Byron made a U-turn in the cul-de-sac and was waving slowly, one muscular, brown arm held out the window. Look at that smile! Eleanor wanted to run after the car, shout to Byron, call him back, explain to him that no, raising him and his baby sister was not the most important thing that she had ever done. What defined Eleanor most was not what, or whom, she had held close but what she had allowed herself to let go of.
Why hadn’t she torn up the paper they’d made her sign the day they took her baby girl away? Why hadn’t she bolted from the taxi while she still had the baby in her arms? Why hadn’t she pounded on doors, robbed a bank, sold herself, done anything to keep her child? Had her daughter, in all these years, ever lain awake at night wondering, like Eleanor, about the mother who had left her behind? Had the questions burrowed into her bones like a woodworm, the way they did every time Eleanor thought about her own mummy?
In fifty years, times had changed. The forced adoptions had been in the news. Graying women like Eleanor were shown embracing their biological children, faces shiny with tears. The government was being asked to apologize. Someone had even made a movie. Elly had thought of renewing her search for her daughter, of asking the authorities for help. But each time, she’d hesitated. Her baby girl, now a middle-aged woman, would want to know about her father. And Eleanor’s other children would want to know, too.
She tried to imagine what her daughter would prefer. Eleanor thought of her own mother, who had gone away and never come back for her. What would Eleanor really want to know about her mother’s reasons? What if knowing the truth were to hurt more than the longing? Eleanor could tell her firstborn child that she’d met a handsome boy all those years ago and had yielded to temptation. People talked about these things nowadays. But she was afraid that her daughter would look her in the eye and know that she was lying.
Would her daughter hate her more, then, for having given her up or for having failed to stay out of her life?
And then there was that other matter, which was no small matter. If Eleanor Douglas were to resurface in England today, someone might note her connection to one Coventina Brown, born Coventina Lyncook, who had been reported killed in a train accident in 1967, who had suddenly disappeared from another country while under suspicion of having committed murder. A murder that remained unsolved.
The false narrative that Eleanor had woven for the benefit of her loved ones had become a net that had trapped her. And as if that weren’t enough, Eleanor had also let go of her youngest daughter. She had allowed Benny to walk away from her and Bert when, perhaps, she’d needed them most. Only Eleanor hadn’t seen it that way at the time.
Eleanor loved her children more than anything, but Bert had given up so much for her. He had risked his career by concealing the truth. She owed her loyalty to the man who had loved and protected her and their children all these years. When Bert had been stubborn, Eleanor had stuck by his side. You couldn’t explain something like this to your child. You couldn’t be honest with her about the way things were, not when it meant having to reveal that your life was resting on a web of lies. Eleanor’s husband had been gone five years, but Benny still hadn’t come back home.
The world couldn’t be an easy place for a girl like Benny. So every once in a while, Eleanor would reach out to her younger daughter. She would leave phone messages. She wanted Benny to know that her mother still thought of her, still cared for her, despite the misunderstandings. But Benny hadn’t called, hadn’t come to see her.
Apparently, Benedetta had decided to keep living her life without Eleanor. And where did that leave Eleanor? Who was she now, without her girls, and without her husband, the only person who, all her life, had truly known her for who she was? It was as if she had never existed.
After Byron drove off, Eleanor stepped inside her home of forty-five years, the house that her husband had bought just in time for little Byron’s birth. She was feeling tired. Tired of everything. She closed the front door, leaned her back against it, and made a decision.
The Accident
Five years after her husband died, Eleanor Bennett went into the garage, pulled out her longboard, and drove south along the coast, looking for the right kind of wave and hoping for an accident. Her widowed friends had warned her it might be this way. They’d told her to just ride out the feelings and keep on going and she had. She’d even started to date again. But a huge part of her had crumbled. Bert was gone, which meant that Gibbs was gone. And if Gibbs was gone, then so was Covey.