The Midwife's Confession

“August 31,” she whispered.

My baby, I thought, my eyes filling. She’d lain alone in a hospital for two days with no mother to hold her. No mother to talk to her. She’d been all by herself until the midwife stole her away, quietly, taking all records of her existence with her, erasing her so that I’d never be able to find her again.

“You’re my Lily, Jenny. I’m certain of it.”

“Stop it!” the woman snapped at me, tugging Jenny close to her, and I knew I’d said too much, too fast, but I hadn’t been able to help myself.

The girl pulled free of her mother and fled down the hallway. Grace took off after her. Tara grabbed the woman’s arm to stop her from following them. “Let Grace,” she said.

The woman looked terrified. “I don’t understand what’s going on!”

“She’s Lily,” Haley said. “She’s so Lily.”

Tara looked at me, her hands wrapped around the woman’s forearm. “Let me talk to Emerson,” she said.

I didn’t want them to leave. I was afraid Lily would vanish once more into thin air. But what could I do?

“All right,” I said. Emerson had already turned away, disappearing into the hallway, getting away from me as quickly as she could. “Please don’t leave, though,” I added, but they were gone and only Haley heard my words.

61

Noelle

Wilmington, North Carolina

1994

She awakened with a great start and couldn’t immediately figure out where she was. The odd, dim lighting in the room disoriented her. She blinked hard, trying to focus. The small sink. The bassinet. She turned her head to the right and saw the bed where Emerson slept. She felt something hard against her thigh through her skirt and glanced down to see a bottle next to her on the seat of the recliner. She’d been feeding the baby. What was her name? Grace? They’d wanted to name her Noelle. No, this baby wasn’t Grace. It was Emerson’s child. Jennifer. Jenny. She had the vaguest memory of getting up to return the baby to the bassinet, but the bassinet was empty. She tried to think. Had Jill come in to take the baby from her arms? She drew in a long slow breath, worried she’d feel dizzy once she got to her feet. She pressed her hands on the seat of the chair to keep her balance, but as she started to stand, her glance fell to the floor at her feet and she saw the baby who had slipped from her tired arms down the silky fabric of her skirt.

She couldn’t breathe. She bent over too quickly to reach for the infant and fell from the chair to the floor, landing hard on her hip. Grabbing the baby, she pulled her onto her lap but knew right away she was too late. Too impossibly late. The baby’s head was at an unnatural angle, her lips already blue and lifeless.

Noelle stared at the infant, eyes wide, horror filling her chest. You killed her, you killed her, you killed her! Her hands trembled as she attempted to straighten the little head on the broken neck. She leaned over to try to breathe life into the purplish lips and tiny nose, where a trickle of blood had already crusted.

She pulled herself to her feet, one hand on the edge of the sink. She felt as though she was wailing, but the sound was caught inside her chest and couldn’t come out. She picked up the baby and placed her in the bassinet, then stood stock-still, trying to clear her head. Trying to think.

The baby in the nurses’ station. The twin to this one. The one with the dying mother. The missing father.

How would she get Jill away? Quietly, she crossed the room and opened the door to the nurses’ station to find it empty. Jill wasn’t there, but the baby was still in the bassinet. Brown hair. Six and a half pounds. No time to waste. No time to think.

Noelle lifted the infant into her arms. She grabbed the thin chart attached to the bassinet and slipped back into Emerson’s room. Her hands shook wildly as she placed the motherless baby next to Emerson’s child in the bassinet. Then she wrapped a flannel blanket around the lifeless infant, Emerson’s little Jenny, and slipped her gently into her huge leather purse.

The wristbands! She reached into her purse and worked the band from the baby’s wrist, then exchanged it for the one worn by the infant in the bassinet, but not before she noticed the name: KNIGHTLY, baby girl. She dropped that baby’s record and wristband into her purse. She’d burn the records. She could already picture the fire in her fireplace.

She stole out of the hospital, passing a couple of nurses and one obstetrician she knew, but they barely acknowledged her as they raced down the hall. The unit was an uncalm place tonight. As uncalm as she felt inside. As uncalm as she would feel for the rest of her life.

