The Lost Daughter (36 page)

From an avalanche of questions Stacey seemed to choose one. “This girl—Najda—was born while you lived at home,” she said wonderingly. Then just one word. “Why?”

Brooke sighed. She hated, hated to relive any of this. But she had started. “I went to Isadora,” she said. “You remember Isadora Bassett—”

“She’s a flake. Believes in auras.”

“Well, back then she believed in herbal remedies. She told me a certain tea would—would cause a spontaneous abortion.”

“Jesus Christ.” Stacey’s mouth wrinkled in the disdain Brooke remembered from the many times she had fallen short of her mother’s
expectations. But she recovered. She got the coffeepot and poured them each a refill. Hers she topped with cream and stirred thoughtfully. “Obviously it failed. You had the child.” She shook her head, wondering how in God’s name such a thing could have happened under her nose.

“I did, yeah. In a motel room.” Brooke realized that she was avoiding mention of Alex. But she couldn’t put his name to her lips. Eventually, her mom would ask. “I thought,” she went on, “it was a late miscarriage. A very late miscarriage. A stillbirth. But I guess the baby just wasn’t breathing well. Someone found her and saved her. Only I didn’t know. Till now.”

Morning light spread across the rim of Brooke’s coffee mug. She could not bring herself to meet her mother’s eyes. She had told the story, she realized, to the cooling coffee. Finally, breaking the long silence, Stacey said, “I’d have thought you could come to me.”

“I know,” Brooke said to the coffee.

“I would have paid for an abortion. I’m not religious.”

“I knew that.”

“Help me out here, Brooke. I want to understand.”

Brooke finally lifted her head. Her mother looked fragile. Stacey’s skin was beginning to thin. Fifty-two. The actual date was tomorrow. Brooke grasped for a memory, just a snapshot, of when they had felt close to each other, and came up empty. More keenly, she felt it had been she herself, not just her young mother, who had pulled away, who had let the distance enter in. “You remember when you took me to get birth control?” she said. “You remember how I wanted the Pill, and you said I should get a diaphragm instead?”

“Did I? Those pills were a lot stronger then.”

“That’s not why. You said I needed to take responsibility.” Brooke wet her lips. Her mouth tasted of coffee, acidic and bitter. “So I got
the diaphragm and I took responsibility. But the thing was sized wrong. It slipped. And I thought you wouldn’t believe me, you’d think I didn’t use it.”

“I always believed you, honey. I trusted you.”

“But you were waiting for me to fail. Just like—”

She broke off. She stood, went to the sink; returned with a tall glass of cool water. “Just like I failed, when I was eighteen?” Stacey said when she’d sat back on the bar stool.

Brooke twisted her hands in her lap. “Did you?”

“No.” Stacey’s smile began tight, then spread. “You’re the greatest success story of my life,” she said.

“But I lied to you. I became pregnant and tried to abort the fetus and gave birth and abandoned the infant. And I never shared a word of it with you.”

“And I never knew. Because I wasn’t paying attention.”

Brooke didn’t argue with that—it was a moment of honesty she had never anticipated. She blinked back tears. She studied her mother. The roots of Stacey’s flaxen hair were showing salt and pepper. Stacey’s nose lacked the signature bump of Najda’s—that had come from Brooke’s dad—but something about the set of the neck, and the flat upper lip…but no. Brooke knew where Najda’s mouth came from. “The father,” she surprised herself by volunteering, “was Alex Frazier.”

“Well, of course,” said Stacey. That was her mother, Brooke thought, acting always as if she were one step ahead of you. “And he’s back now. And you’re in touch with him. You’re getting another chance.”

“No. No!” Brooke slipped off the bar stool. She walked a quick circle on the blond carpet of the sitting room. Yesterday’s moment with Alex, when she had wanted him beyond all reason, entered her blood again as if through a hypodermic. How quickly desire had
filled them and left them empty. When she had told him they were making a mistake, he had not argued. They would talk today, they had agreed. But she expected no call from him. He had blown through her life like a warm, piquant wind. She longed for many things, the past included…but she did not long for Alex. Out of all her feelings, what surprised her most was realizing that she had longed for him all these years, up until now.

