Grace looked at her mother. “I’m not…?”
It took Tara a moment to shake her head. “I don’t think so.” She touched the other woman’s shoulder. “Em,” she said, “is this possible? What do you remember?”
“I had her in the hospital,” the woman said again. “It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous.”
“When is your birthday?” I asked Jenny.
“August 31,” she whispered.
“You’re my Lily, Jenny. I’m certain of it.”
“Stop it!” the woman snapped at me, tugging Jenny close to her, and I knew I’d said too much, too fast, but I hadn’t been able to help myself.
The girl pulled free of her mother and fled down the hallway. Grace took off after her. Tara grabbed the woman’s arm to stop her from following them. “Let Grace,” she said.
The woman looked terrified. “I don’t understand what’s going on!”
“She’s Lily,” Haley said. “She’s so Lily.”
Tara looked at me, her hands wrapped around the woman’s forearm. “Let me talk to Emerson,” she said.
I didn’t want them to leave. I was afraid Lily would vanish once more into thin air. But what could I do?
“All right,” I said. Emerson had already turned away, disappearing into the hallway, getting away from me as quickly as she could. “Please don’t leave, though,” I added, but they were gone and only Haley heard my words.
61
Noelle
She awakened with a great start and couldn’t immediately figure out where she was. The odd, dim lighting in the room disoriented her. She blinked hard, trying to focus. The small sink. The bassinet. She turned her head to the right and saw the bed where Emerson slept. She felt something hard against her thigh through her skirt and glanced down to see a bottle next to her on the seat of the recliner. She’d been feeding the baby. What was her name? Grace? They’d wanted to name her Noelle. No, this baby wasn’t Grace. It was Emerson’s child. Jennifer. Jenny. She had the vaguest memory of getting up to return the baby to the bassinet, but the bassinet was empty. She tried to think. Had Jill come in to take the baby from her arms? She drew in a long slow breath, worried she’d feel dizzy once she got to her feet. She pressed her hands on the seat of the chair to keep her balance, but as she started to stand, her glance fell to the floor at her feet and she saw the baby who had slipped from her tired arms down the silky fabric of her skirt.
She couldn’t breathe. She bent over too quickly to reach for the infant and fell from the chair to the floor, landing hard on her hip. Grabbing the baby, she pulled her onto her lap but knew right away she was too late. Too impossibly late. The baby’s head was at an unnatural angle, her lips already blue and lifeless.
Noelle stared at the infant, eyes wide, horror filling her chest. Y
She pulled herself to her feet, one hand on the edge of the sink. She felt as though she was wailing, but the sound was caught inside her chest and couldn’t come out. She picked up the baby and placed her in the bassinet, then stood stock-still, trying to clear her head. Trying to think.
How would she get Jill away? Quietly, she crossed the room and opened the door to the nurses’ station to find it empty. Jill wasn’t there, but the baby was still in the bassinet. Brown hair. Six and a half pounds. No time to waste. No time to think.
Noelle lifted the infant into her arms. She grabbed the thin chart attached to the bassinet and slipped back into Emerson’s room. Her hands shook wildly as she placed the motherless baby next to Emerson’s child in the bassinet. Then she wrapped a flannel blanket around the lifeless infant, Emerson’s little Jenny, and slipped her gently into her huge leather purse.
The wristbands! She reached into her purse and worked the band from the baby’s wrist, then exchanged it for the one worn by the infant in the bassinet, but not before she noticed the name:
She stole out of the hospital, passing a couple of nurses and one obstetrician she knew, but they barely acknowledged her as they raced down the hall. The unit was an uncalm place tonight. As uncalm as she felt inside. As uncalm as she would feel for the rest of her life.
It was three-thirty in the morning by the time she got home and by then she was operating on sheer adrenaline. Almost without thinking, she found the shovel in her shed. She selected the corner of her yard farthest from the house and, in the darkness, she dug and dug and dug, the earth soft from August rains. She made the hole deep and narrow. She wrapped the baby in her favorite skirt, because it was beautiful and because she needed to sacrifice something she loved. She lay flat on the ground and carefully lowered the baby deep into the ground, then she shoveled the earth over her, finally letting her tears come.
When she was finished she sat on the ground above the baby, above Emerson’s Jenny, not moving even when a misty rain started to fall. She sat there until the sky began to lighten with strands of pink and lemon and lavender, like a bouquet of flowers for a baby girl. That was what she would do this morning, she thought. She’d go to the garden shop and ask them what plants would bloom into a lush blanket of pastel blossoms that even a stranger would not be able to look at without thinking,
62
Tara
We found Grace and Jenny in the little room at the end of the hall. They sat on the floor, leaning against one of
