never be able to understand everything that had happened. I was with the people who did understand: my mom and Emerson and Jenny. I felt like Cleve was from another part of my life that suddenly seemed so long ago, and I realized that, on this very long day when I thought I would turn into someone else, that was exactly what had happened.

  64

  Emerson

  Topsail Island, North Carolina

  I stood at the sliding glass door of the oceanfront cottage Ted, Jenny and I were renting. Midweek in October and not a soul on the beach for as far as I could see. We knew we’d practically have the island to ourselves. That’s why we came.

  Ted and Jenny and the dogs were out there somewhere, but I’d begged off with the excuse that I wanted to make lasagna for dinner. Really, though, I wanted the time alone. Time to think.

  The DNA test results had come in the day before. I hadn’t fallen apart as I’d expected, I guess because by the time we got the phone call, I’d known there was no other explanation for what had happened than the one Tara had offered. Ted called a Realtor he knew and booked this cottage and I called Hunter High to pull Jenny out of school for a few days. We needed the time together, just the three of us, before we’d allow anyone else—Anna Knightly and her family, to be specific—into our lives. Three days for Jenny, Ted and me to come to grips with this new reality.

  For a couple of days after that miserable trip to Washington, I was filled with such a crazy quilt of emotions I could hardly stand it. One minute I’d be furious with Noelle, the next I’d be full of gratitude. One minute, I’d be racked with grief over the baby I’d lost without ever having the chance to see her or touch her, the next I’d be filled with a love for Jenny so pure and bottomless that I was drowning in it. Now, all those emotions had been erased by one simple question: What did our future hold? The only thing I knew for sure, the only thing I cared about, was that I needed to help Jenny find her way through that future. My own fears and losses and anger no longer mattered. All that mattered was Jenny.

  I spotted the dogs first. Shadow and Blue bounded in and out of the shallow water, chasing each other across the sand with an energy they never displayed at home. Then I saw Ted and Jenny walking a distance behind the dogs. Ted made an expansive motion with his arms as though he was illustrating the enormity of the ocean. Or maybe, I thought, he was describing his love for Jenny. I’d never felt closer to Ted than I had in the past few days. We were on the same team. “You’re our daughter,” he said to Jenny with such force that no one could doubt that he meant it. “Do you think a DNA test can change that?”

  As they came closer to the house, I watched Ted take Jenny’s hand. They swung their arms back and forth between them like they were kids. Like nothing bad had happened or ever could happen. Like our lives hadn’t taken as grim a turn as I’d thought. Watching them, I felt an unexpected surge of happiness.

  I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out on the deck. I waved to them and they waved back, and I couldn’t wait for them to come into the cottage. Tonight we’d watch a movie after dinner. Maybe play a game. There’d be time later to make sense of our new and uncertain future. All I knew was that we’d be facing it together.

  My husband.

  Myself.

  And my daughter.

  EPILOGUE

  Tara

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  March 2011

  The cleansing of Noelle’s cottage is Emerson’s idea, and I’m so glad she thought of it. I pull up in front of the house and take in the view. The cottage, now yellow with white trim and black shutters, is adorable. Two white rockers sit on the small porch and the yard is filled with azaleas ready to pop with color.

  Suzanne is moving into the cottage next week. She knows nothing about the cleansing. She’s never seemed the least bit concerned that Noelle killed herself in the house, but we’re certain Noelle would have approved of what we’re doing here today.

  Emerson’s car is in the driveway, and I park across the street. I’ve been inside the cottage a couple of times since its transformation. The kitchen and bathroom have been gutted and refurbished, the floors refinished, and the walls in every room painted in warm Tuscan colors, as Suzanne suggested. It took forever—Emerson had other things on her mind—but it’s finished now and ready for Suzanne to give it a new life.

  Emerson greets me in the kitchen. “You’ll take the east corner,” she says as she hands me a bowl containing a smoldering bundle of sage. A tendril of smoke rises into the air above it. She points toward the second bedroom near the rear of the house and instructs me what to do.

