It was Mom. So young, so beautiful. I’d never seen her quite like that before.
“What do you think?” Gordon asked.
I kept staring at the photo. I tried to keep it together despite the emotion that slowly rose in my throat. My vision started to swim a little. I blinked my eyes a couple of times, fighting off my feelings.
Gordon reached out and took the photo.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak. The photo confirmed everything I had been thinking—that I really didn’t know my mother. Not only had she not told me about her recent life, but she hadn’t told me about any of her life. She was a stranger to me.
But why?
Gordon slipped the photo into his pocket. I wanted to reach out for it and take it back. I wanted to study it longer. What if there was something there that told me what I needed to know about my mother?
“So you’ll listen now?” he asked.
“I still don’t know if whatever you tell me is the truth,” I said.
“You can confirm it all with your uncle,” he said. “I’m sure you called him on the way here, right?”
I didn’t answer. I looked at the top of the table.
“Do you want to remind me of how much time I have left now?” he asked.
“What happened with you and my mom?” I asked.
“You’re not married, are you?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re not. I know your mom was worried about that, about whether you’d ever settle down and have a normal life.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m only twenty-six.”
“Your mom worried about it. I could tell. When you’re married to someone and you share certain experiences, a bond forms that really never goes away. You’re tied to that other person whether the relationship is the same as it once was or not. That’s what happened with your mom and me. Even after all those years, there was still something there. A connection, something we shared. That was there for us, even in the time before she died.”
“You were in touch with her?” I asked. “Recently?”
“Yes. We stayed in touch off and on over the years. Even during the time you were growing up. Like I said, we’re from the same place. We know many of the same people.”
“Did my dad know about you?” I asked.
“He did. He had to. When you get married, you have to disclose any previous marriages you may have had.”
“Did you ever meet my dad?” I asked.
“In passing once,” Gordon said. “I even met you one time, although I’m sure you don’t remember.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“You must have been about five, maybe six. You were out with your mother and your brother. It was in the shopping mall here in Dover. I was there, and by chance we all ran into each other. Your mother introduced me to you as an old friend. Do you remember?”
I thought about it but couldn’t summon the memory. Who knows how many times I went out with Mom? And even though she didn’t have a lot of friends, she still knew people. As a child, I always felt as if I was being introduced to some new person, usually with my mother gently nudging me to remember my manners, look people in the eye, and say, “Pleased to meet you.”
“I don’t,” I said.
Gordon took a sip of his coffee, apparently draining the cup. He pursed his lips as though the dregs of coffee at the bottom of the cup were particularly bitter.
“That was tough for me,” he said. “Seeing your mother with her children.”
I didn’t immediately process what he was trying to say. Then I thought I understood. “Is this because you and Mom didn’t have any kids?” I asked.
He looked into his empty cup. “I should really get some more coffee.”
“Is that it?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything. I knew he wanted me to think he wasn’t saying anything because whatever was on his mind was too troubling to talk about. But I sensed there was something else at play as well. There was a practiced quality to his reluctance, something that told me he wanted me to ask the question. That he needed me to press more.
I gave him what he wanted only because of my intense desire to know.
“Did you try to have children?” I asked.
“We had a baby girl,” he said, his voice low.
I tried to let that sink in. “A baby?” I said, repeating the word, my voice low and husky.
Gordon nodded. “Yes.”
“Did—” I stopped. Then I went on. “Did you lose the baby?”
“She wasn’t a baby,” he said. “Not anymore. I think of her that way, though. As my baby.”
“How old was she?” I asked.
“She was fifteen years old,” he said. “She was fifteen when she was taken away and murdered.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Gordon Baxter took his empty coffee cup and stood up. He carried it with him to the counter, leaving me to sit alone at the table and digest the bombshell he had just dropped on me.
A child. My mother had had another child. Which meant I had a half sister.
Had a half sister. She was dead. Murdered. Just like Mom.
But I couldn’t fix my mind on my dead half sister for very long. Instead, I found myself thinking of my mother. Not only had there been something else I didn’t know about her—she’d been married and she’d had a child before Ronnie and me—but she had lost that child. Violently. My mother had carried around with her one of the gravest losses a person—a mother—could suffer.
And yet she had never told me about it. She had never mentioned it, talked about it, not even hinted at it. Not with me. She’d carried that burden with her silently, suffering in secret.
I looked around the restaurant. A couple two tables down fussed over their baby. College kids laughed and joked as they inhaled French fries and hamburgers. Life went on. People were just living their everyday, mundane lives. Could any of them imagine the things I was finding out, the truths that were being revealed to me?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gordon returning. He held his fresh cup of coffee as he deftly weaved between the people coming and going. He sat back down at the table, then added a sugar packet to the cup and stirred it with a small red straw.
“She was fifteen,” Gordon said. He removed the straw and sucked a drop of coffee off the end. “Just started her sophomore year of high school.”
“Was she your only child?”
He nodded. “Yes. We tried to have another but couldn’t. Your mother really wanted more. I guess it makes sense that she had children when she married your father.”
“What happened to this… to your daughter?” I asked.
“Beth,” he said. “Her name was Beth.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He nodded. “Elizabeth, but we called her Beth. Your mother liked that name, I guess. Or she felt she was naming you as a tribute to her lost daughter.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“Remember, you can verify all of this when you have the chance,” he said. “If you wanted, you could take your phone, the one I know you have in your hand underneath the table, and call your uncle. You could call him right now, and he would verify all of this. It’s true. I’m not making anything up.”
My mom, my whole family had always called me Elizabeth. Never Beth. Never Betsy or Betty or Liz. Elizabeth. And when anyone tried to shorten my name—a friend, a teacher, a neighbor—my mother corrected them. “Elizabeth,” she would say. “She goes by Elizabeth.”