Chapter 1 Molly
Molly
Think of someone you’ve lost.
You think you would trade anything to hear their voice again, or to see their smile. To hold them, or be held by them, just one more time.
You’d be wrong.
I wish I could tell you what happened after my father looked at Georgia, the receptionist from my ob--gyn’s office, and called her by my dead mother’s name—-but I can’t.
She swallowed and said, “Hello, Adam.” That’s all I remember before I got so dizzy that I swayed, and my father’s attention swung to me.
He settled me into a chair, and before we knew it, ladies from the baby shower had gathered round in concern.
By the time I was no longer seeing stars and my father helped me out of the chair, Georgia was gone.
By now, Jesse had come to find us in the back of the restaurant. For once, I am not annoyed, but grateful to see him hovering.
“How . . . how is she here?” my father keeps stammering. “How is she alive?”
“Is he having a stroke?” Jesse asks me. He turns to my father. “Are you having a stroke?”
“He saw . . . he thinks . . .” I am having no more success at putting this into words.
“My wife was just here,” my father says. “My dead wife.”
Jesse puts out his hands, as if he can stop all this nonsense. I watch his police training kick in as he tries to wrangle this confusion. “What happened?”
I take a deep breath. “Georgia—-the receptionist from Dr. Mantillard’s office? She was here, at a baby shower.” I jerk my chin in the direction of the women. “I was saying hello to her when my dad came to get me. And he recognized her. Not as Georgia, but as . . . as Eloise.”
My father still looks haunted. How could he not?
“Are you sure . . . And where is she?” Jesse asks.
“I am absolutely sure it was her,” my father says.
I look up at Jesse. “I don’t know where she went. I felt like I was going to faint and I—-”
“You what?” he growls. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine—-”
“You buried the lede, baby.” I can tell it’s taking everything in his power to not sweep me up in his arms and carry me out of the restaurant like a caveman. “Adam, I’m gonna take her home. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.”
But as we leave the Italian restaurant—-as my father stumbles back to our table to pay the bill and to break the news to Evie—-
I wonder: what is there to figure out?
My mother, who I thought was dead, is not.
Which means she wasn’t tragically taken from me.
She left.
In the car on the way home, Jesse turns to me. “Are we going to talk about this?”
I shake my head.
“Okay,” he says softly, and he reaches across the console to squeeze my hand.
My mind cycles. How did I go to—-God, how many appointments—-and never realize that Georgia—-Eloise—-dammit, my mother—-was the person checking me in? How did she sit next to me all fucking night at a hospital while I panicked about losing this baby and not tell me the truth?
How long has she been here?
What made her come back?
What made her leave?
The memories I had of my mother are like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, blurry and unrecognizable. In an instant, I feel like my whole life has become a lie.
I’m so engrossed in the loop of my thoughts that we are back home before I realize it. Inside, I sink down on the couch, still wearing Jesse’s parka. He kneels in front of me, tugging it from my body like I’m a child.
My eyes focus on him. “How could she, Jesse?”
His hands settle on my thighs. “When you go to the scene of a crime,” he says carefully, “what it looks like, at first, is rarely what actually happened.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe give her a chance to explain,” he offers.
I look to him, incredulous. “You’re on her side?”
“There aren’t sides here. There’s just . . . a really confusing knot that you need to unravel. Do you think your father knew she wasn’t dead?”
“You saw his face. You can’t fake that kind of shock.”
Jesse considers this. “What about Evie?”
Oh my God. Evie. Would she be overjoyed to learn that her best friend isn’t dead? Or gutted by the fact that she pretended to be?
I shake off the thought and shove myself off the couch, pushing past Jesse. “I’m going to take a shower.”
I wrap my arms around my thickened waist so that he doesn’t notice my hands are shaking. But doing that only makes me more aware of this baby, who isn’t even a person yet, and whom I could not imagine abandoning.
“You’re not taking a shower,” Jesse replies. “You nearly passed out in that restaurant. Either I help you in the bath or I get in the shower with you.”
“I’m not a child!”
But I was. And she left me.
He’s there to catch me when the tears come, when I curl like a fiddlehead against his chest. Jesse waits until the worst of the storm is over, and then he tugs me by the hand into the bathroom and starts running the water.
He peels me out of my clothing, his palm skimming gently over my belly like a whispered hello before he helps me into the tub.
