Chosen for Death (30 page)

"What do you mean, he didn't get his money's worth?" I burst out. "You sold Carrie?"

"Not exactly," she said, "not me. I had no say about anything in that place. None of the girls did. We were in disgrace. Your father bribed the social worker to approve them as adoptive parents, even though they didn't meet the agency criteria, because he wanted my baby."

"What are you talking about? Mom and Dad got Carrie through a legitimate adoption agency."

"The agency was legitimate. Proper. God, were they proper!" Her stare was vacant, far away, remembering. I thought about the files I'd seen. All those months with no visitors, no friends. "But your parents weren't. They were too old. And they already had two healthy children. But your mother saw me, when they were there at the agency, and she wanted my baby. So your father arranged it and I agreed. I hated the baby I was carrying, but it was a life. I was glad it was going to a good home."

"So, when Carrie came to see you, you told her all this and rejected her again?" I said. "Maybe you should have thought before you got pregnant in the first place!" I couldn't help it. It was wrong to be cruel to this poor unhappy woman, but it was so callous, rejecting Carrie because it might disrupt her nice little life, when Carrie's life had always been disrupted because of this woman's rejection.

"If only it had been that simple," Carrie's mother said. "Does every pregnancy happen by choice? Have you ever been pregnant?"

"No," I said, wondering what was coming next. This whole thing was nothing like I'd imagined. I'd expected to conduct a deft interrogation to discover if Carrie's birth mother had been her killer. Instead here I was sitting on a rocky cliff with this woman who was so disconcertingly like Carrie, my emotions swinging like a rope in the wind.

"Maybe someday you'll understand better," she said. "I've had three children, including your sister. I hated being pregnant, having my body taken over by another being. But that's the way humans have children." Her blue eyes bored into me. "Your sister was not the product of a teenage affair. She was the result of a rape, and every moment I was pregnant with her, every movement, every kick, was a loathsome reminder of my degradation. I can see that you don't like hearing this, but you need to hear it to understand. I hated the baby I was carrying, and I counted the minutes until she was born and I could get her out of my body."

I wanted her to stop. I couldn't bear to hear this, knowing she had also said it to Carrie. I covered my ears. "Stop it," I said. "I don't want to hear any more."

"Look, I didn't invite you here," she said. "Like your sister, you insisted on coming, and now you're going to listen. When I was seventeen, I was raped by my uncle. When I told my parents, they confronted him and he said that I had seduced him. They believed him and blamed me, insisting it must have been my fault. When I told them I was pregnant, my father beat me with his belt until I bled, hoping I might lose the baby. Does that shock you?"

I remembered my interview with Esther Pappas. No wonder Elizabeth had been depressed when she was in the home. No wonder she'd thought about killing herself. "Yes," I said, "it does. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed... Look, you don't have to tell me all this personal stuff."

"Yes," she said, "I think I do. You came here like your sister did, disrupting my life and intruding on my privacy, forcing me to remember again, and now you'd like to walk away, because it's not a happy ending, but a sordid story, right? Well, you can just sit there and listen."

The sun was nearly gone, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. I wished I'd brought my coat, but it was in the car with my briefcase. It had been warm when I was driving.

"Things are different now, even here in Maine," she said. "Having an out-of-wedlock baby is no longer such a disgrace. But twenty years ago, things were different. In a small town, people talked. You got labeled. Your family really felt the disgrace, people made sure of that. And once you had a reputation for being sexually available, no man respected you. You were fair game for any sort of abuse. My family was desperate to avoid that. They sent me to Serenity House, and pretended I had gone away to school."

Her thin fingers twisted her wedding band. "You can't imagine how bad it was. From the time I discovered I was pregnant until I left for Serenity House, they made me sleep in the shed so I wouldn't corrupt my sisters." She smiled, a bitter, humorless smile. "Sounds like something out of Dickens, doesn't it? Well, it's true. It was winter. The shed was unheated. I was sick and I was scared. I was afraid I'd die from the cold and sometimes I wished I would. And then they sent me to Serenity House."

