Chapter 13: What Patience Saw

She made tea first.

I understood. Some people need to be doing something with their hands before they can say the worst things. Patience filled a dented kettle at the kitchen sink and set out three mismatched mugs, and the clatter of ordinary objects filled the fellowship hall like a small, stubborn prayer.

When she finally sat down across from me, she wrapped both hands around her cup as though it were the only warm thing left in the world.

“I was thirty-nine,” she began. “Night shift on the fourth floor, labour and delivery. I’d worked at St. Anne’s eleven years. I loved those babies, you understand. That’s the part that haunts me. I wasn’t a wicked person. I was tired, and I was a single mother with two boys at home, and I owed three months’ rent.”

“Dr. Watson paid you?” I asked.

“Five thousand dollars, in an envelope.” She laughed, a small, horrible sound. “That was my price. Five thousand dollars to stand in a hallway for twenty minutes.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“There were two women in labour that night in adjoining rooms. Room 410 and Room 412. Your…” She faltered. “Mrs. Coker was in 410. She was a nervous young woman with a husband who couldn’t sit still. They’d been trying for years, and the pregnancy had been rough. When the baby came, it came blue. We worked on her for twenty minutes. Dr. Watson worked on her himself. She never took a breath.”

“My sister,” I said slowly. “The one who died.”

“A little girl. Perfect. Ten tiny fingers.” Patience’s voice broke. “I wrapped her in a yellow cloth because we were out of white blankets. I remember thinking how unfair it was that she should have to go out in a yellow rag.”

I thought of Grace’s photograph, of the bundle in the nurse’s arms at the edge of the frame. Of my father staring at it, instead of at me.

“In 412,” Patience continued, “was a lady from Bel Air. I never learned her name. The chart had been marked VIP, and Dr. Watson handled her himself, which he never did for ordinary patients. She’d had a long, hard labour. They gave her something strong to sleep. When she woke in the morning, she was told her baby had died.”

My mouth was dry as paper. “But the baby hadn’t died.”

“A beautiful little girl,” Patience said. “Seven pounds, three ounces. Pink as a rose. Screaming. She was the healthiest baby on the ward.” She looked at me. “That was you.”

I couldn’t breathe. Natalie’s hand was a vice around mine.

“I was in the nursery when Dr. Watson came in. He didn’t look at me. He said, ‘Patience, the Bel Air baby is going to the Cokers. You’ll hold the other one for me in the hallway. Nobody asks, nobody tells.’ I said, ‘Doctor, what do you mean?’ And he looked at me and said, very quietly, ‘I mean it’s done.’”

“Who told him to?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I swear to you, I don’t know. But there was a man in the waiting room that night, not Mr. Coker, a different man. Tall. A grey suit and a gold watch. He stood by the vending machines for hours, and he never sat. When Dr. Watson passed him, the man put something in his pocket. An envelope, I think. Neither of them said a word.”

“Did you see his face?”

“I’d know it for the rest of my life.” She stared into her tea. “He had a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. I thought at the time that he looked like someone at a funeral who was glad to be there.”

A grey suit. I thought of Vanessa on Natalie’s sofa, saying the tall one, in a grey suit. A chill went through me and settled in the pit of my stomach.

“And the mother in 412? Did you ever see her again?”

“Once.” Patience lifted her eyes. “The next afternoon. They discharged her early. She was very pale, and she couldn’t stand without help. Her husband had a hand on her arm, a quiet, dignified man. And as they passed the nurses’ station she turned and looked straight at me.” She pressed her lips together. “She had a handkerchief in her fist, embroidered with two letters. M.B. She was crying without a sound. I have never in my life seen such grief.”

M.B.

The bracelet on the table seemed to glow. B.

“Why didn’t you tell somebody?” My voice shook. “You knew. For twenty-two years you knew that baby wasn’t dead.”

“Because I was a coward.” Patience didn’t flinch. “I told myself the Cokers would give you a good home. I told myself it was kinder than telling the truth. And later, when I wanted to speak, Dr. WatsonWatson made sure I couldn’t. He found out my son had a juvenile record. He was in nursing school then, a clean, bright boy. The doctor said, ‘It would be a shame if anything were to follow him.’”

“He threatened you?”

“He didn’t need to threaten. He only needed to mention.” She wiped her cheeks with a tissue. “I moved to Altadena the next year. I changed churches. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed.”

Natalie spoke for the first time. Her voice was small. “Did anyone else ever come asking?”

Patience looked at her. Then she looked at me, and something uneasy moved across her face.

“A young man,” she said. “Last month.”

My pulse jumped. “What young man?”

“Tall. Tired. Well spoken. He said he was working for a family who had lost a child, and he asked me, very gently, whether I’d ever been at St. Anne’s.” She took a slow breath. “He had kind eyes, and I was frightened, so I said no. He thanked me and left a card.”

“Do you still have it?”

She went to the kitchen drawer. When she came back, she laid a small white business card on the table in front of me.

It was plain, cream-coloured, the same card Mason had placed on Natalie’s hall table the night before.

Mason Brooks, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

The room tilted. I stared at his name, at the neat, embossed letters, until the edges blurred.

Last month, Patience had said.

Mason had told me he’d watched my father’s house for two weeks. He had told me he’d found me by following a Land Cruiser. He had never once said that he’d already been to see Patience Mensah, a month before Grace’s attack, a month before Mrs. Ruth’s name was ever on my lips.

Natalie looked at the card, then at me. Her eyes were very large.

“Amelia,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he tell you?”