The Secret Daughter

THE SECRET DAUGHTER

A BEAUTIFUL NOVEL OF ADOPTION, HEARTBREAK AND A MOTHER’S LOVE

KELLY RIMMER

For Maxwell and Violette

ONE

Sabina—March 2012

It’s a pretty well established fact in my family that I am not particularly good at keeping secrets. I can think of only two times in my entire life that I have successfully kept something interesting to myself.

The first was when I realised that I had fallen in love with my best friend. We were out at dinner with a group of friends, and over entrées, I caught him staring at me with such love and pride that I could have dissolved into his gaze. I managed to keep my startling realisation to myself for several hours – but as soon everyone else had gone home, I blurted it out in the middle of a totally unrelated conversation. Ted said that I had avoided eye contact with him all night and he’d been wondering why. He says that even when I do hide a secret in my words, my eyes give it away anyway . . . and that if I’d just looked at him that night, there would have been no need to open my mouth at all.

I suppose my glorious history of failure with secrecy makes it all the more impressive that, when I discovered that I was pregnant, I managed to go a whole two days without telling my mother. Knowing my blabber-mouth tendencies, we took every precaution – I called to invite them around for dinner, and as soon as we’d agreed upon a day and time, Ted took my mobile phone and hid it from me.

Even without such extreme measures, I’m pretty sure that I’d have managed to keep my secret
this
time. I wanted our announcement to be special; as their only child, I had always felt an inexplicable pressure to make them grandparents. Not once had Mum or Dad said a single thing to me about settling down and having kids, but by the time I reached my late thirties, I’d watched all of their friends acquire a gaggle of noisy grandchildren. Their social set traded proud grandparent stories like kids trade sports cards, and up until that moment, all my parents had to recount were tales of my not particularly impressive teaching career and my adventures travelling with Ted.

It would have been nice to have them share a meal with us and then to tell them in a civilised manner over coffee after, but
that
was never going to happen. Instead, I greeted them at the door with two perfectly wrapped gift boxes and what must have been a bewilderingly teary grin.

‘Sabina, is everything okay? What’s this for?’ Mum took the box hesitantly. With her spare hand she hooked her handbag onto the coat rack near the door and then carefully unwound her scarf and sat it on top. Dad stepped in behind her and offered his usual cursory kiss to my cheek, then took his gift and shook it curiously.

‘Dad! It’s fragile!’ I laughed, and then I herded them inside with impatient flaps of my hands so that I could close the door behind them. I saw the confused glance they exchanged and I felt the stretch in my cheeks as I grinned hard. ‘Sit down and open them. Oh, come on you two! Hurry up!’

Ted watched from the little nook in our flat that served as a kitchen. He’d been checking on the elaborate meal I’d half prepared before I got distracted trying to get the ribbons
just right
on the gifts. My husband had been wearing the strangest expression since that moment two mornings earlier, when we stood in the bathroom side by side watching the second line appear on the pregnancy test. Ted was nervous and elated, as I’d expected, but I hadn’t anticipated his sudden
contentment
. We were ready for this, in every sense of the word.

As Mum and Dad took their seats and began to unwind the ribbon around their boxes, Ted leant against the wall beside the stove and wrapped his arms over his chest. He stared at me, and I felt an overwhelming and delicious joy between us. For one final moment, we held a secret in our hearts that no one else knew.

Dad unwrapped his box first.

‘A mug?’ he said, bewildered. He turned the white mug over and saw the text on the other side.
World’s Greatest Granddad
. Dad looked up at me in shock, then he almost dropped the mug as he flew to his feet and scooped me up in a hug. ‘Sabina! Oh, love!’

It was just as I’d expected, and I was laughing and leaking tears onto his shoulder as he commentated his stream of consciousness about the news.

‘When did you find out?’

‘A few days ago.’

‘So when is she due?’

‘She?’ I laughed. ‘
It
is due in November.’

‘Have you two thought about investing in education bonds? It’s never too early and the tax incentives are terrific. I’ll email you some information next week. Sabina, sit down, you need to rest. Is there champagne? We need champagne, some Moët is in order for an occasion like this. I’ll head out and get some.’

Dad had gently guided me to the couch and as I sat down, I glanced at Mum for the first time. She had finished unwrapping her gift and was sitting stiffly on the sofa. Her mug was cupped in her overlapping palms and her elbows rested on her lap. There was a flush to her cheeks and a strange intensity in her gaze.

‘Megan? Are you okay?’ Ted left the kitchen nook and in just a few steps had crossed the room to sit beside Mum on the sofa. She seemed to shake herself and offered Ted, then I, a bright smile.

‘This is wonderful news. I’m so happy for you. I didn’t . . .
we
didn’t even realise you two were thinking about children yet.’

‘Mum, I’m thirty-eight. We’re married, our careers are established, we’ve travelled the world and now we’ve made a home here in Sydney . . . what more is there to wait for?’

‘You’re right. Of course you’re right.’ She looked back at the mug and spoke softly, ‘But thirty-eight or ninety-eight, you’ll always be
my
baby.’

‘Oh, liven up, Meg,’ Dad rose and reached into his back pocket for his keys. ‘You’ll have a
real
baby to play with soon enough. I’m going for champagne. Coming, Ted?’

