Necessary Lies (42 page)

I nodded. He’d warned me about that yesterday, so it wasn’t a surprise.

“My mother?” I asked. “Were you able to speak to her?”

“Yes, and she’s understandably very upset. I’m trying to work it out so she can see you. Be careful what you say when she’s here.”

“Will she”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“is she in trouble?”

He shook his head. “Not yet, anyway. I think she’ll be all right. I’m going to talk to her after I leave here.” He stood up.

“Thank you, Gavin,” I said, shaking his hand. Looking into his blue eyes made me remember Lois’s funeral, not even a month ago. “I’m sorry to drag you into this,” I said. “I know this has been a hard month for you. How is Brenna doing?”

“Adjusting.” His smile was sad. “She’s more resilient than I am.” He looked through the bars thoughtfully, then back at me. “I’ll never forget how she went to you after Lois’s funeral that day,” he said. “She’s a very intuitive little girl, and that moment told me something about you.”

“It did?” I asked.

He nodded. “It told me you’re someone worth fighting for,” he said.

*   *   *

After Gavin left, I lay down on my cot, my imagination once more on fire. Ivy and Henry Allen Gardiner. My God. I pictured their faces on my ceiling and smiled to myself.

Run, Ivy!
I thought.
Just keep going.

I remembered her dream of living in California with her baby’s father. They’d looked at picture books. I would imagine them there, sitting on a palm-tree-lined beach, holding hands. They would long for the baby they had to leave behind, but they would have more children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

I smiled at the ceiling, tears running from the corners of my eyes.

I’d hold on to that dream for her as long as I lived.

JUNE 22, 2011

57

Brenna

The last time I’d felt this crazed had been three years ago, when I’d planned the surprise party for Mom’s seventieth birthday. Driving back to the hotel after visiting her old house in Hayes Barton, I reminded myself that the birthday party had come off without a hitch. This was different, though. Until two days ago, I wasn’t sure if my plan for this morning was going to happen at all, but now it looked good. Very good.

I parked in the front lot of the hotel, since I wouldn’t be long. We had to get to the Eaddy Building for the hearing by nine-thirty. I stopped in my own room to run a comb through my hair, then crossed the hall and knocked on my parents’ door.

My mother opened the door, and I could tell by the lines between her eyebrows that I wasn’t the only anxious one this morning. “Was it still there?” she asked, instead of saying hello.

“It is,” I said, walking into the room, “but wow! Let me get a good look at you! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in your power suit.” I took a step back to check her out. My mother lived in yoga pants and T-shirts. I learned early on that buying her clothes or jewelry was pointless. She’d prefer a good book or a new smartphone or dinner out at one of the ethnic restaurants she and Daddy could walk to in their Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

“You’re right,” she said. “I haven’t worn this suit in years. How does it look?” She turned to give me a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the awesomely tailored pantsuit. With the blond bob she’d worn her whole life, she always had a sort of timeless look about her.

“You look seriously amazing, Mom,” I said, and I meant it. I was a size fourteen and I sometimes wished I had her genes. “How do you stay that skinny, the way you eat?”

“Tell me about the house!” She was getting impatient.

“Were you able to see the closet?” Daddy walked into the room from the bathroom, straightening his tie. At eighty-three, he had the slightest limp from a knee replacement that hadn’t gone according to plan and that had scared Mom and me into a stupor, but other than that, he was as fit as my mother and I was glad. So many of my friends had lost their parents already or were busy investigating nursing homes. Mom and Dad claimed they were just lucky, but I knew it was more than that. It was their marriage. It was the way they took care of each other.

“I have a picture,” I said, pulling my phone from my purse.

“Oh.” Mom sat down on the edge of one of the queen-sized beds. “I’m not sure I want to see it,” she said. “Gavin, you look.”

Daddy took the phone from me. “That’s something,” he said. “Amazing no one ever painted over it.”

“Every owner told the next one not to,” I said.

“We should get a print of this, Jane, don’t you think?” He handed the phone to my mother, and she looked at the picture, gnawing her lower lip.

“My,” she said quietly. “My.” She stared at the phone, shaking her head, and I wondered what she was remembering. “That poor girl,” she said after a moment. “What ever happened to her?” She handed the phone back to me. “I wonder if she has any idea about the hearing today.”

