The Richest Woman in Town Claimed Me as Her Lost Daughter on Stage, Then I Read the Date on Her Lab Report novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What Lindsey Kept

Lindsey shows Hallie the lab's original folder and says why Barbara moved first; Hallie goes home to find Barbara and a lawyer at her mother's table.

"You knew," I said.

Lindsey didn't try to look away, and I gave her credit for that.

"Since November of that year," she said. "Will you let me show you instead of tell you? There's a diner two blocks from here."

I texted my mother that I'd be late.

She wrote back, "Eggs are in the fridge," which is how my mother says she loves you and is not asking questions.

The diner on Third Street had a plastic pie case and a waitress who knew my order without asking.

She raised her eyebrows at Lindsey Chalmers in the booth across from me.

Then she raised them at me, and went away without a word.

Lindsey set her bag on the table and took out a manila folder.

The edges had gone soft from handling.

"I was sixteen and I folded mail in the Foundation office after school," she said. "My mother used that address for the lab's billing, because she didn't want the bills at the house."

"And the lab sent a copy."

"A second certified copy, in November. I opened it standing next to the postage meter."

She slid the folder across.

I opened it to page four, and my thumb found the seal again.

October 9, 2015.

I had known what it would say, and my stomach still dropped.

Page three was the one I hadn't seen on the stage.

It said the hospital had released the newborn-screening card of Weber, infant female.

It had gone to the chair of the Hospital Foundation, for the purpose of this test.

It said Barbara Chalmers had signed the release.

"She was the chair then, too," Lindsey said. "Nobody told her no."

"So there's no forgery," I said.

"None. I wish there were. I'd know what to do with a forgery."

The waitress brought two coffees and a plate of pancakes that I had apparently ordered.

Lindsey looked at the plate, and for the first time all day, her mouth twitched.

"You ordered pancakes," she said.

"I'm trying to make a point to myself."

She laughed once, a short surprised sound, and then she put her hand over her mouth, because she was crying.

I pushed the napkins across the table.

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked. "You were sixteen. Then you were eighteen. Then you were twenty-five."

"I was a coward," Lindsey said. "Then it was a year, and a year is a long time to have not said something, and then it was five."

"That's an explanation, not a reason."

"I know."

She wiped her eyes and sat up straighter, like she'd decided to be a person who could say it in order.

"Last Monday I told her I was done. I said I'd stand up at the Hospital Foundation Gala on the twenty-fourth and say it myself, before the donors."

"And she beat you to it."

"By two weeks." Lindsey nearly smiled. "She's very good at getting somewhere first."

I turned my fork over.

"Why a pancake breakfast?"

"Because if my mother stands up in front of the town and announces a miracle, she's the mother of a miracle," she said. "Nobody asks how long she knew."

"The date."

"The date is the only thing in the world that makes her a liar," Lindsey said. "She forgot the seal. She had her assistant take the dates off the cover letter and forgot the embossing."

I thought of the Friday phone call.

Wear the green, honey.

Nothing to worry about.

"I need to tell you something else," Lindsey said, "because you'd find out and it would be worse from the Times."

I waited.

"The summer you were sixteen, you got a page job at the library."

"Everybody wants that job."

"The Summer Page Grant is hers," Lindsey said. "She funds it. She told the library director to put your name at the top."

The coffee tasted suddenly like pennies.

"And the Chalmers Scholarship at Marietta College," I said.

"Four thousand a year. Four years. It came out of her checkbook. I used to see the checks go out of the Foundation's account."

"I had a 3.9."

"You did." Lindsey leaned forward. "You earned every grade, Hallie. She just made sure there was money when you did."

"Why?"

She took a long time to answer.

"I think she needed to watch you be all right," she said. "I think it's also true that she liked you. I've never figured out how to make both of those one woman."

"What do you want to happen to her?"

"I want my mother to be the person who read me Charlotte's Web," Lindsey said, "and the person who burned a lab report. I haven't found a way to make her one person yet, so I'm not the right judge."

It was the first thing she'd said that I believed.

I paid for the pancakes I hadn't eaten and drove to Putnam Street.

The folder rode on the seat beside me.

A black Lexus was parked in front of our half of the house.

A man in a gray suit was carrying a leather portfolio up the steps.

Through the front window I could see our kitchen.

Barbara Chalmers sat at my mother's yellow Formica table with her coat folded on her knee.

My mother was pouring her coffee.

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