“I want to tell you the rest of it,” Fern said. “Maybe then the nightmares will finally stop.”
Still holding her hands, Bobbie waited. This woman was fragile, but she had a core of inner strength. She wouldn’t have made it this far if she hadn’t.
“My father was in a small private room of the Maison. I had managed to separate him from the sick and the dying. I tried as much as possible to be the only person who cared for him and to take all precautions when I entered his room. But we were so short of personal protective equipment. We even had to reuse our masks, that’s how bad it was. I suppose it was inevitable that he eventually caught covid too.”
Bobbie’s heart ached. “All over our country we were horribly unprepared to protect our most vulnerable. That put a tremendous pressure on healthcare workers like you.”
And in people, as in science, pressure wrought change. Pressure plus heat could transform layers of sediment into rock. Had the pressure from lack of support and resources, coupled with her father’s confession, been enough to make Annabelle Singleton want to become Fern Sinclair? Even after hearing Fern’s explanation, Bobbie sensed there was more.
“The conditions were dreadful for all of us. I had the extra worry of watching my dad grow weaker every day. I’d already seen the progression in dozens of my other patients, so I knew he only had days left. He must have known too.”
“Do you think that’s what drove his confession?”
Fern nodded, shifting her gaze from her teacup to the kitchen window. “It was terrible watching him struggle to breathe. But he found the strength to grip my hand. And that’s when he told me. About my mother’s affair with the local mayor, and how he’d taken her baby and killed it. Then disposed of it like a dog.”
Fern’s hands felt so terribly cold. Bobbie tried to rub some warmth into them. “That must have been a terrible shock.”
“Shock?” Fury flashed in Fern’s eyes as she finally turned to Bobbie. “It turned my entire world upside down. I was raised to believe my father had devoted his life to me after my mother left. I was made to feel I owed it to him to stay with him, to look after him in his old age. But he was the one who destroyed our family. I devoted my life to a man who killed an innocent baby and drove my mother to suicide.”
Bobbie had no way to gauge what she would have done in Fern’s shoes. People reacted to shock in unpredictable ways. “Do you think your father was looking for your forgiveness?”
“If he was, he didn’t get it. I told him he was a monster and that I hated him. And then I—” Fern started to cry again.
Bobbie felt like crying too. The awful things that happened in this world. It was too much sometimes. Especially when the awful things were done by people you loved or had loved. She was more certain than ever where Fern was going with this. “Did you lash out at your father with more than words?”
The sobbing stopped. Fern turned slowly to face Bobbie. “I thought finding my brother’s remains would vindicate me and free me from the nightmares and panic attacks. But I don’t think it will. Not unless I tell someone the rest of it. My father was close to death the night he made his confession. But he didn’t die from his dementia or from covid.”
Bobbie didn’t push her. Instead she put her arm around Fern’s shoulders. Felt the woman sag against her.
“I used a pillow,” Fern whispered. “When I reported his death, no one batted an eye. Another covid death. Just a statistic.”