The Beach Quilt (24 page)

Adelaide felt very nervous but very determined. She had told Jack her intentions the night before. His response was, “I respect your choice.” Not exactly the most encouraging response, but it was better than him telling her that she was being an idiot.

Cordelia stomped into the kitchen. “Where's Dad going?” she asked. “I saw him drive away a few minutes ago.”

“He went to play golf with that old friend of his, the one who lives in Arizona during the winter.”

“Oh, you mean Mr. Benson.”

“Yes.”

“He's nice.”

“Yes. Cordelia, I want to talk to you about something.”

“What?” Cordelia's eyes widened. “Am I in trouble? Did I do something wrong?”

Adelaide smiled. “I don't know. Did you?”

“I don't think so. No. Definitely not.”

“Then of course you're not in trouble. Come, sit down.”

“What is it, Mom?” Cordelia asked, joining her mother at the table.

“I want to tell you about something that happened to me a long time ago.”

And she did. When she was finished, Adelaide noted that Cordelia looked paler than normally. And she seemed oddly calm, too. After a full two minutes, she still had said nothing and would not meet her mother's eye.

“Cordelia, please, say something,” Adelaide pleaded.

Cordelia looked now at her mother and shook her head. “I don't know what to say. I can't believe it. You. And Sarah.”

Adelaide half rose from her seat. “Let me get you something to drink.”

“I'm fine,” Cordelia said quickly.

“Do you have any questions?”

“Yes. Did you ever regret it? Giving your baby up for adoption?”

Adelaide sighed and sank back into her chair. “The answer to that question is yes, and then no, not always. Though it took a good deal of time to reach a state of only occasional regret.”

“Are you still sad about it?”

“Yes.” That answer was easy enough to give.

“Who was the father? I mean, had you been going out with him for a long time?”

“Not really,” Adelaide said, embarrassed. “Just a few months.”

“Did you love him?”

“I don't know,” Adelaide admitted. “I suppose I did, in the way that you can talk yourself into believing you love someone at seventeen.”

“Did he love you?”

How relentless she is,
Adelaide thought. She had never seen Cordelia like this. She felt as if she were on trial without a good defense attorney. “Most definitely not,” she answered. “But I didn't know that for sure until I got pregnant.”

“Do you know where the baby is now?”

“He's not a baby anymore. And no, I don't.”

“Did you see him when he was born?”

Adelaide's heart contracted, and it was a moment before she could speak. “I couldn't bear to,” she said finally.

“What did his new parents name him?”

“I have no idea.”

“What if someday he decides to find you?” Cordelia pressed. “What if he calls you or just shows up at the door? What then?”

“I don't know,” Adelaide said. “It's something that terrifies me, but at the same time I almost long for it. Your father and I have talked about the possibility. And he's vowed to support me in whatever decision I make about a relationship with—with my son.”

“So Dad knows?” Cordelia asked, her eyes wide.

“Of course he knows. He's my husband.”

“Was he angry with you when he found out?”

Adelaide bit back a sigh of annoyance. Was her daughter really so naive? “He didn't ‘find out,' Cordelia. It wasn't like that. I told him while we were dating. I knew I was falling in love with him, and I wanted everything about me to be out in the open. And of course he wasn't angry. He was sympathetic.”

“Does he know you're telling me this?” Cordelia asked.

“Of course. We discussed it. We both know this is an important piece of our family's history. Difficult, but important. Do you understand that?”

Cordelia shrugged. “What would you have named him—your son—if you had kept him?” she asked.

Adelaide shook her head. “I don't know. I forced myself not to think about that. Giving him a name would have made it impossible to give him up. At least, that's how it felt at the time. It was bad enough I found out he was a boy. I thought that if I didn't know the sex it would make losing my baby a little bit easier.”

Cordelia seemed to be absorbing this. Then she said: “And Grandma and Grandpa really wanted nothing to do with their own grandchild?”

“A baby changes everything,” Adelaide said carefully. “For everyone, especially when there's only a single parent who needs to rely on help from family. My parents had raised their child already. They simply were too tired to raise another one.”

“Too selfish, you mean.”

There was vehemence in her daughter's words. Adelaide felt them as a blow. “Do you think I was selfish in giving up my son for adoption?” she asked, dreading the answer Cordelia might give.

“I don't know,” Cordelia said after a long moment. “Maybe.”

“I'm sorry you think that. I hope that maybe someday you can better understand.” And maybe, Adelaide added silently, feel some sympathy for me.
Oh, God,
she thought,
is that really why I told Cordelia this? Because I
did
need her sympathy after all?

Cordelia opened her mouth as if to say something more, but then closed it, got up from her seat, and left the kitchen without a word.

Adelaide put a hand to her suddenly aching head. She felt overwhelmed with guilt. It had been a mistake to tell Cordelia. It had been a bad judgment call. She should have listened to Jack and kept quiet. And now it was too late. The proverbial cat was out of its bag, and this cat was a particularly sharp-clawed and dangerous one.

