“Oh please, hardly anyone comes in here. Not even Mrs. Masciarelli, not without her keys. God, I can count and I can spell, so I think I can help.”
There are a lot of crates, and what could it hurt now, really? In for a penny, in for a pound, or whatever Lindy says. And as we search, I’m glad to have her here. Soon my jeans are smeared with filthy prints after wiping my dusty hands on my pants, and despite the cool in the basement, sweat beads up under my arms from climbing shelves and monkeying between the stacks. Jessa has a general idea where the oldest batches of patient folders are, and after what seems like hours but probably isn’t, we’ve found the 1998 files between us. Anxious now, I stumble onto the S’s first. Wow, are there plenty. The first crate alone only goes up to Scollay. In the second I find the many Scotts and thumb through dozens of them with shaking hands, then do it again.
“Is it there?” Jessa asks, her chin nearly on my shoulder, her familiar cinnamon-gum breath in my face.
“Hold on.” I grimace and flip through the folders more slowly this time. Scott, Rebecca. Scott, Samantha. Scott, Shawn. . . . Scott, Spencer. Scott, Thomas. “It’s not in here.”
“What? Look again.”
“I looked again.” I start to riffle through a fourth time, but stop myself. It’s not here. Panicking won’t help. I shove the crate back and think.
“Maybe you have the wrong name?” Jessa pipes up.
“I’m not stupid—” I start to snap, then pause. Because Miles Faye, handsome forensic pathologist, would ask himself, What do you know?
So what do you know, Imogene?
I suppose I don’t know for certain that my mother hasn’t been to Good Shepherd in the past seven years for a broken arm or something, that Sidonie Scott’s file isn’t active and up there in the HIS department with poor, clueless, keyless Mrs. Masciarelli. But if it is, what can I do about it? Breaking into a dusty storage room in the basement is one thing; breaking into the records department of a busy hospital, another. So I set that worry aside for the moment.
I know my mother’s name is Sidonie, more or less admitted by Dad and confirmed by the dedication. I know she gave birth in this hospital in 1998, confirmed by . . . well, my birth. That’s about it. And even so . . .
“I don’t know her maiden name,” I say. “She might have used her maiden name, right? Your mom does. People do that.”
Jessa frowns. “Haven’t you seen your birth certificate or anything? Like when you got your license?”
“No. Dad came with me and handled all that.”
“And you never asked?”
“Of course I asked. Dad’s . . . sensitive about stuff like that.” Asking to hear my bedtime story was one thing. He never minded telling me stories. But pestering Dad for details about Mom, especially in the bad times, was wise only if I wanted to watch him wallow for days in a pit of sadness and empty beer cans and late-night infomercials.
“Okay.” She blows out a breath that stirs years of dust into the air. “So we look for Sidney Something? Like that won’t take forever.”
“Sid-o-nie,” I correct. There can’t be many of them, but the boxes for 1998 fill five shelves, and we definitely don’t have forever. I hop off the stacks I’m straddling, zip open my bag in the corner, and extract A Time to Chill. I turn to the dedication page, as if the information I’m looking for will magically appear in the text. Surprise! It doesn’t. I flip through the whole book quickly. This is the best clue I have. It led me to Good Shepherd Hospital. It led me to the storage room in the basement. Maybe her last name is here somewhere. I turn it over in my hands, read the back cover.
“Find the F’s,” I say. “All of them for 1998.”
Jessa digs right in through the cobwebs, and I’m sort of shocked by her cooperation. I climb back up and between us we zero in on the first box of F’s. There are fewer than the S’s, thank god, and before long I land on a thin file that drains the blood from my head and pounds it right into my heart.
Faye, Sidonie.
SIX
“But we have to go to the Friendly Toast,” Jessa says, examining herself in the mirror in the second-floor bathroom half an hour later.
“Just go without me. I’ll take the train home.”
“Ugh, by yourself? Last time I took it this guy sat down and clipped his fingernails right next to me. He got skin cells in my umbrella.”
“I’ve done it lots of times before.” I’ve always ridden with Dad, but I don’t say so. I wouldn’t mind taking the commuter rail, would love the chance to read my mother’s file while the train winds toward Sugarbrook between so many lakes, you’d think Massachusetts was just a thin film of land over endless, bottomless water. It’s a cold two-mile walk from the train and bus station to my house on Cedar Lane, but that might be better than calling Lindy for a ride.
“But I already told my brother you’re coming. . . .” Jessa smiles, playing her best card. Chad Price hardly cares if I show, much to my perpetual disappointment, and the last thing I’m in the mood for is clumsy flirting over all-day breakfast burritos.