"At first, I thought I was better off. At least I was warm. And the other girls were in the same boat. But, like my own family, the staff let us know how worthless we were, a disgrace to our families. And all the time, I was swelling up with my uncle's child, a hideous, wriggling little thing that kicked me and made me sick and distorted. With his child inside me, I couldn't forget about my uncle and what he'd done to me. His filthy hands. His awful breath. His gross body pinning me to the floor. How much he hurt me. My shame when I couldn't stop him. I hated that baby so much I tried to kill it by killing myself."

I didn't want to hear any more. It was too wrenchingly sad and depressing. In everything I'd read about searching for birth parents, would-be searches were cautioned that they might not like what they found. The birth parents might not be as imagined. They might be disappointing or not receptive. They might even be dead. Carol Anderson had tried to warn me, but nothing could have prepared me for this. This woman was supposed to be nothing to me but a source of information. My search was for Carrie's killer. Now I was torn. I didn't like her. She wasn't likable. Yet I felt a deep sympathy for this woman who had been victimized by everyone around her. I could also imagine twenty years of festering anger fueling the kind of violence that had killed Carrie.

The sun was almost down below the horizon, illuminating her face with its last golden streaks and coloring all the shadows purple. The water was eating up the beach below us. As I watched, a wave rolled over my shoes. My beautiful, expensive shoes. But if I went after them, I'd break the flow, and she might stop talking to me. "You told Carrie all this?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "I did. Just like I'm telling it to you. Except we were in my living room. Jonah wasn't home. She called first and told me who she was. Asked if I would see her. I told her I wouldn't. She pleaded with me, begged me to see her just once. Swore if I did she'd never bother me again. I agreed. And my life has been a living hell ever since."

"So you killed her?"

"I considered it," she said. "But I'm a religious person, and I've been a minister's wife for twenty years. I believe in the commandments. I believe it's wrong to take a life. It was not through my own sin that I became pregnant. But I have lived a deceitful life by not telling my husband. I thought that Carrie's visit might be a punishment for my sin. God was testing me by sending her. I used to think about killing my uncle, too. Sometimes, during those long dismal nights at Serenity House, the baby would kick me awake and I'd lie there in the darkness devising ways to kill him. Maybe he knew that, because he never came around when I was home after that. He didn't come to the wedding. A few years later he died of cancer. A dreadful, lingering death. And I was glad." She shook her head firmly. "No, I didn't kill her. I thought I'd be relieved if she was dead, but my life has been more terrible since, waiting for someone else to discover my connection to Carrie, and reveal my secret. Are you going to tell anyone about me?"

The sun had gone. Below us, the water had now completely covered the beach and crept up the rocks so that the waves were lapping only a few feet below us. There was no way back to the road unless we climbed up the ledge. "The tide comes in fast here," she said. "Are you going to tell anyone? When your sister came, I knew how I felt about killing. After the agony of the past few weeks, I'm not so clear about things anymore. I could push you into the water, wait until you were dead, and then run for help, pretending you fell. But then someone else might come and ask questions. I couldn't go on forever, killing the people who came to ask questions."

She wasn't talking to me anymore. She was just thinking out loud. I'm not easily intimidated, but the look on her face was frightening. She hated me for being there. I knew that. And no one knew where I was, which was on a rocky cliff beside a surging ocean. I was bigger and younger and stronger. Even if she did push me in, I'm a strong swimmer. The water would be cold. The water in Maine is always cold, but I could probably handle it. Still, this woman was distraught and under a lot of stress. I didn't want to wait around to see what she'd do next.

I studied the rocks above us, looking for the best way up. I wasn't looking forward to scrambling over the rocks in my bare feet, but my shoes were under water. I'd miss them. Behind me I heard a loud splash. I whirled around. Elizabeth Davis was no longer on the ledge beside me. Below I could see her bright head, bobbing in the water. She was struggling to get back to the rocks, but the parka she was wearing was pulling her down.

