The room has grown dark by the time she folds up the note and shoves it back down into the toe of the bootie. She places the booties gently back in the box and shuts it, rotates the dials to random numbers.
She walks back over to the open drawer, the contents carefully laid out on top of the dresser, reflecting their placement inside. Nancy lowers the leather box and slides it into its former place in the dusty back corner. She sighs deeply before replacing the other items and closing The Drawer. She leaves the room on legs that don’t quite feel like they belong to her. She can smell her mother’s perfume still. It follows her out of her parents’ bedroom like an accusatory lover.
She pauses at the top of the stairs to listen to the ghosts.
Her mother calling her name from the sitting room, beckoning her down to walk the six blocks to mass on Sunday mornings. Her father’s gruff but loving voice muttering, “Good night, Beetle,” as he turned off the light and closed her bedroom door, leaving it open just a crack so the moonlight from the hallway window could creep into Nancy’s room, soothing her fear of the dark. The creak of the floorboard right outside her bedroom, so inconvenient for sneaking in after curfew.
Nancy runs her hand along the banister, remembering how she screamed down at Frances from this very spot during their first blowout argument. It was about Nancy moving out to go to university.
“But it’s only a few streetcar stops away!” Her mother protested. “You’re not even married! Why do you want to leave us? What will people think?”
Nancy’s father calmed her mother down eventually, reminding her that Nancy was an adult and would be leaving home sometime soon anyway. He understood Nancy’s need for independence, for time away from her mother’s constant supervision. He isn’t a man of many words, and runs his household in the manner of a good-natured health inspector. But he loves Nancy deeply and she’s always known he would do almost anything for her.
Nancy descends the stairs in a trance and wanders into the kitchen, flipping on some lights that flicker to life, illuminating the gleaming countertops. She fills up the kettle and busies herself with some Earl Grey leaves, spilling them when she misses the edge of the tea ball. She absently sweeps them off the counter into her hand and shakes them into the garbage bin beneath the sink. A minute later, the kettle’s whistle makes her jump and she nearly burns her wrist in her haste to get it off the stove.
Tears are welling in her eyes now as she watches the brown tea bloom inside the porcelain cup. She shoves her hand into the box of Peak Freans on the counter and stuffs a whole raspberry cream cookie into her mouth, immediately hears her mother’s admonishment in her head for demonstrating such appalling manners.
Her mother. Her mother is Margaret Roberts.
Nancy lets the tears slip down her face. The only sound comes from the grandfather clock in the hallway. It ticks in time with Nancy’s thoughts as they fall into place, one after another.
“My name is Jane.”
She says the words aloud to the empty kitchen. No one heard. No one will know.
When Nancy finishes her tea, she washes the cup and sets it in the drying rack. The kitchen now smells like the lemon dish soap her mother has always used, and it takes Nancy back to childhood Saturdays, watching Frances clean the floors while she helped with the dishes.
She can’t confront her parents about this. At least not tonight. She needs to get back to her apartment, where ghosts don’t lurk in every corner and she can think clearly, rationally about this.
As she heads for the front door, she holds her breath against the citrus scent. For the rest of Nancy’s life, guilt and betrayal will smell like lemon dish soap.
CHAPTER 10 Evelyn
SPRING 1961
Evelyn’s head snaps back as Sister Teresa wallops her across the face with a powerful open palm.
“With our Lord as my witness, if you do not quiet down this instant, you will lose your privilege to say goodbye to the baby. Calm yourself, Evelyn!”
Evelyn absorbs the nun’s blow, gripping the arms of the chair she’s sitting on in the Goodbye Room.
The Goodbye Room, as the girls have come to call it, is little more than a closet at the end of the hall up on the third floor. There isn’t even a rug, just a bare wooden floor supporting the creaking weight of a pair of large oak rocking chairs, their worn blue cushions sagging sadly over the edges of their seats. It’s the room they sequester each of the girls in for their last goodbye to their baby. A designated, separate room they’ll never have to set foot in ever again, ostensibly so they won’t have to be reminded of the pain of parting from their child. As if such visceral anguish could ever be contained within four paper-thin walls. The pain leaks through all the tiniest cracks. It seeps up from between the worn floorboards like floodwater, muddy with silt and carrying the stench of regret.
They’ve moved the other girls out of the upstairs floors to their chores and into the parlour so they don’t bear witness to Evelyn’s tragedy, knowing that their own time will come just as surely, in only a matter of weeks. But this protocol isn’t a sign of compassion for the girls.
It’s riot control.
Through the shock and sting of the slap, Evelyn still registers Sister Teresa’s language. Not her baby. Never her baby. The baby. The couple’s baby. The product. A retort stabs at the back of Evelyn’s throat, but her eyes flash down to the whip in the Watchdog’s belt loop.
“Good. Now, here—sign this.” Sister Teresa thrusts a piece of paper and pen at Evelyn.
“What is it?”
“It is a document swearing that you will never go looking for the baby. A standard contract.”
“I already signed something at the hospital.”
“Those were the adoption papers. This is to confirm that in choosing to relinquish the child, you are forfeiting all future contact.”
Evelyn can feel the cold smoothness of the pen in her clammy hand. She feels hate rising like fire in her throat, but it scorches her tongue before she can spit in the Watchdog’s face.
“I didn’t choose this,” she says.
“Oh yes, you did. Do not delude yourself. You must sign it, Evelyn, or you will not see the baby.”
Evelyn smooths the piece of paper out on her lap. It’s a typed document with her name on it. Her daughter is listed as Baby Taylor. Underneath that are the words Father unknown. A surge of grief for Leo, of anger that he has been so unceremoniously erased from his own child’s identity, clutches her heart. Evelyn licks her lips, then holds her breath and, swearing a silent oath that she has no intention of adhering to this contract, signs her name on the line. The ink hasn’t even dried before the Watchdog snatches it out of her hand and leaves the Goodbye Room, shutting the door behind her.
Evelyn hears Maggie’s voice on the other side. The nun says something to her, and the door opens again. Maggie slips inside, her face pale underneath a sad smile.
“Hi,” she says, taking a seat in the chair across from Evelyn.
“Thank you for being here, Maggie. I know it’s not—it can’t be easy for you to be here again.” Evelyn’s voice catches.
Maggie’s chest rises and falls on a deep breath. The sunlight pouring in through the window illuminates her hair like a halo. “No. But I wish someone could have been with me.”