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“Why not?”
“Because he was a mistake. The biggest mistake of my life. I was seventeen years old when I met him. It took me ten long years to finally get away.”
“Where is Bruce now?”
“I have no idea. Probably beating up some other poor woman. If I hadn’t left him when I did, I’d be dead. Maybe Amy would be too.”
“You’d do anything for Amy, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.” Julianne looked at Amy. “She’s my daughter.”
“But I don’t think she is, Mrs. Antrim.”
Amy looked back and forth at the two women, uncertain what to do. What to say. Her mother had gone very still, but there was no hint of panic in her face. “Amy,” Julianne said calmly, “please go upstairs to my bedroom. Bring down our old photo album. The one with your baby pictures and your birth certificate. It’s in the closet, up on the shelf. And bring me the passport. It’s in my scarf drawer.”
“Mom?” Amy said.
“Go, sweetheart. It’s just a mix-up. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Amy’s legs were trembling as she walked out of the kitchen and climbed the stairs to her parents’ bedroom. She went straight to her mother’s closet and reached up for the stack of photo albums on the shelf. She set them on the bed and found the albumher mother wanted. She knew this was the right one because it was decades old and the binding had started to crumble, but she opened the cover just to be sure. On the first page was a picture of a young Julianne standing beneath an oak tree, cradling her black-haired infant in her arms. Facing that photo, on the inside front cover, was a certificate of live birth for Amy Wellman, born in the state of Vermont, weighing five pounds, six ounces. The line for the father’s name was blank. She closed the album and sat on the bed for a moment, thinking about what would happen next. What her mother would do, what she must do.
She crossed the room to her mother’s dresser and slid open the top drawer. Pushed aside the neatly folded silk scarves and reached in for what her mother had asked her to fetch.
