The Midwife's Confession (33 page)

I’d have to leave as soon as the sun came up. My mother didn’t have school tomorrow because of the holiday, but she never slept in. Getting up before she did would be hard. I’d set my phone alarm for six, but now I changed it to five. I should leave while it was still dark. If I left at five-thirty in the morning, I’d be there by lunchtime. My heart thumped at the thought of walking into the Missing Children’s Bureau and announcing my identity to the woman who was my mother.

What if she went out to lunch, though? One of those long business-type lunches like my father used to take? I picked up my phone from the night table again and pressed the display to see the time. Three-ten and I was wide-awake. I’d never
been
so awake. I felt like I’d drunk a bucket of coffee. If I left right now, I could be at the Missing Children’s Bureau way before lunch. But it was so dark outside and I could still hear the rain thrumming against my window. I’d only driven a few times in the rain before I’d lost my nerve behind the wheel altogether.

“Do it,” I said out loud.

I got up quickly and put on the same cropped pants and blue sweater I’d worn that day. I dumped my textbooks and notebooks out of my backpack onto my bed and replaced them with clean underwear, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and the folder Jenny’d left with me. I was moving fast, as if I was in a race. In a way, I was. I was trying to beat the part of me that thought my plan was not only stupid but dangerous. I hadn’t driven since before my father died, and I’d never driven alone and never more than a couple of hours at a time. I grabbed the directions I’d printed out, lifted my backpack to my shoulder and quietly walked downstairs. I took the keys to the Honda from the key cupboard by the back door and left the house before I could change my mind.

I did okay driving for about an hour. I knew I was going way too slow, but it was hard to see. The rain made the road as shiny as a mirror and I kept picturing deer zipping out of the darkness in front of my car. I nearly had the road to myself, though, and that was both good and spooky. Then all of a sudden, the rain got unbelievably heavy.
Heavy
wasn’t even the right word to describe it. It fell in blinding waves against my car, pounding so hard on the roof that I couldn’t hear the radio. The wipers were set to their fastest setting, but it was still impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me. I slowed down to forty miles an hour, then thirty, sticking really close to the shoulder. There were more cars on the road by then and none of those drivers seemed to be having any problem with the rain as they zipped past me. One of them honked at me, probably because I was driving so slowly. My hands were sweaty, but I kept them glued to the steering wheel and I was leaning forward like I could somehow see better if my face was closer to the windshield.

I’d just decided I’d better pull over and wait for the rain to ease up when it suddenly did. I sat back a little and let out my breath. I could hear the music on the radio again. I pressed harder on the gas and got my speed up to fifty-five, which was as fast as I was willing to go until the sun was up. So much for that five hours and fifty minutes.

It was light out by the time I crossed the border into Virginia, but it was still raining a little. I was going back and forth in my mind about whether I should call Jenny to tell her where I was when I had a horrible thought. I remembered changing the alarm on my phone to five o’clock. I could see the phone on my night table, but I had no memory of picking it up and putting it in my backpack.
Oh, my God
. I pressed the brake and swerved onto the shoulder of the road. A truck honked and I felt my car sway as it whizzed past me, way too close. I found the button for the emergency blinkers and put them on and then I started hunting for my phone in my backpack, the whole time knowing it wasn’t there. How could I have been so stupid? I was hours from home, on the highway, with no phone. I sat there paralyzed for a few minutes, glancing every once in a while at the floor of the car or the passenger seat as though a phone might magically appear. What could I do? I was two-thirds of the way there. I just had to keep going. Swallowing hard, I turned off my blinkers and waited for a long break between the cars. Then I pulled onto the road again.

A couple of hours later, I didn’t know where I was, but I was good and stuck in traffic. People complained about rush-hour traffic in Wilmington, but they didn’t know what they were talking about. I’d sit still for five minutes, then move about ten feet, then sit still again. There were gigantic trucks on both sides of me and I felt trapped and claustrophobic. They were so big that I could see beneath them to the cars in the other lanes. At least when I’d been driving through the rain and the darkness, I’d had no time to think about anything other than staying alive. Now I was tired and worn-out and the plan that had seemed so right at three in the morning was starting to feel idiotic.

