2007-2008

Morning light through the gap in the curtains. Eyes still closed, Alison felt Mary with her. She rose with the idea of her, carried this through her days: hand on orange in the supermarket. Does she like those? How does she peel them? Might she be eating one now? In bed with Tori, turning the pages of Alice in Wonderland: did she have another daughter? Is she married? Does someone love her? How did she survive carrying a baby, and giving birth, and letting go? How is she now?

With everyone in bed, Alison climbed the spiral staircase to her attic studio, clay left neglected and drying out in the corner. She had ample stock for Etsy, so instead of creating, she typed into the search engine night after night: Mary Kerr, Scotland.

Mary Kerr, darts player in Aberdeen.

Mary Kerr, swimmer in Largs, coming dead last in every race.

Mary Kerr, obituary. Survived by two sons and a daughter. Am I too late? Months like this, and then the realization: that Mary Kerr wouldn’t be her. If Alison’s Mary Kerr had married, she might as well have disappeared. Another blank space. She let that settle.

~

Still January sky. Black outside. The children asleep. Wade at a conference in Atlanta. Instead of Mary Kerr, she typed in Family First, in whose offices she’d sat all those years ago, embarrassed that they’d first thought her seeking to give her child up, found their search agency, BirthRight.

They took the scant details she had, and told her which adoption association to email for more.

A large, fat envelope filled the mailbox before Valentine’s Day. Hand shaking as she lifted Papa’s letter opener, she carefully slit the edge.

On the desk in front of her, in the social worker’s tight script: Mary and James, the ‘putative father’. Mary and her love. Mary and her shock. Mary’s mother, saying they should just take the baby home. Mary’s doubt. Mary doing it, nonetheless. She held in her hand those notes as well as copies of the letters Mary received, weekly, from the Children’s Welfare Supervisor from the Church of Scotland: “As you will probably know, your baby was placed in the care of one of our Foster Mothers … remind you to pay £2 per week towards her maintenance.” The Mrs. typed beside the title. Not even a signature. Alison burned. What they’d done to Mary, those people at the church. Oh, Mary. Where are you now?

~

BirthRight offered a reunion service. All Alison had to do was email her details. She paid a small donation to get her name on the waiting list for a searcher: someone to enter the House of Records and leaf through the papers to find what lay hidden there. In the meantime, she must wait. The imagination stirred. She let it. She must be prepared to take Mary as she was, to go asking for nothing, to accept whatever she might find.

She dreamed of her, night and day, often as ‘Not Mrs.’, a young woman, sullied and lost, or hardened and alone, or as ‘Mrs.’, perfectly happy, with a husband and two perfect children and a garden, having never told anyone about the baby, and having no desire ever to have that secret revealed.

At last, months later, the email came back, containing details of births, deaths, marriages. There they were, on the page, Mary and her mother, Eilidh. Hamish, Alison’s grandfather, given and taken—the death certificate for him there as well. Mary no longer Mary Kerr. Her husband, too, there on the page, and her children. Her other children, now adults. Her new address, in the east. Funny. Where she’d have expected it to be in the beginning.

How do you want to proceed? The email asked.

She wanted to dive in, write to her immediately. Alison wanted to see her, feel the skin of her hand, hear her voice. She wanted to run away from it all.

She selected the option of having the agency write to Mary on her behalf.

In the waiting time, she tried to push away the imaginings, yet still found herself considering everything—every twisted dream she had, of Mary floating over her, dead, of her, gaunt and frail and waiting to see Alison before she died, night after night of them. During the day, she asked herself every conceivable what if, until, in the dark of one of those early mornings, the email arrived, saying they’d had a reply from Mary. She wanted Alison to write the first letter, send it through the reunion service; Mary would reply the same way.

The next weeks were a blur. All Alison could think of was that the woman who carried her and gave birth to her would write her a letter. That, alone, was more than she’d ever dared dream. For the first time in her life, she prepared to face the truth of her story. At long last, she would have the answers she’d sought when she’d been that little girl who climbed the holly tree and went to the gypsies, only to run away. She was braver than that now, wasn’t she?