It was three-thirty in the morning by the time she got home and by then she was operating on sheer adrenaline. Almost without thinking, she found the shovel in her shed. She selected the corner of her yard farthest from the house and, in the darkness, she dug and dug and dug, the earth soft from August rains. She made the hole deep and narrow. She wrapped the baby in her favorite skirt, because it was beautiful and because she needed to sacrifice something she loved. She lay flat on the ground and carefully lowered the baby deep into the ground, then she shoveled the earth over her, finally letting her tears come.

When she was finished she sat on the ground above the baby, above Emerson’s Jenny, not moving even when a misty rain started to fall. She sat there until the sky began to lighten with strands of pink and lemon and lavender, like a bouquet of flowers for a baby girl. That was what she would do this morning, she thought. She’d go to the garden shop and ask them what plants would bloom into a lush blanket of pastel blossoms that even a stranger would not be able to look at without thinking, This is a garden that’s filled with love.

62

Tara

Washington, D.C.

2010

We found Grace and Jenny in the little room at the end of the hall. They sat on the floor, leaning against one of the love seats and my daughter—my daughter, I was sure of it—had her arm around her best friend. They looked up when Emerson and I walked into the room.

“Mom,” Jenny said. “Please tell me I’m not her daughter! Just because I look like those girls doesn’t mean anything.”

Emerson sank onto the love seat. Every trace of color had left her face. She smoothed her hand over Jenny’s head, gently squeezing a fistful of her hair as if she could hold on to her that way. “I don’t understand how you possibly could be her daughter,” she said. “Noelle had nothing to do with your birth.”

I saw the doubt in Emerson’s eyes as she spoke. We’d both seen the picture of those girls. You could exchange Jenny for one of them in the photograph and no one would know the difference.

“The letter Noelle wrote to Anna,” I said. “It didn’t say where she was when she dropped the baby, did it?”

Emerson jerked her head toward me, a look of betrayal on her face. “Do you actually think Jenny could be the one?” she nearly barked at me. “Tell me how that could possibly have happened.”

I sat down on the love seat opposite them, wondering how much to say. How to say it all without being cruel because what happened now seemed so clear in my mind. “Noelle was upset you were alone when you were in labor.” I felt all their eyes on me. “Ted was trying to get a plane home and Noelle was with Sam and me, remember? But once Grace was born, she had a doula come over so she could go see you at the hospital.”

“She never came to the hospital,” Emerson argued.

I looked down at my lap, where I was twisting my wedding ring on my finger. “That’s what she told us later,” I said quietly. I lifted my gaze to Emerson again. “Of course, that’s what she’d tell us—that she never made it there. That she was so tired, she just went home and went to sleep. Didn’t that seem unbelievable at the time, Em? That she wouldn’t come see you?”

Emerson looked away from me. In her hand, she still held a fistful of Jenny’s hair.

“Mom.” Jenny put her hands over her ears as though she could somehow block out what was happening. “I can’t stand this!”

I felt such relief to know that Grace and I were free from the nightmare, yet I was now reliving the emotions of this long day again, reliving them through the friend I loved so much. Tell Jenny she’ll always be yours, I thought, leaning forward, and Emerson seemed to get my unspoken message.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Jenny,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. But I don’t care who gave birth to you, your dad and I raised you and you’re our daughter.”

“Haley needs a bone marrow transplant,” Grace said, unhelpfully. “I was going to get tested to see if I’m a match. They only need to swab your cheek.”

“Grace,” I said more sharply than I’d meant to. “Give Jenny and Emerson a chance to figure out what’s happening, honey. Remember how you felt a couple of hours ago?”

Grace looked contrite. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.” She had grown up today, I thought. Driven hundreds of miles alone. Walked into a hospital. Agreed to endure medical treatments to help a sister she didn’t know. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been the day before.

“I want to go home,” Jenny said. “Don’t make me go back to that room, Mom. Please just take me home.”