Daddy sat down and put his arm around her. “Maybe it’s time we searched for her again,” he said. “It’s so much easier to find people these days.”

“Oh, I Google her name at least once a month,” Mom admitted. “Ivy Hart, or Ivy Gardiner, in case she did marry the boy she ran off with. I don’t think, if she’s still alive, that she’d be the Internet type, though. I can’t see it.”

“Yeah, well, she probably wouldn’t guess you’re the Internet type, either.” I laughed. My mother was so on top of things. She’d been a freelance journalist for decades. She’d covered every type of story imaginable and even wrote about the Eugenics Program way before it was on the public radar. No one paid much attention to the program, though, until the
Winston-Salem Journal
ran a series of articles about it in 2002. Then, all hell broke loose, and at the hearing today, the victims would finally get to tell their side of the story.

I straightened the collar on my mother’s blouse. “We should get going,” I said.

“Let’s stop at the concierge desk and see if they can make a print from the picture on your phone,” Daddy suggested.

I looked at my watch. “If they can do it quickly,” I said.

“Why are you so insistent we leave this early?” Mom asked. “It’s not like you.”

She was right. I ran late for everything. My poli-sci students at Georgetown were ever hopeful I wouldn’t show up for class so they could leave. They’d groan when I’d walk in the door twenty minutes late.

“The hearing’s going to be a media circus,” I said. “We want to be sure to get a seat.”

“We have reserved seats, honey,” my father reminded me. “Mom’s already on that sign-up sheet to testify.”

“Oh, I know. But I need my latte first or I won’t last the morning.”

They exchanged a “what’s with Brenna?” look, but got to their feet.

We took the elevator to the first floor. The guy at the concierge desk was not only quick printing the picture from my phone, but he also put it in a manila folder so it wouldn’t bend. Then we walked out to my car.

“You two sit in the backseat,” I said. Driving down from D.C., Daddy’d sat in the front with me so he’d have more legroom, but this morning I thought he should sit next to Mom. Give her some moral support.

They didn’t fight me. They got in the backseat and I started the car and headed out of the parking lot, thinking that I was not only the driver this morning. I was the master of ceremonies.

58

Jane

I slipped my arm through Gavin’s as we waited in line at Starbucks. I’d never known Brenna to be a big Starbucks fan, but on the drive to Raleigh yesterday, she told us she knew she’d need a latte this morning, so here we were. I thought Gavin would have preferred bacon and eggs, but really, it didn’t matter. Brenna was usually unflappable and I was surprised my plan to testify at the hearing today seemed to have shaken her up so much. I’d been speaking in public most of my life. I still did whenever some women’s club or Rotary wanted to dust me off and trot me out. Give me almost any topic and I could find plenty to say about it. But I wasn’t crazy about revisiting my own past, which was why, when I woke up this morning, I decided not to go over to my old Hayes Barton house with Brenna. It wasn’t the closet, though that was certainly part of it. It was the reminders of a time I’d tried to forget. My marriage to Robert that never should have been. A job I had not been cut out for. Just coming back to Raleigh after living happily—I could even say
joyously
—in Washington, D.C., for forty years was hard enough. So my trepidation made sense. Maybe Brenna picked up on it.

“Oh, that’s cool,” she said now, pointing to a room at the side of the Starbucks. It had a glass wall, so we could see inside to ten comfortable-looking upholstered chairs. “Let’s take our coffee in there.”

“It might be reserved for a meeting,” Gavin said.

“They can kick us out, then,” she said. “Why don’t you guys go sit in there and I’ll bring our coffee. You want scones or muffins or…”

“You pick something out for us, honey.” I thought getting Gavin off his feet was probably a good idea. He could walk a few blocks most days, but standing like this often bothered his knee.

He and I went into the room and sat in a couple of chairs next to each other. The music was much quieter in here. Brenna looked at us through the glass wall and we waved.

“She has ants in her pants this morning,” Gavin said.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

We watched as she walked toward the room balancing a cardboard cup carrier and pastry bags. Gavin got up and opened the door for her.

