The Midwife's Confession

She reached forward to lift his sunglasses to his forehead. “I can’t see your eyes,” she said. “I need to see them.”

He squinted, studying her for a moment. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head.

“Let’s go inside.” He handed her his book, then stood and folded his chair. He carried the chair in one hand and put his other arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the cottage.

Noelle’s throat felt tight and achy. Could she do this? Could she tell someone? Would she be able to get the words out? Should she?

Sam motioned to the rockers on the screened porch and they sat down. “Talk to me,” he said.

She opened her mouth, but her throat locked tight around her voice and she lowered her face to her hands. Sam pulled his rocker right in front of hers and she felt his hands on either side of her head, his lips against her temple. It was exactly what she needed. The comfort of a friend. The comfort of a friend she knew loved her.

She lifted her head, wiping her tears with her fingers, and Sam sat back in his rocker, unsmiling. He rested his fingertips on her bare knee as he waited for her to get her emotions under control.

“What I say now…” She shook her head. Tried again. “If I tell you something, Sam, can you promise me you’ll never tell anyone? Not even Tara. Not ever.”

He hesitated, a line of worry between his eyebrows. “Yes,” he said. “I promise.”

Noelle licked her lips. “Emerson is my half sister,” she said.

The line in his forehead deepened. “She’s…” He cocked his head to the side as though he must have misunderstood her. “What are you talking about?”

“Her mother was my mother.”

“But I’ve met your mother,” he said.

“You’ve met my adoptive mother.”

Her meaning was slowly sinking in. He rocked back in his chair. “Holy shit,” he said.

“No one knows,” she said. “Only my adoptive mother and me. And now you.”

She explained everything. The file she’d found. How she’d felt when she saw Emerson’s name on the list of students at Galloway. How her mother made her swear she would never tell any of this to a soul.

“Was it legal?” Sam asked. “Your adoption?”

“Yes, although there might have been some…I think my parents got some preferential treatment because my mother was involved in my birth. I don’t know. At this point, it really doesn’t matter.”

“So you… Shit.” His eyes widened. “You lost your biological mother this morning and you can’t tell anyone.”

She felt her lower lip tremble. “Except you.”

“Your father,” he asked. “Do you know who…?”

She looked down at her knees where his tan fingers still rested against her fair skin and shook her head. “Some boy she met at a party,” she said. “I don’t even have a name for him.” She pounded her own knee with her fist. “That was my grandfather at the door earlier!” she said. “My grandfather. And I just stood there staring at him.”

“I’m so sorry, Noelle,” Sam said.

“I don’t exist for that family. I couldn’t say anything.”

“Maybe…” Sam looked through the screens toward the beach. “You know how sometimes women who relinquish their kids for adoption later agree to have the records unsealed if both parties want to—”

“She didn’t,” Noelle said. “I’ve checked. I’m just a giant hideous reminder of a mistake she made. That’s all right. I have a great mother, so I lucked out. But I thought I’d…” Her voice broke and she struggled to go on. “I thought I’d get to meet my birth mother someday,” she said. “I thought there was time.”

Sam stood and held out his hand. “Come here,” he said, and when she stood, he closed his arms around, holding her while she cried. There were men who would be afraid of what she’d told him, she thought. Men who’d fear that level of intimacy or who’d crumble under the weight of such a monumental secret. But Sam felt like a pillar beneath her arms. Someone she could lean on. Someone she could talk to about anything. Her biggest wishes. Her worst secrets. Someone she’d be able to talk to. Always.

They spent the next three days together in the cottage. Tara would return on the evening of the third day, though Emerson would stay with her relatives in California another week. Noelle would always treasure those three days with Sam—days of a friendship that deepened by the hour. The only difficult thing was that she knew there was only one Sam and he was not hers. She’d always thought she could live without a man, easily. This man, though, she was not so sure she could live without.

By the morning of the third day, she’d found her smile again. She and Sam had cooked together, gone out to eat one night, rubbed sunscreen on each other’s backs, swam in the sea and talked and talked and talked. The words felt like an aphrodisiac to Noelle, but she fought back the desire. He was not hers. Don’t ever hurt another woman the way Doreen hurt me, her mother had told her. Never, she thought, lying in her bed at night, wishing Sam could be beside her. Never.

“I want you to know something,” he said to her the night before Tara returned. They’d built a small illegal fire on the beach and were toasting marshmallows on bamboo skewers they’d found in the cottage.

“What’s that?” Noelle nibbled the gooey white candy from the skewer.

“That I love you.” Sam had his eyes on his skewer instead of on her. “But Tara is it for me. I think you know that.” He glanced at her.