The doctor actually blinked. “She what?”
“Do you know anything else? Where she went after the transfer?”
“No, unfortunately. I wasn’t involved in her care once she left this hospital. I can give you copies of what I do have, though.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it more than the two words could really carry.
I didn’t go back to Harriet’s right away. I needed to hear it from Gareth’s own mouth first. I called him from the car and told him to meet me at the house. I didn’t wait for a response.
When I walked in, he was pacing the living room. “Where is she?”
“Safe.”
He ran a hand through his hair.
“So why is our daughter alive,” I asked, calm in a way that frightened even me, “when she’s supposed to be dead? Don’t lie to me. I already spoke to Dr. Okafor.”
He stopped pacing. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You shouldn’t have lied.”
You shouldn’t have lied.
He didn’t answer. I stepped closer. “Start talking, or I go straight to the police.”
He looked, suddenly, exhausted in a way I’d never once seen on him in fifteen years of marriage. “Look — she wasn’t the same.”
“What does that mean?”
“After the infection, there was damage. Cognitive delays. Behavioral issues. The doctors said she might never function at her previous level again.”
“So?” I demanded. “She was alive, Gareth.”
“You didn’t see her during recovery. She couldn’t speak clearly. She needed therapy, specialists, special schooling. It was going to cost us thousands, for years, maybe forever.”
My voice rose without my permission. “So you decided she was better off dead to me?”
“I didn’t kill her,” he snapped. “I found a family.”
“A family?”
“A couple who’d adopted before. They agreed to take her.”
“You gave her away.”
You gave her away.
He looked at me like he genuinely expected understanding. “I thought I was protecting you. You were barely functioning, Adele. I thought it was a way for us to actually move forward instead of drowning for years.”
“By pretending she was dead?”
“She wasn’t the same. She was slower. Different. I just — I couldn’t.”
“We’re done,” I said, with a finality that shocked even me as I said it.
“No, Mary — Adele, we can fix this. I’ll talk to the adoptive parents. We can undo it. She belongs with them now, they’ve had her—”
“She belongs with me.”
“You don’t understand what you’re signing up for.”
“I understand exactly what you did,” I said. “You abandoned your own daughter because she stopped being convenient for you.”
His face hardened into something I didn’t recognize. “I’m leaving now,” I told him. “Don’t follow me.”
“Don’t ruin everything over this!” he called after me as I walked out the front door.
I didn’t look back. He’d ruined everything two years earlier, in a hospital hallway, while I sat beside her bed believing every word he told me.
Part Three
When I got back to Harriet’s, Sylvie was sitting at the kitchen table eating grilled cheese. She looked up. “Mom!”
That single word steadied something in my chest. I sat across from her. “Tell me how you ended up at your school, baby.”
She hesitated. “I started remembering things last year. Your voice. My room. I told them, but they said I was confused.”
“The people you were living with?”
The people you were living with.
She nodded. “They kept me indoors mostly. Made me cook and clean a lot. I wanted to find out if what I remembered was true, so when I remembered my old school’s name, I took some money and called a cab while they were napping.”
“You did exactly the right thing.”
She leaned toward me. “You’re not sending me back, are you?”
“Never,” I said, as firmly as I’ve ever said anything in my life. “No one is taking you from me again.”
