by Gail Cleare
This chain of connections and separations is how our lives pass. It was a continuum, with rich memories in the past, a tiny blip to indicate the fleeting present, and vast misty expectations in the future. Nell wanted to learn to be more in the present—to stop and smell the maple trees, to feel love for her mother without the intrusion of selfish grief, and to celebrate Mom’s life as the amazing thing of beauty it was.
“What a wonderful friend she was, my dear. What a sweet and gracious lady,” said one of her mother’s friends, in her eighties and on the arm of a grandson when she stepped up to shake Nell’s hand. Nell nodded and smiled, but an empty place echoed in her heart. Her eyes blurred, and when she blinked, Jake and Adam were standing next in line.
Father and son both wore dark suits and perfectly shined black dress shoes with white shirts and black ties. Jake had hidden his eyes behind sunglasses and carried a bouquet of purple lupines that looked like the ones that grew in the garden of Mom’s cottage. He dropped it gently onto the mound of flowers at the gravesite and then turned to shake David’s hand.
“Jake Bascomb. A friend from Vermont.” He looked stiff and solemn. Nell wondered if he had been drinking yet. At least she couldn’t smell it, and Adam was probably driving. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be a scene at the gathering after the funeral. The less their friends and neighbors knew about Mom’s connections in Vermont, the better.
“Thank you for coming, Jake. It’s good to meet you.” David passed him on to Ben, who gave his hand a manly shake.
Adam stepped up and stood in front of David. Nell watched the two men meet eyes as they shook hands.
“Sorry for your loss. We’ll miss her too.” Adam’s expression was guarded. He glanced at Nell, who was staring, fascinated.
It shocked her to see them standing there together, both tall, even featured, and clean shaven. In a way, they might be brothers. Except for the color of their eyes and David’s slightly darker hair, they looked quite similar. Cut from the same piece of cloth, Mom would have said. But such different personalities. Not really alike at all.
“David Williams,” Nell’s husband said, looking at the other man curiously. “And you are…?”
“Adam Bascomb. One of the Vermont neighbors.” Adam’s eyes squinted as they slowly shook hands, a man-to-man gesture like two bucks sizing each other up.
David nodded, satisfied. “Glad you could come. We appreciate it.”
Then the next mourner stepped up, and the line moved along. Nell could practically feel Adam’s eyes staring at her as he moved down the reception line. He stepped in front of Ben and shook his hand with a polite nod. Both of them started to talk at the same time, then they laughed and introduced themselves. Next, Adam stood in front of Nell. He looked at her face, which was covered in tears, and frowned, holding her hand in both of his for a moment. She felt a blush rising to her cheeks.
“We miss her so much,” he said quietly. His palms were hot and sweaty.
“Me too.” Nell felt her lip tremble and tried not to tear up again.
He lowered his eyes and began to say something else but seemed to change his mind. He released her hand with a final squeeze and stepped past, speaking quietly to Bridget and Jake.
The Bascombs moved along to blend in with the crowd, and eventually, all the mourners went back to their cars and left for the reception being held at an old friend’s home.
“We’ll be along,” Nell told David. “I’ll ride with Bridget. Meet you there.”
The two sisters strolled back to the parking lot, arm in arm.
“What now, Nell?” Bridget gave her arm a comforting squeeze.
Nell sighed, resigned to her future. “Back home to New Jersey, I guess.”
“You… guess?”
“I have responsibilities, Bridget. I love my family. I need to go home and be a mom.”
Bridget stopped and turned to face her. “But have you told David?”
“About what? There’s nothing to tell. I told you, nothing happened with Adam that night.” Nell looked her sister right in the eye so Bridget would see it was the truth. “We just talked. I was upset, and so was he. We’re friends, that’s all. Having an affair is not the kind of thing I do.”
Bridget looked at Nell doubtfully but let it go.
Nell took Bridget’s arm again. “Need some company for the ride back north? I could stay for a few days.”
“Well… I already have some company.” Bridget hooked her arm through Nell’s as they walked toward the parking lot. “Jake just offered to drive me back to Hartland. I’m going to stay at Mom’s place for a while. I can use her car.”
“Did you tell Jake about the baby?”
“Darlin’, I’m telling everybody about the baby nowadays,” Bridget said, laughing. “What’s the point in keeping that tired old secret anymore? He offered to help me look for her. I’d like nothing more than to find the girl, say I’m her momma, and invite her to Christmas dinner for the next fifty years.”
Nell nodded. “From your lips to God’s ear.” She used one of their mother’s favorite sayings.
Nell and Bridget drove away from the cemetery and left their parents behind, resting side by side under an oak tree. For the moment, the Reilly family would carry on in two separate worlds. The complete story of Mom’s secret life was still a mystery, and Nell wondered whether she would ever learn the details. It drove her wild with curiosity to think about her mother planning and preparing for a dramatic life change then giving it all up for a part-time compromise.
