Chapter Twenty-Six
It was your baby,” I say to Sky. And then, looking at Peter, “It was you.”
Peter smiles. I haven’t seen him look so pleased with me since the minutes after I gave birth to Chloe. “You see the resemblance, don’t you? I saw it the minute I saw Sky’s picture on the back of your copy of her book.”
“You never even told me you were adopted,” I say.
He shrugs. “I stopped telling people years ago. They treated me differently, like there must have been something wrong with me for my mother to abandon me.” Sky makes a sound and Peter reaches over to touch her hand. “I don’t blame you,” he says. “I understand now that you didn’t have a choice.”
“My father made me give the baby away,” Sky says. “He was very strict and I was only nineteen.”
“What about Peter’s father?” I ask.
Sky turns pale. “He was dead.”
“But you let people think it was Edith’s!” I look down at Edith, who is playing peekaboo with Chloe, apparently oblivious to our conversation.
“Edith thought it was hers,” Sky says softly. “She took him from me after he was born. I think she meant to take him someplace safe, but she must have gotten confused and left him in the dumpster. Luckily a nurse at the clinic saw Edith leaving the baby. She realized that it wasn’t Edith’s baby and so she went to the dorm to make sure the real mother was all right. I might have bled to death if she hadn’t.”
“That was some nurse . . .” I catch Billie’s eyes and she smiles. “It was you, wasn’t it? The nurse who found the baby . . . but her name was something else.”
“Landry, my maiden name. That was my first job. Dr. Bennett helped me get it. He wanted me to keep an eye on Sky. When I saw Sky’s roommate with a newborn baby, I had a feeling it was really Sky’s. I went back to the dorm and found Sky bleeding to death. I brought Edith and Sky and the baby to Vassar Brothers Hospital, where Dr. Bennett was on call. He took care of Sky and Edith. He was able to sign off on Edith’s mental state—”
“He lied! He said Edith was the mother.”
“She thought she was the mother,” Sky says. “Confronting her with reality would have just made her more upset. He took care of her.” Sky lifts her chin defiantly. “She’s never had to pay a dime for her care at Crantham. My only regret is that I let him convince me that my baby would be taken care of as well.” She looks at Peter and that defiant chin wobbles. “If I’d known . . .”
“I should have been adopted right away,” Peter says, “a white male baby. But there were complications because I was premature. I was hospitalized for several months and then by the time I was ready for adoption, I was older than what people wanted. So I was in an orphanage for two years. Then the people who adopted me—the Pitts—weren’t well suited for parenthood, and they gave me back. You can imagine how things went for me after that.”
I’m picturing the boy in the photograph. The unsmiling face. The vacant eyes. “I’m sorry, Peter,” I say. “I wish I had known.”
“You would have thought there was something wrong with me. When you started talking about taking Chloe—” He breaks off, looks away. I see a tear well in his eye and remember how he cried when Chloe was born. I understand now; it was the first time he’d ever seen someone he was related to.
“It’s all right, darling.” This time it’s Sky who reaches across to squeeze his hand. “I think Daphne understands now. After all, Daphne, you’re a mother who’s just been reunited with her child. Imagine how I felt when Peter found me. How could I refuse his pleas for help?”
“Even if it meant locking me up under a false name?” I ask.
Sky frowns. “You came here under that false name.”
“After my friend died,” I say. “Is that okay with you? That a woman died in my house and Peter told the police she was me? Don’t you think that seems . . . suspicious?”
“I think he was confused and upset. He didn’t know where you and your friend’s baby were.”
“Until I arrived here and you could tell him I was safe. Why not clear it all up then? Why would Peter let me go on as Laurel unless it was because he and Stan needed Laurel’s money?”
“Peter doesn’t need anybody else’s money now,” Sky says. “He’s my heir.”
“Then tell the police I’m Daphne Marist. Tell them you made a mistake.”
Peter laughs. “Right. So I can go to jail and you can take Chloe from me.”
“No one’s sending you to jail, Peter,” Sky says, touching Peter’s hand again. This time I see him flinch. “I have excellent lawyers. You found a dead woman in your own bathtub. Of course you thought she was your wife. You barely saw Daphne at Crantham. It will be on Stan that she was identified as Laurel.”
“But why do any of that?” Peter snaps irritably. “Why not let things stay as they are? She’s clearly unhinged. She belongs in a mental hospital.”
Even though I thought I’d faced the worst about Peter—that he tried to kill me, that he was content for me to spend the rest of my life at Crantham—the anger in his voice shocks me. It must surprise Sky too. She looks at him as if she’s seeing him for the first time. The adoration in her eyes falters. I can’t imagine what it’s been like finding her long-lost child after all these years, seeing