‘Can you keep an eye on the vegetables, Bean?’

I was still watching Mum, who was looking at the mug again. I nodded and smiled at Ted, but as soon as Dad had stepped outside, I motioned towards Mum with my shoulder. Ted shrugged at me, and I returned his confused glance with a grimace.

Once Mum and I were alone, I decided to tackle the tension head-on.

‘You don’t seem very happy, Mum.’

‘Of
course
I’m happy.’ Mum sat the mug back in its box and rose, crossing the tiny space into our kitchen and dining area in just a few steps. She put the box on the dining room table and stared down at it. ‘How far along did you say you are?’

‘Eight weeks, I think. I have a scan next week to be sure but the doctor thinks I’m due in November.’

‘Love!’ Mum turned back to stare at me. ‘You shouldn’t be telling people yet. Just being eight weeks pregnant now is
no
guarantee that there’s going to be a baby.’

I felt my whole body jolt with the brutality of it. For a moment, I couldn’t think of a single way to respond. Her words were cruel and her tone was sharp – she was sounding me a warning siren. It hadn’t even
occurred
to me that anything might go wrong with my pregnancy . . . and why would it? I’d never even been pregnant before, why should I expect the worst?

I’m not sure what the expression on my face was, but I was immediately fighting tears. Mum winced and I saw her clench her fists as she took a deep breath.

‘What I mean, Sabina, is that pregnancy . . . it’s just that . . . it doesn’t always . . .’ There was a desperate pleading in her brown gaze. ‘I just . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.
Please
don’t get your hopes up.’

‘My hopes
are
up, Mum.’ I decided to busy myself, to distract myself from how she’d stung me and how disappointing this moment was turning out to be. I’d thought she’d be elated, that she’d immediately be schooling me in the ways of pregnancy and helping me to make plans for motherhood. I stood and moved to walk past her into the kitchen nook, but she caught my elbow and turned me slowly towards her. A single tear slipped onto my cheek and I wiped it away impatiently.

‘I’m sorry, Sabina,’ Mum whispered, then she caught my face in her hands. She wiped at the moisture on my cheek with her thumb and then stared right into my eyes. ‘Of course you’re excited, and so you should be. I just had such a terrible time with my pregnancies. I’m more scared for you than I should be.’

‘
Pregnancies
?’ I repeated. I was an only child, and this was the first I’d even
heard
about potential siblings. ‘But . . . you never told me you’d had trouble . . .’ I fumbled for a sensitive way to phrase the statement. ‘I mean, trouble having me.’

I watched her for a moment, and noted how distant her gaze was, and the way that her lip quivered just a little as she pulled together a response. The depth of sadness in Mum’s eyes was startling, and I suddenly realised that we’d inadvertently opened an old wound for my wonderful mother. I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her close for a hug. She was never an overtly affectionate person, but the moment just seemed to demand it. Mum hugged me back, briefly and stiffly, and then stepped away and straightened her blouse.

‘We had a
terrible
time of it. I’m sure things will be much easier for you and Ted.’

I felt a heavy, pulsing thud in my ears. I was rapidly processing the implications of this new information and the joy and excitement was entirely gone, replaced with fear and a heightened sense of alertness. Mum had had difficulty carrying a pregnancy? Adrenaline seemed to be pumping through me, as if I was staring down an imminent physical threat to my safety.

‘But . . . I hate to ask you, Mum, but I need to know so I can talk to my doctor about this.’ It took monumental effort to keep my voice level and my words steady. ‘Do you know why things were so difficult?’

Mum sighed and shook her head.

‘There were lots of theories, but no, we never really knew. We fell pregnant easily enough, for the first few years anyway. I just couldn’t seem to carry a baby past the first trimester.’

Mum’s face was utterly pale now, except for the round apples of the too-pink blush she always wore.

‘How many times?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘A lot,’ Mum said abruptly. ‘You really don’t need to worry, love, and I’m sorry that I didn’t react the way I should have. I was caught off guard. I just didn’t realise you and Ted were planning a family.’

‘Of
course
I’m worried. I understand that this is hard for you to talk about, but you’re going to have to give me some more information here.’ When the stiffness in her expression did not ease, I resorted to stating the obvious. ‘Mum . . . what if your problems are genetic?’

My excitement about the baby had disappeared altogether, at least for the moment. I had just discovered that both my optimism and my pregnancy were fragile things that could be damaged somehow by mere words. I thought about the tiny jumpsuits I’d purchased the morning we’d had the positive test. They were sitting out in the open on the dresser in my room, and I was suddenly embarrassed by my own innocence. I wanted to excuse myself to run into the bedroom and to pack those jumpsuits up and hide them at the top of my wardrobe.

What Mum was telling me meant that there was surely a higher than average chance that I would never get to use those jumpsuits, and that the tiny being I had
thought
was safe and secure in my womb might not be so safe after all. Was there an inbuilt kill-switch in my genes, inherited from Mum, waiting to stop me reproducing myself?

Mum seemed to be struggling to come up with a way to explain her situation, but I quickly grew impatient.

‘I’m sorry to press you, but I need to understand this, Mum.’

‘It’s not genetic.’

‘You said there was no real explanations, only theories for why . . . how can you be so sure?’