CHAPTER 29 Maggie 
MAY 1961
Maggie wakes to the sound of breaking glass.
Or at least, she thinks she does. As she starts to come to, the room sliding into focus in the dim bluish light of dawn, she isn’t sure anymore. Maybe it was just a dream after all. She’s had such strange dreams since coming to the home, and now that she’s in the postpartum wing of the building, she’s woken up twice in a hazy confusion, as if someone had carried her out of her normal bed in the middle of the night and set her down somewhere odd and unusual.
Maggie rubs her eyes and rolls over onto her side. As she does so, she hears and feels a crinkle beneath her arm.
She sits up, blinks at the two white envelopes resting on her pillow. Glancing over, she sees that Evelyn’s bed is empty, and stripped bare of its sheets. She picks up the envelopes as a strange tingling sensation creeps downward from the top of her head.
Maggie, the first envelope says. The second is labeled Mother & Father.
Maggie’s heart is racing as she tears open the envelope with her name on it. There are two letters inside. One for her, and one addressed to the Toronto Police Department. The letter for Maggie is on top. She begins to read, heart hammering in her throat.
Dear Maggie,
It pains me to write these words because it will somehow confirm their truth. But I found out yesterday from Agatha that my baby has died. I went to Agatha to ask for help, thinking she might be willing to find a name or an address. Something. Anything to help me find her. And this is the news she brings me. My baby was sold, and then she died.
It is dreadful enough that I was separated from her, but now I cannot even find comfort in the knowledge that she would be the deeply loved child of some barren woman. She is dead, and this is the end for me, too.
To be honest with you, it feels empowering. We are all here because we were never given any choices. We were never in control. And this is something I can do to be in control. I can choose how and when I die. I have no fear for the fate of my soul. I only know that it will be free and at peace, reunited with my poor Leo and our beautiful baby girl.
If the only way I can be with them is in death, then so be it.
Now, I must ask a favor of you before I go.
I have left two other letters with you—one pre-addressed for my parents, and one for the police, enclosed with yours. Keep them hidden and safe beneath your mattress or anywhere else you can hide them, and take them with you when you leave. Please post them as soon as you can. I have said my final goodbye to my parents and brother, and in my account to the police I have explained in detail the atrocities of this place, of the Watchdog’s assaults and the sale of the children. I hope it may be enough to ruin the home, at the very least. It would be too much to ask that the Watchdog get her comeuppance, but perhaps I will be able to haunt her. Because who knows, my dear, what awaits us on the other side?
This may sound incredibly odd, but for the first time in a long while, I have hope.
And I love you, Maggie. You have been like a sister to me since we arrived at this horrible place, and your presence has been a balm for my heart. I am so terribly sorry to leave you, but I know you will leave here yourself, very soon, and go on to do great things. I implore you to live your life fully, for the both of us. And never, never stop looking for Jane. I know you will find her.
With love, I will remain,
Evelyn Taylor
Maggie’s hands are shaking.
Thud.
She jumps at the sound from downstairs, disoriented and afraid. She throws her legs over the side of the bed, clutches the letters in her hand, and pads quietly toward the bedroom door. She glances down the length of the hall, but no one else is stirring. The blue glow of dawn tints the walls and wooden floorboards. The house is silent.
She turns and heads toward the stairs and the sound that has her insides locked in an iron grip, pinching off the air in her lungs.
Creeping down the stairs, Maggie is careful to avoid the creaky step at the midpoint, and lands at the bottom of the staircase. She turns to face the parlor and nearly collapses at the sight.
Evelyn is hanging from the beam above the doorway, her head in a makeshift noose of bedsheets tied end-to-end. Her legs hang limply below the hem of her gray nightgown. Her eyes are mercifully closed, but her lips stand out in a face the color of cement. Her blond hair falls loosely over her shoulders. Beneath her dangling feet, a dining chair is resting on its side.
Maggie doesn’t notice her body sink to the floor, but she finds herself there a moment later. She clutches the letters in her hand and tries to catch a staggering breath. She wants to look anywhere else but can’t. She can’t ever un-see this. She’ll see it every time she closes her eyes.
