The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(105)

She placed both hands over her mouth and I wanted to tell her it was too late to keep this secret. Clenching her eyes shut, she slowly lowered her hands to her lap. “You are,” she said, then opened her eyes. “You are my only child. The baby didn’t survive childbirth.”

I wasn’t prepared for that answer, and a sharp stab of what felt like grief nudged me between my ribs. “Was it a girl or a boy?”

The tears fell freely down her cheeks. “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me, saying it would be easier for me to forget. As if I ever could. They never even let me see my baby.”

“Who? Who wouldn’t?”

After only a brief pause, she said, “Button. And the midwife. And a psychiatrist they said they consulted—all agreed that it would be easier for me to get past the trauma if I didn’t know. If I couldn’t picture the child in my head, or name it. So I didn’t. Not that it made it any easier, of course.” She pressed a knuckle into her eye to try to block the tears. “It was a very difficult birth—they said I almost died. I was half out of my mind with grief and pain and fear and eventually I stopped asking, and accepted it.”

“And the baby?” I asked. “Where was it buried?”

“At the lake house. I agreed to keep it a secret—there were too many people who could be hurt if they knew the truth, including your father. We knew of the plans to flood the lake, so even though I knew it was illegal, I thought it was somehow okay if the grave would soon be underwater. I couldn’t go say good-bye—I was so ill and weak, and didn’t get out of the bed for two weeks. But I did select the Bible verses I wanted Button to read, and the flowers—lilies—I wanted placed on the grave. And then Button packed my bags and put me on a plane to New York so I could resume my life. When they flooded the lake and covered the grave the following year, it made it easier to pretend that none of it had happened. But I never really forgot. A mother never forgets her children.”

I sat back in my chair, trying to digest what I’d just been told. “Sumter . . . ?” The question hung in the air between us.

“He was the father. We’d had a fling in New York. Hasell had just died, and he was recently divorced and trying to find a new life. And I was divorced from your father, and separated from you, and I was looking for someone to love.” She wiped her face with her fingers, somehow managing to look elegant. “Even if the child had survived, it would never have worked out between Sumter and me. Because I was still in love with your father, and that would never change.”

“When was this taken?”

She looked down at the photograph, a soft smile touching her lips. “At the lake house. When I couldn’t hide the pregnancy anymore, I told my agent I needed a break and Button brought me down to the lake to wait out my pregnancy and find a midwife. Sumter was traveling so much for work and paid to have the midwife live at the house full-time until the baby was born. That allowed Button to be in Charleston most of the time so Anna wouldn’t get suspicious.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Sumter was in London when the baby was born—two weeks early. He didn’t get to see our baby, either.”

“Why didn’t you marry him? You were both free.”

She gave a delicate shrug. “Sumter wanted to marry, but I kept putting him off, saying we could decide after the baby was born. I knew he didn’t really want to marry again—he had loved Anna, at the beginning at least. Button didn’t want us to marry, either.”

“But why? You were her best friend. You would be sisters.”

“But there was Anna. Button was afraid of what Anna might do to me if she knew. And the baby. I have to say I was a little afraid of Anna, too. She’d never liked me, and losing Hasell had sent her over the edge. I can’t imagine what she might have been driven to if Sumter brought me and our baby back to Charleston. Even if we moved to New York, we could never have kept it a secret from her.”

“And then the decision was taken care of for you.”

She looked down at her hands and nodded. “I would have loved another baby, although I was afraid that I’d have the same problem I had when you were a child—how the restless dead found us to be a bright beacon and wouldn’t leave you alone. What if the baby had inherited our gift? Would I make that child’s life miserable, too? I confided in Button, and she just said we’d wait and see. She was like that, you know. Always seeing the silver lining. Always believing that everything would all work out. She gave me so much confidence that I’d started to secretly plan on how I’d raise this child in New York, where nobody would care that I didn’t have a husband.” She gave a shuddering sigh. “And then the baby died, and I moved back to New York on my own as if I’d never even been pregnant.”

I reached over and took my mother’s hands in mine. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so sorry. What an awful tragedy for you—and then to have to keep it to yourself all these years. But I’m glad I know now.” I squeezed her hands. “I’m assuming Dad doesn’t?”

She shook her head. “What would be the point? The truth is that I never stopped loving him, despite evidence to the contrary. If he knew I’d ever been pregnant with Sumter’s child, he’d always doubt it.”

I sat back. “You should tell him,” I said softly. “That’s what you’d tell me.”