I should have left a note for my mother, though I wasn’t sure what I could have said. When she figured out I was gone, she’d probably think I went to Chapel Hill. It didn’t matter. I was going to be in tons of trouble either way.

Suddenly I remembered something Daddy told me once when I was angry at my mother. “You know how Mom arranges orange slices on a plate for your soccer team and has activities planned for your birthday parties two months in advance?” he’d asked me. “That’s the way she shows her love, Gracie.” Why was I thinking about that now? I could hear his voice so clearly, like he was talking to me from the backseat of the car.
That’s the way she shows her love, Gracie.

She loved me. I never really doubted that. It would hurt her to realize I wasn’t hers and to find out that her own baby died. I pictured Emerson sitting her down to tell her the truth and I could see my mother’s face crumple.

The traffic was starting to move now. I let the trucks pull away from me and I could see old buildings and smokestacks and cranes, and everything was a blur through my tears.

I clutched the steering wheel. “What are you doing?” I whispered to myself.
“What are you doing?”

44

Tara

Grace was sleeping in, and I thought that was a good thing. She’d been so upset about Cleve the day before and I knew I hadn’t handled the situation well. I’d had to put my foot down about the trip to Chapel Hill, of course, but could I have done it a different way? Some way that didn’t shut down communication?
What
communication? We had none. Next week, I’d call the therapist we’d seen a couple of times after Sam died. Grace wouldn’t talk to her, either, but maybe the woman could give me some ideas for a fresh start with my daughter. Grace and I needed a do-over.

I sat at the kitchen table and made out a grocery list, trying to focus on something less nerve-racking than the deteriorating relationship between Grace and myself. I left a note for her on the table, telling her I was going to the store, then walked through the mudroom to the garage.

In the garage, I stopped short. Sam’s old Honda was gone. It gave me such a jolt. I had a flash of irrational hope that Sam was alive and on his way to work. That the past seven months had been a terrible dream. But I was too much of a realist to dwell in that fantasy for long. Either the car had been stolen or Grace had taken it. I didn’t know which possibility seemed more unlikely.

I went back in the house and knocked on Grace’s door, opening it when there was no answer. Her room was a mess as usual, her bed so heaped with junk that I had to move the books and clothing to prove to myself she was really gone. I felt no anger, only sheer unadulterated terror. My baby girl was driving, no doubt to Chapel Hill. It was raining and she was upset and not thinking clearly and she hadn’t driven in seven months. She’d be driving on the highway with complicated on-and off-ramps and speeding cars and drivers hungover from the night before. Sam had been killed at the familiar Monkey Junction intersection. What chance did Grace have to make it to Chapel Hill alive?

I reached for the phone on Grace’s desk, but stopped myself from dialing. I didn’t want her to try to answer her cell phone while she was driving. Then I remembered Jenny’s older friend was with her and that she was probably doing the driving. I let out my breath in relief. At least I could stop picturing Grace behind the wheel. I only wished I knew Jenny’s friend and that she was trustworthy.

I dialed Grace’s cell phone and jumped when I heard its distinctive ring coming from inches away on her night table. “Oh, no,” I said, grabbing her phone. The display was lit up, our home number prominently displayed. She’d left without her phone? I hung up and sank onto her bed, trying to figure out what was going on. Grace never went anywhere without her phone.

I scrolled through the numbers on her phone and dialed Jenny’s cell. It took a few rings before she picked up and I knew I’d awakened her.

“I thought about you all night,” she said, her voice thick and hoarse. “You okay?”

She was obviously in on this grand adventure. “It’s Tara, Jenny,” I said.

There was a beat of silence. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry. Why are you calling on Grace’s phone?”

“I need the cell phone number for your friend who’s with Grace,” I said tersely. “I can’t remember her name.”

Jenny was quiet again. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Isn’t Grace there?”

