The Midwife's Confession (39 page)

“I’m sorry,” Tara said, but I saw her tighten her hand around Grace’s as if she had no intention of ever letting her go.

“When I was well enough to travel,” I continued, “we went to Wilmington. Lily would have been about seven weeks old by then. We worried that someone thought Lily had been abandoned, which in a way she had been, and that they’d moved her to foster care, so we searched through the foster system.”

“How terrible for you,” Tara said, but she was still clutching Grace’s hand hard.

“I saw the letter your midwife wrote to me,” I said. “I… It’s hard to take it all in. Did you have any idea?”

“None,” Tara said. “Noelle died recently….” She looked at Grace. “Did you tell her?”

Grace nodded.

“She committed suicide and my friend and I found the letter and we began searching for the ‘Anna’ Noelle was writing to. We finally figured out it was you, but we didn’t know whose baby she…whose baby died. We never in a million years thought it was mine.”

“Didn’t you see your baby…I mean, wouldn’t you know if your baby suddenly looked different?” I asked.

“It was the middle of the night when she was born and my labor had been very difficult. When Noelle brought her to me in the morning, I guess she’d already…made the substitution, because that baby was definitely Grace.”

“I don’t think much of your midwife,” I said.

“She did a terrible thing,” Tara said. “But it’s hard for me to let it define who she was.”

“Tell her about the babies program,” Grace said softly.

“Would you like to tell her?” Tara asked. “You’re more involved with it than I am.”

“She started an organization to help babies…preemies and poor babies and sick babies,” Grace said. “She won the Governor’s Award for it, but she wouldn’t accept it.”

I couldn’t look at her as she spoke. I was so afraid of attaching to her. Instead, I looked at Tara. “Maybe this is why,” I said, sweeping my hand through the air to take in the three of us and our predicament. “Maybe she felt she didn’t deserve any awards.”

“Could be,” Tara agreed. She put her arm around Grace. “I think we need a DNA test,” she said. “And I think we’d both better lawyer up. I don’t mean that in an adversarial way, but we—”

“I agree completely,” I said. “We all need to know what we’re dealing with. But I did explain to Grace earlier about Haley’s need for a bone marrow donor. She’s extremely ill. She’s—” I shrugged, giving into the word “—she’s
terminally
ill. And Grace agreed…”

“Grace didn’t know what she was agreeing to, Anna,” Tara said. “I’m sorry, but I have to put the brakes on right now, okay? Let’s take things a little more slowly. I’ll have my lawyer contact yours and see what timeline they recommend for the DNA test and then go from there.”

I felt like jumping from my seat and barring the door. “In a normal world, that would make sense,” I said.
No tears. Please no tears
. Tara was a cool customer and one thing I’d learned in my line of business was the need to stay calm. Still, I couldn’t keep the tremor out of my voice. “Please understand, Tara. I don’t know if Grace is Lily…” I looked at Grace. “I’m sorry to speak about you in the third person,” I said. “I just don’t know, but what if she is? And what if she’s a match for Haley? And what if we find that out too late? We haven’t been able to find a donor and a sibling has a one in four chance of being a good match.”

Tara shook her head. “You’re asking a lot of her,” she said. “That decision will just have to wait.”

“I want to do it,” Grace said. She looked at her mother. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t, honey. You don’t have to do anything.”

“I want to,” she repeated.

Please let her,
I thought.

I saw Tara weaken. A lawyer would say to wait, I was sure of it, but this was different. This was two mothers. Two daughters.

“All right.” Tara gave in. “If you’re sure.”

57

Emerson

Jenny’s ice cream sundae had melted into a mocha-colored soup in her bowl and she pushed the soft liquid around with her spoon. My salad was practically untouched. We sat by the window in the cafeteria, surrounded by the chatter of doctors and nurses and visitors, but Jenny and I were in our own little bubble.

