First thing Monday morning, Gabriel calls the newspaper. Maggie hovers behind him. “Make sure you get a name,” she insists. “They may not want to say.”
“I haven’t even been transferred to classifieds yet.”
“Ask if it was a man or a woman,” she says. “And how long has the ad been running? And how often?”
“Bonjour, madame,” he says, gesturing to Maggie to stop talking.
Maggie steps away to give him some space. She chews on a nail, kills a fly buzzing around the windowsill, opens the back door to toss it outside. It’s a beautiful morning, the sun already blinding, the air thick and perfumed by her garden. She examines her hollyhocks, which are in full bloom, forming the towering wall of pink, coral, and white flowers she’d envisioned two years ago when she planted them.
She goes back inside, and is disappointed to see that Gabriel is still on the phone. “Who placed the ad?” she mouths.
Gabriel glares at her and puts a finger to his mouth.
“Don’t forget to ask if it’s going to run again,” she says.
“And is it scheduled to run again?” he asks, motioning for Maggie to hand him his coffee. “I see,” he says. “Please go ahead and cancel it. No need to run it anymore.” After a beat: “Yes. She did.”
Maggie signals maniacally for Gabriel to wrap up.
“Thank you,” he says. “You’ve been very helpful.”
As he puts down the phone, Maggie throws up her hands in exasperation. “So?” she cries. “I’m surprised you didn’t invite her over for dinner.”
“The ad was paid for by a Mr. Peter Hughes.”
“Peter?” She shakes her head. “My brother? I don’t . . . That doesn’t make sense.”
“Call him.”
Gabriel hands Maggie the phone and she dials his number at work.
“Peter Hughes,” he answers, in what Maggie perceives as a rather self-important tone. He recently made partner at a large architecture firm in Toronto—as per the photocopied letter he mailed everyone in the family at Christmas.
“Elodie called me,” she blurts. No preamble. No greeting.
Peter is quiet.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she says. “But why? I’m stunned, Peter.”
Peter laughs good-naturedly.
“Really,” she says. “Why? And why not tell me?”
“It wasn’t me, Maggie. It was Daddy.”
It takes a moment for his words to land.
“He started running the ad years ago,” Peter explains. “Before he got sick. The first Saturday of every month.”
“He never said—”
“He made me promise to keep doing it after he died. And not to tell you.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t believe she actually saw it and called you,” he says. “After all these years. I never thought she would. I told Daddy I thought it was futile, but he could be stubborn, as you know.”
“Does Ma know?”
“Are you kidding? Of course not.”
Maggie leans over the sink and turns on the tap, splashes water on her face. It’s hot in the kitchen. She tucks the phone between her ear and shoulder and opens the window for some air.
“Will you meet her?” Peter asks her.
“Yes,” Maggie says. “Next week.”
The week crawls by. Maggie and Gabriel go through the motions of each day, feigning normalcy for the kids. They don’t discuss Elodie much among themselves, preferring instead to process it alone. Maggie can think of little else, but with two children, life keeps moving forward whether she likes it or not. There are meals to prepare, moods to manage, tantrums to quell; fights to break up, baths, housecleaning. At work, it’s catalogue season, on top of which her publisher just sent her a book to consider for translation. It doesn’t end, and certainly doesn’t leave much time for anguishing over her fears.
Still, the knot in her chest doesn’t go away. Not for a minute. Beneath every word or movement courses an unrelenting strum of anxiety; her thoughts stubbornly drift back to Elodie. What will she say to her when they finally meet?
She keeps imagining that moment over and over in her mind—the way Elodie will react, the possibility of her anger and hatred, the withholding of forgiveness. Maggie can’t bear the thought; the dread in her body is visceral, as if Elodie were already standing in front of her, accusing and rejecting her.
When Maggie’s mother gets wind of the reunion, she calls Maggie in a panic. “Some things are better left alone!” she cries.
“She’s my daughter, Ma. This isn’t even a conversation.”
“This is not a good idea, Maggie. You gave her up.”
“It’s the seventies, Ma. No one gives a shit that I had a baby at sixteen.”
“You can’t tell the kids. What will they think of you?”
“They’ll understand. I told you, times are different now. They don’t judge like your generation did.”
“What will she think of you?” Maman says. “What if she hates you? Have you thought about that?”
“It’s all I’ve thought about,” Maggie says, and hangs up.
The night before she’s to meet Elodie, Maggie wakes up with a racing heart. She snuggles against Gabriel. To calm herself, she tries to remember the stories her father used to tell her to help her fall asleep. One of his favorite aphorisms comes into her mind, and she can almost hear his voice, as if he’s speaking to her now. He who plants a seed plants life.
At least she did that. She gave Elodie life, though not much else.