The Midwife's Confession Part 26

"That's insane," I said.

"There were no other babies Noelle delivered during that time," Emerson said. "No torn-out pages from the book or anything. I really think it was Grace, Tara. I'm so sorry."

I ran my hand through my hair, thinking, thinking. I remembered the night Grace was born. The realization that something was wrong. The moments when Noelle was debating whether to call an ambulance before she managed to turn Grace inside me. I remembered that long dark night and the deathlike sleep that had gripped me afterward.

"I held her, though," I said, frowning. "I nursed her right away." She'd felt so warm, almost hot, against my skin. I'd loved that warmth. I could still remember it. Then the dreamless sleep. But Sam...had he been asleep, too? Could we have slept long enough for my child to slip through Noelle's hands? Had we slept long enough for her to rush to the hospital and steal her replacement? As unbelievable as I'd found the whole idea before, now it seemed a hundred times more so.

"You're saying...the baby I gave birth to died?"

Emerson stood from the love seat and sat down next to me, her arm around me. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I-"

"How does Jenny know all of this?" I asked. Jenny still wouldn't look at me. She reminded me of Grace today, she was so quiet.

Emerson hesitated. "I talked to Ian about this yesterday, when I...connected the dots, and Jenny overheard."

"You told Ian? Before you told me?" I pulled away from her, suddenly angry. "I'm the last to know about my own child? How long have you known?"

"I figured it out the night before Suzanne's party," Emerson confessed.

"And you didn't tell me?" I felt like slapping her, I was so furious. I stood. "How could you tell Ian and not me?" I asked. "How dare you do that?"

"I didn't know how..." Emerson shook her head. "I was afraid of hurting you."

I couldn't absorb it all. Just couldn't. "Where is Grace?" I asked. There was no room in my mind at that moment for the baby I'd lost. A child who didn't quite exist for me yet. There was only room for the child I loved with all my heart. "Where is she? Why is she-"

"She called Cleve last night after I told her," Jenny said hoa.r.s.ely. "She was really upset and she told him she wanted to go to Virginia to try to find her...that woman. He tried to talk her out of it."

"You should never have talked to Grace about this!" I said.

"I know." Her eyes were bloodshot and she sank deeper into the love seat.

"Please, Tara," Emerson pleaded. "Jenny knows she screwed up."

"How would she know where to find Anna Knightly?" I paced between the sofa and the window.

"The Missing Children's place, I think," Jenny said. "In Alexandria."

Alexandria! I pictured Grace trying to make that long drive by herself in the rain, wondering who she was. Only a tremendous need could make my daughter get behind the wheel of a car for that long. A need I hadn't been able to fill. "Oh, my poor baby," I said. I remembered how quiet she'd been the night before in her bedroom. Had she known then? "She has to be so scared and confused," I said. I thought of how she'd feel when she realized she'd left her phone at home. I could hardly bear to imagine her reaction.

"I feel terrible," Emerson said.

"I don't care about your d.a.m.n feelings right now, Emerson," I said. "All I care about is finding Grace. You had no right to keep this from me. Something that impacts Grace's safety. You've-" I turned my face away from them. "I'm so furious with both of you! If anything happens to her, I'll never forgive either of you." I started for the kitchen and the telephone. "Who do we call?" I asked the air. "How do we find her?"

48.

Grace Washington, D.C.

I stopped at another gas station, bought a cheapy prepaid cell phone and made a deal with myself. If I couldn't track down Anna Knightly at the Children's Medical Center in an hour, I'd call that woman at the Missing Children's Bureau and give her the number. One way or another, I was finding my mother today.

Finally, I saw a sign for the Children's National Medical Center. I drove into a big underground garage and it was worse than driving on the highway. Cars were pulling out in front me and honking behind me, but I finally managed to get into a s.p.a.ce.

At the entrance to the lobby, there was a sign that said you needed to show your ID, so I pulled out my driver's license. The guard looked at it and, without even glancing at me, asked, "Where's your supervising adult?"

My hands were shaking and I wondered if I looked guilty. "My mother and sister are inside," I said.

He started yelling, "Hey! You!" at a guy somewhere behind me, and he must have been more interested in the guy than me, because he just nodded at me to walk through the entrance. I walked fast. I knew I'd lucked out.

The lobby was big and open, and I thought if I were a kid coming here to see a doctor, I'd be comfortable. It was colorful and didn't feel at all like a hospital and nothing like the emergency room where they'd taken my father. But I wasn't a kid and I wasn't there to see a doctor. I wasn't one hundred percent sure what I was doing there. The lobby was filled with parents and children and doctors and nurses, everyone looking like they had someplace to go except me.

