don’t know if they’ve decided whether to move the baby with her or send her to the peds unit.”
“Prognosis on the mom?” Noelle rested a hand against the counter. She felt a little unsteady on her feet and was looking forward to sitting down in Emerson’s room.
Jill shook her head, then winced as though the motion had done nothing to help her migraine. “Doesn’t look good right now,” she said, “and the dad is deployed, do you believe it? Mom was four weeks early and traveling here on business, so there’s no family. We’ll call Ellen first thing in the morning unless they take the baby with the mother tonight.”
“Good,” Noelle said. Ellen was the social worker for the unit. “So which room is Emerson’s?”
Jill pointed to the door behind her. “She’s sleeping, but I was about to change the baby and give her a bottle. Would you like to?” She looked so hopeful, Noelle laughed.
“You really need to go home to a dark room, don’t you?” She smiled with sympathy. She knew all about pain. Her own had eased up nicely. She loved the floaty sensation that now filled her head.
Jill looked at her watch. “Can’t wait. Therese’ll be here any second.”
“I’ll take care of the Stiles baby,” Noelle said. She rested a hand on Jill’s shoulder. “Hope you get out of here soon.”
Emerson was sleeping soundly in the softly lit, quiet room. She looked beautiful and Noelle was filled with tenderness as she leaned over to kiss her forehead. “You finally have your baby, Em,” she whispered. “Your little girl.” She wished she could have been here for her. She hated that Emerson had felt alone and deserted at such a difficult time.
She set the bottle Jill had given her on the small table near the recliner. Then she scrubbed her hands at the sink and moved to the bassinet.
For a strange moment of deja vu, she felt as though she’d already seen this baby. There was the little pink hat fringed by honey-brown wisps of hair. The delicate facial features. The six and a half beautiful pounds. It took her only a fraction of a second to realize it had been the baby at Jill’s station she’d seen a moment ago, not this little one. Only a fraction of a second, but long enough to let her know she was more out of it than she’d thought.
“Hello, precious,” she whispered, beginning to change the little diaper. The baby—Jenny—began to stir, a small frown on her face, a tiny whine coming from her throat. Noelle’s eyes filled and she bit her lip to stop it from trembling.
When Jenny was clean and diapered, Noelle lifted her from the bassinet, then sat down in the recliner, the baby cradled in her arms. Jenny’s eyes were starting to blink open and closed, the frown deepening between her barely- there eyebrows, and her tiny perfect lips parted in the way Noelle knew preceded a good howl of hunger. She teased the baby’s lips with the nipple and felt a little surge of pride when Jenny started sucking without much prompting at all. The infant’s hand rested against her own, each finger a tiny sculpture in perfection. Noelle bent low to kiss her forehead. She’d held hundreds of babies in her life, and for the first time she whispered the words
60
Anna
When the girl showed up in the doorway, I took her in with one glance and that was all that was necessary for my heart to lurch toward her. My body, though, stayed frozen in shock. I stood next to Haley’s bed, one hand on her tray table, the other pressed to my chest. Tara moved toward the girl and her mother. She was speaking, words that may as well have been a foreign language. Making introductions that were no more than white noise. Haley grasped my hand where it rested on her table, pressing her fingertips into my wrist and I knew that, like me, she no longer saw Grace and Tara. She didn’t see the other woman, either. All either of us could see was the girl.
The white noise of Tara’s voice suddenly stopped and she was staring at us.
“Mom,” Haley said. “
“What’s going on?” Tara asked.
If Haley and I had seen this girl on the street on one of our trips to Wilmington, we would have chased her for blocks, for miles, until we caught up with her. We’d been looking for her for so long. We would have known we’d found her, just as we knew that now.
“Did the midwife—” I had to clear my throat “—Noelle… Did she deliver you, too?” I asked the girl, although I already knew the answer. The woman in the doorway put an arm around her, tugging her close.
“No,” she said. “Jenny was born in the hospital, delivered by an obstetrician.”
She was lying. She had to be. My legs were rubbery, but I took two steps toward the night table and picked up the photograph of Haley with the Collier cousins in the Outer Banks. I held it with both hands as if it were very fragile and carried it toward the woman and girl in the doorway.
“This is my sister-in-law and her daughters,” I said, holding it toward the woman. “Haley’s cousins. Look at them.”
I knew what they were seeing in the photograph. Four girls with round dark eyes. Nearly black hair and fair skin. Chins that receded ever so slightly. Noses a hairbreadth too wide to be beautiful. I stepped away from them, back to Haley’s side, because I was afraid I would touch the girl. I would try to pull her into my arms. Right now, I had to settle for breathing the air she was in.
Tara and Grace moved next to the woman and Tara touched the frame where it shivered in her hand. “Oh, my God, Emerson,” she said when she saw the picture. “How can this be?”
I watched all four of them stare at the photograph. I watched as the truth sank in. I held Haley’s hand, waiting for the moment I could take my other child, my firstborn daughter, into arms that had ached to hold her for sixteen years. In that girl’s beautiful dark eyes, I saw confusion and fear and it broke my heart.
“Jenny,” I said. “Is that your name? Did I get it right?” I hadn’t really heard the introductions.
The girl slowly raised her gaze from the photograph. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
