Chương 3
“Yes.”
“When?”
“In a little bit.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always say that when it’s long.”
Emily closed her eyes.
Daniel touched Noah’s back.
“Come on.”
They climbed the stairs.
Noah looked over his shoulder twice.
When the door shut, Emily waited until she heard their footsteps cross the kitchen.
Then she threw the envelope across the basement.
It hit Margaret in the chest and fell to the floor.
“How dare you.”
Margaret flinched.
“How dare you bring that into my house.”
“I didn’t bring it.”
“You kept it.”
“Yes.”
“For seven years?”
“Yes.”
“You wrote his name on it.”
“So I would know whose it was.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I’m not.”
Emily took two steps away because if she remained close to Margaret, she was afraid she might grab her.
The old suitcase sat open between them.
Inside it was a version of Noah’s life Emily did not recognize.
Baby clothes.
Photographs.
Hospital documents.
A cheap plastic rattle.
A pair of tiny socks.
A folded newspaper clipping.
And letters.
More than one.
“Who is it from?”
Margaret looked at her.
Emily’s voice dropped.
“Say his name.”
“Michael Reeves.”
The name landed strangely because Emily had spent years refusing to speak it.
She walked to the utility sink and gripped its edge.
Michael Reeves.
Twenty-nine when Emily met him.
A contractor with a battered pickup truck, a lazy grin, and a talent for making irresponsibility look like spontaneity. He had been charming in the way certain men became charming when nobody depended on them.
Emily had depended on him anyway.
She was twenty-six.
Her father had been dead less than a year.
She had been lonely without admitting it.
Michael told her she worried too much.
She mistook that for freedom.
Six months later she was pregnant.
Three months after that Michael was gone.
Not vanished.
Gone was too romantic.
He simply chose not to stay.
Emily had called him fourteen times over three days. On the fifteenth attempt, his number no longer worked.
She never called again.
At least that was the story she had told Daniel.
It was mostly true.
“Why does he have a letter to Noah?”
Margaret bent and retrieved the envelope.
“Because he came back.”
Emily looked at her.
“When?”
“When Noah was four months old.”
The room shifted under her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I would know.”
“You were exhausted. You were back at work. You were barely sleeping.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“He came to my house.”
Emily stared.
“Why yours?”
“He was afraid you’d call the police.”
“For what?”
Margaret did not answer quickly enough.
Emily felt cold.
“For what?”
“He had been arrested.”
“That narrows it down.”
“Possession.”
Emily laughed sharply.
“Of course.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing because it’s funny.”
“He said he’d gotten clean.”
“And you believed him?”
“No.”
“Good. One intelligent decision.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
“That tone does not improve what happened.”
“Then what happened?”
“He asked to see Noah.”
Emily stared at her.
“And?”
“I said no.”
Some pressure in Emily’s chest eased.
Only slightly.
Margaret looked toward the suitcase.
“He left the letter.”
“Why didn’t you throw it away?”
“Because it wasn’t mine.”
“It was addressed to my infant son.”
“Yes.”
“My son.”
“Yes.”
“You hid it from me.”
“Yes.”
The answer was so plain that Emily almost lost control.
She kicked the side of the suitcase.
It tipped, spilling photographs across the carpet.
Margaret recoiled.
Emily stared at what she had done.
One photograph landed faceup near her shoe.
Michael stood beside a white hospital wall holding newborn Noah.
Emily stopped breathing.
She bent.
Picked it up.
“No.”
Margaret did not speak.
Emily examined the image.
Michael looked thinner than she remembered. His hair was longer. His eyes were red. Noah was wrapped in the green hospital blanket now lying in the suitcase.
The photograph could not exist.
Michael had left before Noah was born.
Emily had labored for sixteen hours with Margaret beside her. Daniel did not enter her life until Noah was nearly two.
“When was this taken?”
Margaret’s lips parted.
Emily moved closer.
“When?”
“The day after he was born.”
“No.”
“Emily—”
“No.”
“I called Michael.”
The photograph slipped from Emily’s fingers.
Margaret’s shoulders sagged.
“I thought he deserved to know.”
Emily sat down hard on the bottom stair.
For several seconds she could not speak.
The basement door opened.
Daniel came halfway down.
“Noah’s watching a movie.”
Emily did not look at him.
“Go back upstairs.”
“Em.”
“Please.”
Something in her voice stopped him.
He looked at Margaret.
“What happened?”
Emily picked up the photograph and held it out.
Daniel descended.
He took it.
His eyes moved across the image.
Then to Margaret.
“You said he never met Noah.”
Margaret nodded once.
“I lied.”
Daniel sat beside Emily.
Not touching her.
He understood her well enough not to.
Emily stared at the old wooden train on the carpet.
“My mother invited the man who abandoned me while I was pregnant into the hospital room while I was sleeping.”
“I didn’t invite him into your room.”
Margaret’s voice was small.
Emily looked at her.
“Where was I?”
“Asleep.”
“Where was Noah?”
“In the nursery.”
“You took him?”
“I asked the nurse.”
“You asked a nurse to let my ex-boyfriend hold my newborn?”
“No. I told her his father had arrived.”
“Oh, that makes it better.”
“It was different then.”
“It was seven years ago, not 1954.”
Margaret looked away.
Daniel placed the photograph on his knee.
“Did Emily know Michael was listed as the father?”
“He wasn’t on the birth certificate.”
“Then how did the hospital—”
“I told them.”
Emily stood.
“No.”
She pointed at Margaret.
“You do not get to keep adding pieces like this.”
“I’m answering your questions.”
“You made decisions about my child without me.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to hospital staff.”
“Yes.”
“You let Michael hold him.”
“Yes.”
“You kept photographs.”
“Yes.”
“And then he came back four months later.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
May you like
Margaret’s expression changed.
Emily saw it.
