“What happened?”
“As soon as I mentioned that they’d been coming more frequently and were a lot stronger, she called Gwen. By then, it was at least a quarter past three, maybe half past. When Gwen arrived, it took her less than a minute to make the decision to go to the hospital, because she didn’t think I’d make it until the morning ferry. My aunt tossed a bunch of things in my duffel bag—the only thing I really cared about was Maggie-bear—then called my parents and the doctor and we were out the door. Thank God the ferry wasn’t crowded and we were able to get on. I think that by then, the contractions were coming every ten to fifteen minutes apart. Usually, you wait until they’re five minutes apart before you go to the hospital, but the ferry and drive to the hospital was three and a half hours. A long three and a half hours, I might add. By the time the ferry docked, the contractions were coming four to five minutes apart. I’m amazed I didn’t squeeze the stuffing out of Maggie-bear.”
“But you made it.”
“I did. But what I remember most was how calm my aunt and Gwen were the whole time. No matter how many crazy noises I made when the contractions hit, they just kept chatting away like nothing unusual was going on at all. I guess they’d driven lots of pregnant mothers to the hospital.”
“Did the contractions hurt?”
“It was like a baby dinosaur chomping through my uterus.”
He laughed. “And?”
“We got to the hospital, and I was checked into a room on the maternity floor. The doctor came by, and both my aunt and Gwen stayed with me for the next six hours until I was finally dilated. Gwen had me concentrate on my breathing, my aunt brought me ice chips—all the usual things, I guess. Sometime around one a.m. or so, I was ready to deliver. The next thing I knew, nurses were getting things ready and the doctor came in. And three or four pushes later, it was over.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You forgot the munching baby dinosaur. Every single contraction was agonizing.”
It had been, even if she could no longer remember the exact sensation. In the dim light, Mark seemed transfixed.
“And Gwen was right. It was a good thing you caught the afternoon ferry.”
“I’m pretty sure Gwen could have handled the birth, since there weren’t any complications. But I did feel better about being in a hospital instead of giving birth on my bed or whatever.”
He stared at the tree before coming back to her again. Sometimes, she thought, he seemed so familiar to her, it was scary.
“What happened after that?”
“Lots of commotion, of course. The doctor made sure I was okay, checked the afterbirth while the pediatrician examined the baby. Weight, Apgar, measurements, and immediately afterwards, the nurse whisked the baby to the nursery. And just like that, it was all suddenly behind me. Even now, it sometimes seems surreal, more like a dream than reality. But after the doctor and nurses cleared out, I grabbed Maggie-bear and started to cry and I couldn’t stop for a long time. I remember that my aunt was on one side of me and Gwen was on the other, both of them consoling me.”
“It had to have been very emotional.”
“It was,” she said. “But I’d known all along that it would be. And of course, by the time my tears stopped falling, it was the middle of the night. My aunt and Gwen had been up nearly twenty-four hours straight and I was even more tired than they were. We all eventually fell asleep. They’d brought in an extra chair for my aunt—Gwen used the other one—so I can’t speak to how much rest they actually got. But I was out like a light. I know the doctor came in sometime during the morning to make sure I was doing okay, but I barely remember that. I went right back to sleep and didn’t wake again until almost eleven. I remember thinking how strange it was to wake up in the hospital bed alone, because neither my aunt nor Gwen was there. I was starved, too, but my breakfast was still on the tray. I had to eat it cold, but I couldn’t have cared less.”
“Where were your aunt and Gwen?”
“In the cafeteria.” When he tilted his head slightly, Maggie changed the subject. “Is there still any eggnog in the back?”
“There is. Would you like me to get you a glass?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
Maggie watched as Mark rose from the table and headed toward the back. As he vanished from sight, she felt her mind drift back to the moment Aunt Linda had entered the room, the past becoming real again.
* * *
Carteret General Hospital, Morehead City
1996
Aunt Linda approached the bed before pulling up a chair. Reaching over, she brushed the hair from my eyes.
“How are you feeling? You slept a long time.”
“I think I needed it,” I said. “Did the doctor come in earlier?”
“He did,” she said. “He said you were doing very well. You should be out of the hospital tomorrow morning.”
“I have to stay another night?”
“They like to monitor you for at least twenty-four hours.”
The sunlight from the window behind her seemed to frame her in a golden halo.
“How’s the baby?”
“Perfect,” she said. “The staff is excellent and it was a quiet night. I think yours is the only one in the nursery right now.”
I absorbed what she’d said, imagining the scene, and the next words came automatically. “Do you think you could do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“Can you bring Maggie-bear to the nursery? And let the nurses know that I’d like the baby to have her? And maybe they could tell the parents, too?”
My aunt knew how much Maggie-bear meant to me. “Are you sure?”
“I think the baby needs her more than I do right now.”
My aunt offered a tender smile. “I think that’s a wonderful and generous gift.”
