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I shake my head. “I think it’ll be safer with you.” I notice a white label on the front of the tape with a typed address: 234 Howard Street.
“Was that your old office?” I ask him.
“No,” he says. “It was probably your mom’s address at the time.”
“But she lived in a halfway house after she was discharged from the hospital. NYU had the address in their records.”
“Apparently not forever,” he says.
I remember Claire said that Mom left the halfway house before Esther did. Maybe this is where she moved to after.
“Where’s Howard Street?” I ask Dr. Siegel.
“Near Little Italy,” he says.
“I need to go there to find out if anyone knows anything about what happened with her pregnancy that might help me understand why the Cadells didn’t want me to find out about it now,” I say.
“Look,” he says. “I’m rooting for you, but that was fifty years ago. Anybody that lived there back then is long gone by now.”
I shrug. “You’re not.”
CHAPTER50
I’M SITTING ONa stoop in front of a reddish brownstone building—234 Howard Street—at 4:35 a.m. It’s a quiet residential block filled with brownstones. Unlike Dr. Siegel’s street, here I can’t bang on any doors or ring any bells without waking up neighbors who will post the intrusion on the Nextdoor app or call the police. And by now, God knows how many people Jason has fanned out throughout the city searching for me.
My only play is to lie low for another couple hours until daylight. Then I’ll try ringing the intercom, or maybe someone will walk out of the building to go to work.
I close my eyes, rubbing my pulsing temples, in disbelief over what I’ve learned about my mother over the last twenty-four hours. She was an opioid addict andpregnantwith another child before she had me. And she never told me about any of it. It’s as if she constructed a persona of who she wanted me to believe she was. Or maybe she was trying to protect me, not wanting to bring me into the Cadell fold. Maybe it was both.
The sound of a police siren approaches, and I immediately jump to my feet, trying to open the front door of thebuilding, but it’s locked. I frantically try several other doors on the block that are also closed until I find one that someone accidentally left slightly ajar. I sneak inside just as the police car zooms by.
I wait a few minutes until it passes, making sure there aren’t any more cars behind it, before stepping outside to return to 234 Howard Street.
I’m about to sit down again on the stoop when a man in blue medical scrubs walks toward me.
“Do you live in this building?” I ask him.
“Is there a problem with the sewer line again?” he says. “Did it back up?”
“No,” I say. “I’m Dr. Beatrice Bennett. In the seventies, my late mother lived here. I’m trying to see if anyone still lives here from back then that might’ve known her.”
“My grandmother might’ve. She bought the building in 1960,” he says.
The tears come quickly. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s the lack of food. Maybe it’s knowing my mom isn’t close to who I thought she was, and I’m not any closer to finding out if she’s still alive or getting my life back because this man’s grandma is long gone. Whatever it is, I’m having a hard time keeping it together.
“I’m sorry,” I say, swiping the tears away from my cheeks. “I just found out that my mom was pregnant back then. I’m an only child, and I might have a half-brother or sister out there somewhere, but I don’t know how to find them.”
“You don’t know who the dad is?” he says.
I shake my head.
“I think there are some old photo albums of the building in the basement. There might be pictures of tenants in them, but I don’t know,” he says, looking down at his watch. “It’s too early to wake up my grandmother and ask her.”
My eyes go so wide like I may never blink again.
“Wait, your grandmother’s still alive?” I ask.
“Yeah, she lives in the apartment below me. I moved in last year to help her with the building. She’s old.”