  Tonight, after the cleansing of the house is complete, Grace and Jenny will begin moving the bags of donated baby items into the second bedroom with some help from Cleve, who’s home on spring break. I can’t go so far as to say that Grace is over Cleve. I swear I can sense her heart beating a little faster when he’s around. But she started going out with a friend of Jenny’s boyfriend, Devon, and she tells me he’s “okay,” which I think means she likes him quite a bit. Grace is never going to be an open book, like me. I’ve learned that the harder I dig, the more she withdraws. But if I wait, if I’m there for her the way Sam used to be without pushing or prodding, she eventually turns to me. Some days it feels like waiting for paint to dry. Every shared confidence, though, is precious. For an entire day, I was unsure who she was and how we fit together. Ironic that the day I feared I was no longer her mother was the day I learned how to mother her.

  Jenny was not a match for Haley, but Haley was able to receive her transplant in January after a donor was found through the global database. Her recovery has been extremely difficult, filled with uncertainty, infections and one hospitalization after another. But she’s at home now, at least for a while, and she and Jenny Skype every day. Every minute, according to Grace, who’s a little jealous of the relationship forming between Jenny and her sister. Emerson has her own jealousy to contend with, but she’s learning to share Jenny with Anna, as we all are, and she’s trying hard to expand her vision of family to include Anna, Haley and Bryan.

  Now Emerson stands on a stepladder to take out the batteries from the smoke detector. Then she lights her own bowl of sage from the candle burning on the counter. She blows it out to let it smolder. “I just hope we don’t burn the place down,” she says as she heads for the room that had been Noelle’s bedroom.

  In the second bedroom, I walk in a large circle, stopping to fill the corners with the aromatic smoke. At the windows, I look out at the garden, where daffodils and crocuses seem to have sprung up overnight. We don’t know for sure and we never will, but we believe we understand the love Noelle had for her
garden and the birdbath with its statue of the little girl. We thought back, remembering that she first planted the garden shortly after Emerson gave birth to her daughter. Noelle had never shown any interest in her yard before then, but she tended that garden with so much love. Almost the sort of love you’d lavish on a child. A niece, perhaps.

  I believe that Sam knew. I believe that one day, when Noelle could no longer keep this final, most devastating secret to herself, she asked Sam to meet her someplace where none of us would bump into them. Someplace like Wrightsville Beach. Maybe she told him everything, client to attorney. She must have told him about the garden, prompting him to question me about it a short time later. What’s with Noelle’s garden? Out of the blue.

  Through the bedroom window, I see Emerson walk toward the garden. I watch as she plucks a few dead leaves from the birdbath, then rests her hand on the head of the little bronze girl. I fill with love for her. I carry the bowl of sage into the bathroom and run a little water onto it, then rest it on the counter. I want to be with Emerson. In this year of changes, only one thing has been certain and solid, and that’s the bond I have with my best friend. I walk outside to help her prepare the garden to welcome the spring.

  READER’s GUIDE

  Tara and Emerson have very different personalities, yet they’ve remained best friends for more than twenty years. What do you think drew them together initially? What keeps them together now?

  Tara’s mother had a history of psychiatric problems. How has this shaped Tara as a mother? As a widow?

  Imagine yourself in Noelle’s place when she learns that Emerson is her sister. Would you be able to keep that relationship to yourself for two decades? Do you think Noelle should have revealed the relationship to Emerson? Discuss the internal struggle you might have if you were in her position.

  What was Sam’s attraction to two women as different as Tara and Noelle? Why do you think he chose Tara over Noelle?

  Emerson values being liked above being ambitious and successful. This is typically a feminine trait and one that can often get in the way of advancing in a career. Yet Emerson, with her new café, Hot!, has clearly found a path to professional success without sacrificing her values. Why do you think she’s succeeded at this endeavor? How do you feel about the sometimes conflicting values of “being nice” versus “being ambitious”?

  Grace is a strong introvert, while her mother is passionately extroverted. How do these differing personality traits affect their relationship?

  Tara has enormous guilt over her feelings toward her former favorite student, Mattie Cafferty. Discuss how her relationship with Mattie may have impacted her relationship with Grace prior to Sam’s death.

  Any major change often throws the structure of a comfortable family out of balance. Why do you think Grace had such a close relationship with her father? How did the family dynamic between Grace, Tara and Sam support that relationship? How did Sam’s death alter that dynamic and what did that change mean for both Grace and Tara? Discuss the different ways in which Tara and Grace grieved for Sam and how those different styles of grieving created conflict and misunderstanding.

  Anna has made the search for missing children her life’s work and has involved Haley in that cause in both a professional and personal way. How do you think this has impacted the relationship between mother and daughter?