Emerson looked at me. “I think we should leave,” she said. “I need to talk to Ian.”

I stood. “I’ll go back and tell them we’re leaving,” I said. “I’ll have to give them your contact information, Emerson, all right? And get theirs for you?”

Emerson shook her head. “I don’t want them calling me,” she said.

Of course not. “I’ll just give them Ian’s number.”

She gave me a reluctant nod. I stood, then bent over to hug her and kiss the top of Jenny’s head. “Love you, Jen,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I found Anna sitting on the edge of Haley’s bed and it was clear they’d both been crying. I could imagine how they felt, suddenly so near the girl they’d feared they would never find, yet unable to touch or even talk to her.

Anna jumped to her feet and rushed over to me. “How is she?” she asked. “Is she okay?”

I nodded. “She and Emerson have a lot to think about,” I said. “They’re not sure…well, you can imagine how over whelmed they are right now. I came to tell you that we’re leaving and to—”

“No!” Haley wailed. “We need to talk to Lily!”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Haley,” I said. “Jenny wants to go home and, right now, I think that’s best. But Emerson will talk to her lawyer and he’ll get in touch with you and your mother very soon. Tell me the best way for him to contact you.”

Anna picked up a briefcase from the floor near the sofa. I could tell she was fighting tears as she pulled out a business card. She added some other phone numbers to the back of it and I wrote Ian’s number on a slip of paper from my notepad.

“We don’t want to hurt her. Lily. Jenny,” Anna said, as she handed me the card. “We want to do this the right way. But Haley needs—”

“I know,” I said. “Jenny’s in shock right now. So is Emerson.” I tried to smile. “So am I, actually.”

“Us, too,” Haley said. “Seriously.”

As I turned to leave the room, Anna caught my arm. “Grace is beautiful,” she said. “When I saw her, I thought, What a beautiful girl, but I felt nothing…here.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “When I saw Jenny, though, I knew. Even if she didn’t look exactly like Haley’s cousins, I would have known. It was like a missing piece of my heart suddenly appeared in the doorway. Can you understand that?”

I nodded. The missing piece of my own heart was in the room at the end of the hall, and on this difficult day, I felt that piece slipping slowly, cautiously back into place.

63

Grace

Jenny and I rode in the backseat, while my mother drove. We’d had to leave Emerson’s car in the parking garage at the hospital. We didn’t have a choice. Only one of the four of us was in any shape to drive and that was my mom, and even she wasn’t doing all that well.

Everything had reversed itself in the weirdest way. It was as if you had to do one of the worst things you could imagine, like walk barefoot across burning coals, and suddenly your best friend was going to do it for you. You know just how your friend feels because you felt the same way, and it hurts to watch your friend go through it all.

I’d thought before about how love could sneak up on you. One day when I was eleven years old, I suddenly realized I loved Jenny the same way I loved my mother and father. We’d been on the beach at Wrightsville, hanging out together in the sun and jumping in the waves, and I’d felt so happy. I looked over at Jenny and thought, I love you, just like that. It was a revelation, really. About a year later, Jenny said, “Love you,” when we talked on the phone, the same way our mothers said those words to each other, and it was like there was suddenly more color in my life. Love came with some hurt, though. When Jenny broke her ankle two years ago, I sat with her on her porch steps while we waited for the ambulance, and it was as though my own ankle had been broken. That’s how bad I felt.

Now, sitting in the back of the car with Jenny, I felt the same way again.

“What are they like?” Jenny asked me. “That girl and her mother? I didn’t even get a look at them, really.”

“They’re nice,” I reassured her, although a couple of hours earlier, I’d felt nothing for them. I thought of Anna’s coolness. “It’s hard to tell because I just, you know, popped into the room and said, ‘Hi! I’m your daughter!’ so they were obviously freaked. And you freaked them even more.”

