Half Past: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh, no! You poor thing.”

  Was she a poor thing? She felt pretty okay about it all. The truth was that she should never had said yes to Jeff’s proposal. She’d warned him that she wasn’t good at love and was even worse at forever.

  But he’d convinced her with his awful patience and love and understanding. He’d tricked her into thinking she was like other people. She wasn’t. She’d known damn well she wasn’t, but she’d married him anyway out of pure hope. And as soon as the ring was on her finger, she’d started to hate him.

  It was her fault. All of it. But that didn’t mean she was giving him half of her settlement. He’d been earning his own money as a history professor the whole time they’d been married. He’d have a damn pension by the time he left teaching.

  She smiled and slapped her hands to her knees as she stood. “Clothes before lipstick. I don’t want to get red all over your pretty yellow blouse. I’ll call a nurse to help, all right?” When she was this shaky, Dorothy normally couldn’t stand for even a few minutes at a time, and Hannah couldn’t support her alone. Becky probably could. Rachel definitely could. But not Hannah.

  She rang for a nurse.

  The sing-along would be fun. When she thought about it impersonally, Hannah found herself fascinated by the way the brain retreated for those affected by dementia or Alzheimer’s, brightening old memories even as it stole new ones. Her mother’s memory seemed to function on a sliding scale these days, thick and sturdy at the farthest end, and frayed to nothing at the nearest. Sometimes her recall rolled close, touching briefly on the present, but it usually settled somewhere in the middle. On the worst days, it hovered near the start.

  Once Dorothy was dressed and colored, Hannah wheeled her slowly toward the rec room, pausing so her mom could talk to other patients on the way. Hannah recognized some of the last names, but most of the faces had hidden their familiarity behind deep wrinkles and watery eyes.

  The halls here were cheery and bright, but there was no way to fully mask the smell of urine in the air. She hoped her mom was inured to it. Hannah hoped she got used to it soon too.

  A few minutes after they were settled near the piano, Hannah felt her mother’s shaking hand tug at her sleeve, and when she looked toward her, Hannah jumped in surprise. Suddenly, just like that, her mother’s blue eyes were full again. Not confused. Not vague. She was in there and shining through.

  Dorothy winked. “Don’t let the nurse know about those brownies or they might not give me a cookie with lunch.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “They’re nice girls, but they’re like prison guards sometimes, I swear. And don’t tell them I said that either.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Hide the brownies in my nightstand before you go. You’ve never been a blue-ribbon baker, Hannah, but those are delicious.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” She took her mother’s hand and held it tight, pressing a kiss to the thin skin of her knuckles. The best goddamn brownies she’d ever baked, and they’d been mass-produced in a store by people who couldn’t care less. She deserved the stab of hurt that closed her throat.

  It was the nicest day they’d had since Hannah had taken up vigil at her mother’s side. Before moving back home, she would have pictured the senior citizens singing songs like “Over There” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” but life wasn’t a nostalgic old movie, and most of the people in the home hadn’t fought in World War II. They sang a lot of Beatles songs. Some Elvis. Peter, Paul and Mary. Even a little Willie Nelson.

  Grumpy Old Men was hilarious, if only for the raucous laughter it inspired in the audience. And though Dorothy’s moment of clarity passed quickly, she later complained that she’d smiled so much her cheeks hurt.

  Claiming those fake brownies had been well worth the guilt. Not that they’d created magic, but every little bit of joy helped.

  When the nurse came in after lunch and said they needed a quick draw of Dorothy’s blood to confirm those records, Hannah simply nodded and went back to her book. Mistakes happened. She wasn’t going to read these people the riot act. If there’d been an error in the file, it would be resolved with no harm done, and Hannah could be sure she’d made a small difference in her mother’s outcome.

  By four, her mother was tired enough that she was nodding off in her chair, and Hannah helped her into bed for a quick nap before dinner. Ironic, of course. This was the first day Hannah wasn’t eager to leave early.