The slim, Air Mail envelope snuggled in between bills and the weekly grocery store mailer. Alison passed the children at the kitchen table, closed the bedroom door, and then the bathroom door behind her, locking it. Tucked between the sheets of tidy script, two photos nestled: one of Mary in 1968, and one of her just a month ago. Alison stared, rubbing her thumb over the face, the body. Her eyes, the same as Alison’s. Everything else, different—long, slim limbs, hardly a curve at the waist. A gentle smile. Kind. Alison’s eyes welled up, blurring the words of the letter. Mary wanted to be in touch, to email. Do you think we could meet? I could come to you. Save you the airfare.

Alison passed the children again, still snacking. “Just have a couple of minutes of work to do.” The laptop open. Thank you for the letter and for the photos especially and yes, I would love to meet. Send.

~

Noon. Sunday. Bright April afternoon. Alison will remember all of that. She will not remember the color of the door on which she knocked. Or the texture. Only the curtained glass to the side, which left a small gap, through which she saw the slim hall and the edges of the kitchen counter, dining table, sofa, armchair, sliding door on the other side, open to reveal pieces of Mary lounging on the balcony.

You could turn and run, Alison. She will remember feeling the thought buzz through her brain, red and grainy.

She will remember that she knocked again, swallowed, felt her saliva thick, whilst through the sliver her natural mother didn’t move at all.

And then she did.

Alison won’t remember that either, didn’t see it, took a step back and then Mary was there, in the doorframe. Mary, for whom Alison felt she’d crawled over 3,000 miles and forty years and as many layers of bureaucracy to find, was there.

They stood silently in front of each other, and then Mary said, “Come in?” Alison followed her.

Mary will tell her, years later, that she drank water, from the tap, with no ice, which Mary thought was good, not American at all. Alison won’t remember that either.

She will remember, though, sitting on the couch, less than a foot away from Mary. She’ll remember her dark eyes, the same as the eyes Alison had been looking at all her life. She’ll remember the grain of Mary’s pale hand wrapped around the mug of tea, the smooth heat of her own mug in her same-grained hand. She’ll remember sipping hot tea her mother made, the way it slid softly down her throat, heating her within.

She’ll remember, too, the cadence of Mary’s words, the melody, halting in places, dotted with rests, skipping beats as they walked across the grass and over the bridge and along the sidewalk and she told Alison all that she could recall.

“We waited,” Mary said, “not wanting to disrupt the normal Christmas. I thought I might burst. As soon as we were home, I saw my mother glance at my belly. There was no point keeping it secret, then.”

Mary continued, saying that all the gifts had been given and received when Mary and Jimmy—only his mother called him James by then—entered the front room that looked out on the bay. They perched on the pale blue settee with its lace doilies on the arms and seatback, a shield against human skin and hair, not that Jimmy or Mary came near them. Spines straight, feet pressed tightly together, hands clasped in their laps, they sat, not even daring to allow their legs or shoulders to touch.

“We’re going to,” Jimmy cast his eyes down. He seemed to speak to his own blurry image, reflected in the slim coffee table in front of them, its spindly legs with claw feet that threatened to dig into the carpet. Those, too, had protectors beneath them. “We’re going to get married.”

“Mrs. MacInnes emitted a sound that might have been called a snort had it come from a lesser person,” Mary said.

Jimmy dared a glance through his long lashes. He cleared his throat.

“She’s,” he began. His cheeks colored. “Mary has fallen pr—”

“You will not,” Mrs. MacInnes said.

“I felt the words like a lasso around Jimmy, pulling him away. My stomach churned. I wished my hands would spring a will of their own, reach for him, pull us both outside.”

She’d dared a turn of the eyes towards the window: a weak winter sun strained, trying to slide through clouds and lace and spotless glass. It would be doing the same next door, offering a last glance at her mother (her lovely mother) as she did the evening check of the orchids. Wee Eilidh, a full five inches shorter than Mary. No match for Mrs. MacInnes.

“James,” Mrs. MacInnes said, “is the brains of this family. I will not,” she paused, “see him give away his future on some baby.”

Mary glanced at Jimmy. This was her hooker, who hunkered in the scrum, fighting the press of the men for the ball. Silently, she tried to will him to rise, to claim this. She didn’t account for the fact that he had always won the ball with a prop forward on either side to protect him, that he was actually the wee man on the team. Never had he stood alone. There, on the sofa, his shoulders shrank inward as Mrs. MacInnes continued about how she, Mary, shouldn’t expect James to pay for her error.

