CHAPTER 33
The info desk lady turned out to be just as helpful as she looked. Jessie was on the fourth floor in room 482. After a short elevator ride and some helpful nurses directing the way, Luke stared at the maroon plaque with white lettering: 482. This was the room. He’d hoped to hear voices on the other side of the door, maybe May’s bubbly laugh or Terry’s monotone, letting him know he’d found the right place.
Instead, there was nothing but the soft whir of an automatic blood-pressure machine, the chugging of a hulking piece of machinery in the corner, and silence. He’d just have to be brave and go in, not knowing what he might walk into. Luke grasped the cold brushed-nickel handle and forced the door open wide into a tidy, neatly furnished hospital room with one bed. In the bed was what seemed to be a sleeping, swollen version of the Jessie he knew. Her skin was stretched so taut, Luke was afraid to touch her in case any gentle pressure in the wrong spot could make her explode.
In a chair at the end of the bed sat Dr. Neal, eyes closed, hands pressed together. His lips moved ever so slightly, maybe praying. Neal looked a lot like his faculty picture from the Eastern Michigan University website—neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, full head of graying hair. Dark circles under his eyes, skin a sallow color almost like he was as ill as his daughter. Luke wanted to hate him, but at that moment he couldn’t see Neal as the man who’d given his child to a mentally unstable adoptive mother who hurt her, maybe killed her. He didn’t even see a man who’d planned and carried out a complex and at times painful plan as Natalie’s confidant and companion. He saw a father with a sick child. Any confrontation with Neal would wait until Jessie was well.
With Jessie asleep and May and Terry nowhere to be seen, Luke started to back out of the room, hoping someone at the nurses’ station could help him locate the pair. He took one step back and then another until he bumped hard into the wall. Luke flinched, muffling a gasp, his elbow throbbing. Ignoring the shot of pain, Luke reached for the door handle.
“Ahem.” Neal cleared his voice across the room and rubbed his eyes. “Hello?”
Luke swore silently. Small talk with the man he’d been consumed with for the past several months would be difficult. But, standing in the same room with him meant there was no turning back now. All he could hope for was Terry and May to show up and provide a diversion.
“Hi, uh, you must be Jessie’s dad.” Luke dropped his bag by the door and forced his feet to move him back into the hospital room. “I’m Luke Richardson.”
“Oh, yes.” Neal sat up in his chair and smoothed his hair. “You called 9-1-1, correct? Your mother just took May down to the cafeteria for a snack.”
“My mother?” It was strange to hear anyone labeled as his mother, much less Terry. “Oh, you mean Terry.” Luke took two more steps toward Neal. “She’s my wife’s mother. Was my wife’s mother . . . she’s my mother-in-law.” Forming coherent sentences was turning out to be a problem. Whether it was from the lack of sleep, the emotional trauma of the past twenty-four hours, or the pure fact of who Neal really was, Luke knew he must seem out of it.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Luke. I’m Neal.” He half stood and reached a hand out. Luke took it and gave one firm pump and then backed away, wondering how long he had to stay in the room with an unconscious Jessie and friendly Dr. Neal. “Please, take a seat.” Luke glanced around the room. A flimsy gray chair sat on the other side of Jessie’s bed. Neal jumped out of his chair and shifted over to Jessie’s bedside.
Luke sat in the chair, still unnervingly warm from Neal’s body heat. From this angle Jessie’s condition came into focus. He couldn’t even count the tubes and machines running in and out of her body. It was almost worse than seeing her passed out on the floor in his home. Now the reality of her illness was painfully obvious.
“So, how is she doing?” Luke felt stupid asking. Clearly she wasn’t doing great.
Neal rubbed his temples. “Not well.” The answer hitched in his throat. “She needs a transplant. She has a few weeks, maybe a month. I never thought . . . I never thought it could happen this fast.”
“I’m so sorry.” Luke struggled to continue. Neal, who’d already lost his wife, could now lose his only child. “She’s a wonderful young woman. I . . . my children . . . we all have come to care for Jessie.” Then Luke found himself saying the sentence he’d heard more times than he could count. Perhaps the least helpful sentence he’d ever heard. “If there is anything I can do to help, please, let me know.”
