PART 2
My own mother, Beatrice, stood at the drop-off curb, her hand wrapped around the small girl’s, both of them laughing at something as they approached the school doors.
For several seconds, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process what my eyes were showing me.
“Mom?”
Beatrice looked up, and the color drained instantly from her face, her laughter dying mid-breath.
“Winifred,” she said, her voice barely audible. “You weren’t supposed to—I didn’t know you’d be bringing her yourself today.”
I got out of the car on legs that didn’t feel entirely my own, walking toward her with a slowness that belied the storm building inside me. The little girl—Lizzy, according to Clementine, though I already knew, with absolute, bone-deep certainty, exactly who she actually was—looked up at me with an expression of open, curious confusion, entirely unaware of the magnitude of what her presence represented.
“Mom,” I said, my voice shaking, “why does that child have my daughter’s face?”
Beatrice’s composure collapsed entirely. “Winifred, I need you to understand. I did what I thought was right at the time.”
“What did you do?”
“She wasn’t stillborn,” Beatrice said, tears filling her eyes. “There were complications, but she survived. Barely, but she survived. Dr. Halloway told me privately, before he told you anything, because he’d delivered you thirty-one years earlier and considered our family close enough to bring the situation to me first.”
I felt the ground tilt beneath me. “She’s alive. She’s been alive this entire time.”
“You were in crisis, Winifred. Genuine, dangerous crisis. The postpartum depression after Clementine’s birth alone had already frightened all of us. Dr. Halloway and I were terrified that learning you had two babies to care for, with your mental state already so fragile, might push you somewhere none of us could pull you back from. We made a decision, together, that we believed was protecting you.”
PART 3
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