After a minute that might be an hour, Maggie manages to stand up with help from the banister. She hauls herself to her feet and stumbles over to Evelyn, her lip trembling beneath beads of cold sweat and tears, then feels a sharp pain in her foot.
She gasps and winces at the shard of glass poking out of the skin. Looking down, she sees the floor is dusted with a shimmering coat of the stained glass that once graced the transom above the doorway. Evelyn must have broken it to throw the sheets over the beam. Maggie plucks the shard from her foot, then hops over to the front door and pulls on a pair of the communal Wellington boots. The glass crunches like gravel under her as she steps back over to the body.
“Oh, Evelyn,” she whispers, reaching out for her friend’s hand. She grasps it briefly, and finds it isn’t even cold yet. Evelyn’s soul has only just flitted away. She’s only minutes too late. The thought cuts into her like barbed wire. She runs her hand gently along Evelyn’s arm. But it’s not Evelyn, she tells herself. Evelyn is gone.
She lets go.
Maggie stares up at her friend for several long moments, thinking over the contents of the letter that’s still clutched in her hand, remembering Evelyn’s smile close to her face while they whispered late at night and kept each other warm in the early mornings. Maggie commits this scene to memory, absorbing every detail of Evelyn’s broken body, how it came to be at St. Agnes’s in the first place, and all the reasons why it ended up hanging from the parlor transom in the cold light of dawn on this May morning.
Because the anger has started now. No, not the anger. The rage. A white-hot, savage rage is coursing through Maggie’s veins like poison.
Evelyn is dead. Maggie’s own baby, Jane, is long gone. She thinks about her father’s friend Joe. She thinks about the Watchdog, about the parents and priests of the girls who’ve been sent away, urging them to “do the right thing.” Maggie has a far different sense of what’s right and wrong than she did before she came to St. Agnes’s. And she needs to make this right.
As the first red-breasted robins start to twitter their sweetness to each other in the hedge outside the parlor window, Maggie comes to a decision.
“Goodbye, sweet friend,” she whispers, gliding her fingers along the sleeve of Evelyn’s nightgown one last time.
It’s time to go.
She folds the letters in half and slides them down into her boot. With confident steps, she strides down the hall toward the kitchen. A mouse scurries along the countertop and out of sight, fleeing the disturbance. Maggie heads straight to the knife drawer. She slides it open and selects her favorite, a paring knife she always prefers. Medium length, with excellent control and a broad handle.
She stomps back across the foyer and with one last glance at Evelyn’s body, she creeps back up the staircase, almost stepping on the squeaky stair halfway up. But she won’t need to keep quiet much longer. She turns right at the top. She knows the locations of all the creaks in the floor; she sees them like a map in her mind as she picks her way down the hallway, carefully avoiding the floorboards that could betray her.
Gripping the knife so tightly her knuckles stand out white against the black handle, Maggie reaches for the doorknob of the Watchdog’s bedroom. An excited flare sparks in her gut at the thought of the justice she’s about to deliver. She knows her Bible. It’s been drilled into her brain since birth and aggressively reinforced over the course of her time at St. Agnes’s.
Assuredly, the evil man will not go unpunished.
She redoubles her grip on the knife and closes her eyes for a moment, preparing. She can feel the crinkle of paper in her boot and the hard steel of the knife handle as she sees Evelyn’s handwriting dance across her mind’s eye.
We were never in control. And this is something I can do to be in control.
She can still smell her own attacker’s breath on the back of her neck late at night. She can feel the strength of Joe’s hands holding her down.
She lets the rage flow freely again, lets it fill up her heart and mind and permeate every cell in her body as she pushes the door open into the dark silence of the Watchdog’s room. The heavy curtains are drawn over the large window and it takes Maggie’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. She blinks several times, then sees the outline of the ornate chest of drawers, the bedposts, the lumpy blankets. She moves into the room. The Watchdog is lying on her back, fast asleep, arms curled up over her head like a serene child.
