PART 3: Behind the Iron Gates
The Whitmore house sat behind black iron gates at the top of Ridgeview Drive. I left Lily with my neighbor, Rosa, and drove my rattling old sedan up a driveway lined with clipped hedges, feeling more out of place with every turn of the wheels.
Owen opened the front door before I knocked. He didn’t say much. He only led me down a long hallway to a glass sunroom overlooking a garden.
Catherine sat straight-backed in a white armchair, pearls at her ears, a cream silk blouse buttoned to her throat. But she looked older than she had the day before, as if she hadn’t slept either.
I didn’t sit. I laid the check on the glass table between us. "Explain this."
She stared at it for a long time. "She never cashed it," she whispered. "No," I said. "She didn’t."
"Seven years ago, Michael brought Jenna home for dinner," Catherine began. "She waited tables at the diner by the lake and took night classes at the community college. Michael had just been offered a position in Boston. I thought he was throwing his whole future away on a girl with an apron."
"Two months later, she came here alone. She told me she was pregnant. She hadn’t told Michael yet. She wanted my advice, because he was about to leave for Boston and she didn’t want to trap him."
My throat was dry. "And what did you advise?"
Catherine closed her eyes. "I told her Michael already knew. I told her he’d asked me to handle it." Her voice broke. "I told her he didn’t want the baby. Or her."
My legs gave out, and I sank into the chair across from her. Owen stood by the window with his hands pressed against his mouth.
"You lied to her," I said. Catherine nodded. "And then I wrote that check."
I thought of my daughter, twenty-four and frightened, sitting in this very room and believing that the man she loved had sent his mother to buy her silence. I thought of every time she’d said, "He’s not in the picture, Mom." She hadn’t been hiding him. She’d been protecting herself from the same pain over and over again.
I took the unmailed envelope from my purse and opened it with trembling fingers. I read it aloud. "Dear Michael, your mother told me you don’t want us. I don’t believe her. I can’t. But if it’s true, I won’t ever ask you for anything. I just wanted you to know you have a child, and I’ll make sure she knows she was loved."
Catherine pressed a hand to her chest. Owen turned away. "And what did you tell Michael?" I asked.
"That Jenna had taken my money and left," Catherine said. "He didn’t believe me. He searched for months. Finally, one of Jenna’s friends told him she’d moved to Millbrook. That was January. There was an ice storm. I begged him to wait until morning."
Owen spoke from the window, his voice raw. "He called me from the road. He said, ‘I’m going to find her, and I’m going to ask her to marry me. I’ve got Grandma’s ring.’ His car went off Route 9, forty miles from your door. They found the ring in his coat pocket."
I stared at them both. Forty miles. My daughter had been sitting in my kitchen that night, maybe folding tiny baby clothes, never knowing the man she loved was driving through ice to reach her.
"Jenna never knew he was coming," I whispered.
Catherine was weeping openly now. "I’ve lived with that every day for six years. I took my son’s chance at happiness. I took your daughter’s. I took that little girl’s father." She looked at me. "I’m not asking you to pity me."
"Good," I said, my voice shaking with fury. "Because I don’t."
She nodded slowly. Then she reached for a leather folder on the side table and placed it on top of the check. "I met with my attorney yesterday afternoon," she said.
My heart began to pound. Here it was. The lawyers. The money. The thing I’d feared since the moment I saw that Mercedes at my curb.
With cold fingers, I opened the folder. The first line, typed in bold capital letters, read: IN THE MATTER OF THE GUARDIANSHIP OF LILY HALE, A MINOR.