In that moment, Mary believed they were following the only path available. She did not realize that, had they been sitting there three decades earlier, they wouldn’t have needed Mrs. MacInnes’ approval to marry; they would already have been married under Scottish law—a promise and subsequent sex all that were needed for a marriage until 1940. Had it been a hundred years prior, many Scots wouldn’t have cared had they not bothered with marriage at all. Illegitimate births were common, especially in the northeast and southwest of Scotland in the middle of the nineteenth century. Before that, illegitimacy did not exist.

She’d heard her mother wittering on about how, in the ancient days, children belonged to them all, received as gifts, belonging to the tuath.

But this was 1966, when she sat, Jimmy at her side, both of them red-faced and rigid and listening to Mrs. MacInnes going on about the Church and the proper ways to do things.

She never looked directly at Mrs. MacInnes. Her eyes turned from Jimmy to the sun beyond the windows. She watched it slowly sink behind lace curtains that hung luminous, bleached and scrubbed clean by Mrs. MacInnes’ own hand, stark white against the darkening December sky.

~

Mary reeled within her room. The weak winter sun rose, set, repeated. She needed movement. Out the front door, the icy air stole her breath. She hesitated. The creak of the door behind her, the MacInnes’ house. The hair on her arms rose inside her winter coat. She turned to retreat. Too late. Jimmy’s hand wrapped around hers.

Inside, her mother, red-eyed at the kitchen sink, scrubbing. Mary fisted her hand. He released, then he stepped forward and lifted her over the low fence, surely and smoothly. No time to resist. Wide-eyed and rigid, both hands jumped to her belly. His hand on top. She looked down, wished she could glare like Mrs. MacInnes. Mrs. MacInnes: away at her work, in someone else’s home, making some pronouncements about someone else’s condition. A nurse. A carer. Mary plucked Jimmy’s big hand off her. Overhead, a gull called. A car passed.

The gravel of the driveway crunched under her feet. Walkwalkwalk. He followed. His hand on her shoulder.

“Mary.” A whisper. “Please.”

She stilled. He slid his hand into hers, steered her down the drive, up the hill, where they’d been before, lips on lips, breath warm and fast. Before. Before Glasgow. Before she fell pregnant. Before.

He leaned in. She allowed it. She felt her baby flutter, within.

“We still have each other,” he said. “We can still have that. Can’t we?”

“What about the baby, Jimmy? What about our baby?”

He hung his head.

Her mind spun: How can he think I would give up our baby and keep him? Her guts churned. She leaned into him; she let her slim frame rest on his broad one. Her breath slowed. She stepped closer, her feet in between his, the length of their bodies against one another. Their hearts beat under a wide December sky. Their three hearts beat. Together. One last time.

~

“They kept me hidden, inside the house, until it was time to go,” Mary said. “Under the cover of night, Mum and I stepped into the garden, waiting until the lights were out next door. The only time I felt safe. Jimmy was gone, quickly. I never knew where.

“And then I was on the ferry again. It’s such a short distance in the scheme of the world, I know, but then it seemed like an eternity away.” Mary held her tears, boiling within as they crossed, Eilidh and Mary, and Jayne within, sailing away from whomever they might have become. There, the spiral began to widen. The space between already preparing to open. There, too, the center of the spiral that would carry them back to each other, at the right moment on the journey, the story waiting, everything they needed within them both.

~

“I don’t remember much after that. I’m sorry. I do remember a few nights, being allowed outside.” Under the moon, Mary stared skyward, alone, invisible, safe. When Mary was small, her mum noted moonrise, the nights’ expansion and contraction each day of the year. Her dad shook his head quietly. There in the back garden of the mothering home, one evening in April, Mary lifted her head. First moonrise she’d noted since December.

She barely noticed the first tightening. She waited until breakfast to tell the matron. Monday’s child, she thought. Fair of face.

Through the arches they went, Mary and the matron. Eastern General, originally built as a poorhouse, Scotland’s last, it turned out. Mary wasn’t so different from most of the women who had tread that path, bellies swollen or babe-in-arms or toddler in hand and not a man in sight. Denied the protection of the wedding band.

The labor continued as the light waxed, then waned again outside. The sky stilled. The belly tightened, tightened, tightened. Bed rails heated under her grip. No man paced outside. No impatient granny-to-be. Or grandpa, readying the cigars. No howdie.

