Selena Kitt - Grace

It made Leah burn with anger. “It all scares me, Erica. I’m afraid for you. It’s like some well-oiled machine. The Mary Magdalenes have sex with the priests and the girls who are unlucky enough to get pregnant end up at places like Magdalene House, forced to give up their babies. And the church profits from it all. I don’t care how much hush money they give them, it’s not enough. It could never be enough. My mother said they make double that on the babies they adopt out. They’re profiting from this everywhere you turn. Even the girls who aren’t Magdalene’s-I told you about that sweet woman, Jean, the one who was mentally retarded? Her family just left her there, and they put her to work in the laundry. And they get away with it. Either they brainwash everyone into not talking about it, or if that doesn’t work, they scare them silly. Besides, who would believe it, even if you did say something? It would be your word against… what, a thousand clergy?”

Erica’s smile was grim as she came up from tying her shoe. “I know.”

“Those poor Magdalene girls,” Leah murmured. “My friend, Marty, she ran away to Australia so she could keep her baby. She agreed to an arranged marriage and went halfway across the world just to get away.”

Erica hopped off the bed, lifting up the pink bed skirt, looking for her other Ked. She pulled it out, triumphant, but then she sneezed, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah, well, at least the Magdalenes can have more babies.”

Leah gasped, feeling tears sting her eyes. “What a cruel think to say, Erica. You can’t just replace one baby with another. It doesn’t work like that. People keep telling me, ‘You’ll get married and have another…’ Even my own mother said that. A baby isn’t like a pair of shoes or a toothbrush.”

Erica stood, pulling her blouse up, exposing her belly, yanking her dungarees low with her other hand. “See that?”

“Your appendix scar?”

“They took out more than my appendix.”

“What do you mean?” Leah looked over at her as Erica sat, pulling on her other tennis shoe.

“They sterilized me.” Erica bent to tie her shoe, her voice muffled. “They sterilize all the Marys.”

Leah blinked, too stunned to speak. The Marys don’t get pregnant. That’s what Marty had told her. Or had she said can’t get pregnant?

“Oh Erica…” Leah put a hand on Erica’s shoulder but her friend shook it off. “I had no idea…”

“Spilled milk and all that.” Erica shrugged. “Turns out, my mother-Susan-she had the same scar. She was adopted by her mother, who also a Mary and had the same scar. All from Magdalene House.”

“Oh my God.” Leah put her head in her hands. “How could they?”

“Anyway, I’m late.” Erica got up, heading toward the door.

“Wait, Erica,” Leah called. Her friend turned, annoyed. “My mother said that your father-that Rob had made some sort of deal with Father Patrick, to keep you out of it…”

Erica raised her eyebrows. “How ironic.”

“Do you think…” Leah didn’t even want to think it, let alone say it, but she had to. “All those pictures we found. Those movies. Do you think that was the trade-off he made?”

“I don’t know what Dear Daddy is into, or how far into it he is,” Erica snapped. “You know him better than I do. What does he say?”

“I haven’t asked him,” Leah admitted.

“Well, you’re going to marry him,” Erica reminded her. “Maybe you should do that before you take a walk down the aisle with the man?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Leah breathed.

Erica laughed. “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.”

Then she was gone, down the hall and out the front door.

Leah went out to the living room and turned on the television, sitting on the sofa, but not really watching the episode of Tic Tac Dough . She was too lost in thought, too buried in never ending questions that seemed to have no answers. Tic Tac Dough gave way to soap operas- Search For Tomorrow , followed by Guiding Light -but the drama unfolding on screen was nothing compared to the drama unfolding in her own life.

Finally, she got up, stomach rumbling-Solie had packed the refrigerator full of Christmas leftovers-and she glimpsed something on Rob’s desk under the loft. She walked over, seeing it was an envelope addressed to Sergeant Robert Nolan. The return address was simply U.S. Army . Leah knew her future husband had been a sergeant in the army during WWII, but she and Erica had been young then and she didn’t remember much.

She picked up the envelope, turning it over. It was still sealed. She put it back on the desk where she’d found it, realizing that even though she’d basically known the man she was about to marry for almost her entire life, there was a great deal she didn’t know about him. Donald Highbrow had mentioned their age difference, and while Leah didn’t really feel it most of the time, the reality that Rob had lived a lifetime of experience before she had even learned to walk hit home when she thought about him going off to join the army. What if there was another war? Oh God, she couldn’t think about losing him, not again.

When they got Grace back-and they would get her back, Leah held on doggedly to that hope-Rob would be the father of a newborn again. It wasn’t something they’d discussed. It had just happened. They were going to be an instant family. And it hit her, after Erica’s news-Grace was Rob’s first and only biological child. And when Grace graduated high school in 1975, Leah would be thirty-seven, and Rob-he would be sixty.

Did the age difference really matter? Her heart told her it didn’t, but the math was a little frightening. Leah had always felt like an old soul, far more serious and grown-up inside than her peers. She’d never been susceptible to peer pressure, unless you counted the way Leah always tagged along after Erica with her mischievous streak. It was Erica who had led her astray, showing her the wicked collection of photographs under her father’s bed.

Leah stared at the tapestry covering the door, remembering the first time they’d snuck into the secret room, Leah following Erica like Alice down the rabbit hole. There was no turning back then and there was no turning back now. She didn’t want to. She loved Rob, she knew she would love him until the day she died, which she hoped and prayed would be on the same day, because she couldn’t bear the thought of being without him.

She remembered how shocked she had been at their discovery, how intrigued, how titillating the photographs, how exciting the reels of film. Leah opened the top drawer of Rob’s desk, finding the key, the one on the leather fob, and she went to the tapestry, pulling it aside. There was a padlock and a bolt, and she slipped the key into the lock, turning-but it didn’t budge. Frowning, Leah tried it again, but no. It wouldn’t unlock. Was it the wrong key?

She checked the drawer again, finding lots of other keys inside, but none attached to a leather fob. Had Rob changed the lock? He must have. But why? Leah put the key back, continuing her journey to the kitchen, her rumbling stomach insisting. She found a plate of stuffed celery wrapped in plastic with a note written in Solie’s fat, child-like handwriting, “Miss Lee.” Smiling, Leah took the plate, poured herself a glass of milk from the pitcher, and settled back on the sofa in front of the soap operas to eat it.

By the time Rob came in and kissed her awake, Twenty-One was blaring on the television and Leah had slept away the whole afternoon.

“I missed you,” he murmured, his breath redolent with alcohol, and she smiled and stretched, yawning and sliding her arms around his neck, pulling him down onto the couch with her. He laughed, stretching out beside her on the sofa, still wearing his shoes, wet from the snow.