When Natalie’s school acquaintances or the administrative assistant at work said those words, they always sounded empty, like a halfhearted attempt to care. Now he knew—it’s what you say when there’s nothing you can do to help besides want to.
Luke expected to hear an approximation of the answer he always gave in return, something like “I’ll let you know” or “We’re okay for now, thanks,” but Neal didn’t say . . . anything. He just nodded and rubbed his beard, like he was thinking of some errand for Luke to run.
“Luke, I . . . uh . . . I wasn’t supposed to tell you this way.”
There was heaviness to his words that made Luke feel like he always did in Pentwater when he could see thunder and rain clouds developing offshore over Lake Michigan. Something was coming; he could see it, hear it, feel it in the air. He had few choices; he could take shelter, or he could meet the storm head-on.
“Neal.” Luke stopped him. “I know.”
“Hmm?” He sat up slowly, like a man just woken up from a deep sleep.
“I know.” He gave Neal a meaningful look, but he didn’t seem to catch on so Luke continued. “The letters—I know you sent them. I know you were Natalie’s teacher. I know about Maranatha House. I know about . . .” He didn’t want to have to say the name—he hadn’t said it out loud since finding the scrapbook—but he’d already said too much to go back. “I know about Mallory.”
“You know about Mallory?” Neal glanced at Jessie like he wanted to make sure she was still asleep. He tangled his fingers into the neatly tucked sheet on the corner of her mattress. “How did you find out?”
The pity that had been keeping Luke calm and understanding was starting to dissolve. Even with the letters, the order from the florist, even the giant scrapbook detailing the life and death of his first child, Natalie’s deception didn’t become real until Neal confirmed it with that simple question.
“Not from Natalie, that’s for sure,” Luke said gruffly, the bitterness starting to escape. “I found a letter from your old boss, Ms. Stephani. It made things pretty clear.”
Neal released the sheet and spread his fingers wide, smoothing the wrinkles on the bed. “Ah, yes, Christina and her conscience. Natalie told me about that letter, but I didn’t know she’d kept it.”
“Well, she did, and I found it. So, what about you, Neal? And your wife? From what I can tell, without you two, my daughter would still be alive.” Luke’s anger, the anger he worked so hard at tamping down, was building.
“All right, I deserve that.” Neal nodded with his whole body and then looked up, meeting Luke’s gaze. “You’re right: we made a lousy choice. Eva Witling was a very ill woman, and we didn’t see that. But to be fair, doctors, nurses, detectives, friends, family—no one suspected. No one.”
“Fine,” Luke acquiesced. “Fine; you didn’t know. But now that we are revealing secrets, maybe you should tell me a little more about your relationship with my wife.”
“I loved her,” he answered simply. The words burned Luke’s ears.
Defeated, the anger left him. He thought he’d want to hit Neal, or at least scream at him, but at that moment of admission, Luke was relieved to finally know the truth.
“How long?” he managed to ask, trying to calculate how many years she’d been living a double life.
“It’s not like that.”
“Do not lie to me, please,” Luke begged, suddenly exhausted and feeling more ready to go home and go to bed than to argue. “It’s obvious you two had a secret relationship. So, how long?”
“Twenty-three years.”
“She was fourteen,” Luke half whispered, half yelled, forcing his voice down in case Jessie could hear them through her medication. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. How had pedophile pastor never crossed his mind? “I think I should leave.”
“No, for God’s sake, no, that’s not what I meant.” Neal put up his hands in defense and then tapped his forehead as if his hands could summon the right words to say. “I was Natalie’s pastor, her professor, and eventually her friend, but I was never her lover. And you’re wrong. I hadn’t seen Natalie for years, years, until she found me at Eastern. This was her idea, not mine.”
“Well then, pastor”—he said the title like an accusation—“maybe you can tell me the one thing I can’t figure out: Why did Natalie lie to me?” Luke’s eyes clouded with tears, and his throat was so tight he could force out only one more question. “Why did she have you send those letters instead of just telling me the truth?”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen . . .”
