by Kelly Rimmer
his potential, and I know that one day he’s going to be a great
man,” she sighed. “And for all of his faults, and I know he has
many, I still love my place in his life. I know you two don’t see
eye to eye on a lot of things, but if you could see each other the
way I see you, I just know you’d love each other.”
“I don’t want to find a place in a man’s life at all. I just want
to be in charge of my own life.”
“You have such a unique way of viewing the world, sister.”
“There are plenty of women who feel as I do,” I assured her.
“And they are finding the strength to speak out, more and more
every day. A hundred years from now things will be very dif-
ferent.”
She gave me a weak smile, then turned to look out the win-
dow again. After a while she reached across and took my hand
and squeezed it. Hard.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this. I feel like I was
headed for a head-on collision with disaster, but you jumped in
and intervened and now I’m going to walk away unscathed.”
“Tell me about what it’s like for you when you had the chil-
dren. Do you think you’re just prone to the ‘baby blues’ more
than others?”
“I don’t know what it is. But whenever I’ve been pregnant
and had a child, I feel like an ungodly fog descends on me, and it
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takes me at least a year to claw my way out. Having Beth nearly
killed me, and feeling like that with another baby? I wouldn’t
survive it.” She drew in a sharp breath, then admitted very qui-
etly, “I’ve been a terrible mother, Maryanne.”
“Don’t say that,” I protested. “Why on earth would you think
such a thing?”
“I let them down all the time when they were small. You
have no idea how dreadful I was in the early days after each
birth. Some days with the twins, I’d forget to feed one…prob-
ably both. Tim is four years old and he knows how to organize
lunches now, because I’ve been through this twice since he was
born, and he’s had to grow up too fast. In the summer I let Beth
crawl around some days without a diaper because I couldn’t be
bothered to change her. I had days where I cried from the min-
ute I woke up until the minute I went to sleep. The misery just
felt endless, even when I’d done this before and I knew it would
pass if I just held on.”
“Didn’t you have friends to help? I know Mother and Father
haven’t been good to you lately, but surely there were others
you could call.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense at all, but the sadder I get,
the less I’m able to reach out and so all of my friends drifted
away. It’s like I curl up into a miserable ball, even when I know
that doing so makes everything else worse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I tried. I sat down to write you last year after Beth, but I
was mortified to admit how awful things were,” she murmured.
“Are you really telling me you’d cry all of the time? What
was Patrick doing during all of this?”
“He took me to the doctor once, but the doctor just said I
needed to be stronger. Patrick didn’t understand—I’m convinced
he thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. He just wanted me to
handle myself better.”
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“So you were on your own, depressed for months on end,
with no relief?” I surmised grimly, thinking that the next time
I saw my brother-in-law, we were going to have words.
“Well, I have found an outlet recently. I’ve been writing these
notes to myself. It probably sounds a little silly, but just sitting
down and scrawling my thoughts out on paper has helped me
a bit since Beth. Even today I wrote one before we left…about
what we’re doing today. About how grateful I am to you.”
“You wrote a confession letter and named me in it, then left it in the house for Patrick to find?” I gasped. Grace laughed softly.
“Maryanne, I’ve been doing this for over a year and he’s
never even come close to finding my notes. I keep them in the
last place he’d ever think to look for them, believe me. And
they help me so much, I do think it’s worth the risk. It’s like
jotting those words down on paper gives me the chance to see
them with fresh eyes, and sometimes once they’re out, the bad
thoughts aren’t as big as they seem when they’re locked up in
my mind.”
I was still unnerved, if a little relieved to hear this “note”
wasn’t sitting out in the open somewhere. And I knew she was
probably getting nervous about the procedure as the city drew
nearer, but I decided that later, when it was all over, I’d ask her
to destroy that note. I couldn’t risk my part in this coming out
somewhere down the line—I wasn’t at all ashamed of what we
were doing, but the risk to my career was simply too great.
“Have you thought about what happens after this?” I asked
her instead. “How you’ll make sure you don’t end up in this
position again?”
“I just don’t know. I’ll be sure stay out of Patrick’s bed for
a long while after this. And…well, we did manage to avoid a
pregnancy for some months just by…” She paused, then flushed
furiously as she muttered, “Well, we found a way, anyway.”