Nell had thought about it again and again, especially in recent days when she was worrying about her own life. Her parents had seemed so comfortable together. They had held hands walking down the sidewalk, laughed at each other’s jokes, kissed hello and good-bye, shared a bed, and went out for dinner on “date night” every Friday, just the two of them. As far as Nell knew, that had been their tradition right up until the time when Thomas became so disoriented it was hard for him to leave the house.
Why had she done it? What had happened between them?
Chapter 33
Bridget ~ 2014
A few weeks later, Bridget and Jake put their bags in the back of Mom’s white Ford and headed southwest into the Berkshires. He drove while she navigated, and she recognized various landmarks though it had been many years since she’d traveled that road. The smooth highway cut slow curves through the foothills, which gradually grew in stature to become graceful wooded mountains. As they neared the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, billboards advertising Jacob’s Pillow and Tanglewood reminded them that the summer concert season was in full swing.
Soon after Mary’s death, Nell and Bridget had gone through the contents of her safe deposit box at the bank. The only surprising thing they found there was a copy of Bridget’s daughter’s birth certificate, carefully preserved in a heavyweight brown envelope. It said the baby’s name was Elizabeth Mary Reilly, and the father was listed as Coleman Montague Longworth. Bridget didn’t remember ever having seen it before, but now the document was safely tucked inside her purse.
As they drove toward the place where it all started, she remembered everything as clearly as if it had just happened. Bridget came to the Berkshires with a high-school friend to work as a waitress at one of the big family resorts, where she met the boy who swept her off her feet and got her pregnant at age seventeen.
“His name was Coleman Montague Longworth the third, actually. His family called him Trey. From the French word for three.” Bridget slid her eyes sideways with an expectant grin.
“No kidding?” Jake raised his eyebrows and whistled.
He had promised not to drink on the trip and to be on his best behavior. When Jake was sober, he was good company. But even his dark side didn’t scare her—it felt familiar. They were both trying to rebound from the mistakes
of the past, and it pulled them together. She could tell Jake missed Mom too, something else they had in common. Since Bridget had been living in the cottage alone, he and Adam had become her family in Vermont.
“Hush. It was his real name, poor thing. We called him Cole,” Bridget said. “At first, I refused to tell anyone who the father was. Then I caved in and told my mother. It still makes my stomach hurt to think about that conversation.”
“I’ll bet. Ellie was a lot more conservative than people thought.” Jake gave her a reassuring smile. “She never told us anything about this at all, you know. Your mother knew how to keep a secret.”
Bridget remembered the soft look of sadness on Mom’s face when she heard about the baby. That dark, enfolding gaze carried a message of inclusion, not criticism, as though all the women through the generations of the world were looking at Bridget in that moment with shared sorrow. The sorrow of impending loss.
She would forever be grateful for her mother’s unwavering support, but it gave her a sense of guilt too. The stress of the situation must have added to the reasons why Mom wanted to get away from her life. The pregnancy was one more thing for her to worry about.
“I’m not surprised,” Bridget said. “Nobody knew except the family. It was too shameful. There weren’t a lot of choices in those days.” She looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap. “Mom wrote to Cole’s parents, but they made it clear that marriage was not an option. When I decided to give the baby up for adoption, I thought it would close the door on that phase of my life and the whole disaster would just… go away.”
“Weren’t you pregnant all through your senior year in high school? That must have been rough.” Jake reached over and gave her hands a squeeze.
“I had some extra credits, so I was able to graduate a semester early. At Christmas, I was four and a half months pregnant, but it didn’t show much yet. Didn’t tell anyone, not even my best friends. Then I went away and told everyone I was backpacking around Europe.”
Bridget stared into the tree trunks that slid past as she looked out the passenger window, remembering. Their priest had recommended a facility, and Mom had helped her pack and move after the holidays. The drive west had been silent that snowy day. Stark black-and-white mountains loomed over them as their little car slid and slipped between the frigid slopes. She remembered it being like a voyage into a frozen hell with a white-out flurry blinding them as they fumbled into the driveway of the old estate that had been converted into a Catholic Charities home for unwed mothers.
She had signed herself in and lived there until the baby came in the spring. Bridget was allowed to hold her daughter for a few minutes in the delivery room at the local hospital. She took the little pink-faced flannel bundle that the nurse handed to her and looked into the infant’s unfocused dark-blue eyes. They had put a pink stocking cap on the baby’s head to keep her warm, but Bridget pulled it off. The little girl had a light fuzz of golden hair, the same color as hers. She cooed up at her mother, tiny pink lips turned up in an expressive curl. Then just before Bridget’s heart began to break, the nurse took the baby away to the nursery.
She never saw her daughter again. It was better that way. Everyone said so.
The nurses showed her how to bind her breasts to help the milk production stop, and her resilient young body snapped back to its original shape in a month or so.
Life went on. Really, life goes on, Bridget had told herself.