Maybe we should have gone with Tara to the girl’s room. I told myself that giving them privacy had been for the best. It was going to be confusing enough as it was; adding two more people to the mix could only make it messier. But I’d been glad Tara hadn’t wanted us with her. I didn’t think I could stand to watch her go through it all. I felt so guilty. Guilty for not telling her the moment I suspected that Grace was Anna Knightly’s child. Guilty that it was my daughter who hurt Grace with the truth. And I was tormented by the thought of how Tara felt at that moment.

I could imagine the conversation between Tara and Anna Knightly. Two mothers fighting over their daughter. Of course, Grace would always be Tara’s. Anything else was unthinkable. Yet Anna’s baby had been stolen from her. How could she not demand at least a part of that child’s life back?

Jenny pushed her bowl of ice cream soup away from her. “I am so sorry, Mom,” she said once again. I’d lost track of how many times she’d apologized.

“Look,” I said, moving my salad aside, “you screwed up by not telling me you overheard. I screwed up by not talking to Tara right away. But none of that would change the fact that Noelle did what she did and now everyone has to deal with the consequences. That’s what you and I need to focus on. Helping Tara and Grace handle what’s coming.”

“I don’t want her to move away and be part of some other family and live up here and—”

“I doubt any of that will happen,” I said. “Grace is sixteen and she’ll have a say in any decision. And you don’t think Tara would say, ‘Oh, here, she’s yours,’ do you?”

“What would you do if you were in Tara’s place right now?” Jenny asked.

I blew out a breath and looked up at the ceiling. “I would give the other woman—Anna Knightly—I would give her my deepest sympathy, but I would do just what I hope Tara is doing. Get Grace out of here and let the lawyers handle everything.” I was worried, though. Jenny and I had debated over getting something to eat because we thought Tara would call us within minutes. Now, nearly forty minutes had passed. What was taking so long?

“How would you feel in
Grace’s
shoes right now?” I asked.

She gnawed on her lip for a moment. “I’d want to get to know the people,” she said. “My other family. But I wouldn’t want them to try to take me away from you and Dad. I absolutely wouldn’t let them. And I’d feel sad that your baby died that way. That’s so awful. Poor Tara.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s unbearable to think about.”

“I just can’t stand how Grace must be feeling right now.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I looked her in the eye. “They’re really going to need our support, Jen,” I said.

“I think we should have gone with Tara to the room,” she said.

My daughter was braver than I was. “You want to be with Grace?” I asked.

Jenny nodded.

“All right.” I got to my feet. “Let’s go find them.”

58

Grace

Mom was being her usual self, chatting up Haley and Anna as we waited on the couch in Haley’s room for a nurse to come swab my cheek. Someone had brought in another chair so everyone could sit and I was still cold, even though I knew the temperature in the room was fine. I had the blue blanket wrapped around my shoulders again and it felt like armor. I didn’t know what to hope for. If I was a match, I was afraid of what would happen to me next. If I wasn’t a match, Haley could die. When I thought about it that way, I knew I had no choice.

My mother was just as nervous as I was. She was talking a mile a minute, which wasn’t all that unusual, and within ten minutes she knew everything there was to know about the neighborhood where Haley and Anna lived in Virginia and what Haley liked in school and all that typical stuff. She was acting like the always-on Tara Vincent, but her eyes were darting between Haley and Anna and the open door of the room and she had moved her chair right next to mine and hadn’t stopped touching me since she showed up at the hospital. I was glad of that.
I belong to her,
I wanted to say to Anna.
I know I’m your baby and it wasn’t fair someone ripped me off, but my mom raised me and I belong to her, okay?

The whole time my mother was talking, Anna and Haley kept staring at me like I was a peach in the grocery store and they were trying to decide if they wanted to take me home with them or not. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Everyone please stop staring at me,” I said. Mom moved closer to me on the sofa, but Anna and Haley just laughed.

“We can’t help it,” Anna said.

“I would so seriously like some of that hair,” Haley said.

I wondered if I could give her some of it. Have it cut and donate it to the Locks of Love program so they could make it into a wig for her. Could you specify who you wanted to receive your hair?

While I was thinking about how I could donate my hair, Emerson and Jenny suddenly showed up in the doorway.

“Knock, knock,” Emerson said. “We just wanted to see how Tara and Grace are doing.”

