I put the notebook down on the desk, and I went downstairs, and I stood in the dark kitchen, and I looked out at the garden, and I thought about the time being right, and about how the time had come at last, and about how Meredith had known, even then, that the truth would find its way to me.
Chapter 15
— The Call to Wilmington
The next morning I stood in the kitchen with the telephone in my hand for a long time before I dialled. I had not spoken to Elspeth in months, not since the Christmas before last, when she had called to ask about Poppy and to tell me about the sea air in Wilmington. We had never been close, not the way Meredith had been close to her, but she was family, and she was the only person left who might know the rest of what Meredith had known.
Dolores took Poppy into the garden so I could talk in peace. I heard the back door close, and I stood alone in the kitchen with the telephone pressed to my ear, listening to it ring, once, twice, three times, and then a voice answered, warm and a little breathless.
"Hello?" she said.
"Elspeth," I said. "It is Beau. Beau Langley."
There was a pause, and then she said my name, and her voice changed, and I could hear the worry in it at once. "Beau," she said. "Is Poppy all right? Is something wrong?"
"Poppy is all right," I said. "She is in the garden with Dolores. I am calling because I need to ask you something, and I do not know how to ask it, and I am sorry to call like this, out of nowhere, but I have found some things, Elspeth, things Meredith kept in her desk, and I think you know what they are."
Another pause, longer this time, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter. "What did you find?" she asked.
I told her about Rosalind coming to the house, and about the bracelet in the locked drawer, and the photograph of the two bassinets, and the notebook, and the entries Meredith had written about the woman in the next room. I told her everything, slowly, because I wanted to hear what she would say.
"Beau," she said at last, "everything Rosalind told you is true. I know, because I was there too, in a way. Meredith called me from the hospital, the night Poppy was born, and she told me about the woman in the next room, and about the baby, and she asked me to pray for them both. And then, two days later, she called me again, and she told me the mother had gone, and the baby was still in the nursery, and she asked me if I would do something she could not do herself."
"What did she ask you to do?" I asked.
"She asked me to take the baby," Elspeth said, and her voice broke a little on the words. "She asked me to go to the hospital and to speak to the people there, and to say that I would take her, and raise her as my own. I was alone then, Beau. I had no children of my own. I had a house by the sea, and I had love to give, and Meredith knew it."
I closed my eyes. The kitchen was very still around me, and the telephone was warm in my hand, and I thought about Elspeth, driving to the hospital, walking down the corridor to the nursery, looking into a bassinet at a tiny baby girl, and I thought about the courage it must have taken, and about the love.
"Did you know who the mother was?" I asked.
"Not then," Elspeth said. "Meredith did not tell me her name. She only said the woman had gone, and that she had signed papers, and that the baby needed a family. I did not learn the mother's name until much later, until after Meredith died, when Rosalind came to see me and told me the rest."
"Tell me about her," I said. "Please. Tell me about the baby."
Elspeth was quiet for a moment, and then she said, very softly, "Her name is Maisie. She is six years old now, the same age as Poppy. She is gentle, and curious, and she loves the sea, and she loves to draw, and she asks a hundred questions a day. She is the light of my life, Beau."
I stood in the kitchen with the telephone pressed to my ear, and I thought about Maisie, six years old, gentle and curious, drawing pictures by the sea in Wilmington, and I thought about Poppy, six years old, in the garden with Dolores, and I thought about the two bassinets, side by side, and the two little girls who had lain in them.
"Elspeth," I said, "I need to know everything. Will you tell me everything?"
"I will," she said. "But not on the telephone, Beau. This is too much for the telephone. Come to Wilmington, or let me come to you. We need to sit down together and talk about this properly, the way Meredith would have wanted us to."
I looked out of the kitchen window at the garden, at Poppy under the big tree, and I said, "Come here, Elspeth. Come to Asheville. Bring Maisie, if you think it is right. I want Poppy to meet her. I think the girls should meet each other, at last."