The Midwife's Confession

  I came to a nearly blank sheet of notepaper and it took me a moment to recognize it as Noelle’s stationery. There was a familiar, faint peach-basket-weave pattern to the paper. I hadn’t seen her stationery in years—did anyone still write letters by hand?—but I remembered getting the occasional note from her on this paper. There was only one line on the sheet.

  Dear Anna,

  I’ve started this letter so many times and here I am, starting it again with no idea how to tell you

  That was it. Just that line. Tell her what? Who was Anna? I sifted through the letters and cards looking for anything from an Anna. There was a card signed by an Ana. All she wrote was, “Noelle, Our family adores you! Ana.” Spelled differently from the Anna in Noelle’s letter. No surname. No date. There was a picture of a little boy attached to the card with tape, and when I pulled it off I saw a name written on the back: Paul Delaney.

  No idea how to tell you.

  The letter was old. The peach-colored paper was soft with age. What could it possibly matter now?

  I shrugged off the unfinished letter and continued making my way through the pile, nibbling my scone and sipping my Earl Grey. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the stack that I found another partial letter Noelle had written, this one typed. It was a bit crumpled. I remembered needing to flatten it when I first stacked the letters. I read it, sucking in my breath and forgetting to let it out again, and I stood so quickly, so violently, that I knocked my cup of tea to the floor.

  13

  Noelle

  UNC Wilmington

  1988

  The second day after the freshmen filled the Galloway dormitory, Noelle made her rounds, saving Room 305 for last the way she saved the blueberries for last in her fruit salad each morning because they were her favorite. She never felt anxious about those blueberries, though, and she was definitely feeling anxious about Room 305.

  In the hallway, she heard laughter coming from the room even before she neared the open doorway. They were bonding, the two girls. Emerson McGarrity and Tara Locke. She knocked on the doorjamb, peering inside. The girls were sitting on the bed closest to the window, culling through a stack of record albums. They looked up at her and she knew immediately which one was Tara—the brown-eyed blonde—and which one was Emerson. Her hair was long, dark and curly. Noelle knew exactly how hard it would be to pull a comb through that hair.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “I’m Noelle Downie, your Resident Assistant. I’m making the rounds to get to know everyone.”

  The blonde hopped to her bare feet and held out a hand. “I’m Tara,” she said.

  Noelle shook the girl’s hand, then turned her attention to Emerson, who had a stack of records in her lap and didn’t bother to get up. Noelle had to lean forward to shake her hand. “Emerson?” she asked.

  “Right.” She had a nice smile, warm and encouraging, and Noelle had a hard time letting go of her hand.

  “You want to sit?” Tara motioned to the desk chair and Noelle was surprised at her need to drop into it, her knees suddenly too soft to hold her upright.

  “I could hear you two laughing like you’ve been friends for a long time,” she said. “Did you know each other before you got here?”

  They laughed again and looked at each other. “It only feels that way,” Tara said. Of the two of them, she was clearly the more outgoing. You could see it in her bright eyes, hear it in the self-assured volume of her voice.

  “We clicked right away,” Emerson said. “I mean, we talked on the phone once over the summer about what we were bringing and everything, but we didn’t know each other at all, really.”

  “And then when we met yesterday it was like we’d known each other forever,” Tara said. “We stayed up all night talking.”

  “That’s super,” Noelle said. “Doesn’t always work out that way.” Doesn’t always last, either, she thought. She hoped it did work out for these two. Already, she wanted everything good for Emerson. Her feelings scared her; they were so visceral, so deep. She had to watch what she said and did. She could lose herself too easily here in this room. She had to treat Emerson no differently than she did the other students.

  She glanced at the dressers. Framed photographs stood on each of them. Testing her legs, she got to her feet and picked up one of a young man with dark hair so long it brushed his shoulders. He looked familiar. He had a symmetrically shaped face and that combination of blue eyes and black hair that was hard to forget. “Who’s this guy?” she looked from Emerson to Tara.

  “Sam,” Tara said. “My boyfriend. He’s here. Prelaw.” She sounded proud of him. “He lives off campus.”

  “Ah,” Noelle said. “I think I’ve seen him around. Will it be good to be closer to him?”

  “Hell, yes.” Tara laughed as though it had been a stupid question and Noelle supposed it had been, but she was not thinking as clearly as she usually did.

  “He cut his hair over the summer so he looks totally different now,” Tara said.

  Noelle picked up the photograph from the second dresser. It was the one she was really after. The blueberries in her fruit salad. A family shot. Emerson with a man and woman. The woman’s hair was short, auburn, frizzy. She had a wide, wide smile and she looked young. Mid-to late thirties, maybe. Noelle looked at Emerson. “Your parents?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh. No boyfriend, yet.” She laughed. “Gotta get me one of them.”

  “Where do they live?” She was having trouble taking her eyes off the face of the woman.

  “California.”

  “California!” Could she be wrong? “So…Wilmington is… You haven’t lived here before?” It was a weird question to ask and she knew it as soon as it left her mouth, but Emerson didn’t seem to notice.