Anna stood from her chair like someone had poked her with a stick, and Haley suddenly sat up straight in her bed.

“Holy shit,” she said.

Then everything turned upside down.

59

Noelle

Wilmington, North Carolina
1994

She’d had taxing deliveries before, scary deliveries where a birth she’d expected to proceed without complications suddenly turned into something that made her pulse race. But Tara’s delivery of Grace would forever remain one of the most frightening experiences of her professional life.

Tara had called early that morning to tell her that her contractions had started, so Noelle didn’t take her morning cocktail of drugs for her back pain. Instead, she put pinches of turmeric between her cheek and gum and made a thermos of red clover tea, without much hope of relief. There was something to be said for herbal remedies in childbirth, but they were failing her when it came to her back. Her pain was worse than ever these days. The only thing that helped were the drugs, and she blessed the inventors of Percocet and Valium.

With each hour of Tara’s long, grueling labor, Noelle’s back seized harder until she occasionally had to mask her tears of pain, not wanting Tara or Sam to worry about her when they needed to be concentrating on themselves. Her own concentration was split between the task at hand and the pills she had in her purse.
Just one Percocet,
she thought to herself over and over again.
Just enough to take the edge off
. But she fought the need for the drugs and kept on going.

Around four in the afternoon, Emerson called to say that her water had broken and a neighbor was driving her to the hospital. Ted was in California at a Realtors’ convention and she was facing labor alone. She cried on the phone, and Noelle felt torn in two.

“Ted’s on his way to the airport,” Emerson said. “He’ll get the first flight out, but he has to change planes in Chicago. It’s going to take him forever to get here.”

“You’re in excellent hands, honey,” Noelle assured her. Without Ted or her two closest friends by her side, Emerson would suffer emotionally, but medically, she’d get good care and that was what mattered most right now. Everything had to go well for her. After the two lost babies, Noelle couldn’t bear the thought of Emerson having anything less than the smooth delivery of her healthy baby girl.

She kept in touch with her by phone, comforting her and cheering her on as she labored. Once Tara gave birth and she was certain both mother and baby were stable, she’d talk to Tara and Sam about bringing in the postpartum doula she’d been working with for the past couple of years. Tara knew Clare Briggs and would be comfortable with her. Then, if Emerson was still in labor, Noelle could run over to the hospital to be with her.

Late that night, while Ted was stuck in Chicago and Tara was fighting fear and pain, Noelle called the hospital and learned that Emerson was having an emergency C-section. Oh, how she wanted to be there to hold her sister’s hand! She kept in touch with the hospital—she knew nearly every nurse in the unit—and she breathed a sigh of relief when Jenny was born and both the baby and Emerson were reported to be healthy and stable.

She poured apple juice for Tara, Sam and herself, and between Tara’s contractions they toasted the birth of Jenny McGarrity Stiles. Sam alone knew her relationship to that baby. He squeezed her hand as she sat on the edge of their bed. Noelle couldn’t wait to see her niece, but first she had a baby to deliver.

Midwifery was always physically taxing. The bending, leaning, twisting and supporting were part of the process, and for the first time Noelle wasn’t sure she’d make it through. The red-hot torture in her lower back wouldn’t let up and she once again toyed with the idea of taking one of her pills.
Just one.
She could almost hear them calling to her from her bag in the kitchen. She’d be more effective if she could move with less pain, she told herself, but she knew better. She knew the danger. This delivery was too risky. She was dealing now with posterior arrest: the baby was stuck and she knew her only option might be to transport Tara to the hospital for Pitocin to strengthen her contractions. Tara wept at the idea. “Your healthy baby’s more important than a home birth,” Noelle said, but she assured her they would try everything else she could think of first. She wanted to separate Tara’s actual need for transport from her own longing to be in the hospital near Emerson and her baby, as well as her desire to have this delivery behind her so she could take something for her back. She and Sam worked together, physically supporting Tara, changing her position on the bed, walking her around the room, giving her tincture of cohosh and other herbs—in short, doing everything she could think of to help the little girl who was trying to be born.