Joe had had a tough day at work. He had been forced to fire a new employee, a nineteen-year-old named Frank O'Donnell. He had given Frank the requisite three warnings, of course, but Frank hadn't taken them to heart.

“The guy had it coming,” Joe said, shaking his head. “He was just too careless. He was putting himself and the other men at risk. Still.”

Cindy put the carton of milk into the fridge. “I know. But it's a difficult thing to disappoint someone. Just keep in mind that he disappointed you first. If he hadn't, he'd still have a job.”

Joe nodded. “It's a good thing he only has himself to worry about. No wife, no kids.”

“Will you give him a reference? What if a prospective employer calls you for a good word?”

Joe seemed to consider. “Doubt that will happen,” he said after a moment. “Frank would want to erase his time with Bauer Construction. But off the record? I could say he's a nice kid without telling a lie.”

“That's something. Oh, Sarah saw Dr. Westin this morning. Everything is just fine.”

“Good.”

“Oh, and I wanted to ask you if we had any of that paint left over from when we last touched up the bathroom. I'm afraid part of the baseboard looks a bit rough. I'd say it was Clarissa's doing, but I know she's too smart for that.”

“Got half a can in the workshop. I'll bring it in.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

Cindy turned away from her husband to put on a pan of water to boil. She had gotten a bag of small red potatoes at the farm stand and thought they would be nice with the salmon she was making for dinner.

“Sometimes I think I want to kill him.”

Cindy spun around. “Who? Frank?”

“No. Morrow.”

Cindy put her hand to her heart. “Oh, Joe, don't say that. You know you don't mean it.”

But the raw anguish she saw in her husband's eyes almost took her breath away.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Cindy didn't for one moment think that Joe would act on his anger, but the very fact that he had admitted it to her was worrisome enough. She was protective of her husband. That someone could get through his usual calm and good nature and inspire such negativity was appalling to her. It made her furious, more furious, she thought, than Joe would ever be capable of feeling.

“Joe—” she began.

“Shouldn't have said that. Forget it.”

Cindy nodded. Best, she thought, to let his outburst go without further remark. “I'm making salmon for dinner,” she said.

“Sounds good. You work hard for us, Cindy.”

“I enjoy it,” she said, and she meant it.

“And I appreciate it. We all do, the girls, too. I just wish . . . I wish I could provide more for us.”

Cindy thought of the quilts she hadn't been able to let go of and felt a stab of guilt. “I believe everything's going to be okay, Joe,” she said, more strongly than she felt. “I really do.”

Joe rose from the table and gathered her into his arms. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and sighed.

Cordelia drifted into the kitchen. She didn't quite know why she was there. She wasn't even that hungry. But there she was, and there, too, was her father.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, Cordelia.” He nodded toward the carton of ice cream he held. “Do you want some ice cream?”

“I shouldn't.”

“That's not an answer to my question.”

“Okay, then, yes, I want some. But I'm not going to have any.”

“Okay,” he said, dropping a large scoop into a bowl. “How's the quilt project coming along?”

“Fine. It's almost done. Sort of.”

“That's good.”

“Mom told me,” Cordelia blurted. “About her—about her son.”

“Yes,” her father said, returning the ice-cream carton to the freezer. “I know. How are you feeling about it?”

Cordelia shrugged. “I don't know. Weird. It's like we have this big family secret now.”

“It was always a part of our family's story, Cordelia. All that's changed is that now you know the story, too. There is no more secret.”

“Except that maybe her son—my half-brother—doesn't know he's adopted or if he does, maybe he doesn't know about Mom. That her name is Adelaide Kane and that she's married and has a daughter and lives in Maine.”

“That's true,” her father admitted. “But we don't really know for sure what he knows or doesn't know.”

Cordelia considered. What would it be like to live in the dark about your origins? She tried, but she failed to imagine such a state. How could she? She had always known exactly who she was. At least, she thought that she had. She had not known that she was a sister, a sibling. For all she knew she might even be a sister-in-law or an aunt!

“I wish I could meet my brother,” she said. “What if we look a lot alike? What if we like the same movies and food and, I don't know, what if we have some of the same habits? What if he has really bad eyesight, like I do?”

“What if you
did
share all those things?”

Cordelia shrugged. “I don't know. It's just strange thinking there's someone out there with a bunch of my DNA and he doesn't even know it. It feels somehow unfair.”

“To you or to him?” her father asked.

That,
Cordelia thought,
was a good question.
“To us both,” she said after a moment.

“I'm sorry this is so hard for you,” her father said.

“Why did she have to tell me, Dad? It would have been better if I'd never known.”

Her father put his empty bowl and spoon into the dishwasher. “Give it some time, Cordelia,” he said then. “Let this information sink in a bit. And know that your mother didn't mean to hurt or upset you by telling you about the adoption. She was hoping that in some way it might help you deal with Sarah's situation.”

Cordelia shook her head and laughed. “How?”