I spotted an information desk on one side of the lobby and walked up to the woman sitting behind it. She was African-American with gray hair and gray gla.s.ses and she smiled at me. I tried my best to look eighteen. I was afraid of getting kicked out.

"Hi," I said. "I have to get an important message to someone. She's the mother of a patient here. If I write a note can someone take it to her?"

"Patient's name?" the woman asked. In spite of her smile, she sounded a little annoyed.

"Haley..." Did Haley have the same last name as her mother? "Her mother's name is Anna Knightly. K-N-I-"

"I know how to spell it. Her daughter's in the East Wing. Room 416. Give me your note and I'll ask a volunteer to take it up when they have time. We're short. Might be a while." She held out her hand for the note I hadn't written yet.

"I have to write it," I said. "I'll be right back."

I found a flyer announcing a Fun Run for Children's! The other side was blank and I sat down on one of the benches and pulled a pen from my backpack.

Now what?

"Mrs. Knightly," I wrote. "My name is Grace Vincent. Please come to the lobby. I have to talk to you. It's very important. I'll be by the information desk. I have very long hair and am sixteen."

I folded the note and took it back to the woman, who acted like she'd never seen me before. "This is the note for the woman in Room 416 in the East Wing," I said.

She took it from me. "It'll be a while," she said again.

I went back to the bench. After about twenty minutes, a volunteer-an old man-went up to the information desk, picked up a vase of flowers and headed for the elevator. The woman behind the desk didn't even hand him my note.

There were signs everywhere, and one of them said East Wing with an arrow pointing down a hallway. Don't be a chicken, I told myself. I stood and walked down the hall to a bunch of elevators. I stood with a couple of doctors and a nurse and a woman with a little boy who leaned sleepily against her leg. The elevator came and we all got on. The nurse pushed the b.u.t.ton for the fourth floor and I felt dizzy as we started going up. I hadn't eaten in forever.

The nurse and I got off on the fourth floor. She kept walking down the hall, but I just stood there, frozen. The carpet had huge geometric patterns on it that only made me dizzier. A sign pointed the way to the rooms. Room 416 was to my right, but I couldn't seem to move. I hadn't noticed the hospital smell in the lobby, but it was definitely up here on the fourth floor.

Don't think about Daddy. Just don't.

"Can I help you?" a woman asked. She was probably a nurse. She wore a stethoscope around her neck and the fabric of her medical jacket was covered with dogs. "You look lost," she said.

"No." I managed to smile. "I'm good." I started walking, pretending I knew exactly where I was going and why.

I reached 416 and stood near the open door. My heart was beating so fast I thought I might end up in the E.R. myself. There were people walking up the hallway toward me and I knew I couldn't just stand there forever. I got up my courage and peeked around the doorframe as though I needed to slowly, slowly see whoever was in the room.

They'd just been names before. Not real people. Suddenly, though, reality smacked me in the face. A nearly bald girl was sitting in a huge bed. A woman sat in a chair next to her bed and they were looking at something in the girl's lap. A book or magazine or something. The woman laughed. The girl smiled. In one single second, I felt the tenderness between the two of them. They were like a little clique that did not include me. All at once, I knew I didn't belong in that room. I belonged nowhere.

The woman glanced in my direction and our eyes locked, just for a second. I stepped quickly away from the door and pressed my back against the wall. My heart was going so fast it was more like a buzzing in my ears than a beating. I didn't know what to do.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman walk into the hallway.

"Hi," she said.

I took a step away from the wall and turned toward her. Her smile was beautiful.

"Hi," I said.

"Are you a friend of Haley's from the unit?" She looked puzzled.

"I'm your daughter," I said.

The woman's smile disappeared. She took a step away from me. "What do you mean?"

"I just found out," I said. "I live in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I found a letter...or some friends found a letter that this woman who was my mother's midwife wrote to you, only never mailed." I lowered my backpack from my shoulder and tried reaching into it for the folder but my hands were shaking so hard I couldn't get a grip on it and I gave up. "She-the midwife-was apologizing for stealing your baby from the hospital the night I was born."

The woman wasn't following me and I didn't blame her. She said nothing, a sharp line between her eyebrows. Her chest was rising and falling so fast I thought she might faint. I licked my lips and kept going. "She dropped my mother's-the woman who I thought was my mother-she dropped her baby and killed it."

I felt a knot tighten in my chest. It was all too much, and suddenly I missed my mother desperately. I wanted her to hold me. The mother who knew me. Not the stranger in front of me whose smile was totally gone, whose eyes told me she thought I was lying. Coming here had been a mistake. An impulsive crazy mistake and the smells of the hospital rushed over me like a wave in the ocean and I knew I was going to pa.s.s out. I leaned against the wall to keep from falling over. I was so far from home and my mother. It seemed like I'd have to cross half the universe to get back to her.