“No. She left the house before I got up this morning, and I assume…” Could I be wrong? “She took the Honda and forgot her phone. I assume she’s on her way to see Cleve. She told me yesterday she wanted to go and would have a friend of yours—an older girl—along as a supervising driver.”

Jenny said nothing and I knew she was either hiding something or as much in the dark as I was.

“Jenny?” I asked. “Do you know where she is?”

“I’m totally confused,” she said.

“Who’s your older friend? Helen or…Elena!” I suddenly remembered. “Her name was Elena.”

“I…I’m not sure what’s going on.”

I got to my feet. “Jenny!” I said, sharply now because panic was rising inside me. “What do you know? This is serious! Did she tell you she was going to Chapel Hill?”

“No!” Jenny said. “I honestly don’t know where she is. Did you try calling her?”

“I told you, she forgot her phone. I’m going to call Cleve. If you hear anything from her or from Elena… Do you have a friend named Elena?”

She didn’t answer.

“Jenny!”

“No,” she admitted.

Damn it.
“Call me if you hear anything,” I said, then hung up. I found Cleve’s number on Grace’s phone and dialed it, but my call was dumped into his voice mail. “Cleve, this is Tara,” I said. “Call me the second you get this. I’m serious!” I gave him my number so he wouldn’t have to dig it up.

I hung up the phone and looked at my watch. It was a little after ten. She must have taken off before I got up at seven. It was possible, though not likely, that she was in Chapel Hill by now.

Through her bedroom window, I could see the rain battering the leaves of the maple tree in our side yard and I shook my head. I couldn’t picture her driving around the block. Imagining her driving in this rain was both impossible and horrifying.

Please, God, let her be safe!

Then I picked up her phone and tried Cleve’s number again.

45

Grace

Alexandria, Virginia

I was on a highway called the Beltway and I’d never seen so many cars going so fast at one time. It was like being stuck in a parking lot that was moving at sixty-five miles an hour, and my leg muscles shook as I pressed on the gas trying to keep up. I was so glad to see the exit for Alexandria. My GPS gave me a few turns to make and I was suddenly in the middle of a busy road in a little town. I needed gas and, even worse, coffee. I spotted a gas station and pulled in. I bought twenty dollars worth of gas and a comb. The only one they had was made for men and it had teeth so close together I’d probably never be able to get it through my hair. I bought a cup of coffee that tasted really old and lukewarm, but I didn’t care and I chugged it down right there in the disgusting gas station store.

When I pulled back onto the road, my GPS said I was only a mile from my destination. Then half a mile. Then four hundred feet, and I began to think it was leading me the wrong way. Wouldn’t the Missing Children’s Bureau be in a big office building? All during the drive, that’s where I pictured meeting my mother. On the fourth or fifth floor of a big office building. But the buildings on this road were small and they looked more like little shops and town houses than offices.

I was stuck at a red light when I noticed a banner about a block in front of me. It hung high in the air above the street. Columbus Day Parade! Oh, no. Oh, no. I’d forgotten about it being a holiday. Would the Missing Children’s Bureau be closed?

My GPS said, “Arriving at destination.” I was certain it had screwed up, but the traffic wasn’t moving and I had a chance to look at the building numbers and there it was—237. It was a little yellow town house in the middle of a string of other little town houses. It had to be wrong, yet I could see some kind of rectangular plaque hanging next to the door, although I couldn’t read it from where I sat. I’d have to get closer.

I couldn’t parallel park. I’d screwed it up every time I tried during my driver’s training and there was no way I could do it with all these cars around me. I turned down a side street and drove a couple of blocks before I found two spaces together and was able to slip the car next to the curb. When I finally turned off the engine, I just sat there for a minute as what I’d done really hit me.
I just drove all the way from Wilmington to Alexandria,
I thought, and even though I was doing the craziest thing I’d ever done in my life, I felt proud of myself. Whatever happened next, I’d done something pretty amazing.

Now, though, came the really hard part.

I looked at my face in the rearview mirror. I looked terrible. I did my best to comb my hair, but it was impossible with that stupid comb.