The Midwife's Confession

“Does Haley know about her?”

“Of course.” He was not used to openness. To hard truths. It had taken him two months to get up the courage to mention Lily. “I told her very early,” I said. “She couldn’t have been more than five or six. Bryan, she’s an unusual girl.”

“I know that,” he said with a smile. “She’s fantastic.”

“Maybe it was because she had to go through all the medical stuff when she was so small, I don’t know, but she’s always been different from other kids her age. She even helps me look for Lily.”

He looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“She knows the sort of work the Missing Children’s Bureau does. She goes through the leads we get, looking for anything that might be related to Lily. She hangs out at the office with me sometimes. She and I have gone back to Wilmington twice, looking for Lily. She and I share that gigantic hole in our hearts. She even has a website she made herself called ‘Sibs of the Missing.’”

“You’re kidding. She made it herself?”

I nodded. “She’s a computer geek, just like her father.”

He leaned his head back, looking up at the sky. “I love her,” he said. “All these years, I sent money and Christmas presents and all that, but I didn’t love her. I didn’t feel anything except guilt for being a shitty father. Now I love her and…I can honestly say I’ve never felt like this before. This kind of emotion. The moment I first saw her in the hospital room, bald and puking—” he looked at me, his smile both confused and tender “—I wanted to take her place,” he said. “Give her my health. Let me be the one sick in that bed.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know that feeling.”

“I’m so pissed at myself.”

I didn’t want to hear any more regrets. The need to hear them, years in the making, had evaporated. “Let’s put the past behind us,” I said. “You’re here now. Now you’re earning that medal for bravery.”

22

Emerson

Wilmington, North Carolina

Hot!’s kitchen was far cleaner than the one I had at home. That was because the health department never showed up at my house, but they could sashay into the cafe at any moment. We had a ninety-nine rating and I was aiming for a hundred, which was why I was making Jenny clean the ice machine and scour every inch of the countertop before I’d let her go for the evening.

“I’m going to the library straight from here, Jenny,” I said, checking the refrigerator to make sure we had enough half-and-half for the morning, “so there’s a container of leftover butternut squash chili in here for dinner tonight. Will you take it home and heat it up for you and Dad?”

Jenny looked up from the counter. “You’re not coming home for dinner?” She acted like I’d said I planned to fly to the moon, but I couldn’t blame her. Except for the occasional girls’ night out with Tara, I was always home for dinner. Tonight, though, I had other plans. Unfortunately, I needed to lie about them.

“I need to do some research on heirloom recipes I want to add to the lunch menu,” I said. “I can’t get to them on Google, but the library has access.” My vagueness paid off. Jenny’s eyes glazed over at the word research. It had worked with Ted, too, when I gave him the same story. I’d lost Ted with heirloom. I had the feeling this wouldn’t be the last lie I told my family for a while. Not until I had things figured out. “So is that okay with you?” I took off my apron and hung it from the hook near the rear door. “You’ll take care of dinner?”

“I guess.” She pumped the spray bottle in an arc across the counter and began rubbing. “But I wanted to talk to you about my job. I’d like to work fewer hours.”

I laughed. “Wouldn’t we all,” I said.

She didn’t look at me and I wondered if she expected me to give her grief about it. I honestly didn’t need her that much right now. My manager, Sandra, and my other waitress and one cook could take care of things most of the time. Jenny needed the money, though, and she was a big help on the days she worked.

“I’m serious.” She moved the toaster to clean behind it. I tried to remember the last time I’d moved our toaster at home. “I’m doing more of the babies stuff because of Noelle being—” she shrugged “—you know.”

“And you want more time with Devon.”

Jenny smiled down at the counter, red-cheeked and busted. “I don’t have much free time right now,” she said.

She was smitten by this guy. I was so caught up in my own life, I’d barely noticed what was going on in hers.

“Less hours means less money in your pocket,” I said, putting away the bowls that had been air-drying in the dish rack.

“I know.”

“You work out a new schedule with Sandra and we’ll see how it looks,” I said. Jenny was a good kid. She was so much like me. Easygoing, with plenty of friends. Maybe not the most ambitious person in the world, but frankly, I thought it was more important to be liked than to be successful. I knew you could find experts who would argue with that, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be liked. So sue me. Jenny seemed to be well-liked by every person—child or adult—who knew her. I’d rather raise a child like that than one who’d stab another person in the back to get ahead.

The few boys she’d dated all seemed like nice kids, too.

She hadn’t been serious with any of them—at least, not as far as I knew—and that had been fine. Maybe Devon was different. I liked when they went out as a foursome with Grace and Cleve over the summer. Safety in numbers, though maybe I was kidding myself about that.

“How’s Grace holding up?” I asked as I closed the cabinet door.