“Upstairs,” she said.
“Get on down here! Your sister’s here!”
“I’ll be a minute. I’ve just got some ice on my leg.”
Agnes said, “What happened?”
“Her leg’s all swole up since she took a fall yesterday,” Dad said.
Agnes yelled, “Stay there! I’m coming up.”
A convoy of us ascended the stairs. Agnes first, then Dad. I stepped aside to let Sarita go ahead of me, and then I went up last.
We found Mom propped up on her bed, on top of the covers, a couple of pillows tucked behind her, one pant leg pulled up above her knee, a thin towel on her leg immediately under the ice pack. There was a half-empty glass of water and an open container of Advil on the bedside table, and a Lisa Gardner paperback, spine cracked, pages-down on the bedspread.
As one person after another filed in, her eyes went wide.
“What is all this?” she said. Her face flushed red with embarrassment, particularly at the sight of Sarita, a total stranger.
I introduced her, and added, “This woman took the baby to Marla’s house.”
“What?” Mom said. “So Marla really was telling the truth? Oh, thank God.” She looked at her sister apologetically. “Not that I ever doubted her.”
Agnes said, “It’s okay. It’s taken a long time for me to figure out what happened, too. I didn’t want to believe Marla had killed that woman and taken her baby, but I knew, the moment I heard where the baby had come from, that it wasn’t just some random thing that had happened.”
“I don’t understand,” Mom said.
Sarita said, “Would you like me to look at your leg?”
“What?”
“You should prop it up some, get a pillow under it.”
“Sarita works at Davidson Place,” I said. “She helps people.”
While Sarita tended to her, Mom pressing her back to the headboard as though reluctant to accept help from this stranger, she said again, “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Agnes. What do you mean, it wasn’t random?”
Agnes appeared to be struggling, so I offered some help. “Because that baby really is Marla’s. Matthew is Marla’s son.”
Mom’s jaw dropped an inch. Agnes looked at me, then back at her sister. “He’s right.” Then, to me: “You found out more than I thought you would. Faster, too.”
“But you never wanted me to. If you’d chased me off, like Dr. Sturgess tried to do, I’d have wondered why you didn’t want my help. That about right?”
Agnes closed her eyes for half a second, as though in pain, and nodded. “I kept hoping the police wouldn’t really find enough to charge her, but that . . . has changed.”
“I heard.”
“I still don’t . . .” Mom’s voice trailed off. “This isn’t making any sense. Don, is this making any sense to you? Do you know about this?”
“Do you want me to get your keys out of the car?” Dad asked Agnes.
Sarita moved out of the way when Agnes indicated she wanted to sit on the edge of the bed.
“I could never be like you,” Agnes said to Mom.
“Be like me how?”
“More . . . accepting.”
“Agnes, please tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ve done a horrible, horrible thing,” my aunt said. “You have no idea.”
Mom slid a hand forward to take hold of her sister’s. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I can tell you maybe. The question is whether I can tell Marla. I don’t know that I can.”
Sarita, Dad, and I stood around the bed, barely breathing, wondering what Agnes was about to confess. I wanted to call the police station again, try to get Duckworth, but I couldn’t tear myself away from this.
She said to Mom, “You’ve always been able to roll with things better than I could. I have a need to . . . control things.”
Credit to all of us—Sarita excepted, who did not know Agnes the way we did—for not snickering.
“It’s what’s made you successful,” Mom told her. “You have to control things. You have a lot of responsibility. You’ve got the lives of hundreds, even thousands of people in your hands.”
“I failed her,” she said.
“Failed . . . Marla?” Mom asked.
“She was determined to have the baby. When that boy got her pregnant, she was determined to have it. I couldn’t talk her out of it. I tried to get her to end the pregnancy. Told her this boy wasn’t suitable husband material, even if he was willing to step up and do the right thing. She had no way to support herself other than this Internet thing she was doing.”
Agnes took a moment to breathe, then continued.