Dawn, the opening complete at last. Tuesday’s child. Full of grace. A glimpse. The baby whisked away. Just the whisper of a name following: Jayne, after a favorite aunt. The Y added because the girls at the mothering home said the baby would think she hadn’t been named at all.

~

“The days I spent on the ward were cruel. They brought the babies to the other mothers. I saw them looking, wondering where my baby was. I tried to imagine us returning home, growing up together. The details of the hospital have all faded. Who else was there? What was the weather out the window? Was the birth difficult? I’m sorry.”

What would remain were the words of her mother, jostling against the image of Mary walking Jayne to school, walking the wee bastard to school. The whole village—the whole island—would know. Jayne would be teased. They would be trapped, forever known as the island’s Unwed Mother and her Bastard. And what Mary wanted most of all was to escape.

She had no notion that Alison would be the kind of precocious child who would sort out early that under the story of Happily Ever After with its married man and woman and her as the daughter was the fact that she was born a bastard. Alison held that within, still.

“I didn’t see you leave, didn’t even know when you left, exactly, only that they told me that was you away. I didn’t see you at all. You probably know more than I, now, from the social worker’s notes. I have no idea what she put down. I remember the sun, though, too bright, the day I left the hospital.”

The last day in April, Mary stepped down the gray stone steps of Eastern General into the glare of the rest of her life, stomach already nearly flat and her mum on her arm, her middle-aged, almost-always-in-a-daze mum, instead of the round-faced baby with the shock of dark hair who left before her.

She waited on the curb, there, hand pale against the elbow of her mum’s brown wool coat, shag robe tucked into the suitcase. Her mum had dressed as though she was out for a bitter winter walk.

“Isn’t the sun lovely, Mary?” Eilidh asked.

Mary. Her name, sounding strange after months of being noted as the Mother, after the matron calling her Miss Kerr.

Mary squinted up, not bothering to shield her eyes. She blinked at the brightness of the sun and at the memory of her mum at her bedside five days prior. She’s lovely. Had Mum really leaned in and whispered so quietly that Mary could nearly pretend that these words hadn’t been said: we could just take her home?

She’d felt sure there in the hospital that adoption was the right thing; she was okay until that very moment on the steps. She fought a sudden urge to rip off her shoes and socks and put her feet directly on the ground, to root in.

She was on the verge of succumbing when her father sidled up in the car.

“What are you two looking at?” He was suddenly beside them and Mary knew he had jumped out of the car to get there because he was her father and the kind of man who always jumped in and out of things.

Her mum answered. With a question, as usual: “Isn’t the sun lovely today?”

Mary tried to drive her feet down, to feel a connection; she imagined the gray stone against her bare toes.

“Aye,” he said. “It’ll be just as lovely in the car.” Her father’s voice broke her concentration. “Come on then. You’d think you didn’t want to go home.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and steered her to the car, steered them back over the hills, across the waters, to the house that was separated from Jimmy’s by one thin wall.

She had not signed the papers yet. She must, though, now, soon. She must decide.

In the evening, she snuck up the loft stairs, crawling on hands and knees once she reached the top, towards the place where she’d crammed her diary and the three photos of herself and Jimmy in Glasgow, rubber banded and huddled up next to old family photo albums where she’d thought they would be safe. She crouched there in the dim light from below, glad of the camouflage of the distant sounds of the telly in the front room, where her father watched whilst her mum, in the kitchen, did the dishes.

In the near dark, her hand connected with empty space. She patted again and again. Her palm connected with dust, with ragged wood, with the smooth cover of the album on top of the stack, which told her she was in the right place. She patted again, harder, until she heard her mum at the foot of the stairs.

“Come and dry the dishes for me.”

Mary stilled.

“Come on now. Dry the dishes.”

She turned, on hands and knees, saw the edge of her mum’s face, tight, saw her mum’s hands, wringing the tea towel.

Dry the dishes. As she’d done since she was five. Whilst her brother and father sat in the lounge, Lego and telly in front of them, she and Mum got everything cleaned and dried and put away. Mary leaned in, found the interior wall. She pressed her palms against it. On the other side of this plaster and wood and whatever else makes a wall, Jimmy’s room. She hung her head.

“Please help me with the dishes.”

Mary turned, descended silently, followed her mum to the kitchen. She took the tea towel from the older woman’s hand; she moved it around plate after plate in whispering circular motions.