“Was he pulling out?” I asked her.
“Maryanne!” she gasped. “Don’t talk about these things.”
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“Oh, Gracie, there’s no shame in it. Pulling out works some of
the time, but if you really don’t want another baby, then maybe
you need to get yourself a diaphragm. Or better yet, find a doc-
tor who will give you a hysterectomy. Then you know you don’t
have to worry about it anymore.”
“Patrick always wanted a big family,” Grace said softly.
“Patrick gets you pregnant and leaves you to deal with the af-
termath.”
“Maybe if some more time passes and Beth and the kids grow
up some more…then maybe I’d be able to cope with another
baby when one comes.”
“Do you even want more children, Grace?”
“What I want doesn’t matter,” she laughed softly, slightly
confused, more than a little bitter. “Babies don’t come when
you want them.”
“You shouldn’t have to keep having pregnancy after preg-
nancy until it kills you.”
“I just have to hope that’s not my destiny.”
“You control your destiny. That’s why we’re doing this today,
because you know what you want and you have every right to
make it happen for yourself.”
“Maybe,�
� she murmured. I sighed and pulled the car over to
park beside a clothing store. When I flicked the ignition off,
neither one of us moved.
“What time is it?” Grace asked me. I glanced down at my
watch and butterflies rose in my stomach.
“We have ten minutes to walk to the meeting point.”
Grace breathed in, then exhaled.
“Okay.”
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“Kind of. Mostly, I just wish you could come with me.”
“Me, too,” I said softly, but then I felt compelled to reassure
her. “But everything is going to be fine, Grace. You’ll see. A
few hours from now we’ll be home and it will all be over.”
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* * *
Grace and I walked slowly on our way to the meeting point,
striding so close that our arms kept colliding. A heavy cloud
cover had come over, casting shadows down onto the footpath,
and the air felt charged with danger as we neared our destina-
tion. I could hear Grace’s breathing was heavier than it should
be, and when I glanced at her, she was positively green. I wanted
to promise her that everything was going to be fine. Women
had abortions every day. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t say what
I needed to in order to reassure her. It felt like the words were
stuck in my throat, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t con-
vince myself to say them. Maybe it was because, despite my bra-
vado, I knew on some level that there was a very real chance
that everything wouldn’t be fine.
When we reached the mouth of the alley, we slowed to a
stop, and we stood in complete silence for a long moment. Grace
wrapped her arms around her waist, took a sharp breath in then
exhaled slowly.
“You’ll wait here, won’t you?” she whispered, her gaze des-
perately searching mine. “Out of sight so he doesn’t get upset
with me. But I’ll feel a bit better if I know you’re here.”
“Of course,” I promised. I actually had every intention of
following the car, but I didn’t want to promise her that I’d be
right behind her, because I knew that keeping up with him was
a long shot in the busy city traffic.
Grace drew in another deep breath, then threw her arms
around me. I hugged her back, my arms locked tight, feeling
somehow that I could keep her safe just by embracing her with
all of my strength.
But then in the distance, I heard a clock strike twelve, and
we both knew she had to go. The alley was clear for now, but
the man was due any minute. Grace disentangled herself from
me, took a step back and offered a wan smile.
“I’ll see you at two o’clock.”
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“Two o’clock sharp,” I promised.
“I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this.”
“Knowing you’re well will be repayment enough.”
“I love you, Mary.”
“And I love you, too, sister. See you soon.”
Grace nodded and turned and walked into the road, disap-
pearing into the shadows and the dismal gray of a city road at
noon on an overcast day.
I did as promised. I lurked just beyond the top of the alley,
standing in front of a restaurant with a book in my hand. I hoped
it looked as though I was waiting for someone to join me for
a lunch date. Only a few minutes passed before I saw a faded
lemon Ford emerge from the alley. A man was in the driver’s
seat and at first, I thought it must be a different car because I
couldn’t see Grace in the back. Only when he passed did I see
the blanket over the backseat, and the unmistakable shape of
someone beneath it.
