Part Seven: Gwen
I asked to meet her on Wednesday.
This was not obvious or expected. My sister said she didn’t think I should. My friend Carolyn said it wouldn’t help, that it would make things harder, that what I needed was distance and time. The detective seemed mildly surprised but made no recommendation.
I needed to see her.
Not for the reason people assumed — not for confrontation, not to assess the competition, not for any of the reasons that jealousy produced meetings. I needed to see her because she was the other end of the thing I was trying to understand, and I could not understand it from only one end.
She came to the hospital — we met in a family room off the corridor of the neonatal ward, where Benjamin had been admitted for observation and warming and monitoring. She was thin in the way of a woman who had recently given birth, with the specific exhaustion of someone who had been doing too many things at once for too long. She had dark circles and clean hair and the expression of someone who was holding themselves together through sheer decision.
She was, I noticed, younger than me. Not dramatically. Five years, perhaps six.
She was not what I had constructed in my mind, which was what I had expected — the people we constructed in our minds never were.
“I’m sorry,” she said, before I had spoken. “I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry I came to your house. I’m sorry I didn’t — I should have done this differently. I should have—”
“You needed help,” I said.
She stopped.
“You needed help, and you didn’t have it, and you were three days postpartum and desperate,” I said. “I understand why you did what you did.”
She looked at me carefully.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “About you. I knew he was married, but I didn’t know — I didn’t know enough. I didn’t understand what I was part of.” A pause. “That’s not an excuse. I’m not saying it’s not my fault. I’m saying I was also lied to.”
“I know,” I said.
We sat in the family room and talked for an hour. Not about Daniel — not primarily. About Benjamin, and what she needed, and what was going to happen. She had a mother who was going to help. She had a job she could return to. She had a legal case that the detective had outlined — not just abandonment but the specific circumstances of it, which constituted endangerment.
Before I left, she said: “Your daughter—”
“Talia.”
“Talia.” She said the name carefully. “She saved him. If she hadn’t found him when she did—”
“I know,” I said.
She looked at me with the expression of someone who wanted to say something and was measuring whether it was appropriate.
“She sounds like someone who pays attention,” she said finally.
“She always has,” I said.