When she came to the last one, she asked, “My diaries?”

“Burned.” Her mother handed her the first of the mugs.

“Photos?” She wrapped the tea towel around her hand, shoved her fist into the mug. The sound of the fist inside the towel inside the mug rustled between them.

“Your Dad didn’t know what else he could do. He wanted to take it away—to give you a clean start.” Her mum took the mug. “Help me put these away.”

Mary took the mugs, placed them too carefully on the top shelves.

“Everything?”

Everything gone, burned in the back garden in a bonfire.

Just one photo of Jimmy was what she wanted, so she could say what welled inside her. Damned if she would be the one who contacted him and said any words to his face.

~

Later, tucked into her single bed, her body felt strangled. She peeled off the covers, tiptoed outside.

A cloudy sky offered glimpses of the waning moon. A drift of smoke in the air wrapped Mary in the scent of smoldering wood. She turned her head slightly, as though she might see the source. In the dark, she sank down, hands on grass. She knew what it was: a Beltane Fire, the lighting of this spring night to celebrate the earth’s opening to fertility, the thinning of the veil between the worlds. Mary was hardly in a position to celebrate fertility. She breathed in the night air, wished for her daughter, wished for Jimmy’s arms around them both. She wished to be part of the sure, solid earth. She wished for something to make sense.

“So it was all gone. And all there was to do was visit the social worker, Mrs. Something. They were all married—the clerks, the matron at the mothering home, even the nurses, and this social worker. Maybe I imagined the emphasis on the Mrs. She scribbled notes that I wasn’t allowed to see,” Mary said.

“I have them,” Alison said. “And the letters asking you to pay for my foster care. It was cruel, what they did to you.”

“I didn’t have it nearly as bad as a lot of girls,” Mary said.

“Doesn’t make it right.” Alison felt flushed, surprised she’d actually said this out loud, to someone.

“Not sure if I want to see them or not,” Mary said. “The way I remember it, on that last visit to Edinburgh, I sat, red-faced and overheated, across from Mrs., still unable to completely let go of my mum’s words in the hospital.”

“Right,” Mrs. slapped her palms on her knees. “You’re going home this afternoon. You’re going to walk straight through your front door and say out loud, ‘I’ve decided on adoption.’ See how it feels.”

Hills outside the bus window. Sheep. Lambs, now big enough to wander away from their mothers. Jayne, in a cot somewhere Mary could neither know nor go. The ferry across the waters, under an autumn sky. 1967. The summer of love, come and gone.

The front door, heavy. She pressed it open and spoke. She did as she’d been told without even checking to see whether her brother was in.

Her dad stepped into the hall, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. He took two steps forward. His heavy shoes thunked on the floor. “Good lass,” he said.

In her room, she pulled her suitcase from under the bed, dragged an empty box from her wardrobe. Gently, she removed the robe Jimmy had given her from the suitcase, folded it to fit into the box, as though she was wrapping something delicate—a giant egg or the space where hope used to live—within it. She imagined the robe cradling her loss at the center, the way her daughter—their daughter—once had been in the middle of the robe and of her and of James. She packed it all away and went to the garden in bare feet. Fresh, green blades, warm and gentle under her arches and heels and toes. She could not quite reconnect herself to the earth. It was as though her roots had been severed.

She bent and dug her nails into the dirt underneath her. Into the bright air, she whispered what she wanted to say to James:

“A girl. We had a girl. Her name is Jayne.”

~

Jayne was still hers, then: not far across the waters from Mary, although it might as well have been another world.

What followed was the lost time, the place between worlds that can never be recovered. Alison imagined it wordless, nameless, yet still held somewhere within, this place to which she was taken with the same things that came with every baby like her: a name and the clothes Mary knitted for her there in the mothering home. The matron had told the pregnant girls that the names and clothes would be their first and last gifts; they would carry these gifts to their new families.

There are no records of who the foster mother was, other than one letter, addressed to Mr. Keith, months later, inviting him to come and have a look at the child, by then named Baby, clear of everything Mary sent with her. The woman who held Baby in those first months was one of an army of women contracted by the Church, all married, who likely had no thought of such things as veils between worlds or of celebrating fertility or any other such primitive nonsense as a Beltane Fire. They took babies like Mary’s, teetering on the edge of bastardry, between one place and the next, and held them until a legitimate couple claimed them.