I hug my knees to my chest as best I can while Jesse soaps up a loofah.
“I used to imagine what it would be like if I could see my mother just one more time,” I say ruefully. “This was not what I pictured.”
Jesse makes a noncommittal sound. He tilts up my chin and pours water over my hair, then massages shampoo into it.
He’s so good at this—-taking care of someone.
He’s going to be an incredible father. But had I known him when he was a teenager, starting fires and mouthing off, I would never have believed that he’d grow up to be so responsible.
People change, though.
Maybe that is what happened to Georgia. (It physically hurts to think of her as my mother. The words stick in my throat.) Maybe whoever she was twenty--five years ago is different from whoever she is now, embarking on her apology tour.
Except, she didn’t apologize. At every single doctor’s appointment where I did not recognize her, she did recognize me.
I have to believe this, because the alternative—-that she reappeared in my own ob--gyn’s office by coincidence—-is too far--fetched.
Also, she was not surprised when she said hello to my father.
But if she returned on purpose, why would she not have told me the truth months ago?
And if she knew I was here, why did she wait so long to come back?
When someone dies, we say: I lost my father. I lost my husband. I lost my best friend. But very few of us actually lose the people we love. We know exactly where they are—-in a grave, an urn, on the table of a medical school. My mother, I lost her. In the truest sense of the word.
I need to talk to her.
I don’t want to talk to her.
It was bad enough thinking that she was a martyr. It’s a thousand times worse thinking that she was a willing participant in her disappearance and her exile.
I don’t feel relief. I feel rage.
“Up you go,” Jesse says, after he’s scrubbed me from head to toe. He wraps a towel around me and then his face appears beside mine, in the mirror. “You need to talk to her,” he says gently. “And you need to talk to your dad and Evie.”
“But not tonight,” I say.
“Not tonight,” he concedes.
He picks up a brush, but I take it from his hand. On autopilot I thread hair through my fingers. I reach for the red ribbon that I have woven into my French braid for over a decade, a subtle tribute to my mother.
But then I let it fall.
Jesse leans against the open bathroom door, enveloped in steam. He looks as if he is fighting the urge to say something. Finally, he sighs. “Someone coming back from the dead? A lot of people would give anything for that,” he says. “Including me.”
My father calls the next day, but I don’t answer the phone. So does Evie. They both text Jesse to make sure I’m all right, but I am not ready to speak to anyone yet. Dr. Mantillard’s office is closed for the upcoming holiday, so I can’t contact Georgia.
Not that I want to.
Jesse watches me, wary. “How long are you going to shut everyone out, Molly?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I reply breezily. “Twenty--five years?”
I pretend that today is no different from yesterday, that my mother is still presumed dead and buried. I check in with Toby, who was on call last night. I’ve never been so frustrated by a state of relative calm in Rhode Island when I am desperate for a distraction. I fire off a few quick emails.
Then I see an email from the producer of the 60 Minutes interview I have completely forgotten about, saying that the piece is scheduled to run the first Sunday in January.
I think about all of Adelaide McCann’s questions concerning my mother and 9/11 and whether my career is a direct result of losing a parent during a public tragedy.
I hit reply. Joke’s on you, I type. Since none of that applies anymore. I sit back, the cursor hovering.
With a sigh, I delete both my response and the original email.
I pull up a CDC report to read, but I can’t focus.
Where has she been all this time?
Maybe I should make bread. That’s relaxing, isn’t it?
I am googling sourdough starter when Jesse walks back into the condo (when did he even leave?), sorting through our mail. He separates the bills, putting the junk mail and flyers in the recycle bin. Then he holds out an envelope. “For you,” he says.
There is no stamp. This was slipped through the mail slot, not delivered by post.
I’ve had enough training on anthrax for all my hackles to rise. Yet even before I break the seal, I know the envelope contains a different kind of poison.
Dear Molly,
This wasn’t the way I wanted you to find out.
I realize, now, there was not really any way that would not have been shocking or upsetting, although I was trying to find one. Maybe that’s why I did not say anything sooner, when you came into Dr. Mantillard’s office.
There is so much I want to say to you—-but not in a letter. I know you think this was a choice I made—-and it was—-but I did it for you. Not to you. And although I do not deserve any of your grace, I hope that you will call me and give me a chance to explain.