“Thank you, dear,” Evelyn mutters, her voice hardly above a whisper. She mops her face and blows her nose hard. “I was at St. Agnes’s, too, Angela.”
Angela nods. “I know.”
Evelyn turns to face her. The tears pour fast down her heart-shaped face. It’s only now that Angela really notices the wrinkles around Evelyn’s eyes and mouth, the leathery texture of her aging skin, the eyes that are no longer bright and clear. They’re tired and sore and the light is starting to fade from them.
“I gave birth to a baby girl there. She was stolen from me after just a few days in my arms.”
Something cold licks at Angela’s insides before Evelyn speaks again. She watches Evelyn run her hands along each opposite arm now, as though cradling the baby she once held. Her right hand moves from her left forearm down to the wrist. She traces her middle finger across a long, faded scar.
“My name was Maggie then. And my baby’s name was Jane.”
CHAPTER 29 Maggie
MAY 1961
Maggie wakes to the sound of breaking glass.
Or at least, she thinks she does. As she starts to come to, the room sliding into focus in the dim bluish light of dawn, she isn’t sure anymore. Maybe it was just a dream after all. She’s had such strange dreams since coming to the home, and now that she’s in the postpartum wing of the building, she’s woken up twice in a hazy confusion, as if someone had carried her out of her normal bed in the middle of the night and set her down somewhere odd and unusual.
Maggie rubs her eyes and rolls over onto her side. As she does so, she hears and feels a crinkle beneath her arm.
She sits up, blinks at the two white envelopes resting on her pillow. Glancing over, she sees that Evelyn’s bed is empty, and stripped bare of its sheets. She picks up the envelopes as a strange tingling sensation creeps downward from the top of her head.
Maggie, the first envelope says. The second is labelled Mother & Father.
Maggie’s heart is racing as she tears open the envelope with her name on it. There are two letters inside. One for her, and one addressed to the Toronto Police Department. The letter for Maggie is on top. She begins to read, heart hammering in her throat.
Dear Maggie,
It pains me to write these words because it will somehow confirm their truth. But I found out yesterday from Agatha that my baby has died. I went to Agatha to ask for help, thinking she might be willing to find a name or an address. Something. Anything to help me find her. And this is the news she brings me. My baby was sold, and then she died.
It is dreadful enough that I was separated from her, but now I cannot even find comfort in the knowledge that she would be the deeply loved child of some barren woman. She is dead, and this is the end for me, too.
To be honest with you, it feels empowering. We are all here because we were never given any choices. We were never in control. And this is something I can do to be in control. I can choose how and when I die. I have no fear for the fate of my soul. I only know that it will be free and at peace, reunited with my poor Leo and our beautiful baby girl.
If the only way I can be with them is in death, then so be it.
Now, I must ask a favour of you before I go.
I have left two other letters with you—one pre-addressed for my parents, and one for the police, enclosed with yours. Keep them hidden and safe beneath your mattress or anywhere else you can hide them, and take them with you when you leave. Please post them as soon as you can. I have said my final goodbye to my parents and brother, and in my account to the police I have explained in detail the atrocities of this place, of the Watchdog’s assaults and the sale of the children. I hope it may be enough to ruin the home, at the very least. It would be too much to ask that the Watchdog get her comeuppance, but perhaps I will be able to haunt her. Because who knows, my dear, what awaits us on the other side?
This may sound incredibly odd, but for the first time in a long while, I have hope.
And I love you, Maggie. You have been like a sister to me since we arrived at this horrible place, and your presence has been a balm for my heart. I am so terribly sorry to leave you, but I know you will leave here yourself, very soon, and go on to do great things. I implore you to live your life fully, for the both of us. And never, never stop looking for Jane. I know you will find her.
With love, I will remain,
Evelyn Taylor
Maggie’s hands are shaking.
Thud.
She jumps at the sound from downstairs, disoriented and afraid. She throws her legs over the side of the bed, clutches the letters in her hand, and pads quietly toward the bedroom door. She glances down the length of the hall, but no one else is stirring. The blue glow of dawn tints the walls and wooden floorboards. The house is silent.
She turns and heads toward the stairs and the sound that has her insides locked in an iron grip, pinching off the air in her lungs.
Creeping down the stairs, Maggie is careful to avoid the creaky step at the midpoint, and lands at the bottom of the staircase. She turns to face the parlour and nearly collapses at the sight.
Evelyn is hanging from the beam above the doorway, her head in a makeshift noose of bedsheets tied end-to-end. Her legs hang limply below the hem of her grey nightgown. Her eyes are mercifully closed, but her lips stand out in a face the colour of cement. Her blond hair falls loosely over her shoulders. Beneath her dangling feet, a dining chair is resting on its side.
Maggie doesn’t notice her body sink to the floor, but she finds herself there a moment later. She clutches the letters in her hand and tries to catch a staggering breath. She wants to look anywhere else but can’t. She can’t ever un-see this. She’ll see it every time she closes her eyes.
After a minute that might be an hour, Maggie manages to stand up with help from the banister. She hauls herself to her feet and stumbles over to Evelyn, her lip trembling beneath beads of cold sweat and tears, then feels a sharp pain in her foot.
She gasps and winces at the shard of glass poking out of the skin. Looking down, she sees the floor is dusted with a shimmering coat of the stained glass that once graced the transom above the doorway. Evelyn must have broken it to throw the sheets over the beam. Maggie plucks the shard from her foot, then hops over to the front door and pulls on a pair of the communal Wellington boots. The glass crunches like gravel under her as she steps back over to the body.
“Oh, Evelyn,” she whispers, reaching out for her friend’s hand. She grasps it briefly, and finds it isn’t even cold yet. Evelyn’s soul has only just flitted away. She’s only minutes too late. The thought cuts into her like barbed wire. She runs her hand gently along Evelyn’s arm. But it’s not Evelyn, she tells herself. Evelyn is gone.
She lets go.
Maggie stares up at her friend for several long moments, thinking over the contents of the letter that’s still clutched in her hand, remembering Evelyn’s smile close to her face while they whispered late at night and kept each other warm in the early mornings. Maggie commits this scene to memory, absorbing every detail of Evelyn’s broken body, how it came to be at St. Agnes’s in the first place, and all the reasons why it ended up hanging from the parlour transom in the cold light of dawn on this May morning.
Because the anger has started now. No, not the anger. The rage. A white-hot, savage rage is coursing through Maggie’s veins like poison.