I stripped off my belt and dove in, making a shallow racing dive that brought me to the surface a few feet from her. The frigid impact of the water took my breath away, but I didn't have time to wait until I adjusted to the cold. Carrie's mother had gone under. I dove down, feeling with my arms. Touched something. Grabbed it and pulled her to the surface. As soon as her head was out of the water she panicked, grabbing me and pulling me under. Every lifeguard knows that a frightened swimmer can drown herself and the guard if she panics. I couldn't get a grip on her if she kept flailing like this. I stunned her with my fist, gripped her head under my arm, and hauled her back to the rocks.

She lay limply on the ledge, waterlogged and pathetic, making no effort to help herself. I didn't dare leave her there while I went for help. She might jump in again. I leaned down close to her head, speaking slowly and clearly. "Betsy," I said, "I'm going to take you to the house. Can you walk?"

Her blue eyes stared dully at the sky. She wouldn't look at me. "I don't care," she whispered.

"We've got to get you back to the house and out of those wet clothes," I said. "Can you stand up?" She didn't answer and she didn't move. I stopped trying to rouse her. Instead I pulled her to her feet, wrapped an arm around her waist, and began to climb up the rock, dragging her along. She made a feeble effort to cooperate, but she was limp as a rag doll. By the time we got to the road I felt like I'd climbed both Everest and K-2, and the rocks had made mincemeat of my feet.

I led her, limp and shambling, across the road, up the driveway and onto her front porch. At the door she balked. "I can't go in there," she mumbled.

"You haven't any choice," I said. "You can't stay out here. You're freezing. You'll get sick." I bent down until my eyes were level with hers. "Here's our story. I stopped on an impulse to ask about real estate because the cove is so pretty. You invited me to walk on the beach, to talk about the area. Just being friendly. We were walking and you slipped. The jacket weighed you down so I had to jump in and pull you out."

She didn't say anything, just stared at me, her eyes wary, but she didn't try to run away when I knocked.

I heard footsteps coming. Before the door opened, she said something in a low voice. I bent down so I could hear her. "Get out of here and don't come back," she said. Her voice was cold as ice, and her blue eyes—Carrie's eyes—were just as cold.

The man who answered was tall and gaunt, with unruly graying hair. He might have been handsome if he hadn't looked so severe. His eyes widened in disbelief as he took in my wet hair, bare feet, and clinging dress. "Your wife had an accident down on the beach," I said. His eyes shifted from me to Betsy. He darted forward, nearly knocking me over, and picked her up as though she were a child. "Come in, please," he called over his shoulder. I stood dripping in the front hall while he disappeared upstairs with his wife. From behind the closed door I could hear muffled voices and then the sound of a tub running.

Humanitarian impulses might have gotten me into this mess, but they had abandoned me now. I was chilled, soaking wet, and my feet hurt. Where was that famous Christian charity now that I needed it? It seemed Reverend Davis's charity extended only to his wife. I didn't expect Betsy to think of me. She wanted me gone and that was all.

A noise behind me made me turn. A teenage boy stood in the doorway, staring at me. Yet another version of Carrie, a masculine one this time. I didn't waste my breath asking what he was staring at. My dress clung like a mermaid's skin. To his still raging hormones I was a weird, wet vision. But I was in no mood to be anyone's wet dream. "You could stop staring and bring me a towel," I said. He detached himself from the door frame and slouched past me up the stairs. He was tall, like his father, with the awkwardness of a boy who finds himself suddenly inside a man's body. "Have you got some clothes I could wear?" I asked his departing back.

"I guess so," he muttered. At the top of the stairs he disappeared through a doorway. I half expected that, like his parents, he would stay disappeared, but a minute later he came out carrying a bundle of clothes, got a towel from a closet, and tossed them down to me. "There's a bathroom under the stairs," he said. "You can change there." He stood silently, watching me. I took the clothes and went into the bathroom.