Maggie wonders, briefly, what she’s dreaming of. Then the corners of her own mouth curl up at the knowledge that she’s about to interrupt whatever sweetness the Watchdog is experiencing right now. That she’s in complete control, about to change this woman’s life forever, just like she’s changed theirs.
Tonight, the Watchdog is everyone Maggie needs her to be.
The mantel clock above the small fireplace ticks away the seconds, counting down for Maggie as she hesitates to act. The Watchdog moves, twitching one arm, then her head. Slowly she wakes, her eyes heavy with sleep. They focus on Maggie, whose heart skips a beat in her throat. It’s now or never.
She tightens her hold on the knife at her side and lunges forward, plunging the blade into the Watchdog with every ounce of her remaining strength.
The blood blooms onto the white linen sheets as the nun’s agonized scream fills the room. Maggie raises the knife and lowers it again as the nun’s arm whips out at her in panic and fury.
The Watchdog lets out another piercing scream, scrambling to press the sheet against the wounds in her leg and hip. She slides off the bed with a gasp, landing roughly on her knees.
Maggie flies from the room, leaving the Watchdog kneeling in a pool of blood, and nearly collides with Sister Agatha at the top of the stairs. She’s still in her dressing gown and cap, wide-eyed and fearful. Doors are opening all along the hallway. Maggie vaguely registers the sounds of other girls’ voices, calling questions to one another.
“What’s happening?”
“Good Lord, Maggie,” Sister Agatha gasps, taking in the blood smears on Maggie’s hands. She looks over Maggie’s shoulder toward the Watchdog’s door as the warden lets out an anguished cry for help.
“Come with me,” she mutters. “Quickly.”
She runs back down the hallway faster than Maggie has ever seen her move. Maggie is hard on Agatha’s heels as the young nun clambers down the old servants’ stairs at the back of the house and out into the kitchen. She lunges for the garden door, which is always dead-bolted and requires a key.
Agatha snatches the key ring from her pocket and fumbles with the lock, her hands shaking. Maggie can hear girls’ screams from upstairs now. Then Maggie’s blood runs cold at the voice of Father Leclerc, who has finally emerged from his room, shouting at the girls to be quiet, demanding answers.
“Your hands!” Agatha gasps.
Maggie dashes to the sink and turns the tap, runs her hands under the water, watching the blood disappear as her heart pounds in her throat.
The screaming from upstairs grows louder. Sister Agatha turns the door handle and opens it onto the back garden.
“Go, Maggie, go!” she says, breathless. “Just run and keep running. Go!”
They meet eyes for only a second, but Maggie sees everything that’s transpired over the past few months reflected in Agatha’s wide eyes.
The snap of the Watchdog’s whip.
Christmas candles and the smell of Pine-Sol.
Agatha with baby Jane in her arms, walking out the door of the Goodbye Room.
Evelyn’s body hanging from the doorway. The glittering glass beneath it.
Blood on her hands, a knife, and cold water.
“Thank you, Agatha,” she whispers.
“Go!” the young nun urges, shoving her in the back, and Maggie bursts out of the garden gate just as a girl’s scream from the front hall pierces the quiet dawn.
Maggie pushes open the iron gate to her brother Jack’s house, vaguely registering the familiar creak of the hinges, then stumbles her way up the gravel path. He never responded to any of her letters and eventually she gave up sending them, but Jack is her only option. If he won’t take her in, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.
She knocks on the front door, then reaches a weak arm out to steady herself against the brown brick. She can already feel her body sinking into itself. For a moment she worries that her brother and his wife aren’t home, and wonders if she’ll have to huddle against the porch railing and wait for them to return. But then Maggie hears her sister-in-law’s high-pitched voice call from inside the house. There’s movement rippling in the glass before a lock slides back and the door opens.
“Maggie! Good Lord!”
“I need a bath,” Maggie says stupidly, leaning more of her weight onto her wobbling arm, her thin skin pressing into the rough surface of the brick.
“Jack! Come quickly!” Lorna screams over her shoulder as Maggie collapses to the ground.
