I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(80)

“I had an infection that wouldn’t go away, so I stayed here for weeks and weeks, suffered setback after setback, and then, one day in mid-March, I woke up and realized that I would live. I was as weak as a newborn kitten, but I got out of bed and walked out into the living room, just inching along until I got to the nearest window. I stood there, hanging on to the window frame, shaky and fragile but feeling alive from head to toe, and I saw crocuses opening up in the yard, yellow and purple, and, for the first time not just in weeks but in years, it was as if spring were happening inside of me, too. I got better.” She smiled. “And Tom and I fell in love. We didn’t have far to fall, either; after all those weeks together, we were more than halfway there.”

“So you stayed,” I said.

“He wanted to marry me right away, but I couldn’t let him. By that time, we’d gotten word that John Blanchard’s lawyer had turned him into a hero—the hero he truly was—in everyone’s eyes, but part of me still waited every day for the knock at the door, for them to catch me and make me go back. And then, one day in May, Tom said, ‘Sarah, I think it’s time to let go of that worry,’ and the strangest thing is that, as soon as he said it, I did let it go. Just like that. And Tom told everyone that his sweetheart from Chicago had come up to marry him, and right out there in the backyard of this house, we were married. When George left here for the last time, on that night just before Christmas, he told Tom he wouldn’t be sending people here anymore. I was the last. He said it was too risky. And maybe it was, but also, of course, he had the baby to think of. Babies change you. They change everything.”

Here, Sarah stopped and the tears in her eyes spilled down her cheeks, just one brief rush of weeping, before her face cleared and she wiped the tears away.

Carefully, carefully, I said, “I can understand about the baby. A woman who worried that she might always be a fugitive, I can understand why she would’ve given her child to someone else to raise. Always looking over your shoulder would be hard enough without worrying that your baby boy might be caught, too, and given to strangers or worse. Gareth was rich and trustworthy, and he and his wife didn’t have any biological children, so it made sense.”

“Yes,” said Sarah, softly.

“It was an act of love,” I said.

“Yes, that’s exactly what George—Gareth—said.”

Shyly, I said, “So you. You’re my grandmother.”

And then Sarah turned wondering eyes on me and said, “Oh, no. He didn’t say those things to me. Is that what you thought? Dear girl, he said them to Edith.”

Even before my mind understood what her words meant, my body did. It began to tremble. Dev took my mug from my hand and set it on the coffee table, and then he slipped his arm around my shoulders and I reached up and grabbed his hand and held on. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Mutely, I turned to Dev.

“The baby Gareth Grace adopted wasn’t Steven?” said Dev.

“No, Steven stayed right here with me and Tom. He was at our wedding, in his grandmother May’s arms. We told people that right before I moved up here to be with Tom, my sister died shortly after giving birth and gave her baby boy to me. But he was my son. Steven lives in Montreal with his family. He’s a doctor like Tom.”

“So—Edith?” I said, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “The baby Gareth adopted was Edith’s?”

“Yes, Edith’s. She’d risked everything for me and Steven,” said Sarah, her eyes teary again. “And that made her a fugitive, too. George—Gareth—helped her disappear and start a new life like he’d done with the others, but he persuaded her to give her son to him.”

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” I said, gasping. “No one ever said anything about a baby. The newspapers never mentioned it.”

“She was near the end of her pregnancy when she brought me here. Bad off as I was, I knew it that night in her house, as soon as I saw her. She was one of those tall, whippet-thin women, quite like you actually, the kind who can just about cover it up with clothes, even at the end. I expect most people couldn’t even tell. But I’d just had a baby myself. I knew. I never said a word to her about it, but I knew.”

“She delivered the baby here in this house?” said Dev.

“Yes. I didn’t know until afterward because I was having a bad time that night. I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me. But I saw the baby later, the next day. The prettiest little boy. Big dark eyes. I can still see his face. And the next night, when Gareth came here and talked to Edith, it was on the sofa you’re sitting on right now. I was lucid then, lying in the next room, and I heard Gareth talk her into giving him the baby to raise.”

“Poor Edith,” said Dev.

“I can’t believe it,” I said, and then I was seeing her again in her gardening clogs and her blue dress; I was hearing her ringing voice: Courage, dear heart.

“No, actually I can believe it,” I said. “It was Edith. Edith, all along. That’s why. The wedding, the house, everything. That’s why.”

Sweet joy swept through me like a flock of birds, a murmuration of starlings, an exaltation of larks. Dev squeezed my hand.

“Gareth said something else that night,” said Sarah.