Chapter 22: Two Mothers

Shelby looked at the box in her lap for a long time without touching it.

The vending machine hummed down the hall.

"What is this?" she said.

"I think you know."

"I don't." Her voice rose. "Say it plainly. You owe me that."

"It's your son," I said. "The one you carried. His name isn't on it, because nobody ever gave him one."

She stared at me.

I watched it cross her face a piece at a time, and I wanted to look away.

"He was stillborn," I said. "He had stopped moving weeks before you went into labor.

"The doctor knew. The nurse kept moving the monitor so you wouldn't see the line go flat."

Her lips were moving, and no sound came out.

"Bernadette told them not to tell you. She switched him with my baby, and she told you Eli was yours."

"No," Shelby said.

"I'm sorry."

"No, when I woke up they put him in my arms. I counted his fingers..."

"You counted my son's fingers."

She made a sound I have only heard once, in a hospital in March, coming out of my own mouth.

The box slid off her knees, and I caught it before it hit the floor.

She doubled over with her arms across her stomach.

I put the box on the bench and put both arms around her.

She didn't fight me.

Down the hall Ty had slid down the wall to sit on the floor with his knees up.

He didn't come closer, and I loved him a little for it.

She cried for a long time.

When she could talk, she said, into my shoulder, "He didn't cry."

"No."

"I thought it was the drugs. I thought I couldn't hear him.

"I asked them, and they said the baby was in the nursery, resting."

"They lied to you."

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