Maggie closes the bathroom door behind her. Her sister-in-law has draped an assortment of fussy lace doilies over the back of the toilet tank. Several pots of face and hand creams are clustered together on the counter beside the sink. Rolls of fluffy pink hand towels are folded with unnatural neatness on a shelf above the toilet.
Maggie turns the brass key in the lock and hears it slide into place with a satisfying click. She doesn’t want to be disturbed. For months now, she has not had a moment alone. She craves peace and quiet and solitude and an end to the chaos. Her brother told her to go take a bath, then have a nap, and that they would talk once she had rested awhile.
She grips her hands on the edge of the counter now, bracing her weak body as she observes herself in the mirror. The girls were not allowed a mirror at the home, but it’s only now that Maggie truly wonders why they were denied one; she can barely stand to look at her reflection, meet her own eyes, heavy with an indescribable exhaustion she fears she won’t ever recover from. Her complexion is pallid, her features sunken and waxy. Her cheekbones are sharper than she’s ever seen them.
Maggie glances down at the stack of Chatelaine magazines in the rack beside the toilet. A fresh young brunette graces the cover with penciled brows, red lips, and full, rouged cheeks. Pretty and clean and new. She’ll teach you how to make the perfect Bundt cake for Sunday tea and settle a fussy child. How to clean your husband’s shirts to pure white perfection, starched and ironed and ready for him each morning. Maggie wonders if the smiling cover girl can also offer lessons on how to scrub away the sweat and blood of the past, the incriminating stains of transgressions and bad fortune. Lipstick from your husband’s collar in a shade you don’t own.
Maggie leans over the bathtub and turns on the hot water at full blast, barely tempering it with cold. She spent months feeling cold both inside and out, and now she wants her skin to burn. When the tub is full, she begins to take off her clothes, muscles aching as she unties her nightgown and pulls off her underwear. She steps into the water, wincing. The spot where she pulled the glass out of her foot stings in the heat. She settles herself down and lets her body float, her mind drifting along in its wake.
The house is silent, and situated on a quiet side street, but she can hear a muffled hum of traffic down on the main road a block away. A bar of her sister-in-law’s pink flowery soap rests in a seashell-shaped dish on the tub ledge. Maggie brings it to her nose and inhales deeply; the lemony rose perfume reminds her of her mother’s rosebushes, her pride and joy. Every summer her mother would pick fresh pink and white blooms from her garden and prop them in ceramic vases in every room of the house. She closes her eyes and imagines the windows open to welcome in the breeze, and the scratchiness of her Sunday church dress in the heat. Her mother in white gloves and a sun hat. Fresh lemonade and the smell of cut grass.
Maggie senses the tear tracks running down to her jawbone. How had it all gone so wrong? One night, that’s all it took. One event that separated her life into Before and After. One moment that will now define her life completely.
Her parents have disowned her. Her brother is allowing her to stay with him for the time being. But what happens when she wears out her welcome? How long can they keep her presence a secret from their parents? Will the police be coming after her?
Maggie blinks. Her eyes are so tired and scratchy they can hardly focus. She closes them again, but this time, all she can see is black. A black future with nothing in it, no landmark or point of reference to guide her. Just a never-ending expanse of darkness. She feels more exhausted than she has ever felt in her life. There is no way back. And no way forward.
Maggie runs the bar of soap up and down her arms, slowly. She has so little energy to spare. Her gaze slides into the middle distance and lands on the counter next to the sink. Her eyes focus now on the box of razor blades. Maggie stares at it for a while. Her mind is strangely blank. She isn’t even sure what exactly she’s considering. But she feels a pull toward the box.
They have already titled her a Fallen woman. How much farther can she fall? She can use one sin to erase all the others. And then she won’t have to care anymore. Her heart won’t feel like lead in her chest. Her skeletal body won’t need to recover. Her mind can finally be blank. That’s what she wants now. Darkness and silence.
Maggie raises herself out of the tub and shivers slightly in the cold air. She flips open the little box with a wet finger, leaving moist spots on the yellow cardboard. She picks out a razor, holding it gingerly in the pruned palm of her hand. There is a stillness in the air now, the heavy mist of the hot water has clouded the windowpane and condensed on the glass jars and bottles beside the sink. She hears a car horn from far away, but it is well beyond this dream.
