House Of Secrets (23 page)

I
was feeling much better by the second day, and when Dad came into my bedroom to talk, I felt ready to deal with the matters at hand. He pulled up a chair and sat down, looking for all the world to be bearing more weight than ever before. I wasn’t surprised. As I’d been lying in bed thinking about baby Noah and my mother, I continued to come back to my father’s role in it all. It still made me angry that he had his suspicions and yet did nothing.

“Since you’re feeling better, Judith thought you might want to talk.”

“I doubt it will be pleasant.”

He nodded. “I suppose it’s to be expected. I did you wrong, Bailee. I’m not just saying that so you’ll forgive me and move on. I’m saying it because I mean it. When you told me what had happened with Noah, it . . . well . . . it sort of confirmed my worst fears.”

I scooted up in the bed and stuffed an extra pillow behind me. “In what way?”

“The night before your brother died, your mother was restless. Around midnight she all of a sudden got up from bed. I asked her where she was going, and she told me she had something to do. I suggested she take care of it in the morning, but she said it couldn’t wait and she wouldn’t be long. She kissed me and told me to go back to sleep. I started to do just that, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I ought to follow her. I deliberated for several minutes, arguing with myself that I was just being paranoid.

“You see, Bailee, your mother was very good at hiding the truth. She appeared so perfectly normal most of the time. But that was in the early years of her disorder. I knew she often ‘talked’ to her grandmother—who had died when Natalie was six or seven. But there was a part of me that thought that was just her way of coping with the loss of her family. I had no understanding until later that she really saw her grandmother—thought she was alive and well.”

“What does that have to do with that night, Dad?” I wanted desperately to keep him focused for fear he’d go off on a rabbit trail that would never return to the path I needed to follow.

“Well, I heard your mom talking to someone, and so I got up and followed after her. She was standing in the doorway to your bedroom—yours and Noah’s. She seemed to be having a conversation with someone and it wasn’t at all pleasant. She was upset, but her voice was hushed so that she wouldn’t wake you.”

“What was she saying?”

“She was talking to her grandmother. I couldn’t hear it all, but your mother kept saying, ‘Don’t be mad at me.’ Then she said, ‘I promise to take care of it; I just can’t do it now.’ I couldn’t imagine what in the world she was talking about, so I interrupted her. She stared at me like I wasn’t even there. She seemed so distant—so empty. I took her back to bed and stayed awake until she fell asleep.

“The next morning I asked her about getting up in the night and what was going on. She denied it. Said I must have dreamed it or else she was just sleepwalking. She reminded me we’d both been keeping long hours—me with work, she with a newborn—and were overly tired. It made sense to me—I suppose because I wanted it to. I told myself she’d been sleepwalking and nothing more. I think a part of me even wanted to pretend I had just dreamed up the whole thing.”

“But surely you knew the difference between reality and a dream,” I said.

Dad folded his hands and leaned back against the chair. “I thought I did. But you have to understand—your mother was so convincing. I went to work that day and told myself that it must have been exactly as she suggested. You have to understand, it was really the first time I’d seen something like this happen. Especially something that involved you kids.”

He paused and fixed me with a hard stare. “Bailee, do you remember your mother ever hiding you away before the time with Noah?”

I thought about it for a moment. There were all sorts of nightmares where Mom was hiding us girls, but I honestly couldn’t remember times prior to Noah, except for bits and pieces. “I have images of Mom and me alone, but not the fear and anxiety I felt after the others were born. In fact, I didn’t realize until now that some of those nightmares I’ve been having revolved around what happened with Noah—because I didn’t remember having a brother. I always figured the baby was Geena or Piper.”

“See, I saw a marked change in your mother after she found out she was pregnant with Noah. We had taken precautions because she fully intended to go back to college. Your mother had plans to go to school and do something great with her life. She was really depressed when she found out she was pregnant with Noah.”

Imagining Mom so young, realizing she would have to put her dreams aside . . . I immediately felt sorry for her. It couldn’t have been easy. Here she already had one unplanned child—me. Now she was going to have another.

“I hate to admit this,” Dad went on, “but I suggested she get an abortion. I knew she didn’t want another child, and I figured if she aborted the baby she could go ahead with her plans to return to school.”

“What happened?”

“She considered it, then decided to talk to someone at her church. They were quite hard on her. They convinced her that she was being purely selfish and that it would be murder. Of course, I believe that now—but I didn’t then. Abortion seemed an easy solution.

“Your mother convinced herself that if she had an abortion she would go to hell. The church folk would even call her at home and plead with her to stand strong and carry the pregnancy to term. They even suggested she give the child up for adoption, but when she mentioned that to me . . . well . . . I have to say, I wasn’t exactly congenial.”

I could well imagine my father’s anger at the interference being caused by the church. Dad would have rebelled at even the hint that a supreme deity need run his life.

“When I found out we were having a boy, I no longer wanted her to abort. I told your mother that we needed to go through with this, and then afterward we’d decide how to keep from having additional children. I told her a boy and a girl was a perfect combination and that we could put two children in daycare as easily as one, and she could still go back to school.”