“Yes, I know, this wasn’t a part of your plan. But it is happening like this. Why all the smoke and mirrors? Was it guilt? Was she afraid of me?” This thought was the most painful, and after her letter about the day his mother died, how that one slap had kept her from contacting him for those six years, maybe she thought it was safer to tell the truth when she was dead.
“She had her reasons.” Neal shook his head and then slapped his hands on his thighs before standing up. “I’m not supposed to be the one who tells you these things, but Natalie couldn’t have known any of this”—Neal gestured to Jessie asleep in her hospital bed—“was going to happen. I knew I’d see you here eventually, so I brought this in case . . . in case I found a way to tell you.” He walked over to the nightstand and pulled open one of the drawers. It opened with a quiet whoosh, and Neal pulled out a blue envelope and offered it to Luke. “The answers are in here.”
The envelope had Luke’s name on it, as always, and the back flap read: “The End.” It didn’t feel like as many pages as he expected, one maybe two. Opening it he knew why. It was another typed letter, two pages single-spaced.
“Did you type this for her?” Luke asked, wondering how to trust a letter written by someone other than Natalie.
Neal nodded. “I did. She was too weak, and she wanted to tell you everything. I just typed what she said, Luke, I swear.” There had been a few typed letters. Neal must’ve typed those too.
“This one was going to be delivered on the one-year anniversary of her death. She thought one year would be enough to prepare you . . .” Neal stopped himself. “But when your mother-in-law called me about Jessie, that you were headed to the hospital with her, I knew the time line would have to change. Just read it.”
Luke didn’t like the idea of doing anything at Neal’s bidding, but he’d waited long enough for the truth. He wasn’t going to wait longer out of sheer spite. He looked back at the page full of neat, black lettering and read.
THE END
Dear Luke,
Well, this is it. My final good-bye. It’s becoming clear that my time is close, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve been dying to say (no pun intended) for our whole marriage because you have the right to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I was going to let my secret die with me, and by the time I changed my mind and decided you had a right to know, I knew my death was only a matter of months away. I didn’t want to poison the last few memories of me with anger. I guess I’m a coward, but I hope one day you’ll understand why I didn’t tell you sooner. So, here it goes, my secret.
I had a baby, Luke. Our baby. I was nearly fifteen years old when she was born. I only saw her once. Hours upon hours of pain, months upon months of regret and embarrassment, all that ended when I looked on our daughter’s face. She was so beautiful, but had so much hair I thought she might be a mutant. I looked right in her eyes and told her how much I loved her and that her daddy loved her too. I told her we were too young to raise her and that you were so far away. I kissed her twice, once for you and once for me. Then I passed our little girl off to Mrs. Townsend at Maranatha House, the maternity home and adoption agency where I stayed. I prayed she’d be happy and safe. I kept that little girl in my heart every day after that, praying she’d found a new home with wonderful parents who would love her and raise her in a way I wasn’t equipped to.
Okay, so why didn’t I tell you about her when we met at the University of Michigan? That’s a fair question. My reasoning was—she was five and had a new mom and dad, we couldn’t get her back, and who knows what you’d think about being a dad. You said you didn’t want kids, afraid you’d be like your dad. To be honest, I was a little afraid too after what happened in the shed. By the time I was sure of who you were and who you weren’t, we were married. When I got pregnant with Will, I made a plan. I would tell you the whole story after his delivery.
Then I got some horrible news. I found out that when our daughter was only three years old, she “disappeared” from her home and was presumed dead. Remember the Mallory Witling case I was so obsessed about? That was our Mallory.
She didn’t live far from us, actually. Just over in Lansing. I had no idea that the pigtailed little girl from the news who’d gone missing from her home during my senior year of high school was our daughter. She’d been reported missing by her parents, who woke up one morning to an empty toddler bed, a pool of blood on her pillow, and no sign of Mallory.
A hunt for the little girl ensued; the whole town pulled together to look for her. But as the investigation went on, Mr. Witling soon brought up concerns about his wife, about her behavior with their first child, who’d died only four years earlier. After exhuming Mallory’s sister’s body, it became clear that Mark Witling was right. His wife, Eva Witling, suffered from a psychological disorder called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. She had been making her daughter sick, probably with poison, slowly, to get attention from hospital staff, friends, and family.
