Evie is suddenly kneeling before me, her hands tight on my arms,her nails biting into my flesh. “That girl thinks she killed him! His sister thinks she threw her baby brother in the river because everyone told her she did. She’s lived the last seven years thinking she killed Alex! She tried to kill herself because of the horror of it. And now she sits in my hospital after trying to hang herself. For the love of God, Maggie, tell me the truth! What did you do?”
And then the other me, the one who has been agreeing to all the wedding plans, tells Evie what I did. How I saw the dying girl on the sofa and how I’d assured her I’d take care of her brother, how I had run back to Mama with the baby, how Mama and I retraced my steps, and how I had seen through the broken window that the girl on the sofa was gone. And how I only had a second to decide what to do.
“When I found Alex, I thought that girl was dying, and then when Mama and I walked back, I saw she was gone. I told myself she must have crawled into their mother’s bedroom to tell her the baby had been rescued and had died there on the floor where I couldn’t see her. But I didn’t want to look inside and find out if I was wrong. I pretended I couldn’t remember which building it was. I didn’t want to go back with Mrs. Arnold the next day and find out there were other family members. So I lied to her, too. I wanted the baby for us because we had lost Henry and that baby needed us. And we needed him. I thought that girl had died. And no one came for Alex. No one went to the police station asking about him. We waited and waited and no one ever asked.”
“Because everyone thought Ursula had thrown him in the river,” Evie says, her voice husky and her face wet with tears. She is looking down at my hands, limp in my lap.
“Ursula?” I say.
“That’s her name.”
“Why? Why did everyone think she did that?”
Evie then tells me how this girl named Ursula had been so feverish everyone believed her to have been delirious when she said an angel in white lace—me—had taken her baby brother away in a little brown boat—my coat. Ursula had seen the heart-shaped birthmark on histummy as he wriggled—alive—in my arms. This is how Evie knew Ursula’s baby brother was Alex. Ursula had tried to follow me and couldn’t, and she’d been found wandering down by the river, mumbling that she was looking for the angel who had taken away her baby brother in a little brown boat.
“She thinks she killed Leo,” Evie says as she wipes her face with the back of her hand.
“Leo?”
“That’s Alex’s name, Maggie. His name is Leo. And he has a sister named Ursula. And a father named Cal. And grandparents named Rita and Maury.”
For a moment I can only sit on Evie’s bed and try to allow these names to have a place in my head. But I can’t. Alex is ours. He has sisters named Maggie and Evie and Willa. And a father named Thomas Bright. Alex is ours. Alex is ours. Alex—
“Maggie, we have to tell Papa.”
I snap my head up to look at her. “No,” I say plainly.
“We must!”
“No.”
“He’s not ours!”
“Yes, he is.”
Her hands are on my shoulders again. “Maggie, listen to me. You did what you thought was best. No one will fault you for that. You thought Ursula was dying. And then when no one was looking for Alex, you thought shehaddied. You were young and it was a terrible time for everyone. You did what you thought was best for him. And now we need to do what is best for him again.”
I free myself from her grip. “How is telling him all this going to be best for him? He doesn’t know any of those people! They are strangers to him. We’re the people he loves! We’re his family. How can you even think of letting complete strangers come and take him!”
“Can you tell me you can go on pretending you don’t know who he really is?” Evie says, her voice splintering. “That you can live knowinghe has a sister who spends every moment of her miserable life thinking she killed him?”
I want Evie to stop talking. Just stop. Stop.
“He’s not ours, Maggie,” she says.
My mind conjures a horrible image of Alex’s face when I tell him. Of Papa’s. And then I see the shattering image of Alex screaming as people he doesn’t know drag him out of this house. The contents of my stomach rise like a fountain, and I dash off the bed, throw open the door, and run to the bathroom. I heave into the commode, and it seems like my very heart and soul are being expelled out of me.
Evie is at my side, stroking my back and crying softly. A moment later Willa is at the doorway, too, having heard my retching in between the measures of her music.
“What’s wrong with her?” I hear Willa asking. And then, “Evie, why are you crying?”
“Are Papa and Alex home yet?” Evie asks, ignoring both questions.
“Only just,” I hear Willa say. “They’re in the mudroom, I think, taking off their coats.”
“We need you to take Alex for a little bit so that Maggie and I can talk to Papa alone. Will you do that, Willa? Can you take Alex to the sitting room and play one of your piano games?”
“Why? What has happened? What’s wrong with Maggie?”
