Lessons in Chemistry(123)
“Miss Parker—” Elizabeth pressed.
“Miss Zott,” Avery returned just as emphatically. “I’ve made a mistake. You don’t want to come back to Hastings; fine. I’m not going to beg.”
Elizabeth took a short breath in.
“I’ve been begging my entire life,” Parker continued. “I’m sick of it.”
Elizabeth brushed a few stray hairs aside. “It’s not even me you want,” she said hotly. “Isn’t that right? You’re only here for the boxes.”
Avery cocked her head as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “Boxes?”
“I understand. You bought Hastings; they belong to you. But this charade—”
“What charade?”
“— I want to know about All Saints. I think I have a right to know.”
“Excuse me?” Parker said. “You have a right? Let me tell you a little secret about rights. They don’t exist.”
“They do for the wealthy, Miss Parker,” Elizabeth insisted. “Tell me about Wilson. About Wilson and Calvin.”
Avery Parker stared back perplexed. “Wilson and Calvin? No, no…”
“Again, I think I have a right to know.”
Avery pressed her hands down on the counter. “I wasn’t planning on doing this today.”
“Doing what?”
“I wanted to get to know you first,” Avery continued. “I think that’s my right. To know who you are.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “Excuse me?”
Avery reached for the chalkboard eraser. “Look. I…I need to tell you a story.”
“I’m not interested in stories.”
“It involves a seventeen-year-old girl,” Avery Parker said, undeterred, “who fell in love with a young man. It’s a rather standard story,” she said brittlely, “where the young girl got pregnant and her prominent parents, shamed by their daughter’s promiscuity, sent her away to a Catholic home for unwed mothers.” She turned her back on Elizabeth. “Maybe you’ve heard of these homes, Miss Zott. They’re run like prisons. Filled with young women in the same kind of trouble. They have their babies, then relinquish them. There was an official form to sign and most signed. Those who refused were threatened: they’d have to endure the delivery alone; they might even die. Despite the warning, the seventeen-year-old girl still refused to sign. Kept insisting she had rights.” Parker paused, shaking her head as if she still couldn’t believe the na?veté.
“True to their word, when her labor started, they put her in a room by herself and locked the door. She stayed there, alone, crying out in pain, for a full day. At some point, the doctor, infuriated by the noise, finally decided he’d had enough. He went in and anesthetized her. When she came to hours later, she was given the grim news. Her baby had been stillborn. Shocked, she asked to see the body, but the doctor said they’d already disposed of it.
“Fast-forward ten years,” Avery Parker continued, turning to face Elizabeth, her jaw tight. “A nurse from the unwed mothers home contacts the now-twenty-seven-year-old woman. Wants money for the truth. Tells her the baby didn’t die; rather, it, like all the other babies, had been put up for adoption. The only unusual thing: this child’s adoptive parents died in a tragic accident, then the child’s aunt died. The child was sent to a place called All Saints in Iowa.”
Elizabeth froze.
“That was the day,” Avery Parker said, her voice turning sad, “the young woman began her quest to find her son.” She paused. “My son.”
Elizabeth drew back, all the color draining from her face.
“I’m Calvin Evans’s biological mother,” Avery Parker said slowly, her gray eyes filling with tears. “And with your permission, Miss Zott, I’d very much like to meet my granddaughter.”
Chapter 44
The Acorn
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Elizabeth stared at Avery Parker, uncertain how to proceed. This couldn’t be true. Calvin’s own diary had revealed that his biological mother had died in childbirth.
“Miss Parker,” Elizabeth said carefully, as if picking her way across hot coals. “A lot of people have tried to take advantage of Calvin over the years. Many have even pretended to be long-lost family members. Your story is—” She stopped. She thought back to all the letters Calvin had kept. Sad Mother—she’d written to him several times. “If you knew he was in that boys home, why didn’t you go get him?”
“I did,” Avery Parker said. “Or rather, I sent Wilson. I’m ashamed to admit I wasn’t brave enough to go myself.” She got up and walked the length of the worktable. “You need to understand. I’d long ago accepted that my child was dead. Now to suddenly learn he was alive? I was afraid to get my hopes up. Like Calvin, I too have been a target for countless scams, including from dozens of people claiming to be my so-called relatives. So I sent Wilson,” she repeated, looking down at the floor as if reviewing this decision for the fiftieth time. “I sent him to All Saints the very next day.”
The vacuum pump started a new cycle, and with it a hissing sound filled the laboratory.
“And—” Elizabeth prodded.