Maggie swallows the lick of fear that has climbed up her throat and settles herself back down into the tub. She looks at her wrists. Her skin is soft from the bath, and she has no fat on her body anymore. That will make it easier.
It.
The thought hovers like a hummingbird in the air above Maggie’s head as she runs her thumb over the flat edge of the blade. This might even be easy. Likely painless. And then it will be nothing. She needn’t worry about anything beyond that. The thought settles itself down deep in Maggie’s core, warm and reassuring.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but it seems intuitive. Maggie lets out one last breath, then runs the blade along her wrist, pressing down as hard as she can, grimacing against the welcome sting. She doesn’t stop, even when her stomach feels as though it’s flipping over. Even when the blood pours into the bathwater, unfurling like red smoke beneath the surface. Even when every instinct in her body is screaming at her to stop.
Stop! she hears.
Soon.
Maggie!
It’s done now anyway.
Maggie lets the blade fall from her slippery fingers as the bathwater turns redder with each passing moment. She leans back against the hard ceramic.
Now she’s floating. She’s a child again, and all she can smell is roses. She can taste lemonade and hear the rustling of the maple trees. Her brother calling out her name across the garden. She plucks one of the roses. A thorn pricks her finger, and she sees a red pearl bloom on her skin. A woman’s voice, probably her mother’s, asking her what she’s doing. Grabbing her by the hand, demanding an answer, as always.
Maggie, you promised.
I am dying, Mother. And you cannot stop me.
Maggie smiles and slips out of her grasp as she fades into the fog of the past.
The bathtub is filling with blood as the curls of dark crimson waft from her wrist. The razor blade drops and sinks down into the dark water. She closes her eyes and her head swivels to the side, knocking the soap dish off the edge of the tub. It falls to the tile floor and shatters.
“Maggie?” Jack’s voice calls from downstairs.
Silence.
Moments later, a key jiggles in the lock. Jack is on the other side of the door, shouting to someone.
The door opens, and a gasp shoots through the misty air of the bathroom.
In a single lunge, Jack is at the edge of the bathtub.
“Lorna! Lorna, get my kit!” he screams over his shoulder.
Jack holds Maggie’s wrist tightly in one hand, his thumb pressing the wound. He reaches down into the tub and there’s an unmistakable plunk of the plug being pulled, the deep grumble and sucking sounds of the water swirling down into the drain.
“Maggie!” Jack gasps. “Maggie. Oh my God. Maggie, please don’t…”
Lorna bursts into the room, a large black case in her arms. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find it right away! It wasn’t in the closet and I had to look.” She gasps. “Oh my God, Jack. Is she…?”
“There’s a pulse but it’s weak. Quickly, Lorna. I need to transfuse her.”
She rummages around in the bag and begins pulling out instruments: a long tube, needles, and other implements. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“No!”
Lorna looks down at him, stunned. “Are you serious, Jack? She’s dying! She might be dead!”
“She’s not dead, Lorna, and I need you. Sanitize the needles with alcohol, then come here and suture her wrist. I can’t do it with the needle in my arm and I need to transfuse her.”
Lorna hesitates. “Will this work?”
Her husband sniffs and wipes his nose on the back of his hand. “I don’t know. But we have to try.”
Maggie’s eyes flutter open slowly, the sleep sticking her eyelids together. She rubs the inside corners with her knuckles, flicking away the crust. Her dry eyes itch as they strain to focus on the wall across from the bed. A painting of a pair of white kittens, cuddling on a puffy chair.
Where am I?
It takes her a moment. Her brother’s voice is faint in the distance, echoing up the stairs from the floor below. The same voice that had sternly instructed her to hold his hand when they were children, crossing the street on their way to school. The voice that had helped her to say aloud the secret she was carrying in her heart and belly, encouraging her to tell their parents, who would of course understand. The voice that drifted in and out, said her name over and over, pleading with her—Stay with me, Maggie, stay with me—as he filled her veins with his own blood.
He says her name again, this time from outside the door. “Maggie?”
