May 15, 1936
Wilmington, North Carolina
When Jacqueline DuMonde did not appear at the table for lunch, Ethel Oglethorpe realized with a start that she ought to have paid closer mind when she’d seen the girl go out to the garden with her book this morning. She wasn’t well yet, still bleeding—it was a travesty, Ethel thought, that Rachel Peters was insisting on picking her up tomorrow and bringing her back to Wayward.
Picturing little Jackie slumped in a faint and bleeding on the ground, Ethel excused herself—it was important to maintain a calm facade for the girls—and hurried out through the kitchen, ignoring Millie’s quizzical look.
Out in the garden, the only sounds were the singing of birds, the slight rustle of leaves. The heat made Ethel begin to sweat immediately; her corset pinched her (there was no question she’d been putting on weight this past year, alas) as her heels clicked down the brick path to the stone bench, encircled in shrubbery, where she knew Jacqueline had enjoyed reading.
There was no sign of the girl.
In the air was the scent of mulberry.
Then, Ethel saw the book, abandoned on the bench. She went to pick it up. A mud-spattered Sense and Sensibility.
“Jacqueline?” she called out, though she supposed she already knew.
A bird whistled in return.
Ethel flipped through the pages of the book. I will be calm, she saw was underlined. I will be mistress of myself.
A lump rose in Ethel’s throat. The poor, sweet child. Never had a chance.
Out fluttered a printed card. It fell to the path.
With effort, Ethel bent to pick it up.
A picture of a bearded saint. Hope begins with Saint Jude. The patron saint of lost causes.
Now real tears came to Ethel’s eyes, though she couldn’t have explained why. Except—usually, this job was full of rewards. Everyone was made happy. The girls were well cared for and glad to know their babies would go to good homes. The adopting couples were pleased to pay well for a beautiful child. Usually, the couples were older, and would not have been allowed to adopt through usual channels. Usually, they had tried everything to have a child, typically for many, many years, and they were so grateful. Many operations of this nature were not so ethically, so happily, run.
And Ethel liked to think she was providing a service. Making dreams come true. Besides that, she managed everything with the utmost discretion. Even taught the girls manners. Most ended up marrying well—better than they might have without Ethel’s tutelage—with no one the wiser.
But Ethel did not like when things didn’t go according to plan. She did not like what Dr. and Mrs. Addington had decided to do in the case of Jacqueline DuMonde. Telling her that her baby had died! What cruelty! And then to follow the recommendation of the state eugenics board without even the girl’s knowledge, making it so poor Jacqueline would never have another child in her life, when Ethel would’ve sworn that Jacqueline was about the furthest thing from feebleminded any girl could be, let alone a prostitute or potential murderess, the way her file claimed. (And, yes, it had been Ethel’s job to convince Jacqueline to surrender the child, and Ethel had failed at that, so she did feel some culpability. But, still. She felt there had to have been another way to ensure that the child was available to the adoptive parents. She felt that efforts could have been made following the birth—but Dr. Addington had said they couldn’t take any chances.)
So, Mrs. Addington had whisked the healthy baby girl away in the night, while poor little Jacqueline was still unconscious, and Mrs. Addington had been caring for the child at the Addingtons’ home. Tonight, the adoptive parents would arrive from Kentucky, pay their six thousand dollars (never knowing they were being charged a thousand dollars extra, on account of the mother having been a scholarship girl), and take the baby away.
Rachel Peters would clear five hundred dollars personally—more than two years’ salary, for her.
Ethel looked around the garden, wondering how far Jacqueline could have gotten in the two hours since Ethel had seen her. With the state of health that the girl was in, Ethel should make sure she was found. She should call the police.
But she could envision how that would play out, she could see it all the way through: it would mean state prison for the girl.
Would Ethel lose her job if Rachel Peters arrived to find Jacqueline DuMonde had escaped?
But what would Rachel Peters care? She’d get her five hundred dollars. If she had to account to anyone for a missing inmate—seemingly, it had bothered no one that Wayward had been one girl short, the past couple of months—she would think of something, clever woman that she was. Chances were, she could make Jacqueline DuMonde disappear altogether from the records.
The girl deserved a chance, Ethel thought. Especially after what the Addingtons had done.
Then she had a wild thought. A solution.
She looked around the garden once more. Yes, she thought. The girl was a survivor.
All she needed was a chance.
