MADDY SILENTLY STEPPED out into the hall and walked quietly to her room. She knelt down and reached under her bed. From inside the box of Shadow magazines she pulled the medical record—the page she’d saved from the warehouse file. The one she didn’t truly understand until this very moment.
She walked back into Jessica’s room. Margo looked up, her eyes red.
“My God, Maddy,” she said. “All those years ago. Lamont and I. We lost …we lost our baby.”
Maddy sat down on the bed with the yellowed paper folded in her hand.
There was nothing to do but to just say it, plain and simple.
“No,” said Maddy softly. “You didn’t.”
She unfolded the paper and handed it to Margo.
Margo held the paper up. Lamont looked over her shoulder. It took a few seconds for them to realize what they were looking at, and a few more to comprehend the scribbled notes at the top:
Year. Date. Time of birth.
Margo stiffened. She inhaled and exhaled slowly. Her heart was racing. She looked at Lamont.
“No,” she said. “No. It’s not possible.”
Maddy understood. She’d thought it was impossible too. But now she realized that it was true. And she finally knew how it all fit together. She sat down on the bed.
“I know you don’t remember,” she said, “but it happened. It did. You delivered a daughter. While you were sleeping. They never wanted you to know. Your daughter grew and got married and had children. And those children had children—all the way down to me. I didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m not some random freak. I’m part of you. I come from you. From both of you.”
Lamont and Margo looked at each other, stunned and silent. In their mental fog, they were both doing the same calculations, trying to add up the decades and generations that had led to this place, this time, this girl.
Their living, breathing descendant.