An hour later, Leah arrived at Tess and Rudy’s cabin.
Tess greeted her warmly, and Leah entered an interior she knew well. Walls of honey-colored wood complemented Southwest-style area rugs inspired by the Native American history of the region.
Today, neither the familiar environment nor the familiar woman soothed her. When she’d called Tess to ask if she could swing by, Leah had hoped she’d be able to conduct herself normally during this confrontation. Now she doubted that possibility. Tension had turned her stomach to stone. Moving oxygen into her lungs required effort.
“I made cookies.” Tess moved toward the breakfast nook, where they’d shared many, many cookies and conversations.
Leah remained still. “This isn’t a social call.”
“Oh?” Tess halted.
“I know that you switched me with another baby the day of my birth.”
Sadness lit inside Tess’s eyes. Otherwise, she remained dignified and still. “I see.”
Rustling sounded from the hallway just before Rudy appeared, beaming. “Leah!”
“Leah and I need to speak about something privately,” Tess said to her husband. “I’ll let you know when we’re done.”
“That’ll be fine, but . . . are those oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I smell?”
Tess fetched two cookies and handed them to him.
“How ’bout one more?” he asked.
“No,” Tess answered crisply. “I wouldn’t want to spoil your appetite for dinner. Now head back and watch TV for a bit.”
He winked at Leah. “Good to see you, hon.”
“Good to see you, too.”
He trundled down the hallway.
Tess motioned to the breakfast nook. “Shall we?”
Leah hesitated. Cookies were cozy, and she wasn’t feeling cozy.
“I expect that you have questions for me,” Tess said. “We’ll be more comfortable sitting down. Shall we?”
Stiffly, Leah took her usual seat at the round table.
Tess poured milk into two glasses. A dusky blue plate supported the cookies . . . a testament to the dozens of batches of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that Tess had made for Leah and Dylan through the years.
Tess sat, then took a slow sip of milk.
Leah didn’t reach for either the milk or the cookies.
Tess was a controlled person, not given to fissures of emotion. Even so, given the magnitude of Leah’s bombshell, Tess’s response seemed tremendously understated.
The older woman carefully positioned her glass on the table, her knobby fingers loosely encircling its base. “I’ve thought for some time that you might find out.”
“Why did you do it?”
“If you know what I did, then I’m guessing you know something of my motive.”
“I think it has to do with your son Ian.”
“Yes. My son Ian.” Her sigh spoke of pain. “I wish I could explain to you what a joy he was to me. He had such a sweet nature. Quiet and kind. Full of fairness. Every year his teachers would give him citizenship awards. Best Listener. Best Helper and the like.”
Tess’s focus drifted toward the living room, but Leah guessed that it had actually drifted back decades. “He grew and became a little more serious, a little more subdued. But he was still good, through and through. There wasn’t a mean or malicious bone in his body. He cooked dinner for the family when I wasn’t up to it. If I asked him to take out the trash, he’d do so immediately. If I told him to come home at ten, he’d come home at nine fifty.”
Leah waited.
“He went off to college and earned a degree in business, then started work for an electronics company. It was during those years that he had an idea for a web browser that could display images. He did all the research, worked out all the logistics. He told a few of his closest friends about his idea.”
“Was one of those friends Jonathan Brookside?”
Her lips thinned. “Yes. They were the same age and had started at the company the very same day. Jonathan stole Ian’s idea. He went behind Ian’s back and assembled a team. He was from a wealthy family, and his father lent him the capital to start a company of his own.”
“Gridwork Communications Corporation?”
“Exactly. Jonathan was able to get the web browser off the ground long before Ian could raise the funds.”
“And Jonathan’s company went on to become a huge success.”
“It did. Ian was devastated. He’d been betrayed by someone he trusted. He slipped into depression.”
Tess’s heartache was a palpable thing. Leah could feel it against her skin. “His father and I persuaded him to sue Jonathan,” Tess continued, “and he improved somewhat during that process. He had hope that right would prevail . . . that justice would win.”
“I know that the suit didn’t go his way.”
“I wish, very dearly, that it had. Jonathan was able to afford excellent lawyers. So, no. The case didn’t go Ian’s way. Afterward, we tried and tried to reach him, to help him. But we couldn’t get through. He committed suicide a year later.”
“I’m very sorry.”
Tess’s gaze met hers. “Unless you’ve lost a child, you can’t imagine the grief. I loved Ian with every fiber of my being. His death is not something I’ve ever recovered from, nor ever will. I went on because I had another child, family members, work responsibilities. But I did not get over it. Half my heart belonged to Ian. And still does.”
“I understand.”
“My marriage to Malcolm fell apart. We divorced. Suddenly I was without one of my sons, without my husband. I was struggling with depression myself when one day, at work, I learned that Jonathan Brookside’s wife was giving birth at my hospital. Magnolia Avenue was located near Atlanta’s best neighborhoods, of course. Some of the most well-respected obstetricians in the city delivered babies there.”
“Did you see Jonathan that day?”
She shook her head. “I was working in the nursery when both you and the Montgomery baby arrived for treatment and observation. After the pediatrician finished and said that you were both well enough to be returned to your mothers, I found myself alone with the two of you.”
“Jonathan had taken your baby. And now you had the chance to take his.”
“Yes. That was the precise thought that entered my head.”
“You wanted to punish Jonathan.”
“It’s true. I wanted retribution for what he’d done to Ian. He’d gotten off scot-free, you see. He’d never paid any price at all for ruining my son’s life . . . and mine.” She turned her glass in a circle, then set her hands in her lap. “The things I felt and did in that moment are difficult, even for me, to comprehend. I’d never broken a rule in my life. But neither had Ian, and look where that got him.”