Emerson and my mother were talking quietly in the front seats. From where I sat, I could see a tissue wadded up in Emerson’s fist. For the first hour of the drive, I’d heard words like I refuse to believe it and This will kill Ted and Where is my baby? They were whispered words I didn’t want Jenny to hear, so I tried to talk over them. I heard Emerson speak to Ted on the phone, so quietly I couldn’t understand what she said. How would she tell Ted their daughter was probably not their daughter, after all?

“So…tell me about this disease Haley has,” Jenny said after a while.

“It’s leukemia,” I said. “I only talked to her for a little while, but she’s cool.” I felt a tiny bit of jealousy: if Jenny was really Anna’s daughter, then she had a sister. “She seems really strong. She doesn’t seem like she’s going to die tomorrow or anything, but she could.” I couldn’t help myself. I knew my mother thought Jenny couldn’t handle this, but she needed to know the truth. “She is going to die if she can’t get a bone marrow transplant,” I said.

“Now they’ll want me to do it, won’t they?” she said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “But I think you should. A sibling has a one in four chance of being a match.”

Emerson must have heard me. She turned in her seat. “Jenny, don’t even think about this now, all right? We have no idea what’s going on yet, really, and even if you turn out to be the baby Noelle took, you don’t need to decide a thing right now. Not about being a part of their lives, and absolutely not about donating bone marrow.” I didn’t think I’d ever heard Emerson sound so firm. “You don’t need to ever decide, if you don’t want to,” she added.

Jenny didn’t say anything, but when Emerson had faced forward again, she turned to me. “What does it take,” she asked. “Being a donor?”

“Cheek swab first,” I said. “Then if you’re a match with the cheek swab, they do a blood test. If you’re a match after that, they have to take some of your bone marrow. I don’t know exactly how they do it. If you need to do it, though, I’ll go with you.”

“You were going to do it?” she asked.

“That doesn’t mean you have to.”

“But you’re such a wimp. And you were going to do it.”

I was amazed by that myself. “She could die,” I said with a shrug.

Jenny wrinkled her nose, then leaned forward and tapped Emerson on the shoulder. “Mom?” she said. “I need to find out if I’m a match for her. For Haley.”

Emerson turned around again. She looked at Jenny. Then she looked at me. Her face was a pasty-white mess, smeared with mascara. “All right,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”

Jenny’s phone rang and she checked the caller ID. “It’s Cleve.” She looked at me. “I talked to him while we were driving to Washington and told him what was going on. Should I answer?”

I took the phone from her. “Hey,” I said.

“Grace! You’re with Jenny? Where are you? I’ve been worried about you! I’ve been going out of my freakin’ mind, wondering what’s going on.”

I smiled. He’d been worried. Going out of his freakin’ mind. “I’m fine,” I said, “but it’s too long to go into right now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Just tell me you’re all right,” he said.

“I’m good,” I said.

Cleve wasn’t a part of this. He’d never be able to understand everything that had happened. I was with the people who did understand: my mom and Emerson and Jenny. I felt like Cleve was from another part of my life that suddenly seemed so long ago, and I realized that, on this very long day when I thought I would turn into someone else, that was exactly what had happened.

64

Emerson

Topsail Island, North Carolina

I stood at the sliding glass door of the oceanfront cottage Ted, Jenny and I were renting. Midweek in October and not a soul on the beach for as far as I could see. We knew we’d practically have the island to ourselves. That’s why we came.

Ted and Jenny and the dogs were out there somewhere, but I’d begged off with the excuse that I wanted to make lasagna for dinner. Really, though, I wanted the time alone. Time to think.

The DNA test results had come in the day before. I hadn’t fallen apart as I’d expected, I guess because by the time we got the phone call, I’d known there was no other explanation for what had happened than the one Tara had offered. Ted called a Realtor he knew and booked this cottage and I called Hunter High to pull Jenny out of school for a few days. We needed the time together, just the three of us, before we’d allow anyone else—Anna Knightly and her family, to be specific—into our lives. Three days for Jenny, Ted and me to come to grips with this new reality.