  Ten minutes later she was softly closing the door of her mother’s room behind her when the nurse approached. This time she was accompanied by the doctor.

  “Everything all right?” Hannah asked.

  “Ms. Smith, I’m Dr. Kapur. If we could take a moment of your time in one of our consultation rooms.”

  Hannah laughed. “Honestly, it’s no big deal. Just get the records corrected.”

  “It’s . . . not that.”

  Hannah looked from the doctor to Nurse Karen, whose eyes dropped. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not wrong, per se,” the doctor said, as if that clarified anything. “Are you sure about your blood type, Ms. Smith?”

  “As sure as a girl can be. I get phone calls from the Red Cross if I skip a donation. Why?”

  He cleared his throat and tipped his head toward the small room to their right. Hannah gave in with a roll of her eyes and walked toward it. “If you could just spit it out?”

  “Yes, well.” He followed her in and closed the door behind them. Karen hovered near the door while Dr. Kapur waved a hand toward one of the chairs. Impatient now, Hannah sat, trying to hide her irritation. She knew most of it was fear for her mother. But surely a simple blood typing couldn’t reveal anything dangerous. She was worried over nothing.

  “We retested your mother’s blood,” the doctor said as he perched on the edge of the chair. “We sent it over to the hospital. It is AB positive.”

  Hannah rolled her eyes again. “Then test it one more time. Come on.”

  “You don’t understand. Her blood type was tested when she was admitted to the hospital two years ago. Then again today. Plus there is the report you brought in. Your mother’s type is AB positive. No question.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  He cleared his throat again and glanced at the nurse before clasping his hands carefully together. “Ms. Smith, every person has two markers, one from each parent. If the parent is an A type, the child could get an A, or in some cases an O. If the type is AB, the child could get an A or a B.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  “So you understand what I’m saying.” He slumped back a little, his body language screaming relief.

  Hannah wasn’t feeling anything like relief. She was feeling a surge of white-hot anger. “No, I definitely don’t get what you’re saying.”

  He glanced at the nurse again, as if begging for help.

  “Hannah,” the nurse said softly, “an AB parent can only give an A or a B marker to a child. Not an O. An O is an absence of either—”

  “I know that!” she snapped. “I just don’t get what you’re saying!”

  “Ms. Smith,” the doctor tried again, “I’m sorry you have to learn this way, but you must have been adopted.”

  You’re not my daughter.

  She looked from the doctor to the nurse. “What?” she whispered.

  “Closed adoptions were common in the ’70s. The rule, really. Open adoptions were very rare at that time.”

  Who are you? Where’s Rachel?

  Hannah clutched the arms of the chair, digging her nails into the rough fabric, wondering how many other devastated children had done the same in this room. “No. That’s not possible.”

  “If you were adopted at birth, all the records would have been sealed, and—”

  “No. My father is . . .” What did she mean to tell them? My father is my father. I look just like him. I can’t be adopted. As if they would care. “Excuse me. I need to
speak with my mother.”

  “Hannah, wait,” Nurse Karen said, but Hannah was already past her and opening the door. “If you’d like to have your blood re-typed to be sure—”

  But she didn’t need another test. The Red Cross hadn’t been wrong for twenty-five years. But Hannah had been wrong. All wrong from the start.

  “Mom,” she said as she shoved open her mother’s door. “Mom!” The word rang through her head, discordant. Too sharp. And not accurate.

  Dorothy didn’t stir, so Hannah rushed over to touch her. “Mom, they’re saying I’m not your daughter.” She shook her awake. “Mom, they’re—”

  “Help!” her mother croaked, the word splintering before she drew a breath and tried again. “Help! Help! Please!”

  “Ms. Smith!” She heard a rush of voices behind her, felt hands on her shoulders, but she clung hard to her mother’s arm.

  “Mom, who am I? They’re saying I’m adopted. Who am I?”

