Даниэла Стил - Finding Ashley [calibre]

Their mother came from a less wealthy background, and her parents had left her nothing when they died in an accident, so she had to drop out of college and go to work as a secretary. But she had been beautiful and sexy when she was young, and caught their father’s eye when she worked at the same bank he did. His family never approved of her, and she was bitter about that too. He still managed to support them on what was left of his inheritance, despite his drinking and the jobs he lost, but he couldn’t provide the easy life and luxuries his wife had hoped for when she married him. But she never had to work during their marriage. They had also inherited his parents’ Park Avenue co-op apartment, where they lived until Melissa sold it after their parents’ deaths and moved to a small West Side apartment with Hattie. Melissa had handled their finances well.

Their father was a gentle man, but they led a small life, while he drank heavily at night, and all day between jobs. While her parents were alive, Hattie hid in the room she shared with her sister so she didn’t have to hear their parents fight. But Melissa knew it all. Her mother blamed her father for Melissa’s pregnancy, and said that if he was a better father, supervised his daughters better, and was sober, it wouldn’t have happened. Melissa tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. She was just looking for love, but he refused to discuss it with her and let his wife decide what to do about it. He paid to send her away, and when she came back, he acted like nothing had happened. Her mother told Melissa it was her fault she had gotten stomach cancer, from all the worry and shame she caused her. People whispered about them, because of his drinking. And to her dying day, she blamed her husband and oldest daughter for her illness. He died less than a year later, and was in a coma for the last month of his life, after a drinking binge, so the girls never got to say goodbye, and tell him they loved him. As an adult, Melissa felt her mother’s own venom had killed her. She had been a bitterly unhappy, dissatisfied woman all her life. Melissa wrote about her in her books, and about the weak father who had given up and died. Both girls felt sorry for their father. He had been a frightened, defeated, sad man, a failure in life and in his wife’s eyes. It had made Melissa a fighter, and made Hattie long for a safe haven, which she had found at last when she took her vows. Nothing could touch her in the convent.

—

When they got to the bus terminal, Hattie took a cab to Saint Blaise’s, and it loomed out of the darkness like the prison Melissa had described. It made Hattie shudder. She couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like to Melissa as a frightened teenager far from home for the first time, facing unknown terrors and agony in the months to come.

Hattie had already missed dinner when she rang the convent bell, and an elderly nun with a cane came to answer. She had a kind smile, and Hattie explained who she was, and the old nun looked startled.

“I thought you were a nun.”

“I am, Sister. I’m sorry. We don’t wear the habit most of the time now. I’ve got it with me in my suitcase.”

“Things must be very modern in America,” she said, and hobbled into the dark hallways with Hattie behind her. “You’re up the stairs, third floor, first room to the right. The door is open. The WC is at the end of the hall. Mass is at five-thirty, breakfast at six-fifteen in the refectory.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Hattie said, as she walked up the stairs with her bag. It looked like a perfect setting for a ghost story or a horror movie. The room was grim and bare when she walked in and closed the door softly behind her. The place was every bit as dismal as Melissa had said, although she said that the girls lived in dormitories, with as many as twenty to a room, and Hattie wondered if they even existed anymore. It was a home for older nuns now, and Hattie doubted that they housed them in dormitories, but more likely in cells like the one she was in.

She lay in bed that night, thinking of her sister, no longer surprised by how angry she had been at their mother, and how bitter about the experience ever since. She had been a happy young girl before that, although somewhat introverted and bookish, and an angry woman when she returned, seething with rage at her mother.

Hattie set the alarm she had brought with her for five a.m., and when it woke her, she showered and dressed in her habit. Although it was August, the convent was damp and chilly. There were only two other nuns on her floor. She arrived at Mass promptly at five-thirty, slipped into a pew, and quietly observed the community of nuns who lived there, some of them her age, others much older, and a few earnest-looking young ones, about thirty-five in all. The elderly nuns who lived there now no longer came to Mass at that hour and were exempt, and there were many of them, she had been told.

Breakfast in the refectory was a silent meal, according to ancient tradition, and a far cry from the convent where Sister Mary Joseph lived. She was used to the babble of conversation at breakfast, before everyone rushed off to their day at work in schools and hospitals around the city.

She had an appointment with Saint Blaise’s mother superior at nine a.m., and went back to her room for two hours to pray. She hoped for some little wisp of information that she could use to warm a trail toward Melissa’s daughter, but the meeting was discouraging. The mother superior was a woman in her early sixties who had only been there for two years, and said she knew little about the adoptions that had taken place so long ago. She confirmed that there wasn’t a shred of the records left, and told Hattie that there was no way to reconstruct them now, since there had been no copies of the records and documents, to protect everyone’s privacy, including her sister’s.

“They didn’t want it leaking out about who had been here. And the adoptive parents wanted confidentiality too. It served everyone’s interests to keep it all secret, and dispose of the records once they no longer served any purpose to those concerned,” she said firmly, obviously convinced.

“But what about the girls who wanted to know what had happened to their babies, or the children themselves once they became adults? It’s inhumane that they have no way of finding anything out.”

“They gave up their babies, and signed away all right to know,” the mother superior said coldly.

“As children themselves, the young mothers had no idea how it would impact them later. I believe that in some cases, it ruined their lives. Are there no nuns left who were here at the time and might remember something?” Hattie asked, feeling desperate. The needle in the haystack was proving to be as elusive as she had feared.

The mother superior was pleasant but firm, and offered her no hope. Hattie changed out of her habit and went for a walk afterward to clear her head, and figure out what to do next. There were three other convents on her list to visit, one only two hours away, but Saint Blaise’s was where Melissa had been, and it frustrated her that the trail here was so cold. She was hoping that even one nun from the old days might have been transferred to one of the other convents where adoptions had taken place, and still be there, and might remember something about Melissa and her baby, and her adoptive parents. It was a long shot, to say the least. But it was all she had to go on, with no information at Saint Blaise’s.

She wandered into the neighboring village on her walk. It was still early and the shops weren’t open yet, but the librarian was sweeping off the front steps of the library and had just opened the doors. Not knowing what else to do, Hattie walked in, and smiled at the librarian when she came to the desk after her sweeping. She was a tall thin woman with a sharp face, who glanced at Hattie with suspicion, and recognized immediately that she was a stranger in their midst. She looked old enough to have been there when Saint Blaise’s was an adoption mill, and Hattie decided to be bold and take the chance, and dove in.