Looking for Jane (104)

“Yes,” Maggie answers, and immediately regrets it.

The door handle turns with a small creak, and her brother’s nose appears in the crack. “Are you decent?”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

Jack pushes the door open with the corner of the tray he’s carrying, laden with a full English breakfast of eggs and sausage, toast with Lorna’s own black-currant jam, fried tomatoes, and tea. Maggie pushes herself up into a sitting position, leans against the hard wooden headboard, and looks skeptically at the breakfast tray.

“You slept straight through two meals. You need to eat.” Her brother lowers the tray onto Maggie’s lap, then perches himself at the bottom corner of the bed. He’s facing the door, as though planning a quick escape. Maggie’s throat tightens when she sees the dark circles under his eyes, the slump of his shoulders.

“Jack—”

“Why, Maggie? Why would you do such a thing?”

Maggie’s gaze falls from her brother’s anguished face. She can hear birds outside the window, and it dawns on her how desperate she is for fresh air.

“Maggie.” Jack presses for an answer. “Look at me.”

She meets her brother’s eyes under wet lashes.

“Why?” He waits, hands folded neatly in his lap.

Maggie picks up the tea, takes a slow sip. The clink of plates and glasses drifts into the room from downstairs in the kitchen where Lorna is doing the washing up. She knows she owes them the truth.

“You never got any of my letters?”

“No, we didn’t. How many did you send?”

“Once a month, pretty much. More often at first. Ten or twelve?” As if it even matters at this point. “The Watchdog must have destroyed them. Our letters were all posted for us. Or at least we thought they were.”

“Who is the Watchdog?” asks Jack.

“Basically the matron of the home. The head nun. She’s…” Maggie trails off.

Jack clears his throat. “That’s okay. It doesn’t matter now.” A long pause, then, quietly, “Where is the baby, Maggie?”

Maggie fights it briefly, but her eyes pinch shut, and she feels an unpleasant swoop cut through her gut.

“They took her away, Jack,” Maggie manages, her voice sticking in her throat like clay. “She was adopted.”

She picks up the cloth napkin from the breakfast tray and mops her face. She has never cried this much in front of anyone before. She’s never cried this much, full stop. She hates feeling so weak.

Jack is silent for a moment. He nods to himself before speaking, as though confirming a thought. “But you were going to give it—her—up for adoption anyway, right? Wasn’t that the plan, Meg?”

“Yes. It was, at first. But after I’d had her, held her, then I wasn’t so sure. After I saw her face. She looked like you.” She chokes on a sob.

Jack takes the tray from her lap, placing it on the dresser while Maggie composes herself, but brings her back the tea, which she sips gratefully.

“In one of the letters…” She pauses. “I asked you whether… whether you and Lorna might want to adopt her. Because, well…”

“Ah.” Jack heaves a silent sigh. “I see. That might have made sense. I understand. Lorna brought it up one night, but I think she was afraid to really suggest it. I never told her what happened to you, Maggie, but frankly I thought, given how the baby came to be—I thought you’d want nothing to do with that child. I thought you were content enough with giving it up.”

Jack was the first person she told. He sat with her and held her hand while she relayed the news to her parents. They believed her about the pregnancy, but refused to accept how it had happened.

“I thought I was, too,” she says. “But things changed once I felt like she was mine. And if you and Lorna had taken her—she told me about her miscarriages last year—I just thought it might have been a decent solution that we all could have benefited from.”

“But Maggie, I—”

“I know. I know, Jack.”

She realizes he is truly the only person she has now in this world.

“What…” Jack begins, faltering. “What happened there? How did it all lead you to opening up your wrist in my bathtub, Maggie? I need to understand.”

Maggie takes a deep breath in, then bravely replays the nightmare, recounting every detail to her brother: the workhouse labour, the conditions, Father Leclerc, the Watchdog, and Evelyn’s death. Jack shifts in his seat, but she doesn’t stop.

“And they sold the babies. Sold them, Jack.”

Jack’s brow is furrowed under the swoop of his sandy hairline. “But how did they give it away without your say-so?”

“They made me sign before they would give me the painkillers,” she says.

Jack’s mouth falls open. “But Maggie, they can’t make you sign a contract under those conditions. It’s not binding, it’s invalid. We could fight this!”

A dense silence follows Jack’s words. They meet eyes across the bed, brown mirroring brown. Deep in her chest, Maggie feels the unfamiliar sensation of hope struggling to its feet.

“But who’s going to believe me, Jack? A lot of the girls that go through that place willingly give their babies up. They convince you to, coerce you into agreeing. They tell you your baby will have a better life with an adopted family, that you can’t afford it, you’ll end up shamed and prostituting on the street. They terrify those girls into signing off on the adoptions. It’s the Church, Jack. Who’s going to believe us? Even if they do believe me, they would probably still agree that the baby is better off with an adopted family. Forced or not. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”