  But her mother only gave a wordless, terrified cry and closed her eyes, covering her face with her hands as if Hannah were about to hit her.

  “Mom!” she screamed as the hands finally pulled her away. “Please.”

  But her mother was sobbing, her clawed fingers shaking against her cheeks as she wept.

  “Hannah,” the nurse said, “this isn’t helping anything. You’re only scaring her.”

  Hannah shook her head. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not like this.

  “You need to leave,” the woman said, most of the sympathy gone from her voice.

  “No, I need her to tell me the truth.”

  “Even if that were possible at this point, we can’t have you terrifying her. And she obviously can’t tell you anything right now.”

  Hannah took a deep breath, squeezing her hands into fists as she closed her eyes.

  “Help,” she heard her mother whimpering over and over. “Help.”

  Hannah wanted to scream “Help!” right back at her. Help, Mommy! Help me! But she backed away instead.

  She found people gathered in the hallway, watching as she rushed from her mother’s room. Hannah brushed past the group of attendants and patients and hurried toward the locked doors. She was buzzed out and free within seconds.

  She couldn’t be adopted. She was her father’s daughter. She even had his strange little fingers that flared out at the last joint. The lab work had to be wrong. All of it. Every time.

  But when she finally reached the exit of the care center and raced toward her car, the truth chased after her. She couldn’t escape it. Three separate tests couldn’t have been wrong.

  She drove too quickly toward home, speeding past houses and fields she’d passed a hundred times. A thousand. The world blurred around her. Her pulse muted every sound but her heart. No, not her heart, but her fear and horror. That was the thump, thump, thump that drummed through her body.

  You’re not my daughter. You’re not my daughter.

  This wasn’t fair. Hannah was already lost. Already floating in an uncertain place between her past and future. She didn’t need this right now. It wasn’t fair.

  Help. Please help.

  She was home in fifteen minutes instead of twenty. The house was stifling and still when she burst in. It would storm later, but right now, the air was heavy and humid. Still, she didn’t stop to open windows. She marched to her bedroom closet and tore down the piles of boxes she’d lined against the wall.

  Almost all her possessions were in storage, but she’d brought her most important documents and keepsakes with her. She opened box after box until she found what she was looking for; then she sat down hard on her ass and stared at it.

  She’d looked at her birth certificate a dozen times before, so she would have noticed if someone other than Dorothy were listed as her mother, but somehow she’d hoped to find a straightforward answer there. As if she’d open the folder and see “Jane Doe” listed on the mother’s name line and she’d smack her forehead for never registering it before.

  But no, it said the mother’s maiden name was Dorothy Baylor just as it always had. And Peter Smith was listed as her father. Her birthday was the one she’d always celebrated: February 5, 1972.

  The information under place of birth and witness was strange, but it had always been strange. It was an address on Highway 1 in Big Sur, California. Not a hospital, but a house. And the attending witness to the birth hadn’t been a doctor. It had been a woman named Maria Diaz, no MD following her name. A home birth.

  She’d been astounded the first time she’d seen it. Horrified, even. But the explanation from her mother had been simple. They’d had no money, so they’d done it the old-fashioned way. Lots of people did back then. The end.

  But Hannah didn’t know of any old-fashioned way of giving birth that would result in the wrong baby.

  She read the birth certificate again. Everything was the same as it had always been, but this time she noticed something odd. She’d been born on February 5, but the birth hadn’t been recorded by the county until March 27. Was that normal with home births?

  She needed to know more about her sisters’ births, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to call them yet. At this point, no one else knew aside from a couple of medical professionals. Telling her sisters would make it real. Permanent. She couldn’t face it right now.

  But maybe she didn’t have to. One of the many files she’d sorted through last week had contained copies of all their birth certificates. She’d noticed it because she’d thought maybe someday she’d work on their genealogy. Their parents never spoke about family. They hadn’t seemed secretive about it, just close-mouthed in the way that Midwesterners were.