For a couple of days after that miserable trip to Washington, I was filled with such a crazy quilt of emotions I could hardly stand it. One minute I’d be furious with Noelle, the next I’d be full of gratitude. One minute, I’d be racked with grief over the baby I’d lost without ever having the chance to see her or touch her, the next I’d be filled with a love for Jenny so pure and bottomless that I was drowning in it. Now, all those emotions had been erased by one simple question: What did our future hold? The only thing I knew for sure, the only thing I cared about, was that I needed to help Jenny find her way through that future. My own fears and losses and anger no longer mattered. All that mattered was Jenny.

I spotted the dogs first. Shadow and Blue bounded in and out of the shallow water, chasing each other across the sand with an energy they never displayed at home. Then I saw Ted and Jenny walking a distance behind the dogs. Ted made an expansive motion with his arms as though he was illustrating the enormity of the ocean. Or maybe, I thought, he was describing his love for Jenny. I’d never felt closer to Ted than I had in the past few days. We were on the same team. “You’re our daughter,” he said to Jenny with such force that no one could doubt that he meant it. “Do you think a DNA test can change that?”

As they came closer to the house, I watched Ted take Jenny’s hand. They swung their arms back and forth between them like they were kids. Like nothing bad had happened or ever could happen. Like our lives hadn’t taken as grim a turn as I’d thought. Watching them, I felt an unexpected surge of happiness.

I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out on the deck. I waved to them and they waved back, and I couldn’t wait for them to come into the cottage. Tonight we’d watch a movie after dinner. Maybe play a game. There’d be time later to make sense of our new and uncertain future. All I knew was that we’d be facing it together.

My husband.

Myself.

And my daughter.

EPILOGUE

Tara

Wilmington, North Carolina

March 2011

The cleansing of Noelle’s cottage is Emerson’s idea, and I’m so glad she thought of it. I pull up in front of the house and take in the view. The cottage, now yellow with white trim and black shutters, is adorable. Two white rockers sit on the small porch and the yard is filled with azaleas ready to pop with color.

Suzanne is moving into the cottage next week. She knows nothing about the cleansing. She’s never seemed the least bit concerned that Noelle killed herself in the house, but we’re certain Noelle would have approved of what we’re doing here today.

Emerson’s car is in the driveway, and I park across the street. I’ve been inside the cottage a couple of times since its transformation. The kitchen and bathroom have been gutted and refurbished, the floors refinished, and the walls in every room painted in warm Tuscan colors, as Suzanne suggested. It took forever—Emerson had other things on her mind—but it’s finished now and ready for Suzanne to give it a new life.

Emerson greets me in the kitchen. “You’ll take the east corner,” she says as she hands me a bowl containing a smoldering bundle of sage. A tendril of smoke rises into the air above it. She points toward the second bedroom near the rear of the house and instructs me what to do.

Tonight, after the cleansing of the house is complete, Grace and Jenny will begin moving the bags of donated baby items into the second bedroom with some help from Cleve, who’s home on spring break. I can’t go so far as to say that Grace is over Cleve. I swear I can sense her heart beating a little faster when he’s around. But she started going out with a friend of Jenny’s boyfriend, Devon, and she tells me he’s “okay,” which I think means she likes him quite a bit. Grace is never going to be an open book, like me. I’ve learned that the harder I dig, the more she withdraws. But if I wait, if I’m there for her the way Sam used to be without pushing or prodding, she eventually turns to me. Some days it feels like waiting for paint to dry. Every shared confidence, though, is precious. For an entire day, I was unsure who she was and how we fit together. Ironic that the day I feared I was no longer her mother was the day I learned how to mother her.

Jenny was not a match for Haley, but Haley was able to receive her transplant in January after a donor was found through the global database. Her recovery has been extremely difficult, filled with uncertainty, infections and one hospitalization after another. But she’s at home now, at least for a while, and she and Jenny Skype every day. Every minute, according to Grace, who’s a little jealous of the relationship forming between Jenny and her sister. Emerson has her own jealousy to contend with, but she’s learning to share Jenny with Anna, as we all are, and she’s trying hard to expand her vision of family to include Anna, Haley and Bryan.