~

Mary locked down, tight, the secret of it all. She moved on, as she was told was best. She tried to be grateful for herself and for Jayne. She thought of Jayne every birthday. Other days as well, but especially birthdays.

One loose tear trailed Mary’s cheek as they walked. Her words created a space, an opening through which Alison could step and end the separation, not just of these two women but of parts of herself. She held out her hand. Mary took it.

Alison wanted more than that, though; she wanted to jump into Mary’s lap, curl there and stay.

~

In the days that followed, Alison’s head hurt. As she took the children to school and cooked dinner and read bedtime stories, she felt separate from herself. When she met Mary for coffee, most of her energy seemed to be spent resisting the impulse to stare, to learn all she could. When she wasn’t with her, she ached.

When she’d searched, Alison thought of just the two of them meeting; she needed to protect her children until she was sure who this woman was. Now, she wanted them all together, or at least as many as she could have, with Charlie now a sophomore at Vanderbilt. They had only a few days. Mary had booked a short trip, in case it all went wrong.

Alison broached the idea over dinner.

“My mother,” she began.

“Mary, you mean,” Mikey said. He’d always been outspoken, but now, at sixteen, had added attitude and skepticism.

“Yes,” Alison said.

“I’d like her to meet you all. She’d like to as well. What do you think?”

Mikey shrugged, forked in a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“I’d like to meet her,” Will said. “More family.” He grinned. “More Christmas presents.”

“Will!” Alison said.

“She can see what she’s been missing out on all these years,” Mikey said.

“You don’t have to,” Alison said.

“He’s just being a brat. As usual,” Will said, reaching over Mikey for the green beans.

“Just using my head. As usual,” Mikey said. He moved the platter away.

“Enough,” Wade said. “Answer the question. And pass your brother the damned beans.”

“Fine,” Mikey said. “It’s fine.”

“Tori?”

“Is she like Nana?” Those dark eyes holding Alison’s.

“No, Tori. She’s lovely.” Alison rubbed Tori’s hand.

“You just met her,” Mikey said.

“I did, and she seems lovely.

“Okay, Mum,” Tori said. “Pass the potatoes, please.”

~

Mikey stood rigidly against the wall when Mary entered. He extended his hand formally, the way Wade had taught him. “So nice to see you,” he said, voice polite, eyes flat.

Will, who had often scared Alison when he was small with the way he accepted everyone, hugged Mary. “Hi! Nice to meet you. What do we call you?”

“Mary.”

“Not Granny?” Mikey’s voice burst in, sharply.

“Michael.”

Mary gave a slight shake of the head, and bent to Tori’s height.

“You must be Victoria.”

Tori cast her eyes down, pressed the side of her body tightly to Alison’s. Alison wrapped her arm around her daughter. “Let’s go and sit in the garden.”

As Alison poured a glass of wine for Mary and herself, Tori moved as Alison moved, not leaving her side. Mikey’s bum barely touched the seat before he cited homework time.

“I think we can skip it for one day,” Alison said.

“I have an essay due.” Mikey and Alison locked eyes, held on. A challenge there, from him: choose.

“Go get to work on it. I’ll come read it later.”

“I’ve got it, Mum.”

“I have no doubt. I’ll read, anyway. Because I love you.”

“Whatever, Mum.” At least he didn’t slam the door on the way back in.

Mary and Alison sat, wanting to stare at each other in the way that mothers and newborns do, aware that no one else would understand. Instead, they focused on Tori, on Alison’s lap for the first time in years, and on Will prattling on about soccer and his upcoming graduation, partly interested in this newly found grandmother and partly enjoying avoiding homework time, until Wade came home, poking his head out around the French doors.

“Hey,” he said, “So you’re the person we have to thank for bringing my wonderful wife into the world!”

Mary rose, extended her hand. “I don’t know about thanks. But it’s nice to meet you, Wade.”

“Likewise,” he said. “Heard quite a bit about you. Almost nonstop, actually.”

Alison tucked her chin. Wade sat.

“I’ve heard quite a lot about you, too,” Mary said.

Wade reached across the table, squeezed Alison’s hand. “You started dinner?”

Alison jumped up. “No. I’ll just …”

“Sit,” Wade said. “I’ll get take-out for us. You two can talk.”