“Alex does not believe,” she told her mother, returning to the counter, “that the child lived. That this child we’ve discovered is ours. Look,” she said as Stacey’s brows furrowed, “something hurt Najda. The herbs themselves, or the messy way she came out, or being left for”—she made herself say it—“for dead. I don’t know. She cannot walk, or talk properly. Her life’s been one long frustration, because of me. But she’s here. And I’m here.” She felt sure of herself as she spoke, more calm than she had been in years. “And she has a family who loves her, including a mother.”

“You gave this child up?” Stacey asked wonderingly. “And now you want her back?”

“No, I told you! Luisa found her. Behind the motel.” She hesitated; she was ready to tell her mom about Najda’s deficiencies, but not about Luisa’s. “And now Luisa’s afraid of losing her. Which she won’t.” She pinched her lips together, holding in fierce remorse. “Najda,” she went on, “doesn’t need me, not personally. She needs a good school. A school that understands smart kids in uncooperative bodies. She needs a lot of money. And I want to give that to her. I want to give her Grandpa’s money.”

Brooke’s gaze rested on her mom. In Stacey’s eyes lay the idea, the ideal, of Brooke Frazier, of that perfect young couple. It was a stubborn ideal. “Alex has money,” she said.

“Forget Alex, Mom. He doesn’t believe in this.”

“And you’re sure—”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, your grandfather didn’t leave much. He didn’t leave enough. You think I would still be here”—she gestured around the small, elegant condo—“if my father had left me a fortune?”

Yes, I do, Brooke wanted to answer. But too much was at stake. “What about the quarry? What about the sale?”

“Honey, by the time your grandfather sold that quarry, it was practically worthless. There had been something fishy, you know. With the accounting. Not enough to land anyone in jail. But by the time he paid off his creditors…” She held up empty hands.

“Why’d I never know this?” Brooke asked. And then a new possibility dawned on her. “Didn’t Alex’s dad do the accounting?”

“No one knew it, sweetheart. Not even your father. And by the time your grandpa found out, Ed Frazier was gone.”

“You mean Alex’s dad—when he had that accident—you mean it wasn’t—”

“I don’t know. No one knows. Well, all right, maybe Nancy Frazier does, and that’s why she’s been made of glass ever since. But we can’t change the past. It wasn’t your fault, or mine, or your dad’s.”

“I feel awful. Alex never even suggested.”

“Maybe it’s not a suggestion he knew to make. I’m telling you only because of the money, all right?” Stacey took both of Brooke’s hands. She was all reason, all practicality. “We are talking here about the money and what you can do about this girl—if you think she’s yours, really. Aren’t we?”

Brooke swiped at her eyes. “Yeah. Yes.”

“So listen.” Stacey’s fingers were cool and dry, the touch that had been soothing whenever Brooke had run a fever as a child. “I work with the schools, remember? I know a little something. And one of the things I know is that the state is obligated to provide an appropriate education for each and every child.”

“But they haven’t.” Brooke’s head reeled a little, from the news about the quarry. Alex’s father…had it really not been an accident? Was
that
part of Alex’s guilt? Should she have known? “The schools,” she managed to go on, her lips numb, “have not provided Najda any sort of education.”

“That remains to be seen. I don’t know your”—Stacey’s lips wouldn’t form that word
daughter
, not yet—“this girl, Najda. But if your hunch is right—”

“It’s not a hunch! I’ve seen her! I’ve talked to her grandfather! She wants to go to college, and if—”

“If your hunch is right,” Stacey repeated, “you don’t need great wealth.” She drew herself up; Brooke’s mom was not one to dillydally. The quicksand of regret did not lie on the paths she charted. “Brooke, honey,” she said. “You need to negotiate the system. You need a good lawyer.”

L
uisa stood outside the train station in Scranton, confused. It was the same place—same enormous columns rising from the short flight of steps, same clock above the letters
LACKAWANNA
, with stone eagles on either side. Ziadek had brought them all here when she was little, and they had stood in the grand waiting room and had ice cream from a vendor. Then they had boarded the enormous train for New York. She remembered it all perfectly. And yet here was the station, and people bustling in and out of it, but when she had gone through the revolving doors inside it had all been different. A fountain stood in the center of the tiled floor, yes, and golden marble columns rose from the tile, and a gilt rail ran around the balcony on all four sides. She even recognized the indoor clock, its bright face and roman numerals. Only there were no people waiting for trains, no ticket windows. No one was hurrying. Instead, the people with their luggage stood before a desk, laughing and holding hands. A black man with a little red pillbox hat had been pulling a rack of hanging bags across the smooth floor when he stopped to ask her if she was at the hotel.