  “Actually, I lived here until my sophomore year of high school and then my dad got transferred to Greensboro, so I finished high school there. Then in July, he got transferred to L.A., but I wanted to stay in North Carolina. I love Wilmington.”

  “And I’m from Wake Forest,” Tara volunteered.

  Noelle forced herself to put the photograph back on Emerson’s dresser. “Where did you get your name?” she asked Emerson.

  “My mother’s maiden name,” Emerson said.

  Yes, Noelle thought. Yes. “Well, tell me more about your families,” she said, sitting down again. She hadn’t asked that question of any of the other students. With them, she’d talked about their schedules, their majors, their interests. But she would make this conversation sound like her usual getting-to-know-you drill.

  Tara went first, as she’d expected her to. Her father was an accountant, her mother a homemaker, and she was an only child.

  “Me, too,” Emerson piped in.

  No, you’re not, Noelle thought to herself.

  Tara could talk a blue streak. She was a theater major, which didn’t surprise Noelle a bit. In any other circumstance, Noelle would have found her intriguing—her energy, her extroversion—but right now, she was desperate for Emerson to have her turn.

  “So you’re an only child, too,” she said, when she was finally able to shift the focus back to Emerson.

  “Yeah. My mom’s a nurse and my dad’s in sales for this big furniture company.”

  A nurse! “I’m a nursing major,” she blurted out. This is not about you, she reminded herself. Yet this conversation was entirely about her and she knew it. She glanced at the photograph of Emerson’s parents again, drawn to the woman and her wide smile. “Will they visit you here sometime, do you think, or will you be going to California to see them instead?”

  “Right now they’re gaga over California,” Emerson said, “but my grandparents live in Jacksonville, so they’ll have to come back to North Carolina sometime.”

  Noelle’s heart gave a thud. Grandparents. She thought of the manila folder she had in her room down the hall—one thing of her mother’s that she had kept for herself. “Your mother’s parents or your father’s?” Was she sounding like a nutcase? Sh
e hadn’t asked any other student about her grandparents. Why would she?

  “My mother’s,” Emerson said. “My father’s parents are both dead.”

  “I’ve got all of mine,” Tara said. “But they all live in Asheville where my parents grew up, so I hardly ever see them.”

  “That’s a shame,” Noelle said. “You’ll have to try to visit them sometime soon.” She swept her attention back to Emerson, hoping she didn’t seem as rude as she felt. “Any other interesting names in your family?” she asked. “What’s your father’s name?”

  “Plain old Frank,” Emerson said.

  Tara was frowning. Noelle could see her expression out of the corner of her eye. Tara wasn’t exactly on to her—who could possibly figure out what she was up to? But Noelle was afraid Tara was beginning to think the Resident Assistant was not all there. Yet she had the answer she needed. She had all the answers now, and she couldn’t stay in the room another second. Something was going to burst inside her if she did.

  She looked at her watch. “Whoa,” she said, “I’ve been here way too long! I need to move on but wanted to get to know you two. We’ll have a hall meeting tomorrow night with cake and games, so make sure you’re around.” She stood, holding on to the back of the desk chair because she felt wobbly. “Meantime, if you have any questions or problems, you know where my room is, right?”

  “Right,” Tara said.

  “Thanks for stopping by,” Emerson added.

  Noelle made it out the door before she had to lean against the wall to hold herself up. From Room 305, she could hear giggling, then Tara whispering to Emerson, “I think she’s totally in love with you.”

  She was not far off.

  Back in her room, she dialed Miss Wilson’s house and was relieved when her mother answered. “I need to talk to you, Mama,” she said. “Seriously talk.”

  “Are you all right?” Her mother sounded breathless as if she’d run to answer the phone.

  “I’m fine.” Noelle sat down on her bed, not fine at all. “Do you have time?”

  “Hold on.” Her mother left the phone and Noelle could hear the clank of dishes. Then she was on the line again. “I’m back. What’s wrong?”

  She’d thought about this conversation a hundred times in the past few years but had never honestly expected to have it. She hadn’t expected Emerson. She hadn’t even known that Emerson existed. Meeting her changed everything.

  Noelle drew in a breath. “When I helped you move out of our house before my freshman year, I saw one of your files. Not on purpose. It was windy that day and… It doesn’t matter. I saw it. The file on me.”

  “On you?”

  “On my birth. My adoption. I took it. The file.”

  Her mother was quiet and Noelle imagined she was trying to remember exactly what had been in that file.

  “It had the social worker’s notes about my birth mother and…everything.”

  Her mother was quiet once again. “Why are you bringing this up now?” she asked finally.

  Noelle remembered the conversation on the way back from the birth of Bea’s first baby, when her mother told her about the girl who had given birth to her and relinquished her for adoption. “You said you didn’t know who she was. Just that she was fifteen.”

  “I didn’t see any purpose in telling you her identity. Her identity was unimportant.”

  Noelle shut her eyes. “Mama,” she said, “there’s a girl here. She’s on my floor. She’s a freshman. Her name is Emerson McGarrity.”

  Her mother sighed. “Emerson was the surname of your biological mother, but I don’t see why that would make you think anything—”

  “McGarrity, Mama. Her father’s Frank McGarrity. Isn’t that name familiar to you?”