Quiet wafted between them, and Leah registered the distant sound of Rudy’s TV show, of a bird’s song.
“I switched you with the Montgomery baby, which took some doing, as far as your ID bands and records went. When Tracy entered the nursery, I asked her to take you back to your mothers. And off you went.”
“And that was that.”
“I was certain I’d get caught. For days. Weeks. But no one was the wiser.”
“How did the Bonnie O’Reilly who worked at Magnolia Avenue become Tess Coventry?”
“I was born Bonnie Theresa Byrne. My mother gave me the middle name Theresa in honor of her sister, then called me what she’d always called her sister: Tess . . . which is short for Theresa. Everyone in my family called me Tess, but at school and around town, I went by Bonnie. When I married Malcolm, I became Bonnie O’Reilly. Then, years afer my divorce, I met Rudy. When he found out that my family called me Tess, he started calling me Tess, too. Then I married him and my last name changed to Coventry.”
“But even if you were Tess to Rudy and your family, shouldn’t you have been Bonnie Coventry to everyone else?”
“Had I not switched two babies, I would have been. In an effort to at least partially cover my tracks, ease my paranoia, and make things difficult for anyone searching for Bonnie O’Reilly, I convinced Rudy to move outside of Atlanta. I took a job at a new hospital and introduced myself to everyone there as Tess. Over time, I became Tess to all.” Politely, she moved a cookie onto her napkin. “May I ask how you found me?”
Leah gave Tess the SparkNotes version of her search.
“Ah.”
“Who else knows that you switched Sophie and me?” Leah asked.
“Just you, me, and God. The secret of what I did has been a companion invisible to everyone except me. Until now.”
“I’m inferring that our meeting at the middle school in Gainesville was not a coincidence.”
“No, it wasn’t. I often worried that what I’d done had impacted you and Sophie negatively. I looked for information on the two of you but never could find anything until I came upon an article featuring you as the brightest of the students who were attending Clemmons. I was delighted, truly, to discover that you were a math prodigy, to know that you’d flourished.”
Tess picked up invisible cookie crumbs with her fingertip. “But then, a few years later, around the time I learned that Sophie had gone to Vanderbilt and appeared to be doing very well for herself, I found you on the Internet as a high school teacher. In your biography, you said that you were caring for your brother, Dylan. That concerned me. I wondered why an eighteen-year-old girl was working full time and caring for her brother. I couldn’t let it go. I was retired by then, and Gainesville was just twenty miles from where Rudy and I were living at the time, so I took it upon myself to contact the PTA and volunteer in hopes that doing so would provide me an opportunity to meet you.”
“Which it did.”
“I struck up a friendship with you. When you told me about your parents and your brother, I felt responsible.”
“You were responsible for placing me with that family.”
“And I knew that I was. I liked you at once. And, of course, I liked Dylan at once, too. He reminds me of Ian. Pale skin, brown hair, brown eyes.”
Fresh understanding filtered in. Tess had always doted on Dylan.
“I wanted to help you, as a way to make amends for what I’d done and for your parents’ deficiencies. I also wanted to build a relationship with the two of you. Rudy and I have five granddaughters and we now have three great-granddaughters. Here was a boy. Here was another chance to know and care for a little boy. You and Dylan have made our lives, Rudy’s and mine, so much richer these last ten years.”
“When I wanted to leave Gainesville for Dylan’s sake, you encouraged me to apply for a position in Misty River.”
“Yes, because our cabin was here. I love this place, and I had reason to believe you’d love it, too.”
The villain who’d switched her at birth was the same woman who’d functioned as a grandmother to her and Dylan. Tess had taken care of them more dependably than any of Leah’s actual relatives ever had. Tess had picked up Dylan from school for years. Tess had brought Leah food when she was sick, given her gifts every birthday and Christmas. Tess and Rudy had functioned as her trustworthy babysitters.
What was it that she needed to communicate to Tess?
“It was wrong of you to switch Sophie and me.” She definitely did need to say that.
“Yes,” Tess acknowledged. “It was. Unequivocally.”
“You played God when you did that, and no one has the right to play God. Not for any reason. Regardless of what Jonathan did to Ian, Jonathan was the father I should have had.”
“I’m very sorry, Leah.”
“He and his wife could have given me . . .” Her voice broke. The depth of her emotion took her by surprise. “Stability and the chance to pursue my education, which I would have cherished.” Yet it sounded like Jonathan was a snake. So while growing up as his daughter would have granted her some advantages, there was no telling what hardships it might also have served her.
“Are you going to tell Sophie and her family what I did?”
“I haven’t decided. Imagine how they’ll feel if I do tell them. As terribly as I felt when I learned I wasn’t biologically related to Dylan.” Tears piled on Leah’s lashes. “Your actions will decimate them.”
“Are you going to turn me in to the police?” Tess asked after a time. “Or to a reporter?”
“No.”
Tess handed her a napkin. “I won’t blame you if you do.”
Leah blotted her eyes. “If I tell Sophie and her family the truth, I can’t say how they’ll respond to you. But I’m not interested in bringing you down. You took your revenge, but I won’t be taking mine.”
Tess’s composure finally slipped, revealing regret. “I truly am sorry.”
Leah couldn’t bring herself to tell Tess she was forgiven.
“Do you think, given time, we can continue as we have been?” Tess asked. “You, me, Dylan, and Rudy?”
“I don’t know.” Leah stood. “I honestly don’t know.”
They looked at each other for an agonizing stretch of time.
Then Leah walked from the cabin.
As she drove home, she wished with a yearning that stole her breath that she could go to Sebastian’s house, pour out her story, and find comfort in his arms.
God, her spirit howled, where are you?