“Am I?” she had asked back.

“Are you staying here?” he had said. His lips were full and pink, like the flowers in the enormous bouquet they’d set up in the middle of the fountain.

“I’m going to New York,” she’d said. “On the train.”

He’d laughed at her, then. He’d said the train didn’t go to New York anymore. Not go to New York! Where would it go, then? He’d said this wasn’t a station, anymore. It was a Radisson. If she wanted to go to New York, he said, she could take the bus. He’d led her outside, by the elbow. On the street there was construction, big jackhammers tearing up the roadbed and cops directing traffic around. Luisa put her hands over her ears. The black guy touched her shoulder and pointed down the street. “See there,” he’d shouted, “where they got the white dog blinking. That’s the place.” Then he went back through the revolving door.

She stood amid the racket, bright sun streaming onto the workers and wind blowing debris up from the street. Why would they take a train station and make it a hotel? Where had the trains gone? Walking here from the bus stop, she had seen one of the old steam trains they kept for show at Steamtown, chuffing its way across Lackawanna Street. Would they move the new trains over there now?

People brushed past her, going up the broad steps into the station that was a hotel. She lifted her eyes to the columns, the eagles. Then she turned and started down the street.

Last night she had stayed in a motel room outside Towanda. She had spent forty-two dollars of Ziadek’s money, she had spent twenty minutes in the hot shower, and she had watched TV until three in the morning. This morning she had slept until noon, when the motel’s breakfast was all finished, and the manager had let her have a stale doughnut, but that was all. Then she had waited for the bus into Scranton.

They must miss her by now. They probably missed Ziadek’s money, too. She should feel bad about taking it, except it was his fault. He had been about to take a lot more than money from her. Her daughter. She loved Ziadek but she would never forgive him, never. Maybe they would figure that she had taken the bus as far as Scranton. Katarina would drive to Scranton and bring Najda, and they would come look for her at the train station. She wouldn’t be there, because the trains weren’t there, so they would have to drive up and down the street until they found her. They would tell her how sorry they were and they weren’t going to talk to that lady or to those stupid schools again.

The bus station wasn’t nearly as nice as the train station. It had a grimy counter with a lady on the other side watching a reality show on her little TV. The three o’clock to Port Authority had broken down outside Elmira, she told Luisa. They expected it in by six thirty; it would pull into New York before midnight. Luisa found a place to wait. Across the room—yellowing posters on the wall, a drinking fountain at one end, gray doors leading to restrooms—a newsstand featured hot dogs revolving slowly on warm metal cylinders, but at four o’clock the guy running it pulled down a grate. As soon as he clicked the padlock, Luisa felt hungry. Around her, people were dozing in plastic chairs, drinking out of paper bags; one tired-looking mom was feeding a little baby. Hoisting her backpack, Luisa went up to the counter. “Can I get something to eat somewhere?” she asked. Her voice sounded hollow.

The lady glanced at the clock—a digital one on the wall, nothing like the clock at the train station. “Newsstand closes early on Sunday.”

“I wanted to take the train. They have food on the train.”

“Yeah, well, you’re out of luck, aren’t you.”

“Somewhere nearby?”

“McDonald’s over on Spruce Street.” She glanced at the clock again. “You got two hours, sweetheart. Go for it.”

“Where’s Spruce Street?”

Now the lady looked at her close. She got up from the table where she was sitting and pulled a map out from a display. With a red pen she marked the route. “You turn left out of the station and go a couple blocks—here, see?—and then left again, past the parking garage and the fitness place. You’ll see it by the bank, across from the newspaper building. Do you understand me? Here’s the time the bus leaves.” She wrote that down. “Do you know your left and your right?” She was talking loudly now. That was how people talked to both Luisa and Najda, and before Najda got those ideas in her head, thinking she was so smart, they used to laugh together about it. Now Luisa just took the map and went out of the station. It was darker outside now, and getting cold. She pulled her knit cap over her ears. She hadn’t brought mittens. What if they never came after her? What if she went to New York and it got colder and colder?