Her Mother's Name

Shelby looked smaller in the hospital bed.

Clara hadn't expected that to make her angry.

Her cousin's right arm ended beneath a heavy dressing. Her hair lay flat against the pillow. The frightened, defiant face belonged to somebody Clara knew and someone she could no longer reach.

Owen placed a chair beside the bed.

Clara sat.

"They're arranging a specialist in Westbridge."

Shelby stared at the ceiling.

"How generous."

"You need care."

"And you're going to pay."

"For the treatment. Yes."

Shelby's mouth twisted.

Clara looked down at her hands.

"They told me about the baby."

Her cousin turned sharply.

"What did they tell you?"

"Only that you're pregnant."

"It's not your business."

"I didn't say it was. But if you're asking us to arrange your life afterward, we need to know what you're planning."

"Us."

The word came out bitterly.

"You and your husband. Everything is us now."

Clara looked at her.

"You told people you were his wife."

Shelby turned away.

"You weren't there."

"That didn't make you the bride."

"It made me the one they took."

The room went quiet.

Owen stood near the door, his face carefully blank.

Clara's stomach tightened.

"Gordon thought—"

"Yes. He thought I was you."

Shelby held up the dressing with a sudden, furious movement.

"So tell me again how kind you are. Tell me what you're willing to pay for."

Clara flinched.

She could know that her cousin had encouraged the lie and still be sickened by its cost. Those two truths sat together without making either easier.

"What happened to you was terrible," she said. "I didn't want it."

"You never want anything bad. It just happens to everybody around you."

Ethan's face rose in Clara's mind so abruptly she had to grip the chair.

Owen stepped forward.

"That's enough."

"No," Clara said.

She looked at Shelby.

"You were there when Lorraine locked me in that house. You lied about Audrey. You wore my clothes and told me something you knew wasn't true. Don't tell me you've never wanted to hurt me."

Shelby's eyes filled.

"I looked after you."

"I know."

"You don't. Ethan told me to keep you safe. I was a child too."

Clara's face changed.

"I know that too."

"Raymond came for you, and I stopped him. I told you to run. I stood there. Me. Not your precious parents looking down from heaven."

Her voice broke on the last word.

"They never looked after you. They didn't even come back."

Clara stopped breathing.

Shelby saw it happen.

She closed her mouth.

"What did you say?"

Owen looked from one woman to the other.

Clara stood.

"What do you mean, come back?"

"Nothing."

She went to the bed.

"Shelby."

Her cousin pulled away.

"I was little. I don't know."

"Tell me."

"Ask my mother."

Clara's hand tightened around the bedrail.

"Are my parents alive?"

For a long moment Shelby watched her as though deciding how much power the answer was worth.

Then her face crumpled.

"They were. After the car. They were alive then."

***

Lorraine tried to deny it.

She tried outrage, tears, and a sudden claim that her heart couldn't bear the excitement.

Clara stood in front of her bed and listened to none of it.

"Which hospital?"

"She doesn't know what she's saying. She's ill."

"Which hospital?"

"After everything I've done—"

"Say that again and you won't get another word from me."

Lorraine stopped.

Owen put the phone on speaker and called Nathan. He reported the facility Shelby half remembered, the neighboring county, the years involved.

Lorraine listened to him arrange a search.

When he mentioned obtaining the old payment records, she made a small sound.

Clara turned.

"You paid them?"

Her aunt wouldn't look at her.

"We had to."

The answer came out before she could stop it.

Clara felt something inside her go very cold.

"You had to keep them there."

Lorraine began crying again.

This time Clara let Owen ask the questions.

Lorraine caught Clara's coat as she turned away.

"You don't understand how hard it was."

Clara looked down at the fingers gripping the wool.

There had been a time when that hand could stop her at a doorway, send her outside, take a coin from her pocket, or decide whether she ate with the others.

Now it was only a hand.

She removed it from her sleeve.

"My mother was alive."

Lorraine tried to speak.

"All those nights I asked whether she might come back. All the times you told me she was dead and I should be grateful to you."

Her aunt looked away.

"I didn't know what Martin was doing with all the papers."

"You knew where they were."

Owen stood by the door, phone against his ear.

Clara wanted to ask a hundred questions. What her mother ate. Whether her father had ever called her name. Whether anybody had told them their daughter was learning to read, passing exams, getting married.

She couldn't bear to hear the answers from Lorraine.

"Nathan will talk to you," she said.

She went out before her aunt could begin crying again.

In the car, Owen asked whether she wanted to wait for Damian.

She looked at the address he had written on his pad.

"Every minute we've waited has already been too long."

He didn't argue then. He should have, perhaps. Later he would return to that moment more often than any other.

By the time they left, they had an address.

***

The facility stood beyond the edge of a town Clara had passed through once and never remembered.

There was no sign large enough to read from the road. The gate was rusted. The windows on the lower floor were covered from inside.

Nathan was arranging local officers. Damian was coming from Briarhaven. Both told Owen to wait outside.

Then an old man opened the gate and asked whom they were visiting.

Clara said her mother's name.

"Nobody here by that name."

He began closing the gate.

She caught it.

Owen was beside her immediately.

"We have reason to believe she was registered under another name."

The man looked toward the building.

A woman in a cardigan appeared at the door and offered to check the records.

Clara followed before anybody could stop her.

Behind the reception desk stood a shelf of faded plastic flowers. Clara remembered buying flowers for a grave that had never held her mother. Every year she had tried to think of something to say to the empty earth.

Now there was a corridor ahead of her.

She walked faster.

Inside, the hall smelled of stale food and disinfectant used too sparingly. A man in patient clothes stood by a locked door, watching them with an alertness that didn't fit the room around him.

Owen noticed.

He sent Nate outside to call again.

Clara saw a woman through the last doorway.

Gray hair against a pale pillow. A face thinner than any face should be.

She knew it anyway.

"Mom."

Her voice vanished.

She crossed the room and knelt beside the bed.

The woman looked at her without recognition.

Clara took her hand.

"It's me."

Owen stopped in the doorway.

For a moment none of the years between them seemed possible. Clara was six, and the hand around hers was going to guide her across the street, tuck a scarf beneath her chin, bring her home.

"I'm Clara."

The woman frowned gently.

"No."

Clara bent closer.

"Mom. Please."

"My Clara's a little girl."

Owen turned away as Clara began to cry.

From the hallway came the sound of a bolt sliding into place.

He looked up.

The man in patient clothes wasn't by the door anymore.

"Clara," Owen said quietly. "We need to go."

She held her mother's hand with both of hers.

"I'm not leaving her."