“Now don’t cry,” he said. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“You wanted to see me alone.” I reached over the bar of the bed to hold his hand.
He nodded. “I need to talk to you,” he said, “and I’m afraid this will shock you a little, honey.”
I pressed my lips together, unable to imagine where this was going. He looked worried about me. “I’m fine,” I said. “You can tell me anything.”
“You have a good friend,” he said. “Noelle Downie.”
He’d met Noelle a few times over the years, but I couldn’t imagine why he’d be talking about her now. I hadn’t mentioned her death to him. There’d seemed no reason to mention it, and something in his voice told me not to bring it up now.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Noelle is your half sister.”
I leaned toward him, frowning. A few times in recent weeks he’d said things that made no sense.
“What do you mean, Grandpa?” I asked.
“Just what I said. She’s your half sister and my granddaughter. You were never supposed to know.”
“I… Would you explain—”
“Yes.” He turned away from me, looking out the window at the manicured landscape. “I can’t die without telling you the truth about Noelle.” A tear slipped from each of his blue eyes and I reached for a tissue and blotted his cheeks. My mind scrambled to take in what he was telling me.
“Your mother had a baby when she was fifteen years old,” he said.
I sucked in my breath and sat back. “Oh, no.” I tried to picture my mother as a teenager. Discovering she was pregnant. Grappling with a decision. “You’re saying…that was Noelle?”
He licked his parched lips. “Susan was going with Frank at the time, but another boy got her pregnant. We didn’t know until she was pretty far along. Frank didn’t know. No one knew, and Susan wanted it that way. We sent her to your great-aunt Leta’s in Robeson County. She told Frank…well, I don’t remember exactly what she told Frank. That Leta was sick, I think, and she had to help out. Leta found this midwife to take care of your mother and…make the problem go away, so to speak.”
A midwife? Noelle? I felt suddenly, thoroughly confused. I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t understand how —”
“The midwife wanted a child,” he said. “She and her husband adopted the baby.”
“But…how do you know it was Noelle?” I asked. I felt a crushing pain starting low in my rib cage as the loss of one of my closest friends began to grow into a greater loss than I ever could have imagined.
“Around the time your parents moved to California, your mother began toying with the idea of finding her daughter,” he said. “She held off, though. She was afraid to tell your father the truth, even after all that time. Afraid he’d be angry she’d lied to him. But, anyway, your mother knew the midwife had the last name Downie and she knew where she lived and I guess it wasn’t that difficult to find out Noelle’s name. She found all that out right around the time she died, but we never realized you were friends with her…with Noelle…until a while after her death. We were shocked, your grandma and me, the first time you mentioned her name to us. It wasn’t such a coincidence that you both went to UNCW, but to end up friends was just…” He shook his head, then gave me a long look. “Do you think somehow she knew?” he asked.
I thought of Noelle’s will. Naming me executor. I thought of the surprise split of her money with seventy-five percent of her assets going to Jenny. I remembered the first time Tara and I met her in our dorm room. Even years later, we joked about how weird Noelle had been that day, questioning me about my family, my name, my grandparents.
“She knew.” I could barely speak. “I don’t know how she figured it out, but she knew.”
“Your grandma and I decided we’d best keep it to ourselves, since your father never knew about her. We didn’t want to do any harm to his memory of Susan. But now your father’s gone, and I’m about to leave this good earth myself, so it’s time.” He looked at me with hope in his blue eyes. I’d always loved those eyes and suddenly I saw Noelle in them. “I want to ask you a big favor, Emerson,” he said. “Only if you’re comfortable with it, okay? I know it’s a lot to ask.”
I nodded. “Anything,” I said.
“I’d like her to know the truth. I want to spend some time with her. My granddaughter.” His lips trembled in a way I couldn’t bear. “Would that be all right?”
“Oh, Grandpa.” I took his hand again, holding it between both of mine, and then I told him the part of Noelle’s story that
28
Tara
Emerson and I sat side by side on the back steps of Noelle’s house, our arms around each other’s shoulders as we looked out toward the garden. We were waiting for Suzanne to stop over to see the house in the hope that she’d become the new tenant. Her current lease wouldn’t be up until the spring, but that was fine with Emerson and Ted, who needed time to renovate.
Suzanne had been in the house many times over the years, but it had been such a mess that when Emerson asked if she was interested in renting, she’d made a face before saying, “Maybe.” She would have to look past the scarred floors and dirty walls and the empty places in the kitchen where new appliances would go. Hopefully, she’d be able to see the potential, because we wanted someone who’d loved Noelle to have her house.
We also wanted to pick Suzanne’s brain a little to see if she knew any more than we did about the waning years of Noelle’s practice. We doubted it since Suzanne herself had been stunned to learn Noelle was no longer a midwife, but it was worth a few questions.