With the help of Mark Witling and the evidence from their first child’s death, the prosecution was able to get a confession, and Mrs. Witling ended up in prison. It’s a small consolation for such a horrific crime. I wanted to go visit her in prison, scream at her, say, “She wasn’t even your child!” but I didn’t. Instead, I tried to bury my regrets and myself in work and in our growing family. Those were some beautiful years.
Then cancer came into our lives, and I decided to finish up my master’s degree. I was going to finish at UM but it was beyond our budget, so I researched a few programs in the area. That’s when I saw a picture of Dr. Neal Townsend, associate professor of education at Eastern Michigan. I knew who he was right away—the pastor from Maranatha, he and his wife had helped place Mallory. Suddenly I didn’t care about any of the programs, ratings, or even tuition. I knew I had to see him again.
First day in his Math Methods class, and there wasn’t even a twinge of recognition from my old pastor. Twenty-odd years and three kids later, I’m sure I looked far different than the fourteen-year-old girl he knew at the maternity house. Then I saw him talking to a girl in the hallway; there was something about her that made me look twice. He looked at her differently than the other students at school, and she bounced when she talked to him. She reminded me of someone. So, I followed her. Yes, I was losing my mind; I’d become a crazy stalker, but I didn’t care. I started studying in the same vestibule where she liked to sit and read. Slowly we became friends, and soon I found out this girl, Jessie, was Neal’s daughter.
I’ll spare you all my secret agent moves, but Dr. Neal, as his students call him, and I became friends, starting with him rescuing me from that confrontation with Tiff. Either way, it wasn’t until my most recent, devastating diagnosis that I had the courage to tell him the truth. In return, he told me something I’ve felt in my heart for a long time: our daughter isn’t dead.
Neal told me Jessie’s story that day. It actually all goes back to Mr. Witling. Neal said that he showed up one morning on the steps of Maranatha House with three-year-old Mallory in her pj’s. Maria, Neal’s wife, was working the desk at the time. Mallory was sick, very sick, her kidneys severely damaged from the ethylene glycol, the antifreeze, he’d discovered his wife adding to Mallory’s juice cup.
Mark Witling begged her to take the child back, keep her safe from his wife. Maria tried to refuse, encouraged Mr. Witling to go home and call the police, to take the little girl to a hospital, but then looking at the sick child, knowing she could have no children of her own, Maria made a decision that would change half a dozen lives. She took Mallory out of his arms and brought her into Maranatha.
When Maria told the story to Neal, he wanted no part of it. But Maria begged him to give her a day or two to figure out how to help the child without landing her in foster care or as a ward of the state. As sickly Mallory slept between them that first night, the news broke of a missing little girl from Lansing, Michigan. The news story methodically described the blood in the house, the broken screen to her bedroom window, the muddy footprints outside her window. Mark had faked a kidnapping.
So, there it was—they could keep the child, find a way to forge her adoption, care for her physically, emotionally, spiritually, or they could give her back to a family where the mother was hurting her and the father didn’t seem strong enough to stand up and fight. So they kept her.
After lying to you for decades, I’m so scared you’ll hate me, that the anger I see you fight will take over you and our family. Plus, the selfish part of me wants to die as your beloved wife. I want you to mourn the years we had together, not the years we could’ve had if I’d told you sooner. I don’t regret giving up our daughter; I know it was the right choice given our age and situation. I don’t even regret the secrets; I’m sorry, I don’t. But I won’t keep you from Jessie. Neal has agreed to help. I know some of these letters will be hard for you to read, but I hope others can be a place you can go for comfort. I know you don’t believe I exist anymore, that my time on this planet is over, but you’re wrong. I live in these letters.
Jessie doesn’t know anything beyond the fact that she’s adopted. I’ll leave it to you and her father to decide what and how much to share. If you ever tell her who you really are, who I was to her, who she really is, please give her my love—my love and my letters.
I’ll love you forever.
Natalie
“Jessie?” Luke asked, not trying to stop the tears this time. He’d always known there was something familiar about her. The rest of the letter, the admission of a felony, all the lies and secrets—he didn’t care. He’d thought his daughter was dead, and she wasn’t.