  Bryan deserted Anna and Haley during the most vulnerable time of their lives. When he returns, they both need his support, but does Anna forgive him too easily? How does her role as a mother or a woman feed into that forgiveness?

  How are the three mother-daughter relationships (Tara and Grace; Emerson and Jenny; Anna and Haley) the same or different?

  Discuss Noelle’s choice to become a gestational surrogate. Why did she choose this particular path to atonement? Why do you think she had no children of her own?

  Noelle lived not just one lie, but many. Discuss what it must be like to keep the most significant parts of your life a secret from your closest friends. When Ian learns about her surrogacy, he says “It must have been so lonely, being Noelle.” Do you think Noelle was lonely and if so, were there ways that she compensated for that loneliness?

  Imagine yourself in Emerson’s place when she feels certain that Noelle substituted Grace for Tara’s infant. How would you feel knowing such devastating information about your best friend? Would you handle it the way Emerson did or in some other way?

  As the reader, you’re unable to see the world through Grace’s point of view until the final third of the story. Did that impact how you perceived Grace? Did being in her point of view change your feelings about her?

  Tara learns that her missing daughter is not her biological daughter and at the same time realizes that her biological daughter is dead. What does she learn about herself as a mother in those moments?

  Anna’s reaction to Grace’s arrival at the hospital is conflicted and hesitant. Did this surprise you? Do you think some sort of maternal intuition came into play in this scene or was some other emotion at work? Discuss Anna’s reaction to Grace’s pronouncement that she is Anna’s daughter.

  Noelle is a powerful woman even from the grave. Every character in the story has been hurt by her in some way. Yet ultimately this is a story of forgiveness. Trace the complicated relationships Tara and Emerson had with Noelle. Why do you think they are able to make peace with Noelle’s hurtful actions?

  The Midwife’s Confession is also a story about deep and abiding friendships between women. What would you say is the ultimate take-away message about friendship?

  Who do you think grew the most over the course of the story and why? What do you think the future holds for Tara and Grace? Emerson and Jenny and Ted? Anna, Haley and Bryan?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  North Carolina offers so many unique areas in which to set a novel and I loved getting to know beautiful Wilmington better as I wrote The Midwife’s Confession. Thank you to my North Carolina publicists, Tori Jones and Kim Hennes, for sharing their love of Wilmington with me as they carted me around town. You two are excellent tour guides! Thanks also to Beth Scarbrough, who attended UNC Wilmington at the same time as the Galloway Girls and who helped me paint a picture of their campus life.

  As usual, the other six members of the Weymouth Seven helped me brainstorm this story in between games of Balderdash, chats with ghosts and work on their own novels. Thank you Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff and Brenda Witchger. Two other author friends, Emilie Richards and Maureen Sherbondy, also contributed their ideas at various points in the story, as did my sister, Joann Scanlon, and my assistant, Denise Gibbs, and I’m grateful to all of them.

  Thank you Tina Blackwell for the Native American legend on Spanish moss, which I shamelessly altered to suit my story. Thank you Kelly Williamson for giving me a peek into the life of a North Carolina high school student. Thank you Janina Campbell for sharing your poignant memories of your father as I shaped Grace’s character. Eleanor Smith helped me map out Emerson’s library research, and Phyllis Sabourin updated my recollection of maternity units and hospital nurseries, which have come a long way since my days as a hospital social worker.

  The internet not only allows for impersonal factual research, but it also gives us an intimate look into the life journeys of real people through their public blogs. The research I did into Haley’s leukemia put me in touch with many of these stories, and they touched me deeply. I was particularly moved by the experiences of Kay Howe of the Netherlands. Even when my research was complete, I continued reading the blog written by Kay’s father as I rooted for that courageous ten-year-old girl whose zest for life inspired me every day. I was stunned and saddened when Kay lost her fight with leukemia, and she and her family will always have a place in my heart.

  Thank you to my agent, Susan Ginsburg, who has to be the most positive person in the book business. I love your optimism! Special thanks to my editor, Miranda Indrigo, who’s not only
able to see the forest for the trees but who always helps me blaze the best trail through the undergrowth.

  Finally, for reading every word of nearly every draft and offering his honest critique along with his support, for being my resident photographer and best friend, thank you John Pagliuca. Sorry there was no place to put that car chase you wanted. Maybe next time!

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0153-8

  THE MIDWIFE’S CONFESSION

  Copyright © 2011 by Diane Chamberlain

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