  “Should it be?”

  “It was in the social worker’s notes.” She wondered if, after all this time, her mother had simply forgotten the story. “Susan Emerson got pregnant at a party. She didn’t even know the boy’s last name. But she had a boyfriend, Frank McGarrity, and she didn’t want him to know what she’d done. Her parents didn’t want anyone to know, either, and they sent her to live with her—”

  “Her aunt.” Her mother sighed again. “Yes, I know all this, Noelle. I know it all very well, although I’d forgotten the boyfriend’s name. He wasn’t really in the picture. I don’t understand…” She suddenly gasped. “My God,” she said. “You think this girl in your dorm is her daughter? Susan Emerson’s daughter?”

  “She’s my half sister, Mama. You should see her.”

  “You can’t tell her,” her mother said quickly. “The adoption record is sealed. Her mother never wanted anyone to know.”

  “Well, the social worker’s records weren’t sealed, were they? You had them.”

  Her mother hesitated. “I was the midwife at your birth, Noelle,” she said finally. “I knew the aunt Susan stayed with. The family wanted everything kept quiet. You were placed in foster care for a couple of months while your father and I worked out the adoption. I was privy to the social-work notes. To the whole…to everything. But I never should have had them somewhere where you could stumble across them. You cannot do anything with this information, Noelle. Do you understand?”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “It was something that family needed to pretend never happened. Especially since it sounds like she wound up marrying the boyfriend—the McGarrity boy—who had no idea she had a child. It’s not your place to tamper. I know this is hard, Noelle. I know it,” she said. “When you feel a longing for a mother, call me. Please, darling. Call me. And ask to switch to another dorm. You shouldn’t be around that girl.”

  “She’s my sister,” Noelle said again.

  “You shouldn’t be around her.”

  “I want to be around her.”

  “Don’t hurt her with this, honey,” her mother said. “And don’t hurt that family. And most of all, Noelle, don’t hurt yourself. Nothing good can come from opening up the past. All right?”

  Noelle thought of the girl in Room 305 and the picture of the woman who was her mother. She thought of what she probably represented to that woman. A huge mistake. Something she needed to pretend never happened, her mother had said. Something she’d wanted to go away. She thought of the love in Emerson’s face when she talked about her family. Her mother. Her grandparents.

  “All right,” she said, tears burning her eyes, and she knew she would only be able to love her sister from afar.

  14

  Tara

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  2010

  I had a quick break between my last class of the day and the play rehearsal with the juniors. Sitting at the desk in my classroom, I slipped my day planner into my purse and noticed the message light on my phone was blinking. I only had about thirty seconds until I had to head to the auditorium, but I hit a couple of keys on the phone and listened.

  Emerson sounded frantic. “Call me right now!” she said, then added, as if an afterthought, “Nobody died. Just call me.” I frowned as I slipped the phone back into my purse. What had our lives come to that we had to add “nobody died” to our phone messages?

  I headed for the auditorium. I could put one of the students in charge for a few minutes while I returned Emerson’s call to make sure everything was okay.

  The kids were all there ahead of me when I walked into the auditorium.

  “Mrs. V!” a couple of them called out when they spotted me.

  “Hey, guys!” I called in response.

  They were hanging out in the front seats, a few of them sitting on the edge of the stage, and they were smiling at me. Grinning. These kids liked me. I wished I could say as much for my own daughter.

  Hunter had a fabulous auditorium with rows of deep purple seats that sloped in a graceful bowl toward the stage. The acoustics were to die for. But I didn’t walk toward the stage. Instead, I called one of the boys, Tyler, to join me where I stood inside the auditorium door.

 
“I need to make a quick phone call,” I told him. Tyler was a nice kid, new to the school, very artistic. He’d be one of our set designers. “Would you be in charge for a few minutes?”

  “Me?” He looked surprised.

  “Yes,” I said. Then I called to the rest of the students. “Everyone! I have to make a quick phone call, so Tyler’s going to talk to you about the set. Give him your input and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  They were quiet as I left the auditorium and I knew bedlam would likely break out the second the door shut behind me, but they’d survive for a few minutes. I’d be fast.

  I walked down the hall toward the teachers’ lounge, hoping I hadn’t set Tyler up for failure. I could have picked a different student; I knew many of the other kids better than I did him and there were some real stars among the junior actors. I was careful always to pick a different student for any special task, though. I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of having a pet. Never again.

  I’d always hated that expression “teacher’s pet.” When I was in high school, people used it to describe me because Mr. Starkey, the head of the drama club, doted on me. He saw talent and passion in me and thought he’d found a student who could help him raise the drama club above the mundane. It was probably his belief in me that fed my arrogance about my talent and led me to think that I could somehow get into Yale, which had been my dream school, without paying much attention to the rest of my studies. In retrospect, I was angry at him for making me into his prodigy. It cut me off from the other students who resented the attention he paid me and it gave me an unrealistic sense of my own ability. Just because I was the best actor in my small high school did not mean I was a good actor. I was only the cream of a lackluster crop.