Angela smiles grimly, then asks the question that’s been niggling at her. “Did the Watchdog die?”
Evelyn shakes her head. “No. Well, eventually, but not at my hand. Jack and I scoured the newspaper after my escape, but we never saw a thing about the home until they announced the closure later that summer, after I sent the real Evelyn’s letter to the police. But back in the late nineties, Jack told me he’d heard through someone at his church that she had passed. Thank God.”
Angela sighs. “And do you mind if I ask? Did you ever make amends with your parents? Did they ever apologize for not stopping the abuse from your dad’s friend, or…？”
Evelyn stares into the empty mug in her hands. “They made it clear to Jack that they didn’t want anything to do with me if I continued to insist that their friend had raped me. They refused to believe it. Or at least, they pretended to refuse to believe it. The power of denial can be incredibly strong. But I couldn’t forgive them for any of it. They thought I was dead, and my brother and I maintained that deception until their deaths.”
“Oh.”
“Jack split the inheritance with me, though, when my mother died. She passed a few years after my father; I went to the funeral and sat in the back. I used the money to set up the Evelyn Taylor Medical Scholarship.” She smiles. “It’s a modest scholarship for single mothers attending medical school.”
“When I was initially researching trying to find Margaret Roberts to see if she—you—were still alive, I found an obituary in some microfilms of the Star from the sixties,” Angela says.
“My brother placed that obit as part of the ruse. I have a copy somewhere, too.”
“But how do you just place an obituary without an actual death?”
“It was easy back then,” Evelyn says with a shrug. “There weren’t the detailed records and government red tape we have now. Especially for women. Evelyn and I were young; neither of us had even voted yet, we weren’t enrolled in school anymore. We didn’t have a driver’s license or any other identification. Government health coverage didn’t exist, so no health card, no credit cards. It used to be far easier to disappear or change your name. I told Jack we needed a plan for me to start over completely. We talked and talked, and finally we decided that he needed to report me missing. And then I suggested the obituary: paper-and-ink evidence that Margaret Roberts was dead. It was the cleanest solution.”
Evelyn continues to stroke Darwin, who arcs his back into her palm. “So, Jack told my parents I had escaped the home, and a couple of weeks later I wrote a suicide letter to him in my own hand, saying I was in hiding somewhere in the city and was planning on killing myself, when really I was still tucked away in his guest room. He showed that to my parents, and he placed the obit. The shame that I had committed suicide meant there was no funeral. No one followed up. Why would they? I was a ‘fallen’ girl. Honestly, it was easy. For me, anyway,” she adds, running her thumb slowly around the rim of her mug. “But Jack sacrificed a great deal to help me start over. He loved me so much. Loves me still.”
She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I had wanted to go to university, and after Evelyn’s letter, well, I suggested medical school to Jack. Since he and Lorna didn’t have any children—despite their best efforts, poor things—he had the money to loan me for tuition. I’d always had stellar marks in school. We applied to McGill under the name Evelyn Taylor, and I was accepted.”
“Why did you pick Evelyn Taylor?”
She considers the question for a moment, remembers lying in bed with her friend on that cold winter morning, discussing Evelyn’s hopes for her future, a future that would be snuffed out just months later. The words drift back to her, an echo across the surface of a deep lake.
“Dr. Evelyn Taylor just has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Angela shifts into a more comfortable position. “So, you just assumed the real Evelyn’s identity once you started medical school in Montreal?”
Evelyn frowns. “I didn’t assume her identity. We didn’t look much alike. It’s more like I assumed her dreams, her future. I embodied it for the both of us, since she couldn’t fulfill it anymore. She asked me in her goodbye letter to go live for both of us, and I’ve spent every day since then trying to live up to her last wish.” She pauses. “There wasn’t much left to my own identity at that point anyway. I was just the remainder of some previous sum. It started with one lie, and I guess I just kept lying.” Her eyes gloss over again. “The longer you keep a secret, Angela, the bigger it gets. The more power it has over you.”
Each of the women is lost in her own thoughts. Angela comes back first.
“Seems a bit macabre for you to still have the obituary,” she says.
“I have the real Evelyn’s, too.”
“Wow.”
“I suppose a part of me was mourning the loss of Maggie Roberts, too. I had to become Evelyn Taylor so quickly, I never really had a chance to say goodbye to Maggie.” Evelyn gives Angela a watery smile. “It’s all a complicated soup of emotions.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Evelyn reaches out and runs a thumb down the younger woman’s cheek. “I’m so glad you don’t have to, my dear.”
Angela sighs. “We have more options now, that’s for sure. Thank you for that.”
“Ha! Well, you’re welcome. We did it for our daughters, our granddaughters, and their granddaughters. We did it for all of us. All of you.”
The sun is glowing orange outside the window. It’s late afternoon now.
Angela runs a finger around the rim of her coffee mug. “Did you ever look for Jane? Your note—I’m sorry, I read it. It feels like an invasion of your privacy now, but I had to. And it said you would never stop searching for her.”
Evelyn nods. “Yes. I searched as best I could. It was difficult; they didn’t have the networks back then like they do now. Or the internet. Some search agencies started to pop up in the eighties, but both the parent and child had to register for the matching system to work. I placed ads in the classifieds for years and years, but I couldn’t use my real name, you see. And that’s the only name Jane would have known, if she ever read my note, which, frankly, I assumed she hadn’t. I figured the adoptive parents would have thrown it away. Tom says he got a call once from a young woman who hesitated on the phone, then said she had the wrong number and hung up. That was decades ago now. I tried to hope, but it was probably just the wrong number.”
She closes her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest and leans into them. “I can still feel her. I didn’t want her at first, because of how she came to be. But it was when I felt her move. Everything changed right from that moment. She became mine.”
Angela swallows hard and strokes Evelyn’s shoulder.
“What’s her adopted name?” Evelyn asks Angela.
“Nancy Mitchell. But she goes by Birch online. That’s why I—”
“Nancy Mitchell?”
“Yes, I’ve spoken with her, Evelyn.” She sits forward in her seat, as though she’s been itching to say this. “She’s very eager for me to set up a meeting. Would you like to meet your daughter?”