“Yes,” Neal said, sitting again, this time with Jessie’s hand in his. “She’s your biological daughter. Yours and Natalie’s.”
“She’s what?” Terry’s shrill voice cut in from the doorway. She pulled the door closed behind her. Fortunately, there was no sign of May by her side. Luke sat frozen in his chair at the end of the bed.
Thankfully, Neal spoke up.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” He looked over at Luke. “All of you, but yes, Terry, Jessie is your granddaughter. You might remember my wife better than you remember me. Maria Townsend. We were both much younger then.”
Terry’s hands shook by her side, her footfalls slow. “You adopted her? You and Maria?”
“Yes, we did.” Neal glanced at Luke like he was pleading for him to keep the secret they’d only just shared. Then he stood and helped a dazed Terry to Jessie’s bedside. “She’s been the greatest joy of our lives.”
“I’ve been looking for her, you know.” Terry didn’t take her eyes off Jessie. “Maranatha Adoptions gave me the runaround, so I’ve been saving up for one of those private services. When I lost my baby girl . . .” Terry choked up. “When I lost my Natalie, I knew I had to find her daughter, maybe see a little of Natalie still living in her like I do in the other kids. And now, here she is.”
“She’s been looking for you guys too,” Neal responded, his lips trembling. “She’s never had much family beyond me and her mom. A few years after Maria died, she wanted to find her birth parents. I could’ve told her, maybe I should’ve, but she’s been getting sicker and sicker, and it just never felt like the right time.”
“Oh my God, she’s so sick.” Terry looked at Neal, panicked. “She’s not going to die, is she? I don’t know what I’d do if she died.” Luke cringed at Terry’s bluntness. To talk about Jessie’s death in front of Neal was cruel.
“They just don’t know. Her kidneys have given out completely. She was living on dialysis, but her body is not tolerating it well. Eventually, she needs a new kidney.”
“Oh that poor girl.” Terry stepped up to the edge of the hospital bed. Terry went to her knees, using the bed to balance. She took Jessie’s hand in her own. “I was the last person to hold her, you know, before they took her away. I . . . yes . . . I see it now. A mix of May and Clayton, and maybe my auntie Clara, don’t you think?” She reached out, tucked some stray hairs behind Jessie’s ear, and looked up at Luke.
“Sure,” Luke answered, completely overwhelmed by the revelation, Terry’s surprising joy, and Neal’s contrition. And what was worse, the child he thought was dead might actually be dying in front of his eyes. “Uh, Terry, where’s May?” Luke kept a cautious eye on the door. May couldn’t know, not yet. Jessie didn’t even know.
“She’s just down the hall charming the nurses.” She waved Luke off. “What was she like as a baby? May was fussy, but Will was a little angel.”
Neal opened his mouth to answer, and Luke was sincerely curious as to what he was going to say since he didn’t get Jessie until she was three. A knock sounded at the door, and a middle-aged doctor wearing a white lab coat and dark-rimmed glasses, holding a stainless steel clipboard, walked in. Terry wiped at her eyes, eventually taking off her glasses to get better access, and then used Neal’s arm for support to get on her feet.
“Mr. Townsend, can I speak with you for a moment?” The doctor’s face was stoic. He looked meaningfully at Luke and Terry, silently inviting them to leave. Luke took the hint and stood.
“Come on, Terry, we should give them some privacy.” Luke stood beside her and put out a hand. “Let’s go find May.” He could read Terry’s reticence as she glanced between Neal and the doctor, but after a moment she ignored his hand and headed for the door.
“Yes, that’s fine.” She seemed to have gathered herself enough to speak normally. “The nurses invited May to ‘help’ them for a few minutes over at the nurses’ station.”
As they left the dimmed room and entered the brightly lit hallway, Luke tried to tune out Terry’s grumblings about how as Jessie’s grandmother she should be allowed to stay in the room and since Natalie was gone she was the closest thing Jessie had to a mother. Instead, he strained to hear the half-whispered conversation between Neal and the doctor. As the door clicked shut, all Luke could be sure he’d heard were the words “transplant” and “terminal.”