They watched him go. Tori cuddled in as Mary and Alison chatted. Mikey managed to be civil over dinner, ducking back into his room after. Though it was late, it seemed far too soon when Mary stood to go.

A hug that was far too quick. “Coffee tomorrow, before I leave?” Mary asked.

“Of course.”

Anxiety rising as she watched Mary pull away in her rental car. The impulse to run after her. Instead, she poked her head around Mikey’s door. “Hey.”

“Hey.” His pen dragged across the page.

“There really is an essay?”

“I assigned it to myself.”

Alison sat on his bed, and edged him over. “What’s it about?”

“It’s called ‘Really, Mum, what are you doing?’”

“What have you written so far?”

“About that woman.”

“My mother.”

“Yes. Your mother. Your mother who dumped you and you treat it like it was nothing.” Mikey stood, folded his arms. “You go out of your way to be so fucking nice. And we’re all supposed to follow along.”

“It isn’t that simple.” Alison rose. She stood eye-to-eye with Mikey. “And it has never, ever been nothing for me.”

“It is that simple, Mum. You didn’t dump us.” He paused. “Not even Charlie.”

Mikey’s jaw set. Neither of them moved. A car rumbled down the street outside. Alison reached for him. He flinched.

“The others might not have thought about it, but I can count,” he said.

“I’m aware.”

“You’re the one who explained how things work. Better than any of my friends’ parents.”

“Is that what this is really about?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Me, either, but it seems as though we need to.” Alison sat again, patted the bed. “Are you bothered that I was pregnant when your dad and I got married?”

“Mum, nobody gives a shit about that stuff anymore.” Mikey sat, arms still crossed.

“I’m not sure about that, but okay. Do you think I considered giving any of you away?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Mikey uncrossed his arms, sighed, considering what Alison had just said. He looked straight at her: “Would it have been different if Dad hadn’t wanted to marry you?”

A clench in the gut. Her face calm, though. “Our lives would have been a lot different. I might have gone to Scotland.”

“Bonus.”

“Sure, except, you wouldn’t be you if Dad and I hadn’t been together.”

“I’d have been me,” he said. “Somehow. I just wouldn’t have to put up with Dad.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. He’s uptight.” He paused. “He should be nicer. To all of us.”

“He loves you.”

“And anyway, we’re not talking about Dad. We’re talking about the woman who abandoned you, which is something you’ve just said you would never do, and yet she was just in our house.”

“It was a different time.”

“That’s a shitty excuse. You deserve better.”

Alison wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. And I love you even more for trying to protect me. It’s been a big hole in my life, not knowing who or where I came from. It doesn’t change anything between us. Can you please try to understand?”

“Sure, Mum.”

“Is there more to that essay?”

He shook his head.

“I could make us some hot chocolate. We could sit outside. Full moon. Leonids.”

“You’re a freak, Mum.”

“I love you, too.”

They did sit out under the stars, and in the morning, Alison and Mary sipped their coffee. She caught Mary staring, a strange look in her eye, as though she’d found something flawed in Alison.

“What?” Alison asked.

“It’s just.” Mary set down her mug. “You look just like him.”

Alison raised her eyebrows, questioning.

“Your father.”

“Oh.” She’d put away the idea of him after the blank space. It hadn’t fully come back even though she now knew his name. This drew her to him, though.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Change of subject. Would you like to come to me next time, maybe?”

“I’d love to,” Alison said, not sure how she’d manage it but knowing that she must.

A hug and a wave and away in the car Mary went. Somehow, they each had to return to their lives, with husbands and children. Alison turned her attention there, fearing Will may have the same fears as Mikey, left unspoken. There never seemed to be a good time to broach the subject before it was time to pack him up for college, and when he returned for fall break and took his place on the sofa beside her, he clearly had his own priorities.

Tori was harder. For months, she remained glued to Alison’s side. No amount of reassurance helped. Once, Alison tried to be firm—she was going to the supermarket alone. Tori stood at the door, weeping as Alison left. Halfway down the garden path, Alison turned, expecting to reassure herself that Tori was gone, just as she’d done at Mother’s Morning Out when she was younger. Red-faced, hand-to-glass, Tori stood. Alison returned, lifted her. She wrapped her legs around Alison as she had when she was a baby. She hung on, burying her face in Alison’s shoulder.

“Alright. I’m here. I’m never leaving you.”