Every so often, in those days, Bridget would wake up with mysterious tears on her cheeks and the vague memory of a small pink face in her dreams. That was rare, however, and it really was not until years later, when she was in her thirties and seriously trying to have a child with her second husband, that she began to be haunted by questions about her daughter. Where was she, and what did she look like? Was she smart, funny, artistic? What was her name? What were her adoptive parents like?
“Many years later,” Bridget said quietly, “I found out I would probably never have any more children. It was the punishment I earned for giving her up.”
“You were young. We all do stupid things when we’re young. Some of us even keep on doing them when we’re old.” Jake looked at her sideways. “You’re here now, kid. You stuck with it, and you’re still trying. That counts for a lot.”
Bridget had a plan for when they arrived at the hospital. She hoped to find out who had worked in the maternity ward at the time her child was born and try to track them down. Somebody might remember something useful. It was worth a try.
Jake pulled up to the Berkshire Medical Center and parked in the lot. He looked across at Bridget, who was hiding behind big sunglasses and felt a little sick to her stomach.
“You want some company, or shall I wait here?” he asked.
He was so kind to come all that way with her. He looked good, neatly dressed in slacks, a sport coat, and a clean white golf shirt. In general, his appearance and mood had taken an upturn lately. He’d mentioned going to AA meetings a few times since Mom died, and Bridget was encouraging him. His expression was calm and full of admiration when he looked at her. Spending time with a man who didn’t want anything from her except honesty and friendship was a balm to her frazzled soul.
“You’re wicked brave to dig up the past this way,” Jake said. “It’s honest to God one of the scariest things I ever heard of. You’re my hero.”
“And you’re mine, kind sir. Convenient, isn’t it?” Bridget took her sunglasses off and hugged Jake around the neck.
For the first time in many years, Bridget was thinking about staying single for a while—just being herself instead of some man’s vision of the perfect mate. If she even knew what herself meant anymore. She hadn’t been her true original self since high school. Most of her adult life had been spent transforming in order to impress some man, starting with Daddy, to whom she had been such a big disappointment.
Her father was taken by disease and death before they had a chance to forgive each other. Jake might be able to help Bridget forgive herself and Thomas both. He was filling a hole in her life at just the right time.
“I think I need to do this alone,” she said, and he nodded.
Checking her purse one last time to make sure the birth certificate was still in there, she got out of the car and walked to the main entrance. After asking at the information desk, she followed directions to the human-resources office. It was lunchtime, and only one employee was sitting at her desk. The petite brunette was about Bridget’s age, in her mid-forties, and looked up with a friendly smile when she entered the room.
“Hi.” Bridget’s voice quavered. “I’m… not sure if this is the right place.”
The woman got up and came over to the counter. “Let’s find out. What are you looking for? A job application?”
“No, actually, I wanted to ask about the people who worked here… around this date.” Bridget inched the birth certificate forward.
The woman glanced down and saw what it was. Her expression subtly changed. “Are you looking for someone in particular?” Her voice was lower, confidential.
“Well,” Bridget said, “pretty much anyone who might remember the birth of my daughter.”
“Is there something wrong? A health issue?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so, anyhow. It’s not about that.”
“Then… why are you asking?”
The two women looked at each other across the divider, and Bridget tried not to appear nervous. She relaxed her face and smiled in her most charming manner.
“I want to locate her and offer to meet. Even if she wants to see me now, we can’t connect. I was hoping somebody might remember something that would help.” Bridget reached out her hand in an unconscious imploring gesture. “I was… just seventeen.”
The woman’s eyes were sympathetic. “Unfortunately, I’m not
allowed to give out information from the files without permission from my supervisor. She’s not here right now. But… I can tell you what I happen to know, I suppose.”
Bridget raised her head, alert.
The woman continued. “You see, my mother is a nurse, retired now. She worked here then, in the eighties.”
“She did? In what department?” Bridget asked eagerly.
“In neonatal, actually. She took care of the newborns.”
Bridget’s heart leapt with hope. “Do you think she would talk to me?” She was breathless.
“These days, she’s so bored she’ll talk to anybody who comes to the door,” the woman said, laughing. “The Fed Ex man, the newspaper boy, the exterminator—you name it.”
Bridget laughed along with her. “You see, the records of my baby’s adoption were lost,” she started to explain.
“In the fire at Catholic Charities? Yes, you’re not the first person to tell us that. A lot of adopted people are looking for their birth parents these days. Wanting to establish a genetic history to screen for potential diseases.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.” Bridget realized that her daughter might be open to the idea of establishing contact for that reason if not for emotional ones. “So she may have been looking for me too.”
The woman nodded. “And she would have run into the same roadblock.”
“Could I speak to your mother today, do you think?” Bridget pulled out a pen and a little notepad from her purse. “What’s her name and address? Can I have the phone number too?”
The woman wrote the information down. Bridget’s pulse racing with excitement, she stumbled over her thanks and hurried back to the car. When she got back to the Jeep, she found Jake with the windows all rolled down and the driver’s seat tipped back, dozing in the sun.