“What did she say?”

Dad rubbed his hands along the front of his jeans. “She seemed to agree. I mean, the church folks had convinced her abortion was murder, and now I was glad they had. I wanted a son, and when Noah was born, I couldn’t have been happier.”

“And Momma?”

“Well, I think she was happy that she’d pleased me, but I think another baby just overwhelmed her. She never did seem to really adjust, and I worried about her. The doctor said it was normal—especially since she hadn’t wanted another baby. The doctor said in time she would come to terms with the situation and that I just needed to give her space.

“Your mother seemed to adjust once she was home, and in the days that followed, I felt more confident that the doctor had been right. Your mother appeared quite willing to care for Noah and you, and even though I thought she was being too liberal with the way she allowed you to watch over him and even carry him at times, I was relieved that things seemed normal again.”

“But they weren’t,” I said as if he’d forgotten.

He shook his head. “No, they weren’t.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, like I said, she convinced me that everything was fine. I went to work, and when I came home that evening . . . that was when I found Noah . . . dead.”

I put my hand to my mouth. I couldn’t even speak for a moment. I kept thinking of how awful it must have been for him to know that something hadn’t been quite right, but having no proof, he’d had to put aside his concerns and do his job. Then to come home and find his son dead . . .

“The memories you had . . . from your nightmare . . . I have to believe were true. I have no reason to think otherwise. I think your mother was overwhelmed when she realized Noah was dead—maybe her mind wouldn’t even accept it when she took him to his crib after hiding you both. Instead she needed someone else to blame.”

“Me.” I shook my head. “She put the blame on me.”

He looked away. “Yes.”

“I remember the policeman took me away from her because she was so angry. She was shaking me and yelling at me.”

Dad met my eyes. “Yes, that happened.”

“She told me it was my fault. And she slapped me hard. The police officer was angry with her. You came and took hold of her.”

He nodded. “It was just like that.”

I closed my eyes. “The officer took me out of the room and Mom continued to scream after me. I was so scared. I thought the officer was a bad man taking me away. I thought I would never see any of you again.” I felt the fear tightening around my throat.

Dad reached out and took hold of my hand. “I’m so sorry, Bailee. I’m sorry that you remember any of that.”

All of my life I had lived with a guilt that couldn’t be explained. I had taken on responsibility for my sisters—motivated by a fear that I couldn’t understand. There had been such desperation in our relationship. Now I understood why.

“A few nights after Noah’s death, I found your mother wandering around the backyard. She was in her nightclothes and it was cold for March in northern Texas. She was murmuring to herself, and as I drew closer I realized she was talking to her grandmother again. I didn’t understand then, but I do now.”

“What was she saying?” I asked, almost afraid to know.

“She kept saying over and over, “See, I took care of it, Grandma. Don’t be mad. I took care of it.”

I felt a chill come over me. “She killed Noah on purpose? It wasn’t just an accident caused by her paranoia?”

Dad didn’t need to answer. I could see the truth in his expression. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how many pieces were missing from the Cooper family puzzle. I guessed we all had our places that were filling in little by little.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy.” Thinking that Mom had just been scared and negligent in hiding a baby in a trash bag had been one thing. Knowing she had purposefully ended the life of her son was another.

Tears streamed down his cheeks and I couldn’t help but want to comfort him. But still, why did he allow Mom to be alone with us girls? What if all those times of hiding us, she’d really been trying to kill us as well. Maybe she thought that if she could just get rid of her children, her sanity would return. I shook my head. Mom didn’t think she had a problem, so she would never reason in that manner. So what had been her innermost purpose?

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Bailee. I know I can’t go back and do right by you girls. I was wrong to leave you in her care. I was wrong to have my suspicions and do nothing with them for fear of where they might lead. I wanted my family—my perfect little family.”

“A family that never existed,” I countered. “We were never perfect. We weren’t even close.” A thought came to mind. “Why did you have more children? If Mom didn’t want them—”

“But she did,” he interrupted. “I mean after Noah’s death, she was almost desperate to have another baby. I couldn’t deny her—it seemed like a healing kind of thing.”

“So Geena was a consolation.”

He nodded. “And Piper was our last attempt to have another son. It was after she was born that I came to realize how serious your mother’s condition really was.”

“But still you did nothing.”

“I know.” He wiped at his eyes. “I did what I thought was right. I got help for the house and figured it would be enough. I took her to doctors, hoping the medicine would restore your mother back to the woman I married.” He leaned back in a dejected fashion, tears continuing to stream. “It’s my fault. I can’t make the past right, Bailee. There is nothing I can do to go back and be the man that I should have been. Please . . . please forgive me.”

I was crying now too. I reached out and took hold of his arm. “I forgive you,” I whispered, barely able to speak. “I forgive you.”

“Seems like I’ve missed out on all the excitement,” Mark declared on the phone a few nights later.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that.” I’d just filled him in on all the details of my illness and epiphany. “It’s the kind of excitement I’d just as soon avoid.”

“Geena said you were pretty sick. I was just about to resign my position and fly back out to Seattle.”