I handed her the teddy bear, watching as she cradled it before reaching for my hand. “Now that you’re awake, can we talk about the adoption?” When I nodded, she went on. “You know you’re going to have to formally give the baby up, which means paperwork, of course. I’ve reviewed it, so has Gwen, and as I mentioned to your parents, we’ve worked for years with the woman who set up the adoption. You can trust me that everything is in order, or if you wish, I could arrange for you to have an attorney.”
“I trust you,” I said. And I did. I think I trusted my aunt Linda more than anyone.
“The important thing you should know is that this is a closed adoption. You remember what that means, right?”
“That I don’t know who the parents are, right? And they won’t know me?”
“That’s correct. I want to make sure that’s still what you’d like to do.”
“It is,” I said. The thought of knowing anything would drive me crazy. “Are the new parents here yet?”
“I heard that they arrived this morning, so we’ll take care of the paperwork in a little bit. But there’s something else you should probably know.”
“What is it?”
She took a deep breath. “Your mom is here now, and she’s arranged for you to fly home tomorrow. The doctor wasn’t thrilled by that because of the possibility of blood clots, but your mom was fairly insistent about it.”
I blinked. “How did she get here so fast?”
“She found a flight yesterday right after I called. She actually arrived in New Bern late last night, before you delivered. She came by this morning to see you but you were still asleep. She hadn’t eaten, so Gwen and I took her to the cafeteria to get her something.”
Preoccupied with thoughts about my mom, I realized that I’d almost tuned out the other thing she’d told me. “Wait. Did you say I’m leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“You mean I’m not going back to Ocracoke?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about the rest of my things? And the picture Bryce gave me for Christmas?”
“I’ll ship everything to you. Yo
u don’t have to worry about that.”
But…
“What about Bryce? I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t say goodbye to his mom or his family, either.”
“I know,” she murmured. “But I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Your mom made the arrangements, and that’s why I wanted to come up here to tell you right away. So you wouldn’t be surprised.”
I could feel the tears again, different tears than the previous night’s, filled with a different kind of fear and pain.
“I want to see him again!” I cried. “I can’t just leave like this.”
“I know,” she said, compassion weighting every word.
“We had a fight,” I said. I could feel my lip beginning to quiver. “I mean, sort of a fight. I told him I couldn’t marry him.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I have to see him! Can’t you try to talk to my mom?”
“I did,” she said. “Your parents want you to come home.”
“But I don’t want to leave,” I said. The thought of living with my parents again, not my aunt, wasn’t something I could face right now.
“Your parents love you,” she promised me, squeezing my hand. “Just like I love you.”
But I feel it with you more than I do with them. I wanted to say that to her, but my throat locked up and this time, I simply gave in to the sobbing. And, just as I knew she would, my sweet and wonderful aunt Linda held me tight for a long time, even after my mom finally entered the room.
* * *
Manhattan
2019
“Are you okay? You look troubled.”
Maggie watched as Mark set the eggnog in front of her. “I was remembering the next morning at the hospital,” Maggie said. She reached for the glass while he took his seat again. When he was settled, she told him what had happened, noting his dismay.
“And that was it? You didn’t return to Ocracoke?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Did Bryce make it to the hospital? Couldn’t he have caught the ferry?”
“I’m sure he thought I’d be coming back to Ocracoke. But even if he had figured it out and made it to the hospital, I can’t imagine what it would have been like with my mom there. After my aunt and Gwen left, I was devastated. My mom couldn’t understand why I kept crying. She thought I was questioning the decision to give up the baby for adoption, and even though I’d already signed the papers, I think she was afraid that I was going to change my mind. She kept telling me that I was doing the right thing.”
“Your aunt and Gwen left?”
“They needed to catch the afternoon ferry back to Ocracoke. I was a wreck after saying goodbye to them. Eventually my mom got tired of it. She kept going downstairs to get coffee, and after I had dinner, she ended up returning to the hotel.”
“Leaving you alone? Even though you were so upset?”
“It was better than having her there and I think both of us knew it. Anyway, I eventually fell asleep and the next thing I really remember is the nurse wheeling me out of the hospital while my mom pulled up the rental car. My mom and I didn’t have much to say to each other in the car or the airport, and once I got on the plane, I remember staring out the window and feeling the same sense of dread that I’d felt when I’d left Seattle to come to North Carolina. I didn’t want to go. In my head, I kept trying to process everything that had happened. Even when I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bryce and Ocracoke. For a while, the only thing that made me feel better was Sandy. She knew I was struggling, and she wouldn’t leave my side. She’d come into my room or follow me around the house, but of course every time I saw her, I was reminded of Daisy.”
“And you didn’t go back to school?”
“No,” she said. “That was actually a good decision by my parents and the headmaster. When I think back, it’s clear I was depressed. I slept all the time, had zero appetite, and wandered around feeling like a stranger in my own house. I wouldn’t have been able to handle school. I couldn’t concentrate at all, so I ended up bombing every single final. But because I’d done well until then, my overall grades still ended up okay. The only upside to my depression was that I dropped all the baby weight by the time summer started. After a while, I finally felt up to seeing Madison and Jodie, and little by little, I began to inch my way back into my old life.”