“We really don’t need this big space,” he said.

“I feel like stretching out.” She handed each of us our cups and pastries. “Now we’re all set.” She sat down across from us. “Do you know exactly what you’re going to say this morning?” she asked me.

She said something else, but I didn’t hear it. Through the glass wall, I spotted a woman leaning against the back of a chair, watching the main door of Starbucks as if she were waiting for someone. She made me think of Teresa. Oh, she was close to Brenna’s age, but I thought,
I bet that’s what Teresa would have looked like if she’d lived.
I had trouble taking my eyes off her. Her blond hair was in a high short ponytail, an explosion of fuzzy curls on the top of her head. She wore a sleeveless blue tank top and white capris.

“Mom?” Brenna said. “Did you hear me?”

“What?” I turned to my daughter, but only for a moment before looking back at the woman. I didn’t want to lose the grown-up Teresa. The woman glanced at me and I looked away quickly and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Brenna asked.

“I was staring at a woman out there and she caught me,” I said, pulling the scone from the pastry bag.

“Who?” Gavin asked.

“Don’t look,” I said. “Just someone who reminded me of my sister.” I couldn’t help myself—I had to look again, and now another woman was greeting her. They hugged and when they separated, I saw her friend’s face and gasped. “I think I’m cracking up,” I said. “First I thought I saw someone who looked like a grown-up Teresa and now I see someone who looks like a grown-up Ivy. I’m sure it’s because of today. She’s on my mind.”

“Mom.” Brenna moved to the chair next to mine and rested her hand on my knee. “It
is
Ivy.”

I stared at my daughter, her words not quite sinking in. Brenna looked away from me to wave to the two women, and I turned to see them walking toward the room.
Oh my God
. She had Ivy’s eyes. Ivy’s smile. I was suddenly back in the police car, unable to help the terrified girl who stood alone in my yard. I had wanted to reach her, hold her back then. And I couldn’t.

But now I could.

“What’s going on, Brenna?” Gavin asked, but I didn’t wait to hear her answer. I raced out of the room, my scone flying off my lap, and in a moment I had Ivy in my arms. I didn’t know which of us was crying harder.

*   *   *

We sat in the private room, which
had
been reserved—by Brenna. I couldn’t take my eyes off Ivy, who sat next to me, holding my hand. “I can’t believe it,” I said, over and over again. “I just can’t believe you’re here in front of me!”

“I know,” she said. “I feel like I stepped into a time machine. Yesterday, I was fifteen and you were twenty-two, and now, suddenly, here we are—senior citizens. And you look beautiful.”

“Oh, you too, Ivy!” I said sincerely. She did. Her highlighted short blond hair was simply styled, her skin was tan but not weathered. She wore a white and gold striped top and khaki pants. The farm girl was gone.

The younger woman sat on Ivy’s other side. She’d introduced herself to us as “Rose,” but with her lithe build and wild hair, she reminded me so much of Mary Ella that I knew she had Hart blood in her. There was an edginess to her. A depth to her voice that made me think she smoked. Close up, I could see silver scattered through her wild blond hair. She was so sweet with Ivy, rubbing her shoulder, touching her hand. She loved her. That much was clear.

“I’m no speaker,” Ivy said. “But when Brenna told me you were going to testify on Mary Ella’s behalf, I knew I couldn’t let you do it alone.”

“I’ve thought of you so often!” I said. “I’ve looked for you for fifty years, do you know that? What happened? You and Henry Allen must have taken off together. That much I figured out.”

“We did,” she said. “It was terrible in a way. I didn’t want to leave Mary”—she squeezed the hand of the younger woman sitting next to her—“but we had no way of knowing where she was.”

“Is this Mary?” I had to know.

Ivy nodded with a smile. “The first foster home named her Rose, and she was nearly five when we finally found her, so we kept the name. We didn’t want to confuse her any more than she already was. I call her Rose Mary, but I’m the only one who does.”

“Thank God.” Rose laughed.

“How did you find her? Where did you go? Tell me everything!”

“Me and Henry Allen knew we had to get out of North Carolina because everyone was looking for us. You were locked up or I knew you would have helped me find her, but we had to leave. So we hitched our way to California.”