"Is this...has someone put you up to this?" the woman asked. "Is this some sort of cruel joke?"

I couldn't speak. My throat was thick and I'd never felt so alone and so lonely. I shook my head.

The woman took my arm. "Come with me," she said.

49.

Tara Wilmington, North Carolina We stood in the kitchen, Emerson hunting on my laptop for the number of the Missing Children's Bureau while I held the phone, ready to dial. Jenny stood near the island, biting her lip. I wanted to yell at both of them to get the h.e.l.l out of my house, but I needed their help to find Grace. I didn't look at them. I was holding on tight to my anger.

"Here's the number," Emerson said. "Oh, it's a hotline number, not the office number." She rattled it off and I dialed. I explained to the man who answered that I was trying to reach the bureau's Alexandria office. I was careful what I said, although Emerson kept trying to put words in my mouth. "Shut up!" I said to her finally, then I apologized to the man and somehow convinced him to give me the office number. When I called there, though, I was dumped to voice mail.

"I need to speak with Anna Knightly," I said. "Please have her-have someone-call me right away. This is extremely urgent." I left both my cell and home number.

Emerson was trying to reach Ian again, but I knew he was unreachable when he was on the golf course. "Maybe we should call the police," Emerson said after leaving another message for Ian. "They can be on the lookout for Grace's car. They could have someone go to the Missing Children's Bureau and wait for her to show up."

"I'm going up there," I said.

"You don't know where she is, though," Emerson said. "It's better to stay here."

"I'm going." I grabbed my purse and headed for the garage.

"I'll drive you." Emerson ran after me. "You're too upset to drive."

I spun around. "I don't want you near me!"

"You need me," Emerson said, "and Grace is going to need Jenny. We're driving you."

It was as if we were flying instead of driving. I sat in the pa.s.senger seat, clutching my phone on my lap, so filled with fear and anger and anxiety that my limbs trembled. Behind me in the backseat, Jenny kept apologizing. Emerson, too. But I tuned them out, and for a couple of hours I didn't speak at all except to leave my own message on Ian's voice mail, telling him where we were and what was going on. Emerson kept trying to get me to talk to her, but all I could think of was Grace, who had to be feeling alone and upset and scared. I knew that was how she felt. It might have been the first time since she was small that I knew her feelings without being near her. The first time in so long that I felt that invisible connection to her. My blood was in her blood. My heart in her heart. I didn't care what a DNA test might say. She was my daughter.

I didn't want to think about Anna Knightly. When I'd been trying to figure out who had her child, I'd felt sympathy for her. She'd been a stranger to me. A name in a letter. I'd thought about what it would feel like to realize your baby was missing. Now I knew how it felt firsthand. Anna Knightly had another daughter, I thought. Let her be satisfied with that one.

I wished Grace were in the car with me right that instant. I'd hold her and tell her that no matter how poor a job I was doing at being her mother, I loved her. I'd do anything for her. Whether she wanted me to or not, I'd hold her so tight that no one would be able to pry her from my arms. Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough. I wanted that chance with my daughter.

"Do either of you need to stop?" Emerson asked when the traffic slowed near Richmond.

"No," I answered for both of us. I didn't care if Jenny needed to stop. Jenny could burst for all I cared. "Just keep driving."

Two wildly opposing emotions were at war inside me. Hatred toward Noelle that was spilling over to Emerson and Jenny, regardless of how irrational that might have been. And love for my daughter. "Oh, Grace," I said out loud, although I hadn't meant to.

Emerson reached over to rest her hand on my forearm. "She'll be all right," she said. "It will be all right."

I turned my face away from her.

"It was my fault," Jenny said from behind me. There were tears in her voice and I wondered how long she'd been crying back there.

There was plenty of blame to go around. Emerson and Ian for keeping this from me. Jenny for stupidly taking what she'd learned to Grace. Myself, for not knowing how to mother my daughter. For not being the sort of mom she could turn to when she learned this devastating truth. She would have turned to Sam. I could blame Mattie Cafferty, who took my husband from me and left me to cope alone. And, of course, I could blame Noelle for her criminal, unconscionable act. And yet...if Noelle hadn't done what she did, I wouldn't have my Grace.

My Grace.

My phone rang and I lifted it to my ear. "This is Tara Vincent." My words spilled over one another.

"This is Elaine Meyers from the Missing Children's Bureau, returning your call."

"Yes! Thank you." I pressed my hand to my cheek. "This is very complicated but my sixteen-year-old daughter is probably going to show up there looking for Anna Knightly and I need-"

"Pretty girl? Long hair?

"Yes. Is she there?"

"She was. But I explained to her that Ms. Knightly isn't here. She was quite upset. She said she had information about a missing child."

"Where did she go?"