“Did you talk or write to Bryce?”
“No. And he didn’t call or write, either. I wanted to, every single day. But we had our plan, and whenever I thought about contacting him, I reminded myself that he was better off without me. That he needed to concentrate on him, just like I needed to focus on me. My aunt wrote to me regularly, though, and she’d offer the occasional nugget about Bryce. She informed me that he became an Eagle Scout, went off to college on schedule, and a couple of months after that, she mentioned that Bryce’s mom had come by the shop to let her know that Bryce was doing exceptionally well.”
“How were you doing?”
“Despite my renewed contact with my friends, I still felt strangely disconnected. I remember that after getting my driver’s license, I’d sometimes borrow the car after church and visit garage sales. I was probably the only teenager in Seattle scouring the newspaper for used bonanzas.”
“Did you ever find anything?”
“I did, actually,” she said. “I found a Leica thirty-five-millimeter camera, older than the one Bryce used but still perfectly functional. I rushed home and begged my dad to buy it for me, promising to pay him back. To my surprise, he did. I think he understood more than my mom how desperate and displaced I felt. After that, I started taking pictures, and that centered me. When school started, I joined the yearbook staff as a photographer so I could take photos in school, too. Madison and Jodie thought it was silly, but I couldn’t have cared less. I’d spend hours at the public library, flipping through photography magazines and books, just like I did in Ocracoke. I’m pretty sure my dad thought the phase would pass, but at least he humored me when I showed him the photos I’d taken. My mom, on the other hand, was still doing her best to turn me into Morgan.”
“How did that go?”
“It didn’t. Compared to what they’d been in Ocracoke, my grades were terrible in my last two years of high school. Even though Bryce had taught me how to study, I couldn’t make myself care enough to try all that hard. Which, of course, is one of the reasons I ended up at community college.”
“There was another reason?”
“The community college actually had some classes that interested me. I didn’t want to go to college and spend my first two years doing gen-ed and studying the same things I had in high school. The community college offered a class on Photoshop, and others on indoor and sports photography—they were taught by a local photographer—as well as a few classes in web design. I never forgot what Bryce had told me about the internet becoming the next big thing, so I figured that was something I needed to learn. Once I finished all those, I started working.”
“Did you live at home the whole time you were in Seattle? With your parents?”
Maggie nodded. “The job didn’t pay much, so I didn’t have a choice. But it wasn’t bad, if only because I didn’t spend much time there. I was either at the studio or the lab or on location shooting, and the less I was around, the better my mom and I seemed to get along. Even if she still made it a point to let me know she thought I was wasting my life.”
“How was your relationship with Morgan?”
“To my amazement, she was actually interested in what had happened to me while I’d been in Ocracoke. After making her swear not to tell our parents, I ended up spilling pretty much the whole story, and by the end of that first summer, we were closer than we had ever been. But once she started at Gonzaga, we drifted apart again because she was rarely at home. She took summer classes after her first year, worked at music camps the summers after that. And, of course, the older she got and
the more she settled into college life, the more it became clear to both of us that we really didn’t have anything in common. She didn’t understand my lack of interest in college, couldn’t relate to my passion for photography. In her mind, it was as if I had quit school to become a musician.”
Mark leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. “Did anyone ever figure it out? The real reason you’d gone to Ocracoke?”
“Believe it or not, they didn’t. Madison and Jodie didn’t suspect a thing. They had questions, of course, but I was vague in my answers, and soon enough, it was back to the usual. People saw us together and none of them really cared enough to probe in detail why I’d left. Like Aunt Linda had predicted, they were preoccupied with their own lives, not mine. When school started again in the fall, I was nervous on the first day, but everything was completely normal. People treated me exactly the same, and I never got wind of any rumors. Of course, I wandered the halls that entire year feeling like I had little in common with any of my classmates, even while I was taking pictures of them for the yearbook.”
“How about your senior year?”
“It was strange,” she mused. “Because no one ever mentioned it, by that point, my stay in Ocracoke began to feel like a dream. Aunt Linda and Bryce seemed as real as ever, but there were moments when I could convince myself that I’d never had a baby. As the years went on, that became even easier. One time, maybe ten years ago, a guy I’d met for coffee asked me if I had kids, and I told him no. Not because I wanted to lie to him but because in that instant, I truly didn’t remember. Of course, almost immediately, I did remember, but there was no reason to correct myself. I had no desire to explain that chapter of my life.”
“How about Bryce? Did you send him a Christmas card? You haven’t mentioned him.”
Maggie didn’t answer right away. Instead, she swirled the thick liquid in her glass before meeting Mark’s eyes.
“Yes. I sent him a card that first Christmas after I returned home. Actually, I sent it to my aunt and asked her to deliver it to his house, because I couldn’t remember Bryce’s address. Aunt Linda was the one who put it in his mailbox. Part of me wondered whether he’d forgotten all about me, even though he’d promised that he wouldn’t.”
The Wish Page 31