I closed the book and walked briskly to my car. As the Ford
waited for a break in the busy traffic, I opened the car door with
shaking hands and slipped inside. On first attempt, the engine
stalled, and I swore and shook a little harder as I tried again. Fi-
nally, the car spluttered to life, just as the Ford passed. I wanted
to look calm. I couldn’t afford to panic and drive erratically and
rouse suspicion. Dad’s car was already eye-catching enough—a
near-new aqua Chevrolet Bel Air.
So my instincts were to pull out without indicating and to
gun the engine to catch up with the man, but I waited until an-
other car passed, and then in the smallest of gaps, slipped into
the traffic behind it. For several blocks I managed to hang just a
car or two behind the yellow Ford, and my heart rate was start-
ing to settle and I was actually starting to think I’d be able to
follow him all the way to wherever he was going.
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Then a traffic light turned amber, and just as I prepared to flat-
ten my foot to race through it, the car in front of me stopped dead.
I sat behind that car as the light turned red, watching as the
lemon Ford carrying my sister disappeared from view.
It’s no exaggeration to say that it was the longest afternoon
of my life. By two o’clock I felt like I’d been waiting weeks in-
stead of hours. I was already at the alley, tapping my toe impa-
tiently against the concrete of the footpath, glancing toward the
sky that was darkening ominously. I had a blister forming in my
right heel and I’d been sweating so much that my nylon dress
was clinging to me all over. I bought a sandwich at a nearby
deli, but it now sat untouched in a nearby bin. I was hungry
enough to feel a little light-headed, but I’d raised the food to
my lips a few times, only to find my stomach was turning over
so violently I couldn’t manage a single bite.
By two-fifteen, I was pacing between a stack of trash bins
and the roller door of a garage. I jumped at every sound, and
when a car finally turned into the alley, my knees went weak
with relief. But it wasn’t the yellow Ford. It was an olive-green
Chevy, and the driver gave me an odd look at my rapidly fad-
ing smile, then drove right past me.
By two forty-five, I could feel myself hyperventilating. She
was forty-five minutes late and there was no longer any avoiding
the “what-ifs,” but once I opened that floodgate in my mind,
I was quickly overwhelmed. I sank onto the curb and forced
myself to take some deep breaths because I wasn’t going to help
anyone if I actually passed out.
By three o’clock, I’d returned to my father’s car and found
the tattered piece of paper with the unregistered doctor’s phone
number on it, and I was frantically looking for a pay phone in
the blocks around the road, no longer trying to stay calm, and
no longer trying to look inconspicuous.
I finally found a pay phone. It took me six attempts to dial
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the number because my hands were shaking so violently. The
busy signal echoed in my ear, so I tried again, and again, and
then I ran back to the road again, and I checked at the car in
case she’d found her way there somehow, and then I ran back
to the pay phone and tried again.
I repeated this cycle over and over, trying to convince myself
that any minute now the call would connect and the “doctor”
would give me a very reasonable explanation for the delay or
that Grace herself would wander around a corner and tell me
she’d simply gotten lost.
Grace is fine. I kept telling myself she was definitely fine.
She had to be—she had four children at home who desperately
needed her. I desperately needed her. The universe wouldn’t be
so cruel as to have her harmed when I was only trying to help.
When I ran out of change, I managed to convince the at-
tendant at the deli that I’d had a family emergency, and he let
me use a phone in his apartment upstairs. I sweated as I raced
through the entries in the telephone book, calling hospitals,
praying someone had information about my sister. My attempts
at conversation were embarrassingly unclear because I was so
flustered I could barely explain what I needed.
“Grace Walsh…but maybe she’s not admitted under that
name. Maybe she’s just been dropped off injured and you don’t
know who she is yet. Have you had any unidentified women
admitted this afternoon…? Do you have a women’s ward? Could
you ask them?” And then finally, when I grew still more des-
perate, “I don’t know what you call the wards but I know you
have places where women go. The women who’ve had failed
abortions. Could you please check there?”
“We have two,” the clerk said curtly. “The sepsis ward, or
the palliative care ward?”
“Oh, God. Check both.”
When my calls turned up nothing, I had started driving from
emergency room to emergency room. One hospital did have
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a Jane Doe recently admitted and I waited half an hour to see
her, but she turned out to be a stranger.
In the early hours, all I could think about was Grace. I was
terrified for her—frantic only at the thought that she might be