That afternoon, Ethel—she had told the girls that Jacqueline DuMonde’s family had come early for her, that she’d been heartbroken not to get to tell them goodbye—prepared the birth certificate for Jacqueline DuMonde’s little girl. Henceforth, the child would be known as Clarissa Ann Duncan, daughter of Jack and Lola (née Breckinridge) Duncan of Lexington, Kentucky. Ethel would report the birth to the county registrar as if Jack and Lola were the biological parents; as if Jacqueline DuMonde had never existed at all. The registrar received a hundred dollars per month from Dr. Addington to accept whatever information the McNaughton Home submitted as gospel fact, so there would be no question why the well-to-do couple from Lexington had traveled to Wilmington for the birth of their daughter.
As usual, where the form asked for “place of birth,” Ethel made no entry. Dr. Addington was a forward thinker, and did not want the grown babies, years in the future, getting too curious about the McNaughton Home. “No good could come of that,” he said. It was the girls who’d given birth he was protecting, he said, as well as the adoptive parents.
Next, on McNaughton Home stationery, Ethel typed a short narrative of the child’s biological background. This was rarely done, but, in cases like Jacqueline DuMonde’s, where the baby had emerged with a slightly darker skin tone, Dr. Addington required it. These girls kept some secrets even from him, and he didn’t want couples showing up a year or two down the road questioning a child’s purity and demanding their money back. “People believe what you tell them,” Dr. Addington always said, and Ethel, who had no idea of Jacqueline DuMonde’s background, let alone the baby’s father’s, enjoyed the imaginative exercise—the father being “from an old English family long in the U.S.” was a particularly nice touch, she thought—picking out the letters on the typewriter’s sticky metal keys, leaving room for Dr. Addington’s signature at the end.
Next, she prepared a death certificate for Jacqueline DuMonde, getting a secret little thrill as she wrote in the cause of death in her neat cursive: Complications from childbirth. This, she would not send to the state—because Jacqueline DuMonde, after all, had never been at the McNaughton Home, nor given birth; Lola Duncan had—but to Miss Peters. Ethel was counting on the fact that Miss Peters would not want to file it, so as not to shed light on her lucrative arrangement with the McNaughton Home. Miss Peters would certainly have a new certificate drawn up with a different cause of death and signed by someone at Wayward, showing that the girl had died in custody there.
The important thing was that Miss Peters would believe that Jacqueline DuMonde was no more; that Miss Peters would make Jacqueline DuMonde disappear entirely.
At three, Dr. Addington arrived as scheduled, stopping at Ethel’s office first. True to form, he signed every paper she set in front of him without bothering to read it, chatting lazily about the weather. He trusted her that implicitly; they had been working together so long.
While he went off to give the girls their examinations, Ethel folded Clarissa Ann Duncan’s birth certificate into one envelope, labeling it as such. Into another, she folded the typed narrative and the prayer card Jacqueline had left behind. (This was a bit of a risk, suggesting as it did that the baby’s parents were Catholic, which the Duncans might protest. But a part of Ethel was in rebellion against so thoroughly erasing Jacqueline DuMonde from the earth; at least, she felt sending Jacqueline’s little keepsake along with the child was the right thing to do.) This envelope she labeled, Background information (if desired). Perhaps it would never be opened. A lot of parents didn’t want to know. They wanted their baby to have literally dropped from heaven. A stork delivery, like greeting cards showed. It made Ethel laugh, the things that people would believe, just in order to live with themselves.
She put the two envelopes together into a large brown envelope, and, when he came back into the office, handed the package to Dr. Addington. He would pass it along to Jack and Lola Duncan tonight. Dr. Addington’s eyes were bright, the way they always were when he had a big payment coming. (But, Ethel reminded herself, Dr. Addington was generous in his care of the girls. Dr. Addington provided well for his employees. Dr. Addington was a good-hearted man, or Ethel would not have worked for him all these years.)
By the time he left, it was getting late, but Ethel still had time. She sealed the death certificate into an envelope, addressed it to Miss Peters at Wayward, then put on her hat and gloves. (“Look at the fine lady!” Millie teased, as Ethel strolled out through the kitchen; Ethel so rarely left the Home for any reason.) She went out to the garage to her scarcely used Buick. The lightest rain was falling. Ethel drove carefully over to the train station and parked. She covered her hair with a scarf. Resolutely not keeping an eye out for Jacqueline, who, after all, might at this very moment be boarding a train, Ethel dropped the envelope into a postbox, then hurried through the drizzle to the Western Union office and filled in a telegram blank.
