my shoulder and tried reaching into it for the folder but my hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t get a grip on it and I gave up. “She—the midwife—was apologizing for stealing your baby from the hospital the night I was born.”
The woman wasn’t following me and I didn’t blame her. She said nothing, a sharp line between her eyebrows. Her chest was rising and falling so fast I thought she might faint. I licked my lips and kept going. “She dropped my mother’s—the woman who I thought was my mother—she dropped her baby and killed it.”
I felt a knot tighten in my chest. It was all too much, and suddenly I missed my mother desperately. I wanted her to hold me. The mother who knew me. Not the stranger in front of me whose smile was totally gone, whose eyes told me she thought I was lying. Coming here had been a mistake. An impulsive crazy mistake and the smells of the hospital rushed over me like a wave in the ocean and I knew I was going to pass out. I leaned against the wall to keep from falling over. I was so far from home and my mother. It seemed like I’d have to cross half the universe to get back to her.
“Is this…has someone put you up to this?” the woman asked. “Is this some sort of cruel joke?”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was thick and I’d never felt so alone and so lonely. I shook my head.
The woman took my arm. “Come with me,” she said.
49
Tara
We stood in the kitchen, Emerson hunting on my laptop for the number of the Missing Children’s Bureau while I held the phone, ready to dial. Jenny stood near the island, biting her lip. I wanted to yell at both of them to get the hell out of my house, but I needed their help to find Grace. I didn’t look at them. I was holding on tight to my anger.
“Here’s the number,” Emerson said. “Oh, it’s a hotline number, not the office number.” She rattled it off and I dialed. I explained to the man who answered that I was trying to reach the bureau’s Alexandria office. I was careful what I said, although Emerson kept trying to put words in my mouth. “Shut up!” I said to her finally, then I apologized to the man and somehow convinced him to give me the office number. When I called there, though, I was dumped to voice mail.
“I need to speak with Anna Knightly,” I said. “Please have her—have
Emerson was trying to reach Ian again, but I knew he was unreachable when he was on the golf course. “Maybe we should call the police,” Emerson said after leaving another message for Ian. “They can be on the lookout for Grace’s car. They could have someone go to the Missing Children’s Bureau and wait for her to show up.”
“I’m going up there,” I said.
“You don’t know where she is, though,” Emerson said. “It’s better to stay here.”
“I’m going.” I grabbed my purse and headed for the garage.
“I’ll drive you.” Emerson ran after me. “You’re too upset to drive.”
I spun around. “I don’t want you near me!”
“You need me,” Emerson said, “and Grace is going to need Jenny. We’re driving you.”
It was as if we were flying instead of driving. I sat in the passenger seat, clutching my phone on my lap, so filled with fear and anger and anxiety that my limbs trembled. Behind me in the backseat, Jenny kept apologizing. Emerson, too. But I tuned them out, and for a couple of hours I didn’t speak at all except to leave my own message on Ian’s voice mail, telling him where we were and what was going on. Emerson kept trying to get me to talk to her, but all I could think of was Grace, who had to be feeling alone and upset and scared. I
I didn’t want to think about Anna Knightly. When I’d been trying to figure out who had her child, I’d felt sympathy for her. She’d been a stranger to me. A name in a letter. I’d thought about what it would feel like to realize your baby was missing. Now I knew how it felt firsthand. Anna Knightly had another daughter, I thought. Let her be satisfied with that one.
I wished Grace were in the car with me right that instant. I’d hold her and tell her that no matter how poor a job I was doing at being her mother, I loved her. I’d do anything for her. Whether she wanted me to or not, I’d hold her so tight that no one would be able to pry her from my arms. Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough. I wanted that chance with my daughter.
“Do either of you need to stop?” Emerson asked when the traffic slowed near Richmond.
“No,” I answered for both of us. I didn’t care if Jenny needed to stop. Jenny could burst for all I cared. “Just keep driving.”
Two wildly opposing emotions were at war inside me. Hatred toward Noelle that was spilling over to Emerson and Jenny, regardless of how irrational that might have been. And love for my daughter. “Oh, Grace,” I said out loud, although I hadn’t meant to.
Emerson reached over to rest her hand on my forearm. “She’ll be all right,” she said. “It will be all right.”
I turned my face away from her.
“It was my fault,” Jenny said from behind me. There were tears in her voice and I wondered how long she’d been crying back there.
There was plenty of blame to go around. Emerson and Ian for keeping this from me. Jenny for stupidly taking what she’d learned to Grace. Myself, for not knowing how to mother my daughter. For not being the sort of mom she could turn to when she learned this devastating truth. She would have turned to Sam. I could blame Mattie Cafferty, who took my husband from me and left me to cope alone. And, of course, I could blame Noelle for her criminal, unconscionable act. And yet…if Noelle hadn’t done what she did, I wouldn’t have my Grace.
My phone rang and I lifted it to my ear. “This is Tara Vincent.” My words spilled over one another.
“This is Elaine Meyers from the Missing Children’s Bureau, returning your call.”