She buries her face in a pillow that smells like dust and lavender. She’s in Jack and Lorna’s guest room at the end of the upstairs hallway, decorated sparsely with an odd collection of outdated furniture, lamps, and art prints.
“Maggie? Are you awake?” A soft knock on the door.
“Yes,” Maggie answers, and immediately regrets it.
The door handle turns with a small creak, and her brother’s nose appears in the crack. “Are you decent?”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
Jack pushes the door open with the corner of the tray he’s carrying, laden with a full English breakfast of eggs and sausage, toast with Lorna’s own black-currant jam, fried tomatoes, and tea. Maggie pushes herself up into a sitting position, leans against the hard wooden headboard, and looks skeptically at the breakfast tray.
“You slept straight through two meals. You need to eat.” Her brother lowers the tray onto Maggie’s lap, then perches himself at the bottom corner of the bed. He’s facing the door, as though planning a quick escape. Maggie’s throat tightens when she sees the dark circles under his eyes, the slump of his shoulders.
“Jack—”
“Why, Maggie? Why would you do such a thing?”
Maggie’s gaze falls from her brother’s anguished face. She can hear birds outside the window, and it dawns on her how desperate she is for fresh air.
“Maggie.” Jack presses for an answer. “Look at me.”
She meets her brother’s eyes under wet lashes.
“Why?” He waits, hands folded neatly in his lap.
Maggie picks up the tea, takes a slow sip. The clink of plates and glasses drifts into the room from downstairs in the kitchen where Lorna is doing the washing up. She knows she owes them the truth.
“You never got any of my letters?”
“No, we didn’t. How many did you send?”
“Once a month, pretty much. More often at first. Ten or twelve?” As if it even matters at this point. “The Watchdog must have destroyed them. Our letters were all posted for us. Or at least we thought they were.”
“Who is the Watchdog?” asks Jack.
“Basically the matron of the home. The head nun. She’s…” Maggie trails off.
Jack clears his throat. “That’s okay. It doesn’t matter now.” A long pause, then, quietly, “Where is the baby, Maggie?”
Maggie fights it briefly, but her eyes pinch shut, and she feels an unpleasant swoop cut through her gut.
“They took her away, Jack,” Maggie manages, her voice sticking in her throat like clay. “She was adopted.”
She picks up the cloth napkin from the breakfast tray and mops her face. She has never cried this much in front of anyone before. She’s never cried this much, full stop. She hates feeling so weak.
Jack is silent for a moment. He nods to himself before speaking, as though confirming a thought. “But you were going to give it—her—up for adoption anyway, right? Wasn’t that the plan, Meg?”
“Yes. It was, at first. But after I’d had her, held her, then I wasn’t so sure. After I saw her face. She looked like you.” She chokes on a sob.
Jack takes the tray from her lap, placing it on the dresser while Maggie composes herself, but brings her back the tea, which she sips gratefully.
“In one of the letters…” She pauses. “I asked you whether… whether you and Lorna might want to adopt her. Because, well…”
“Ah.” Jack heaves a silent sigh. “I see. That might have made sense. I understand. Lorna brought it up one night, but I think she was afraid to really suggest it. I never told her what happened to you, Maggie, but frankly I thought, given how the baby came to be—I thought you’d want nothing to do with that child. I thought you were content enough with giving it up.”
Jack was the first person she told. He sat with her and held her hand while she relayed the news to her parents. They believed her about the pregnancy, but refused to accept how it had happened.
“I thought I was, too,” she says. “But things changed once I felt like she was mine. And if you and Lorna had taken her—she told me about her miscarriages last year—I just thought it might have been a decent solution that we all could have benefited from.”
“But Maggie, I—”
“I know. I know, Jack.”
She realizes he is truly the only person she has now in this world.
“What…” Jack begins, faltering. “What happened there? How did it all lead you to opening up your wrist in my bathtub, Maggie? I need to understand.”
Maggie takes a deep breath in, then bravely replays the nightmare, recounting every detail to her brother: the workhouse labour, the conditions, Father Leclerc, the Watchdog, and Evelyn’s death. Jack shifts in his seat, but she doesn’t stop.
