Chương 6
The sheer domestic absurdity of it almost defeated her.
“You’re hiding me from my own father.”
“I am trying to get thirty minutes before he knows what we’re doing.”
“What are we doing?”
“Finding something.”
Mara’s anger shifted.
“What?”
“Just come.”
Elaine disconnected.
Mara drove to her parents’ house instead of her own.
The decision felt like betrayal even though she could not have said whom she was betraying.
The Ellisons lived in the same brick colonial where Mara and Noah had grown up, on a street where the trees had become enormous and the children belonged to people Mara still pictured as teenagers.
Elaine opened the side door before Mara reached it.
She wore black slacks and a cream blouse, fully dressed despite having nowhere to go.
Her lipstick was missing.
That frightened Mara too.
“Inside.”
Mara entered the mudroom.
The house smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and toast.
Richard’s gardening shoes sat beneath the bench, dirt dried in the treads.
Mara had the sudden sensation that she was breaking into her own childhood.
Elaine locked the door.
“You talked to Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“How much did he tell you?”
“Enough to know you’ve both been lying to me since birth.”
Elaine flinched.
Mara had expected denial.
The flinch made the anger harder to sustain.
“Why did you call him three weeks ago?”
“I needed to know whether his DNA was in the database.”
“Why?”
Elaine looked toward the hallway.
“Come upstairs.”
“Mom.”
“Please.”
They went to the second floor.
Mara passed the framed school photographs still hanging beside the stairs.
Noah at eight with a missing front tooth.
Mara at ten in a sweater she had hated.
Richard had refused to replace those pictures with adult ones because, he said, nobody improved after fifth grade.
Elaine entered the bedroom she shared with him and closed the door.
Then she knelt beside the dresser.
“What are you doing?”
“Help me move this.”
Mara stared.
The dresser was solid cherry and nearly five feet long.
“You want to rearrange furniture now?”
“Just pull.”
They dragged it several inches from the wall.
Dust appeared beneath it along with a lost button and one of Richard’s collar stays.
Elaine crouched and reached behind the dresser.
Her fingers found a narrow strip of molding.
She pulled.
A shallow panel opened in the wall.
Mara stared at her.
“You have a secret compartment?”
“Your father does.”
Elaine reached inside.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She searched again.
Then faster.
“What is it?”
“There was an envelope.”
Mara felt the room contract around them.
“What envelope?”
Elaine stood.
“It’s gone.”
“What was in it?”
Elaine looked at her daughter for a long moment.
“A hospital bracelet.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Mara frowned.
“You kept your own hospital bracelet hidden behind a dresser?”
“It wasn’t mine.”
“You just said—”
“It had my name on it because newborn bracelets used the mother’s identification.”
Mara stopped.
Elaine’s face had gone gray.
“What baby?”
Her mother sat on the edge of the bed.
For several seconds she looked not frightened but exhausted, as if this conversation had been waiting inside her for decades and had finally become too heavy to carry standing up.
“I had a son,” she said.
“Before you.”
Mara did not sit.
“With Dad?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“They told us he died.”
The room became very quiet.
Mara heard a lawn mower somewhere outside.
“When?”
“Two days after he was born.”
“And you think he didn’t?”
“I didn’t then.”
“But you do now.”
Elaine pressed her palms together.
“Three months ago, I received a letter.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did it say?”
“That my son had lived.”
Mara stared at her.
“That’s why you bought the DNA tests.”
“Yes.”
“At Christmas?”
“I bought yours at Christmas.”
“That was nine months ago.”
“I know.”
“Then the letter wasn’t three months ago.”
Elaine’s eyes closed.
Mara felt something cold move through her.
“You’re still lying.”
“I’m trying to tell this in an order that makes sense.”
“Try chronological.”
“The first letter came last November.”
“Before Christmas.”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
“Only that the baby we buried wasn’t ours.”
Mara sat down because her knees had begun to feel unreliable.
“You buried a baby?”
“There was a funeral.”
Elaine’s voice thinned.
“We saw a coffin.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“They told us there had been complications after death.”
Mara pressed her hand to her forehead.
“And Dad believed that?”
“We were twenty-four.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
Elaine looked toward the open space behind the dresser.
“Richard believed the hospital.”
“You didn’t?”
“I did for a long time.”
“Until the letter.”
“Yes.”
“So you bought DNA kits for everyone.”
“Not everyone.”
Mara stared at her.
“Noah.”
Elaine nodded.
“I replaced his kit before Christmas morning.”
“With what?”
“An unused kit I’d already registered under a different account.”
“Why?”
“I needed yours in the database.”
“Because of Thomas.”
“No.”
The answer came sharply.
Mara’s stomach tightened.
“Then why mine?”
Elaine looked at her.
“Because whoever wrote the letter said the easiest way to find my son was through his sister.”
Mara’s phone vibrated.
Richard again.
This time it was a photograph.
Her father stood in Mara’s kitchen beside the oak boards, frowning theatrically at the empty room.
The caption read: Abandoned by my own family.
Then another message appeared.
Daniel just pulled in.
Should I wait for you two before I start cutting?
Mara showed the screen to Elaine.
Her mother stood so quickly the mattress shifted.
“You have to call Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Tell him not to let Richard leave.”
Mara stared at her.
“Five minutes ago you didn’t want Dad knowing I was involved.”
“I didn’t know the envelope was gone.”
“What was in it besides the bracelet?”
Elaine looked toward the open compartment.
“A photograph.”
“Of the baby?”
“No.”
“Then of who?”
Elaine swallowed.
“Richard.”
Mara felt her pulse in her throat.
“Doing what?”
“Holding a baby.”
“Your baby?”
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
