“You have to get rid of it!” Libby screamed so loud that I was afraid she’d wake up the other girls.
“But where should I take him?” I asked.
“I don’t care! Someplace no one will see you. You have to go now, while it’s still night. Go out the back door, past the laundry and the power station, to the lake. No one will see you there.”
“And just . . . leave him?”
Libby looked like she was going to yell again but instead she put her hand on my arm and spoke softly. “It would be the kindest thing. You can see he’s not . . . right, can’t you? He came too early. He won’t live—or if he does he’ll be stunted and ugly.”
I looked down at the baby. He was very small, his face pinched and wrinkled, his skin nearly transparent, as if it hadn’t quite finished forming. He had come too soon. It was only seven months since I had been with Cal . . .
“Are you sure?” I asked Libby.
“Yes,” she said. She squeezed my arm. “Go. Take it down to the lake. Leave him . . . someplace pretty. And then everything will be the way it was. We’ll go to Europe. We’ll lay a wreath for him on Keats’s grave in Rome and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s in Florence. You’ll paint pictures for him and I’ll write for him. Whatever we make will be for him. But if you don’t go now, there will be no paintings and no books.”
I didn’t know what to do. Find someone who will know, a voice said inside my head. The voice sounded like Libby, even though Libby was sitting right in front of me and she wasn’t saying anything like that. But maybe it was what she really wanted. Once she had said to me that a true friend helped you when you didn’t even know you needed help.
And then I knew what I had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Run, Laurel told me. Fight.
But how could I do either with Chloe in my lap? Where could I run and take Chloe with me?
Edith buries her head in Sky’s lap. Sky strokes her hair. “It will be all right,” she tells her. “Dr. Hancock will take care of you and you can come visit again.”
“But what about the baby?” Edith wails.
“The baby will be fine,” Sky says. “I’ll make sure.”
Edith nods, appeased, but I’m not. I can’t hand Chloe over to Peter. Billie stands, waiting to take her just as she must have taken Peter from Sky all those years ago. How easy she made it for Sky to give up her own baby!
I get up. Both of the orderlies take a step toward me. Do they think I am going to dash my baby’s brains out on the flagstone? What kind of monster do they think I am?
One who abandoned her baby, Laurel provides helpfully.
I ignore her and walk toward Sky. I don’t want it to be easy for her this time. I want her to know what it feels like to give up a baby. I look down at Chloe, hold her blue gaze for a moment, and then hand her to Sky. Sky stiffens and presses herself back in her chair, recoiling from Chloe’s touch, but then Edith takes both of Sky’s arms and pulls them around Chloe. Sky resists a moment longer and then softens, shaping herself to Chloe—her grandchild.
“I’m holding you responsible for her care until I can come back for her,” I say. “And I’m holding you responsible for telling the truth.”
Sky looks up at me, her eyes wide and vulnerable. This is a Sky I haven’t seen before. For the first time I think she really understands what it feels like to give up a child. She nods once and before I can change my mind—before I melt into a puddle of blubbering goo on the flagstone—I turn and let the orderlies lead me from the terrace.
THE ORDERLIES LOAD Edith and me into the back of a van that has a Plexiglas divider, so we can’t jump the driver, and a locked back door. One of the orderlies sits with us; the other drives. Dr. Hancock sits in the passenger seat. For all her acquiescence on the terrace, Edith is trembling now. “Let me sit next to her,” I ask the orderly. He shrugs his consent and I move next to Edith and take her hand. “It’s okay,” I tell her.
Edith pats my hand, as if I’m the one in need of reassurance. “I’m just glad we found your baby. That’s what matters. Libby will look after her. Only . . .” A flicker of doubt crosses her face. “Only I didn’t like that man. He reminded me of Solomon.”
“Peter?” I ask, wondering what Peter could possibly have in common with the bearded Old Testament judge. “I’m not sure I like him much anymore either, but he does love Chloe. You can tell by the way he looks at her.”
Edith nods. “Yes,” she says, but she still looks uncertain. “But some kinds of love are as dangerous as hate.”
The words chill me and we ride the rest of the way in silence. I think about kinds of love that are dangerous: sexual passions that lead to envy, possessiveness, and jealousy. Protective love that leads to blindness. Sky’s father thinking it was better for her to be sent away. Peter’s father painting his beloved in pieces because she had left him. Loving a child so much you can’t bear the thought of anything happening to her so you wall off your heart from loving her. Hadn’t I done that with Chloe? I was so afraid of the things that could happen to her, of all the horrible pictures that popped into my head, that I had closed my eyes to her. Yes, it’s scary
