My daughter grabbed my shoulders and shook me, then she dropped to her knees and forced me to meet her eyes.
“Her name was Ellen? She died? Then who am I? Did you name me after her? Was she older than me? How could that be? Mr. Bell said—” She pushed away from me. “I saw the baby book. The sketches. That’s me, right? Tell me, Mom, that’s me?”
I shook my head, and the room seemed to spin ever so slightly, each movement delicate, slow, and infinite. Not with the brute force of an earthquake but with the deceptively delicate movement of butterfly wings whose fluttering could ultimately impact global events, the words I had guarded so carefully for so many years were about to reach into our world and change it forever.
“No,” I said.
Ellen stumbled and reached for the chair, and the butterfly pot fell with a crash, the blue shards scattering and beyond repair.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Emotionally and physically devastated, I tried to explain, but each word I spoke was strained and stretched as if pulled from the lips of the condemned.
“You were left on our porch with a note,” I started. Then the words came out in a rush, tumbling one after the next . . . That I hadn’t wanted to do the wrong thing . . . That I was simply trying to protect her . . .
But there was no way to explain it that didn’t sound self-serving.
“You’re not my mother?”
I stared at her and patted my heart but couldn’t speak.
“Mr. Bridger left me at your house? I was staying at his house—the one beyond Elk Ridge? My parents left me there?”
I nodded. “I tried to find Mr. Bridger, but he was already deceased by the time I located the hospital. I didn’t know where to find your other blood relatives . . . or your father or mother. I was afraid if I went to the authorities, they’d take you away and put you in foster care or . . . Meanwhile, Gran . . . and I . . . we had such emptiness in our hearts . . . and you . . . felt like a gift from God. People assumed . . . and I let them.”
“I knew I’d seen those butterfly windows before.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. It sounded more like a hiss. “I knew I remembered them despite what you said.”
“You might have. You were young, but . . . it’s possible.”
With the force of an overzealous prosecutor, she said, “Liam Bridger. The man who’s working on the porch posts. He grew up at the Bridger house. Does he know my parents?”
“He’s Mr. Bridger’s son.”
“His son,” she said as she paced.
“His only son.”
“Are you saying he’s my father?”
I looked away.
“Does Liam know?” Her voice rose higher with each word. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know the truth?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but other words entered the room before mine could.
“Do I know what?” Liam said. “What’s wrong?”
Ellen turned to look at him. Surprisingly, I felt grateful relief. Now he could take over.
“Do you have a daughter?” Ellen asked him.
His voice, still coming from behind me, sounded hesitant. “I did. Her name was Trisha. She died many years ago.”
She came up close to me and asked in a breathless voice, “What have you done?”
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Liam said, “but you shouldn’t talk that way to your mother.”
Ellen shouted, her tone ugly. “She isn’t my mother! And you . . . Why didn’t you take better care of your daughter?”
I wanted to intervene. I tried. I raised my hand, but my arm seemed to be moving within a different sphere of time from everyone and everything around me. My hand dropped back into my lap, giving up. Outside, through the window, the shadow had re-formed on the stone wall.
From a distance, Liam’s voice said, “My daughter died in a flash flood in New Mexico. She was with her mother while I was . . . away.” He paused. “Why are you asking about Trisha?”
“Because it seems like maybe she didn’t die. It seems like maybe your father left me on the Coopers’ porch fifteen years ago, and Hannah Cooper decided to keep me because she’d killed her own baby.”
“Killed . . .”
She shook her head and waved her arms. “Not killed, then. Not killed. Lost. She lost her baby. Lost, lost, lost. Like it’s misplaced. How do you misplace a baby? But I guess you can, because my parents lost me and she”—Ellen pointed at me—“got a do-over.” She stared at me. “What did you think I was? Some kind of toy? A doll you could play pretend with and never need to tell the truth?”
Ellen backed away from both of us. She was hitting her fist against her chest. Her dark eyes were flashing. “I just found out my life is a lie, and I don’t know where I belong. Do I belong anywhere?” She pointed at me. “Because it can’t be with the woman who stole me from my real family.”
Liam finally moved into my view. I saw his boots, his jeans. His T-shirt. I stopped looking when I reached his chin. I looked away, to stare at the floor. He bent over and picked up a blue glazed fragment from among the many scattered on the floor. He turned it over, examining it, then knelt in front of me.
“Hannah? What’s happening?”
His eyes were kind. They were dark. Dark and warm like the eyes of my daughter, Ellen. I tried to smile in reassurance, to touch his cheek, but nothing moved. Not my lips. Not my hands. I shook my head. That was all I could manage.
I’d handled this poorly. Back then and again today. Well intentioned, but badly done.
I turned away to look out the window again. Ellen might be lost, but so was I. Lost.
Ellen. Trisha. Hannah. Even my mother, Anne Marie, before me.
Focusing on Liam, I said, “I don’t have your father’s note. It burned in the fire.”
He frowned. “What note?”
“No, it didn’t,” Ellen said. “It was tucked into the baby book. Stuck between the pages. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.”
Not me. Gran must’ve put it there.
I put a hand on Liam’s arm and stood. My fingers hurt. They felt torn. Like when I’d dug up the concrete block and rolled it up the hill and into the cemetery to secure the grave. I examined my fingers, but there was no dirt and no blood. I faced Ellen.
“No matter how you feel right now, you are still my daughter. You will always be my daughter. What you choose to do is up to you, but it won’t change what’s here.” I touched my heart. I turned my full attention to Liam. “I owe you an apology I can never give. Your father put Trisha into my care long ago. Maybe I should’ve made different decisions, but nothing can change that now. I regret you didn’t have her in your life. She’s been a blessing to me. A gift.”
The expression on his face, though silent, shouted of shock and confusion. Soon there would be anger.
“If you choose to speak to the police,” I said, “I won’t blame you. I probably broke several laws not reporting her as abandoned. Anyway, I’ll be easy to find if they want to arrest me.”
He waved his arms. “Hold on. What are you telling me?”
“Liam, Ellen needs a place to go. She won’t want to come home with me.”