To Rachel Peters, NC Reformatory for Wayward Girls
UNFORTUNATE TURN OF EVENTS STOP J DUMONDE PASSED AWAY THIS AM FROM DELAYED COMPLICATIONS STOP NO NEED FOR YOU TO COME STOP YOUR FEE WILL BE FORWARDED STOP SIGNED DR JOS ADDINGTON
Ethel counted out the fee from her own pocketbook.
All the girl needed was a chance.
* * *
September 2019
Kure Beach, North Carolina
Kate got in from riding Ransom feeling good and with just enough time to spare. She was going to meet Lana, who was down visiting from Raleigh, and their mother and Monty for dinner at McGillicuddy’s to celebrate: Lana had just gotten a publication contract for her book, Lucky: How DNA Solved the Mystery of My Biracial Identity and Gave Me a New Family.
Kate took a quick shower, not washing her hair, and picked a red sheath out of the closet, her favorite pair of sandals. She still looked good for sixty-one, she thought, as she let down her hair and assessed herself in the mirror, and she hadn’t had a drink in three years. Life was good. Almost better than ever, in fact—except for the fact that it was missing Mark. But she’d come through to a place of gratitude for the years she’d had with him, and for the fact that she’d found reasons to go on living without him, and living fully, soberly, happily. She was closer to her mother and sister than she’d ever been; she had family in Minnesota now, too. She had more hope for the future than she’d ever had, and if that was strange, at her age, she didn’t care.
Though she hardly had time—maybe it was just habit—she sat down at her computer (she loved the desk in her new home, which overlooked the white sand of Kure Beach) and clicked on her email.
Her stomach lurched when she saw two emails from Ancestry. (She’d long ago taken over management of her own account from Lana; no way did she want her sister acting as go-between on all her communications, which had turned out to be many.)
You have a new DNA match!
And: You have a new message!
Okay, well, maybe another of her Montgomery half-sisters had sent in her DNA and reached out? Tricia had written Kate a while back, and now they were in touch every month or so; they’d even met once. And Kate had spoken to Clayburn on the phone, before he’d passed away last year. Lana had, too, once. (Clarissa had not.) To Lana, he had said, “I never once thought of you as mine,” which, of course, had sent her screaming back to therapy and given her two chapters’ worth of material for her book. She’d taken to referring to him as “the sperm donor”; to Lucky as her “spiritual father.”
To Kate, Clayburn had said, I’m sorry, Katie. I was wrong.
Not as satisfying as she’d have thought, but better than nothing, in the end. (Of course, she hadn’t told Lana, and never would.)
Kate clicked on the message, anticipating a half-sister or some distant cousin. She’d trained herself, after all this time, not to hope for more.
But then she saw the username—MattK—and she knew.
Her vision blurred as she read:
Hello,
I apologize for dropping in out of the blue like this, but it seems from the DNA that you must be my birth mother. I was born June 1, 1973, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon. I hope it’s all right that I’m contacting you. I would really like to get to know you, if you’re agreeable. I’ve always known that I was adopted, but never knew anything about you. I hope that this is not an unwelcome message. I look forward to hearing from you, and, I hope, to getting to know you.
Sincerely yours,
Matt Kowalski
And a phone number! He had given her his phone number! Kate was laughing and crying. She picked up the phone and called her mother. Clarissa didn’t answer, and Kate left a bubbly voicemail, probably incoherent, finishing it, “I’ll see you—I’ll see you very soon, at the restaurant!” Then she quickly dialed Cecily in Minnesota.
“Cecily, Cecily, you won’t believe it!” And Kate told her the news.
“Oh, my dear, that’s wonderful.” Cecily sounded tired but happy. Kate had already talked to her at length about her fears surrounding telling her son—in the event he ever contacted her—the details of his conception, and Cecily had advised the truth. Tell him that light comes out of the darkness; that without darkness there could be no light, she’d said. Now she said, “Please, call him right away. Right away! That’s my great-grandson. My and Lucky’s great-grandson. I want to meet him. I’ve stayed alive for the chance, I think!”
Kate was crying as she hung up and dialed the number Matt had written below his name.
“Hello?” It was his voice! Her son’s voice!
Kate had to swallow hard before she could speak. “Um, hello? Matt? My name is Kate Montgomery. I—I just got your message. I was so happy to hear from you!”
“Kate Montgomery?” His voice was thick with emotion.
Tell him, Cecily had advised, we never stopped praying for impossible things.
Tell him that, thanks to him, and you, and your mother, a long-ago love lives on.
“Yes, Matt. Yes. I’m Kate Montgomery. I’m your mother.”