“I don't quite know,” her father admitted. “But her intentions were good.”

Cordelia sighed. “I suppose so. But what I really can't understand is why she was pushing the idea of Sarah putting her baby up for adoption when she knows how hard it was to do.”

“Again, her intentions were good. Maybe they were a bit—emotional—but she only wanted what she thought would be best for Sarah.”

“Why would Mom think that she knew what was best for Sarah? She's not Sarah's mother! And it's not her baby!” Cordelia frowned. “It's all very confusing. Maybe I will have some ice cream after all.”

Her father smiled. “I ate all of the pistachio, I'm afraid. But there's still chocolate.”

“That'll do.”

The moment Sarah appeared in the doorway to the kitchen her mother leaped up from her seat at the table. She was clutching a magazine. “There you are!” she said. “I've been dying to talk to you.”

Sarah repressed a sigh. Her mother had been poring over parenting magazines since Sarah had announced her pregnancy. They were all over the house. Occasionally, Sarah leafed through one. Mostly, she found them repetitive and faddish. Too often they seemed to be making outrageous efforts to create alarm. A lot of times the writing wasn't very interesting, either. The pictures of the babies were cute, though. Everybody liked looking at pictures of babies.

Anyway, after Sarah had gone to her mother with the offer of putting her baby up for adoption, her mother had gotten even more—well, even more annoying.

“What is it?” Sarah asked.

“I just read an article about teaching your child a second language right along with English. It sounds very exciting, doesn't it? I think we should send away for this introductory package and learn more about what's involved. I mean, I think that you should send away for it. It's your child, after all. It's just that all these language experts are saying it's the right thing to do, so it seems to me we should take their advice. I mean, that
you
should take their advice.”

Sarah bit back an impatient reply.

“I don't know,” she said, as evenly as she could manage. “I'll think about it.”

Her mother frowned. “I'm not sure there's much to think about. It seems to me that—”

“Mom. I said, I'll think about it.”

Her mother compressed her lips into a tight line. “All right.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Sarah said, a tiny little bit of guilt niggling at her. “Really. I know you're just trying to help, and I appreciate it.”

“Well, at least read the article. Information is always a good thing.”

Except,
Sarah thought,
when it isn't because it isn't really substantial, or is misleading, or unproved.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll read it.”

“Good.” Her mother handed the magazine to Sarah. “I've turned down the corner of the page on which the article starts so it'll be easy to find. Oh, and there's another good article in this issue. It's about vaccinations. They're very important, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Thanks.”

Her mother left the kitchen. Sarah resisted rolling her eyes, but she did toss the magazine onto the table. She had an unhappy feeling that she would have to fight her mother on every single decision regarding the baby. If that were the case, life in the Bauer house would be miserable for everyone until she could afford to move out with her son and start a life of her own with him. And that might be years from now.

Sarah sighed. She was not naive enough to imagine that life alone with her baby would be idyllic. She would have the burden of worrying all to herself, no husband or partner with whom to share it. At least, living with her parents, she would have the comfort of knowing that if for some reason she couldn't be there for her child, someone else would be. If a fire broke out in the middle of the night and she was overcome by smoke, then her mother or her father or even Stevie could rescue the baby. If she lost her job, her son would still have food and shelter. And if something even worse happened . . .

Sarah sat in the chair her mother had abandoned. A while ago Dr. Westin had given her an article on postpartum depression. Women suffering from postpartum depression did terrible things to their babies. At least once a year, you heard about some distraught, wild-eyed woman who drowned her children in a bathtub or strapped them inside the family car and sent it into the deep end of the local lake for all sorts of fantastical reasons, from voices in her head commanding her to save her children from the horrors and evils of life to revenge on the hated father of the children.

Sarah toyed with the edge of the magazine her mother had given her. What if after the birth of her baby she became so depressed that she couldn't even handle basic feeding? Would her parents take her baby away? Would they go to court to gain legal control of him? Would they keep the baby and throw her out of the house? They could do that; it was their house after all. It was hard to imagine her parents ever doing something so—so drastic—but then again, it was hard to imagine, to accept, even now, that she had gotten pregnant.

Such morbid thoughts often assailed Sarah in the dark hours of the night. Daytime wasn't necessarily much better, except, she found, when she got lost in her work on the baby's quilt. Otherwise, she was intensely aware at almost every moment of the enormity of her situation. Almost every time she found herself smiling at the thought of the life growing within her, feeling calm and even pleased, a jolt of panic or guilt would assail her and the peaceful, joyous moment would be gone.

Like what had happened today. She had walked into the kitchen feeling just fine. And now, only a few moments later, she felt anything
but
fine.

Sarah picked up the magazine and went up to her room. She would read the article because she had promised her mother she would, but what was the point in following every rule and doing everything just the way the “experts” told you to do them? You could make every possible preparation, but the reality was that everything changed and would continue to go on changing and you would never know—you
could
never know—what exactly was going to happen next.