Chapter 6: Karen
She arrived at the hospital at seven the next morning.
James called me at six forty-five.
I was already awake — I hadn't slept much — sitting at the kitchen table with cold coffee when the phone rang.
"There's a woman here," he said.
"She says she's Diane's mother.
She's been talking to Patricia for twenty minutes and I haven't been allowed in the room."
"I know who she is," I said.
"She texted me last night."
Silence.
"She texted you."
"Yes."
"How did she get your number?"
"I don't know, James."
Another silence.
"Are you coming?"
I looked at the clock.
Ruth was upstairs.
The boys wouldn't be up for another hour.
"Yes," I said.
"I'm coming."
Karen Marsh was nothing like I had imagined.
I don't know what I had imagined — something harder, maybe, or more broken.
She was a small woman, mid-sixties, with Diane's dark hair gone mostly silver and the kind of posture that comes from spending a lifetime holding yourself together through things that should have knocked you flat.
She was standing in the corridor when I arrived.
James was ten feet away, arms crossed, watching her the way you watch someone you don't know how to read.
She looked at me when I came through the door.
"You're the wife," she said.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For all of it.
I want you to know that first."
I nodded.
"I didn't know Diane was pregnant," she said.
"We hadn't spoken in eight months.
We had a falling out — it doesn't matter what about, it was stupid, it was the kind of thing that seems important until suddenly it isn't." Her voice stayed level but her jaw was tight.
"I found out she was gone from a friend who saw the death notice.
I didn't even know she was in the hospital."
"I'm sorry," I said.
And I meant it.
"I want to take the baby," she said.
"I want to raise Clara.
She's my granddaughter and she's all I have left of my daughter and I am asking you — both of you — to let me do that."
James took a step forward.
"That's not — we haven't decided anything yet."
"I know you haven't," Karen said.
She looked at him with an expression that was not quite anger and not quite grief.
Something in between.
"I know what my daughter was to you.
I know what you were to her.
I'm not here to make this harder than it already is." She paused.
"But Clara is a Marsh.
She is Diane's daughter.
And I am her grandmother, and I am asking."
The three of us stood in that corridor and the weight of it pressed down on all of us equally.
Patricia appeared at the door of her office.
"Mrs.
Marsh?
We're ready for you."
Karen looked at me once more before she went in.
Not at James.
At me.
"Whatever you decide," she said quietly, "I hope it's what's right for her.
Not what's easiest for everyone else."
She went inside.
The door closed.
James turned to me.
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know yet."
"She has a right to her, doesn't she.
Legally."
"I don't know.
Maybe.
Probably."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Part of me is relieved.
Is that terrible?"
"I don't know what it is," I said.
"I don't know what any of this is."
We sat down in the plastic chairs.
The same ones from the night before.
My hands were in my lap this time, no cleaning spray, just my own hands.
"Tell me about your sister," I said.
He looked at me.
"Right now," I said.
"Tell me about Clara.
Not later.
Now."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he started talking.
He talked for a long time.
About a little girl with dark hair who used to follow him around the backyard.
About the way she laughed.
About the morning their mother sat him down and tried to explain something a seven-year-old has no framework to hold.
About the years after, the silence in the house, the way some names become too heavy to say out loud.
About telling Diane, one night, because she had asked him why he seemed so far away, and he had told her the truth because it was three in the morning and he was tired of carrying it alone.
"You could have told me," I said.
"I know."
"In eleven years, James."
"I know." He looked at his hands.
"I think I was afraid that if I said it to you, it would become real in a different way.
You make things real.
You always have.
It's one of the things I—" He stopped.
"Don't," I said.
"Okay."
We sat quietly.
After a while, Patricia's door opened and Karen came out.
Her eyes were red but her posture was the same.
She sat down across from us.
"I have rights as next of kin," she said.
"Patricia confirmed that.
But I'm not here to fight.
I want to ask you something instead."
"Ask," I said.
"Would you be willing to be part of her life?
If I take her home — would you be willing to know her?
To let her know you?" She looked at James.
"She's going to grow up and she's going to want to know where she came from.
I can't give her that alone."
James looked at me.
I looked at Karen.
"I need time," I said.
"I can't answer that today."
"I know," she said.
"I'm not asking for today."
She reached into her bag and set a photograph on the chair between us.
Diane, maybe thirty, laughing at something off-camera.
Dark hair.
My nose, I realized.
Diane had my nose too.
"She was a good person," Karen said.
"She made a bad choice.
Those aren't the same thing."
She stood up.
"I'll be back tomorrow to start the paperwork," she said.
"Take the time you need."
She walked back toward the nursery.
Through the glass, Clara was awake now, her dark eyes open and unfocused, her small fist still curled near her cheek.
James picked up the photograph.
Looked at it for a long moment.
"She looks like you," he said.
Not about the baby this time.
About Diane.
I looked at the photograph.
He was right.
May you like
She did.
And I did not know what to do with that either.