  Her father had lost his parents by age eighteen, and her mother had spent her teen years in an orphanage. Tough times, but they’d survived. Today they would have blogged endlessly about overcoming hardship, but back then people had straightened their spines and kept moving, and any hard feelings were kept to themselves.

  Nose to the grindstone. Simple folk living simple lives.

  Or not. They might have been utter frauds this whole time. What could she trust when she couldn’t trust her own life?

  “Calm down, girl,” she muttered to herself. This wasn’t a made-for-TV movie. There was an answer somewhere. Something straightforward and not at all awful.

  She carried the birth certificate to the den and opened the file box she’d nearly filled since moving in. Right at the start of it was a file she’d neatly labeled “Birth Certificates” in bold, sure letters. What an innocent conceit.

  She laid her siblings’ papers on the cracked leather ottoman and set hers between them. All the documents looked the same. She dragged her fingertips over the raised seal on hers. It was missing on the photocopies of her sisters’ certificates, but she could see the gray shadow of it on both, hovering like a ghost.

  The address of birth was the same on all three: 47105 Highway 1. The attendant was the same too: the mysterious Maria Diaz.

  Her sisters’ births were a year apart, in 1968 and ’69. Hannah had come a little later in ’72. Three years was time enough for a remarriage or a change in relationship status, but that hadn’t happened. Her parents had been married since 1966. They’d still been married when her father had died forty-five years later.

  So what was different?

  She checked the signatures and the name of the clerk, and then she looked at the filing dates and frowned.

  Her sisters’ certificates had both been filed within a week of their births. Only Hannah’s had been delayed by more than a month.

  It must mean something.

  Whether she was ready or not, she had to call Rachel. They weren’t the closest of sisters, but Rachel might be the only one who could help her figure this out.

  Keenly aware that she was about to ruin a lot of her sister’s childhood memories, Hannah slipped her phone from her pocket and dialed.

  “Hannah!” Rachel answered happily. “How are you holdi
ng up?”

  She lied automatically. “I’m good.”

  “Is Mom okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, deciding not to say, Of course not, she’s lost her mind!

  “What’s up?”

  Hannah cleared her throat. “Are you busy?”

  “I’m setting up for a wedding reception in the church basement, but it’s no big deal.”

  “Oh, you’re not at home?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  What the hell was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to introduce this? But maybe Rachel knew already. She was the oldest. She could be part of the secret.

  Her head went light and her scalp tingled. Hannah rubbed her brow. “What do you remember about me as a baby?”

  “As a baby? I was only four when you were born. I don’t really remember anything except that time Mom spanked me for giving you a haircut, and you were almost a year old by then. She must have just about died when she pictured me wielding a pair of scissors an inch above your eyes. Can you even imagine?”

  Rachel laughed, but all Hannah could do was frown in confusion over what she was about to say. “So you don’t remember anything about me being born?”

  “No.”

  “Not even, like, Mom being pregnant?”

  “Not at all. What’s going on?” Rachel paused for a beat and then sucked in a quick breath. “Oh my God, Hannah, are you pregnant?” She nearly squealed the word pregnant. It didn’t matter that Hannah was in the middle of a divorce. A baby was a baby, and babies only brought joy as far as Rachel was concerned. That was why she’d had five of them.

  Five. Even in her current preoccupied state, Hannah cringed. “No, I am not pregnant.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If I were, I’d be a good eight months along, so yeah. I’m sure.” She heard the muted sounds of other people talking in the room with Rachel, and she realized what a bad idea this was. “Listen. You’re busy. I’ll call back later.”

  “I’m not busy. We’re wrapping up. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Rachel . . .” Her stomach twisted itself into a knot. How the hell was she supposed to say this? Maybe there was some good way to put it, but she couldn’t think of anything but the obvious. “Rachel, I’m not related to Mom.”