“Amanda and Matthew,” she said, revealing two tiny, smiling faces. “My first grandbabies. There will be more to come out of my first three children, but the fourth one is a wild child who will never settle down.”
Abe smiled, thinking of his own mother’s insistent questions about grandchildren. Neither he nor his sister had produced grandchildren, much to his mother’s dismay, but his sister, Lisa, had just gotten engaged and hoped to start a family after medical school.
“They’re sweet,” he said.
She smiled, proud.
“Sweet as strawberry pie. The little boy on Sapphire was a different sort of child. He might have been sweet, given another mother, another life.”
“Spencer?”
“Yes. I remember him well. Empty dark eyes, skin the color of rotten turnips. Poor, sad child.”
“Was he ill?” Abe tried to reconcile the handsome man in the gold car with this memory of a sick child.
“Unwell, yes, but from a disease or from abuse, I can’t say.”
“Abuse?”
Rosie nodded, touched her locket again.
“Midwives have a responsibility to the children, but to the mothers as well. We’re chosen because we do not adhere to the laws of man. We are ruled by women.” Her mouth grew pinched as she spoke, and the lines of her age deepened in her face. “In the end, I spoke with a friend in Social Services. They visited the house and reported a doting mother, an ill toddler, and a healthy newborn baby. I tried to visit Virginia three more times to provide after-care for her and the new baby, but found the gate locked. She didn’t return my calls or respond to my letters. I never saw her or the children again.”
“Today, she only has one son,” Abe told her. “Spencer. I’m curious, though, you said dark eyes. Do you mean brown eyes?”
“The sickly child had brown eyes, almost black.”
Abe frowned.
“Spencer has blue eyes. Could illness have made his eyes look a different color?”
Rosie lifted an eyebrow.
“Never heard of a disease that changes eye color,” she murmured, “but I’ll tell you this. That second baby had the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. Blue as the name of his street, Sapphire.”
Abe remembered Spencer’s glittering blue eyes. They were an uncanny blue, icy.
“What did she name the baby?”
“She didn’t. She refused to name him, insisted she wanted to wait, though as far as I knew, the baby’s daddy was dead. Though…”
“What?”
“Another man was there. The children’s uncle. A strange man, with eyes like the new baby.”
“But don’t most babies have blue eyes?”
“Yes, they do, but I’ve seen enough babies to know whose eyes will change and whose eyes will stay blue. That baby’s eyes were unique. I’d bet they look the same today.”
Abe watched the children and tried to make sense of the woman’s story.
“Did she mention putting the second baby up for adoption?”
Rosie shook her head.
“She looked at that baby like… like he was a rare jewel. Not the way of most mothers, overflowing with love, but her own kind of curiosity and desire. A greedy look in her eyes. I helped that baby out of her body, and then she clutched him like he might disappear from her arms. I didn’t hold him again. I tried to weigh him, and she snarled at me like a rabid possum.”
“How old was the sick child?”
“No more than two. He barely walked, sort of lurched around. He didn’t speak.”
“Spencer is twenty-five, according to his driver’s license,” Abe thought out loud.
“Well, the second baby was born twenty-three years ago, so that’s the right age for the older child. But that child did not have blue eyes.”
“Blonde hair?” Abe asked.
“Black as a bad luck cat.”
“His hair was black?” Abe asked, incredulous. Eye color was one thing, but black hair to blonde? “This doesn’t make sense.”
“If I had to describe the older boy in a phrase, I’d call him steps from the grave.”
“You think he died?”
“Unless something remarkable happened, I suspect he was dead within a year.”
“But Spencer’s the name of her son.”
Rosie shrugged.
“Women sometimes call on midwives because they have secrets to keep.”
Chapter 38
Orla
“Ben,” Orla said.
Ben looked up from his mop and offered her a half-smile.
“You’re neglecting your pants.” Unable to lift a hand and point, she nodded in the direction of his jeans.
He glanced down, and she watched him frown at the tear along the seam of his pants, growing larger every day.
He shrugged.
“I’ll fix it sometime,” he said.
“Like you did on that side?” She saw where he’d crudely sewn black thread into a split on the opposite side of his pants.
He blushed and shrugged.
“Bring me a needle and thread, and I’ll have those pants looking good as new,” she told him. “I’m a seamstress. Did you know that?”
He nodded.
“I read it in the paper.”
“You read about me?” she asked, her pulse quickening.
He nodded, setting his mop down and shuffling over to his bag on the floor.
She expected him to pull out the newspaper; instead, he drew out an apple.
“I brought this for you. Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes, please.” The apple was red and smooth. Crow gave her a piece of fruit only when she performed for him. The fruit always tasted overripe, bordering on rotten.
Ben pulled a chair next to her bed and pulled out a small knife.
“How does he keep me hidden?” Orla asked. “The hospital is huge. There have to be hundreds of patients and doctors…”
“There are,” Ben murmured. “But this wing was closed after an outbreak of influenza a few months ago. After they clean it, the hall has to remain empty for three months. It will open in five weeks.”
“So, he could keep me here for five more weeks?”
“Yeah,” Ben confessed.
He cut a slice of apple.
“Thank you,” Orla whispered, leaning forward and opening her mouth.
Ben popped the apple into her mouth and cut another piece.
It tasted crisp and sweet, and she closed her eyes, savoring the fruit.
When she opened them, she gazed at the knife, but knew even if she managed to free a hand, she could never hurt him. She’d gleaned bits from touching Ben, little glimpses of his past. Somehow, Crow had become his guardian. The man used him as a servant, belittled him constantly.
“How old are you?” Orla asked, studying his downcast eyes.
He pursed his lips and shook his head.
“I’m not sure. In my twenties, I think.”
“You don’t know?” she asked.
He fed her another piece of apple.
“I’ve never celebrated a birthday. I asked Dr. Crow a few times, but he claims not to know either. He took me in. I was an orphan, and he raised me.”
“He’s a terrible man, Ben. You deserve better.”
Ben gave her the last bite of apple and returned the core to his bag.
“I don’t,” he murmured.
He left before she could ask more.
Chapter 39