“Like Edith?” I ask.
Billie looks up at me. “Edith hadn’t had a baby,” she reminds me. “Her problems were different. But Sky . . . after the doctor brought her back from Poughkeepsie, she was in an awful state. He hired me to watch her—just as he’d hired my mother to watch Sky’s mother after she gave birth. I guess postpartum depression must run in their family. Dr. Bennett thought it would be better for Sky if the baby was taken away from her, but I think that it only made it worse. When she saw Edith going up into the tower she thought she was hiding her baby from her. She ran up into the tower and attacked Edith. They both fell out the window.”
“That’s not what Sky told me,” I say.
“It’s not the way she remembered it afterward,” Billie says, “which I thought was a blessing.”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to talk about E.S. jumping from the window in front of her.”
Billie looks embarrassed. “I only told you about it to let you know it was possible to get better from postpartum depression. But now I wonder if she was ever truly herself again. Losing a child like that . . . even if she thought she didn’t want it . . . you’re never the same. She coped by writing, though she really just told the same story—her story—over and over again. When Peter found her, she thought she could make up for what she’d done, to both him and Edith. And I thought . . . well, if we were only keeping you until you were better, what harm was there?”
“I can see that,” I say, willing to forgive her because of how well she’s taken care of Chloe. But Billie isn’t ready to forgive herself. “But then she asked me to move Chloe to the bathtub during the night.”
“You did that?” I ask, both relieved it wasn’t me and horrified that she’d crept into my room at night.
Billie nods, biting her lip. “Sky said we needed you to see you were unwell, but I didn’t feel right about it, playing a trick like that. Of course I made sure Chloe was safe. I stayed right by the door to hear if she cried. I heard when you got up to get her. That’s when I realized that you were a perfectly good mother.”
“It wasn’t even my own baby,” I say, looking regretfully at Chloe. Perhaps she should be angry with me. She’s not even a year old and I’ve already abandoned her twice—once for another baby.
Billie shakes her head. “Oh, but that’s what being a good mother really means. That you have so much love for your own it spreads out to all the other children in the world who need you.” Billie looks down at Chloe with such a clear expression of love that I feel a pull inside me, like that red thread Edith wears on her wrist.
“How is Edith?” I ask.
“Sky left a trust for her care and . . .”—Billie’s voice wobbles—“she split the rest of her estate between me and Peter, which means that half will go to you. Of course, the house is gone but the land is still quite valuable and there’s plenty of money to take care of Edith. I’ve been taking care of her at my house . . . I hope you don’t mind that she’s staying with me while I watch Chloe.”
“Why would I mind?”
“Some mothers might worry if their children were living with a former mental patient.”
I start to object, but then I realize that this is exactly the kind of thing that would have thrown me into a paroxysm of dread a few months ago. But when I think about Edith, I find I don’t have the least anxiety about her being near Chloe. “I can’t think of anyone less likely to hurt Chloe,” I say, feeling a swell of gladness at the thought of Edith free of Crantham. If loving our children connects us to other children, it also connects us to all who love them, shouldn’t it? And for a moment I don’t just forgive Billie, I forgive Sky for doing what she thought she had to for her long-lost child and, picturing that little boy in the photograph, I forgive little Thomas Pitt, my husband.
AFTER BILLIE LEAVES, I ask Ben the question I’ve been dreading. “Where’s Chloë? Laurel’s Chloë. Laurel didn’t have any family . . . or many friends.”
Way to make me sound pathetic.
“I believe the Department of Social Services has taken custody of her,” Ben says. “But a lawyer has been wanting to talk to you, a pretentious prick from Scarsdale who talks like he’s got a hockey puck in his mouth. Nurse Goodnough and I have been fending him off.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?”
“Something about an amendment to Laurel’s will. Do you want to talk to him?”
I wait for Laurel to fill me in, but all she says is, Sheesh, you know I’m not the real Laurel, don’t you?
“Yes,” I tell Ben, “I think I’d better.”
LAUREL’S LAWYER IS like a parody of a John Cheever character. He has white hair, tan skin, and a lockjaw WASP accent that reminds me of Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island. I feel bad for Laurel that her welfare was entrusted to this man when her parents died. The thought that Chloë will be raised with him as her legal guardian turns me cold.
I’m grateful that Ben suggested we meet in the solarium. I would not want this man to see my rumpled hospital bed. I’ve gotten dressed for the occasion, in clothes that Ben bought for me at Target. Pull-on sweatpants and a Jets T-shirt. I can see Ronald Jones-Barrett (or JB, as he tells me to call him) eyeing them