“And they sold the babies. Sold them, Jack.”
Jack’s brow is furrowed under the swoop of his sandy hairline. “But how did they give it away without your say-so?”
“They made me sign before they would give me the painkillers,” she says.
Jack’s mouth falls open. “But Maggie, they can’t make you sign a contract under those conditions. It’s not binding, it’s invalid. We could fight this!”
A dense silence follows Jack’s words. They meet eyes across the bed, brown mirroring brown. Deep in her chest, Maggie feels the unfamiliar sensation of hope struggling to its feet.
“But who’s going to believe me, Jack? A lot of the girls that go through that place willingly give their babies up. They convince you to, coerce you into agreeing. They tell you your baby will have a better life with an adopted family, that you can’t afford it, you’ll end up shamed and prostituting on the street. They terrify those girls into signing off on the adoptions. It’s the Church, Jack. Who’s going to believe us? Even if they do believe me, they would probably still agree that the baby is better off with an adopted family. Forced or not. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Jack chews his lip the same way Maggie does. “I assume you didn’t see the name on the adoption papers? Of the parents?”
Maggie shakes her head. “I hardly remember signing.”
She knows her brother means well, but there’s no point discussing the what-ifs. It’s not possible now. There’s nothing to be done. It’s over. Jane is gone. “There is something else, though,” she says.
Jack waits.
“I, um, I attacked Sister Teresa. The warden.”
Jack springs off the bed. “What?”
“Jack, she had it coming, I promise you.”
“What? What do you mean, ‘had it coming’?”
Maggie can feel the burn of shame creeping up her neck. “She beat us. She sold our babies. She’s evil, Jack.”
Jack opens and closes his mouth, then throws himself back down on the bed. “What did you do?”
“I stabbed her.”
“God, Maggie.” Jack buries his head in his hands for a moment, then rakes them through his sleek hair. “But they’ll be coming to find you. The police could be arriving here at any moment! Why didn’t you say something when you first got here?”
Maggie tenses at his raised voice, curling her shoulders inward. Jack notices, immediately apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Maggie. Where did you stab her?” he asks, wincing. “Is there a chance she’s dead?”
Maggie shakes her head. “Probably not.”
“Probably not?”
“I can’t say for sure. I don’t know. It was right after I found my friend Evelyn dead. I’d just had enough. Something snapped. I had Joe’s face in my mind. And I stabbed her and ran. Sister Agatha unlocked the door for me and told me to run. I didn’t know where else to go, so I came here. I thought they would be after me right away, like you said.” Maggie picks at her cuticles. “Your razors were right there. I thought I could just drift off, and… I woke up here this morning, and I’m alive because of you.” She reaches out and strokes his arm, trying to avoid looking at the gauze wrapped around her wrist. “The police haven’t shown up, so I’m sure the Watchdog isn’t dead. Have you heard from Mother?”
Jack shakes his head.
“So, they’re not coming for me, I’m sure of it,” she says. “Listen, I have a letter from Evelyn, addressed to the police. She asked me to post it for her, as her final wish. I’m hoping, when they read it, they might actually come after the Watchdog. It shouldn’t be me they want. And the home has to deal with the body of a—a dead girl, and a stabbed warden. The house will be in chaos right now. They won’t come after me. And the letter is my insurance policy.”
Jack collects his thoughts, then reaches out and pulls Maggie into a hug that crushes her starved frame. He lets out a breath into her shoulder. He’s warm and solid and smells like the cedar aftershave Maggie gave him for his birthday the previous year. She smiles through her tears.
“I’m so sorry, Maggie,” he whispers into her ear. “I should have gotten you out of there. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know, Jack.”
“I love you, Maggie.”
“I love you, too.”
The room is silent. Maggie can hear the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the bedside table. Twenty-one ticks, she counts. She and her brother hold each other for twenty-one seconds until her breathing slows and matches his. Twenty-one seconds that heal the temporary divide and bind them together again. Twenty-one seconds until they break apart and Jack asks the impossible question:
“So. What happens now?”