‘How do you feel, ma’am?’ asked the reporter.
Hannah nodded. ‘Grateful. Very grateful,’ she whispered, although, in truth, she felt sick to her stomach, her heart was hammering, and she wished that the ground would open up and swallow her, and Adam and Sydney, so that they vanished completely, and no one could ever find them again.
THREE
Eighteen months earlier
Hannah Wickes stuck her trowel into the soil and gently waggled it until she had a shovel full of dirt. ‘Now,’ she said to the toddler who crouched beside her, ‘have you got your flower?’
Sydney nodded gravely and lifted the little cup-shaped mound of dirt with one blooming red impatiens in the middle of it. She handed it to her grandmother.
‘No, you do it,’ said Hannah, smiling. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand as Sydney carefully placed the seedling into the hole Hannah had dug.
‘Now we pat,’ said Hannah.
Sydney obediently pushed soil into the hole around the seedling, and patted dirt down on it with her tiny palms.
‘Good,’ said Hannah. ‘And a little drink . . .’ She gave the toddler the plastic watering can, and Sydney poured out a stream of water on the seedling.
‘Hold up,’ said Hannah, laughing, and tilting the spout of the watering can up into the air. ‘Not too much.’
Sydney nodded gravely, then rose from her crouch and looked up at the deck which ran along the back of the house. ‘Mama!’ she cried. ‘Look what I did. I planted a patient.’
‘Impatiens,’ said Hannah, smiling, and kissing the top of the child’s head.
Hannah’s daughter, Lisa, was seated at the table on the deck, her pale skin shielded by the umbrella anchored in the center of the table. Her dark hair, a mass of unruly curls, was tied back with a shoelace. Her laptop was open in front of her, and she was making notes on a pad beside it. Lisa lifted her head and gazed at her daughter through her narrow, black-rimmed glasses. ‘That’s wonderful, Sydney,’ she said.
‘Come and look,’ Sydney insisted.
‘I will. Just give me a minute,’ said Lisa.
Hannah spoke softly to the child. ‘Mommy’s got a lot of work to do. You have to study a lot if you want to be a doctor.’
Lisa continued to peer at the computer screen and jot down notes. ‘It’s all right, Mother,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’ll come and look. I just need to finish this chapter.’
‘It’s all right, honey. You finish your chapter.’
‘It’s not a problem,’ said Lisa. She got up from the chair, slipped her feet back into her rubber thongs and walked down to the little flower garden. She crouched down beside Sydney and said, ‘Let’s see.’
Sydney pointed to the newly planted flower with a pudgy finger. ‘Look. I did that.’
Lisa nodded approvingly. ‘You’re doing just great,’ she said. ‘Mommy loves you.’
Sydney beamed. ‘You can plant one,’ she said.
Lisa frowned. ‘Not right now, darlin’,’ she said. ‘Can’t take the time.’ Sydney’s dark eyes lost their gleam. Hannah was tempted to urge her daughter to take a break and plant a flower. But she knew better than to interfere. Lisa was nothing if not focused on her work. It wasn’t as if she wasted a lot of time on herself. She wore no make-up and was indifferently dressed, as usual, in a baggy shirt and cut-off jeans, which did nothing to enhance her slender frame. When they had offered to get her contact lenses, Lisa said she didn’t have time to go for appointments and make the necessary adjustments. Glasses were fine.
Climbing back up the steps to the deck, Lisa turned and blew Sydney a kiss. Sydney hesitated, and then blew her a kiss back. Cheerfully the child crouched down again and renewed her attack on the dirt while Lisa resumed her place at the table beneath the umbrella. Hannah looked from one to the other, thinking that, as a child, Lisa would never have been appeased as easily as Sydney was.
Lisa had always been headstrong, and daring to the point of recklessness. At the age of eighteen she announced that she was pregnant. She refused to give up the baby, or name the father. Hannah feared that someone older at college had taken advantage of her daughter, who, thanks to her intellect, was always attending school with people much older than herself. Lisa was somewhat plain, and she had had very little experience with boys. But Lisa insisted that she had not been assaulted, and that she wanted to keep her baby. Adam said that if Lisa insisted on being careless she was going to have to take care of Sydney on her own. Hannah had reminded him gently that she had become pregnant with Lisa when she was only eighteen; Adam fumed that it was different for them. They were ready, even at that young age, to accept responsibility.
But Hannah knew that Adam was really more disappointed than angry. He had had boundless hopes for his only child. At the age of four, Lisa could multiply and divide, and her IQ tested off the charts. With her pregnancy, Adam saw all Lisa’s prospects vanishing into a fog of single motherhood. He needn’t have worried. In fact, despite her pregnancy, and the birth of Sydney, Lisa barely skipped a beat. She, who had finished high school at sixteen, was able to get through a pre-med program in college in three years, despite her pregnancy, and was accepted to medical school at Vanderbilt, near their home in Nashville. She had grants and scholarships but her hours were long and erratic and she still needed help from her parents. Hannah put Sydney in daycare several hours a day while she worked part time at
