LITMIR.BIZ

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having a party?” Grace looked up from the blanket she was folding.

      I nodded. “Her fiftieth birthday party,” I said. “We’re going to have it here at the house and—”

      “Will Cleve come home for it?” she asked. Her face was so hopeful, so filled with longing, that I could hardly bear to look at her.

      “I’m not sure, honey,” I said. “Maybe.” A light had gone out of Grace’s eyes when Cleve broke up with her.

      Grace dropped the blanket she’d been holding and pulled her phone from her pocket. I watched as she texted a message—to Cleve, no doubt. Jenny watched, too, and I didn’t miss the worry in my daughter’s face.

      Jenny looked up at me. “We can help, Mom,” she said.

      “Great,” I said. “And one other thing. When I spoke to Suzanne this morning, she said a couple of preemies were born overnight and asked if one—or both—of you could take a couple of layettes over to the hospital this afternoon.”

      “Sure,” Jenny said. She loved any excuse to drive now that she had her license.

      Grace looked up from her phone. “Can you drop me off home first?” she asked Jenny.

      “Don’t you want to see the babies?” Jenny asked.

      Grace shook her head, but I knew it wasn’t the babies she didn’t want to see. It was the hospital. Tara had told me that Grace couldn’t even look at the road sign for the hospital these days without going pale.

      “They need to go over this afternoon sometime,” I said, “so I’ll let you two work it out.”

      “Okay,” Jenny answered.

      I headed for the stairs and was halfway down them when I heard Jenny ask Grace, “What does he say?”

      I stopped walking and stood still, snooping.

      “Can’t miss it or she’d disown me,” Grace said. I pictured her reading the text message from her phone display. I could hear the smile in her voice. The hope.

      Oh, Gracie, I thought. He’s eighteen and in college, honey. There’s no place for this to go.

      Downstairs, I headed for our home office where the box of Noelle’s cards was waiting for me. The box was beginning to feel like another person in my house, a person with too much power for the space she took up. It was our last hope, that box. Nothing in Noelle’s house had given us answers. Tara and I had spoken with the staff at every single obstetrical office in a twenty-mile radius, and they all knew what we hadn’t known: Noelle gave up midwifery years ago. Few of them had seen her recently, so we didn’t bother asking if they knew she was depressed. Suzanne and the other volunteers were all coming to us with that question. Whatever had been bugging Noelle, she’d kept it to herself. I suspected that the box wasn’t going to give us the answer, either, but if I ignored it, at least it gave me hope.

      No more excuses. I had time now. I was going to start digging.

      Ted and I shared our home office. It was a big low-ceilinged room that the previous owners had added on as an in-law suite … for in-laws they must not have liked too much. The low ceiling was oppressive, but the space worked for us. Ted’s desk and office equipment were on one side, while my smaller desk was on the other. We’d had bookcases built into one windowless wall, and two long tables were set up in front of the windows where Ted could spread out his area maps. At that moment, Shadow and Blue were snoring beneath the tables. Before I’d opened Hot! I’d used my part of the office for household records. Now, I had my own filing cabinet devoted to the café. It was so wonderful how things had fallen together for me, and I’d started to feel as though my life was charmed. Now Sam and Noelle were dead and I was about to lose my grandpa, and I knew I would never have that everything’s-right-in-my-world feeling again.

      I sat down in the armchair by the window and lifted a fistful of cards and letters from the box, but I quickly realized that a leisurely approach wasn’t going to do. In my hands I had a letter dated a month ago and another dated eight years ago. There was a copy of an email exchange between Noelle and another midwife. Two pictures of babies. A picture of a teenage boy. A birthday card from Jenny that I remembered picking out for her to send Noelle years earlier. It was as though Noelle had taken a giant Mixmaster to the box and scrambled the contents. I wished Tara had the time to help me. In thirty minutes, she could have this mess alphabetized and arranged by date.

      I stood, cleared off one of the tables by the windows and began sorting the cards and letters and pictures and a few newspaper clippings. Ted still thought I should just toss the whole mess, but Noelle had kept these things. They’d been important to her. I wanted to try to feel whatever she’d felt as she dropped each of them into the box. Why did she keep them? Ted thought I was becoming maudlin, grieving over Noelle and worrying about my grandfather. He said I was obsessed, and maybe I was, but the box felt like my last link to one of my two best friends. These were the things she’d cared about enough to save.

      If I approached the items chronologically, maybe I’d be able to follow what had gone on in her mind over the years. Maybe I could even write a minibiography of her. If we ever found her now-adult child, maybe he’d appreciate having that remembrance of his—or her—birth mother.

      “Like you have time to write,” I said to myself as I neatened the stack of cards. Shadow lifted his head to look at me on the off chance I was talking about food.

      I spotted the card I’d sent Noelle for her last birthday. Her very last birthday. I touched the card, heavyhearted, then pulled another handful from the box. There was a newspaper clipping from the year before about the obstetrical practices in the area getting rid of their midwives. I shook my head. That was why we thought she’d quit. She told us that, didn’t she? That she was getting out while the getting was good, when the truth was, she’d gotten out long ago. “Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked out loud.

      My plan to organize the items chronologically quickly fell apart because so many of the cards and letters had no dates. So I stacked them according to type: cards in one pile, letters in another, printouts of emails in a third pile and newspaper articles in a fourth. Tucked in the bottom of the carton, caught halfway beneath the flap, was a valentine Grace had made for Noelle when she couldn’t have been more than four. I pictured Noelle holding the card above her trash can, then deciding to add it to this box of keepsakes instead.

      I heard the girls leave the house and used that interruption to take a break. In the kitchen, I made a cup of tea and unwrapped one of the scones I’d brought home from the café, breaking off the corners to give to the dogs. Then I carried the scone and tea back to the office.

      When I walked into the room, a little blue-and-white-checked note card on the top of a pile jumped out at me. I rested my mug and plate on my desk and picked up the card. When I opened it, I had to sit down in the armchair as it hit me: the card was from me, and it was ancient. Seventeen years old, to be exact.

       Noelle,

       Thank you for taking care of me. You seem to understand exactly how painful this has been for me and know just the right things to do and say to help. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Love, Em

      I remembered writing the words a few weeks after my second miscarriage. My second baby lost. Ted and I had lived near the campus then, and Noelle moved in with us for a couple of weeks to take over everything. She cooked and cleaned and, most important of all, listened to me grieve. Ted had run out of words to comfort me by then; he had his own grief to deal with. Noelle knew how badly I’d wanted those babies. Little more than a year later, I’d be holding Jenny in my arms. She couldn’t make up for the loss I felt—the loss I still felt when I thought of those babies I never got to know—but Jenny brought me back to life.

      I held the card in my hand for a while. What was the point of keeping it? Of keeping any of the notes written to Noelle? Yet I put it back on the pile. I didn’t need to make any decisions right now.

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