Now Emerson stands on a stepladder to take out the batteries from the smoke detector. Then she lights her own bowl of sage from the candle burning on the counter. She blows it out to let it smolder. “I just hope we don’t burn the place down,” she says as she heads for the room that had been Noelle’s bedroom.

In the second bedroom, I walk in a large circle, stopping to fill the corners with the aromatic smoke. At the windows, I look out at the garden, where daffodils and crocuses seem to have sprung up overnight. We don’t know for sure and we never will, but we believe we understand the love Noelle had for her garden and the birdbath with its statue of the little girl. We thought back, remembering that she first planted the garden shortly after Emerson gave birth to her daughter. Noelle had never shown any interest in her yard before then, but she tended that garden with so much love. Almost the sort of love you’d lavish on a child. A niece, perhaps.

I believe that Sam knew. I believe that one day, when Noelle could no longer keep this final, most devastating secret to herself, she asked Sam to meet her someplace where none of us would bump into them. Someplace like Wrightsville Beach. Maybe she told him everything, client to attorney. She must have told him about the garden, prompting him to question me about it a short time later. What’s with Noelle’s garden? Out of the blue.

Through the bedroom window, I see Emerson walk toward the garden. I watch as she plucks a few dead leaves from the birdbath, then rests her hand on the head of the little bronze girl. I fill with love for her. I carry the bowl of sage into the bathroom and run a little water onto it, then rest it on the counter. I want to be with Emerson. In this year of changes, only one thing has been certain and solid, and that’s the bond I have with my best friend. I walk outside to help her prepare the garden to welcome the spring.

READER’s GUIDE

Tara and Emerson have very different personalities, yet they’ve remained best friends for more than twenty years. What do you think drew them together initially? What keeps them together now?

Tara’s mother had a history of psychiatric problems. How has this shaped Tara as a mother? As a widow?

Imagine yourself in Noelle’s place when she learns that Emerson is her sister. Would you be able to keep that relationship to yourself for two decades? Do you think Noelle should have revealed the relationship to Emerson? Discuss the internal struggle you might have if you were in her position.

What was Sam’s attraction to two women as different as Tara and Noelle? Why do you think he chose Tara over Noelle?

Emerson values being liked above being ambitious and successful. This is typically a feminine trait and one that can often get in the way of advancing in a career. Yet Emerson, with her new café, Hot!, has clearly found a path to professional success without sacrificing her values. Why do you think she’s succeeded at this endeavor? How do you feel about the sometimes conflicting values of “being nice” versus “being ambitious”?

Grace is a strong introvert, while her mother is passionately extroverted. How do these differing personality traits affect their relationship?

Tara has enormous guilt over her feelings toward her former favorite student, Mattie Cafferty. Discuss how her relationship with Mattie may have impacted her relationship with Grace prior to Sam’s death.

Any major change often throws the structure of a comfortable family out of balance. Why do you think Grace had such a close relationship with her father? How did the family dynamic between Grace, Tara and Sam support that relationship? How did Sam’s death alter that dynamic and what did that change mean for both Grace and Tara? Discuss the different ways in which Tara and Grace grieved for Sam and how those different styles of grieving created conflict and misunderstanding.

Anna has made the search for missing children her life’s work and has involved Haley in that cause in both a professional and personal way. How do you think this has impacted the relationship between mother and daughter?

Bryan deserted Anna and Haley during the most vulnerable time of their lives. When he returns, they both need his support, but does Anna forgive him too easily? How does her role as a mother or a woman feed into that forgiveness?

How are the three mother-daughter relationships (Tara and Grace; Emerson and Jenny; Anna and Haley) the same or different?

Discuss Noelle’s choice to become a gestational surrogate. Why did she choose this particular path to atonement? Why do you think she had no children of her own?

