The Midwife's Confession

“I know. Me neither, but—”

“Why would you think I’m the baby she took?”

“I don’t understand for sure how they know it’s you, but they do,” Jenny said. “I think it’s because of this. Because of the date here.” She pulled two sheets of printer paper from the folder and showed me the top one. “See the URL at the bottom? This is from the website of the Missing Children’s Bureau. It’s just one line.” She read it out loud in her raspy voice. “‘Lily Ann Knightly was born August 29, 1994, and disappeared from a Wilmington, NC, hospital shortly after her birth.’”

I shook my head slowly. I was starting to feel nauseated.

“Were there other…I mean, could it have been a different baby Noelle delivered? Why are they so sure it’s me? Your birthday is a day closer to hers than mine.” Lily. Could that really be my name?

“But Noelle had nothing to do with me being born.”

Jenny put her arm around me. The truth was sinking in for both of us. We knew I looked nothing like my parents. I had their brown eyes, but so did half the kids in the country. Everyone always said I was quiet and smart like my father, but plenty of kids were quiet and smart. And I was nothing like my mother. Nothing.

“I can’t believe this,” I said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. “I thought you had a right to know. I didn’t know if they’d ever tell you.”

I touched the sheet of printer paper. Lily Ann Knightly. Lily. “Who am I?” I asked.

Jenny pressed her cheek to my shoulder and her arm tightened around me. “You’re Grace,” she said. “My best friend, and don’t you ever forget it.”

My mind was miles away. “I always knew I didn’t fit in. My mother… It’s like she wishes I was someone else,” I said. “That dead baby. That’s who my mother was supposed to get as her daughter.” I stood and waved my hands through the air. “Oh, my God, Jenny. A baby died. I hate Noelle. How could anyone do something like this?”

“If she never took you, you wouldn’t be my friend, though, and I can’t stand that thought.”

It was true. I couldn’t imagine my life without Jenny in it. But that felt like the only thing that was good about my life right then.

“When are they going to tell my mother?” That would be it, I thought. That would be the moment my mother cut me out of her heart. Right now, she had to love me and put up with me. No wonder she’s nothing like me, my mother would think. How could she help but think that? How could she help but wonder about how different, how perfect, her real daughter would have been?

“I think Tuesday,” Jenny said. “Don’t tell her I told you, okay? My mother would kill me for snooping. I have to get these things back before she figures out I took them.”

“What’s the other paper?” I pointed to the two sheets of printer paper on her lap.

“It’s just nothing.” Jenny stuck both sheets back in the folder.

“Let me see,” I said. Jenny was a terrible liar.

She hesitated, then reached into the folder and handed me another paper printed from the Missing Children’s Bureau website.Missing Children’s Bureau director, Anna Chester Knightly, 44, has worked for MCB for ten years. Her infant daughter, Lily, disappeared from a Wilmington, North Carolina, hospital in 1994. She has one other daughter, Haley.

I couldn’t speak. My mother? And a sister. “Where do they live?” I was finally able to ask. “Are they in Wilmington?”

“I don’t think so. She’s director of this Missing Children’s place and I don’t think that’s here.”

“She’s been looking for me,” I whispered. “All my life, she’s been looking for me.” I felt so much sympathy for her. Sympathy, and a longing so strong I felt it from the center of my heart to the ends of my fingers. “She probably thinks I’m dead.”

Jenny took the paper from my hand and put it back in the folder. “Look, I’ve got to get home,” she said. “I told my mother I was just going to the store for cough medicine. She’ll be calling me any second.”

“Leave the papers with me,” I said.

“I can’t. She’ll notice they’re gone.”

“Please, Jenny. I need them.”

“I can’t.” She started to put the folder back in the grocery bag, but I grabbed it from her and hugged it to my chest.

“Grace! I have to put them back!” she said.

“I’m keeping them. They’re mine. They’re about me.”

“Gracie. Please. She’ll kill me.” She grabbed for the folder but I turned around quickly, opened my dresser drawer and shut the file inside it.

“Grace!” She tried to get to the drawer but I held her away. “You can find the same stuff on that website,” she said. “On that Missing Children’s website.”

I held my hands out to my sides to keep her from getting to the drawer. She was right; I could find the information on the site, but I wanted those sheets of paper. Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t stand one more thing being taken away from me. “Let me keep them, Jenny,” I pleaded. I felt tears running down my cheeks. “Let them be mine.”

She stared at me a minute, then pulled me into a hug. “Make copies,” she said into my hair. “Then give them back to me tomorrow.” I wasn’t sure which one of us was crying harder.

I sat in my room for an hour after Jenny left, the two sheets of paper on my lap. I’d stared at the words on them for a long time