Noelle lived not just one lie, but many. Discuss what it must be like to keep the most significant parts of your life a secret from your closest friends. When Ian learns about her surrogacy, he says “It must have been so lonely, being Noelle.” Do you think Noelle was lonely and if so, were there ways that she compensated for that loneliness?

Imagine yourself in Emerson’s place when she feels certain that Noelle substituted Grace for Tara’s infant. How would you feel knowing such devastating information about your best friend? Would you handle it the way Emerson did or in some other way?

As the reader, you’re unable to see the world through Grace’s point of view until the final third of the story. Did that impact how you perceived Grace? Did being in her point of view change your feelings about her?

Tara learns that her missing daughter is not her biological daughter and at the same time realizes that her biological daughter is dead. What does she learn about herself as a mother in those moments?

Anna’s reaction to Grace’s arrival at the hospital is conflicted and hesitant. Did this surprise you? Do you think some sort of maternal intuition came into play in this scene or was some other emotion at work? Discuss Anna’s reaction to Grace’s pronouncement that she is Anna’s daughter.

Noelle is a powerful woman even from the grave. Every character in the story has been hurt by her in some way. Yet ultimately this is a story of forgiveness. Trace the complicated relationships Tara and Emerson had with Noelle. Why do you think they are able to make peace with Noelle’s hurtful actions?

The Midwife’s Confession is also a story about deep and abiding friendships between women. What would you say is the ultimate take-away message about friendship?

Who do you think grew the most over the course of the story and why? What do you think the future holds for Tara and Grace? Emerson and Jenny and Ted? Anna, Haley and Bryan?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

North Carolina offers so many unique areas in which to set a novel and I loved getting to know beautiful Wilmington better as I wrote The Midwife’s Confession. Thank you to my North Carolina publicists, Tori Jones and Kim Hennes, for sharing their love of Wilmington with me as they carted me around town. You two are excellent tour guides! Thanks also to Beth Scarbrough, who attended UNC Wilmington at the same time as the Galloway Girls and who helped me paint a picture of their campus life.

As usual, the other six members of the Weymouth Seven helped me brainstorm this story in between games of Balderdash, chats with ghosts and work on their own novels. Thank you Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff and Brenda Witchger. Two other author friends, Emilie Richards and Maureen Sherbondy, also contributed their ideas at various points in the story, as did my sister, Joann Scanlon, and my assistant, Denise Gibbs, and I’m grateful to all of them.

Thank you Tina Blackwell for the Native American legend on Spanish moss, which I shamelessly altered to suit my story. Thank you Kelly Williamson for giving me a peek into the life of a North Carolina high school student. Thank you Janina Campbell for sharing your poignant memories of your father as I shaped Grace’s character. Eleanor Smith helped me map out Emerson’s library research, and Phyllis Sabourin updated my recollection of maternity units and hospital nurseries, which have come a long way since my days as a hospital social worker.

The internet not only allows for impersonal factual research, but it also gives us an intimate look into the life journeys of real people through their public blogs. The research I did into Haley’s leukemia put me in touch with many of these stories, and they touched me deeply. I was particularly moved by the experiences of Kay Howe of the Netherlands. Even when my research was complete, I continued reading the blog written by Kay’s father as I rooted for that courageous ten-year-old girl whose zest for life inspired me every day. I was stunned and saddened when Kay lost her fight with leukemia, and she and her family will always have a place in my heart.

Thank you to my agent, Susan Ginsburg, who has to be the most positive person in the book business. I love your optimism! Special thanks to my editor, Miranda Indrigo, who’s not only able to see the forest for the trees but who always helps me blaze the best trail through the undergrowth.

Finally, for reading every word of nearly every draft and offering his honest critique along with his support, for being my resident photographer and best friend, thank you John Pagliuca. Sorry there was no place to put that car chase you wanted. Maybe next time!

ISBN: 978-1-4592-0153-8

THE MIDWIFE’S CONFESSION

Copyright © 2011 by Diane Chamberlain

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

MIRA and the Star Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

For questions and comments about the quality of this book please contact us at Customer_eCare@Harlequin.ca.

www.MIRABooks.com