The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

THE BEAUTIFUL UNCUT HAIR OF GRAVES David Morrell

Despite the rain, you’ve been to the cemetery yet again, ignoring the cold autumn gusts slanting under your bowed umbrella, the drenched drab leaves blowing against your soaked pant legs and shoes.

Two graves. You shiver, blinking through tears toward the freshly laid sod. There aren t any tombstones. There won’t be for a year. But you imagine what the markers will look like, each birth date different, the death dates—God help you—the same. Simon and Esther Weinberg. Your parents. You silently mouth the kaddish prayers that Rabbi Goldstein recited at the funeral. Losing strength, you turn to trudge back to your rain-beaded car, to throw your umbrella on the passenger seat and jab the button marked Defroster, to try to control your trembling hands and somehow suppress your chest-swelling rage, your heart-numbing grief.

Eyes swollen from tears, you manage to drive back to your parents’ home. An estate on Lake Michigan, north of Chicago, the mansion feels ghostly, hollow without its proper occupants. You cross the enormous vestibule and enter the oak-paneled study. One wall is lined with books, another with photographs of your precious father shaking hands with local and national dignitaries, even a president. As you sit at the massive desk to resume sorting through your father’s papers, the last of them, the documents unsealed from your parents’ safe-deposit box, your wife appears in the study’s doorway, a coffee cup in her hand. She slumps against the wall and frowns as she did when you obeyed your repeated, so intense compulsion to go back—yet again—to the cemetery.

“Why?” she asks.

You squint up from the documents. “Isn’t it obvious? I feel the need to be with them.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Rebecca says. She’s forty-nine, tall, with a narrow face and pensive eyes. “All the work you’ve been doing. All the documents and the meetings. All the phone calls. Can’t you let yourself relax? You look terrible.” “How the hell should I look? My father’s chest was crushed. My mother’s head was . . . The asshole drunk who hit their car got away with just a few stitches.” “Not what I meant,” Rebecca repeats. Using two hands, both of them shaky, she raises the coffee cup to her lips. “Don’t make sympathy sound like an accusation. You’ve got every right to look terrible. It’s bad enough to lose one parent, let alone two at once, and the way they died was”—she shakes her head—“obscene. But what you’re doing, your compulsion to . . . I’m afraid you’ll push yourself until you collapse. Don’t torture yourself. Your father assigned an executor for his estate, a perfectly competent lawyer from his firm. Let the man do his job. I grant, you’re a wonderful attorney, but right now it’s time to let someone else take charge. For God’s sake, Jacob—and if not for God, then for me—get some rest.”

You sigh, knowing she means well and wants only what’s best for you. But she doesn’t understand: you need to keep busy, you need to distract yourself with minutiae so that your mind doesn’t snap from confronting the full horror of losing your parents.

“I’m almost finished,” you say. “Just a few more documents from the safe-deposit box. Then I promise I’ll try to rest. A bath sounds . . . Lord, I still can t believe . . . How much I miss . . . Pour me a scotch. I think my nerves need numbing.”

“I’ll have one with you.”

As Rebecca crosses the study toward the liquor cabinet, you glance down toward the next document: a faded copy of your birth certificate. You shake your head. “Dad kept everything. What a pack rat.” Your tone is bittersweet, your throat tight with affection. “That’s why his estate’s so hard to sort through. It’s so difficult to tell what’s important, what’s sentimental, and what’s just ...”

You glance at the next document, almost set it aside, take another look, frown, feel what seems to be a frozen fishhook in your stomach, and murmur, “God.” Your breathing fails.

“Jacob?” Your wife turns from pouring the scotch and hurriedly puts the bottle down, rushing toward you. “Whats wrong? Your face. You re as gray as !

You keep staring toward the document, feeling as if you’ve been punched in the ribs, the wind knocked out of you. Rebecca crouches beside you, touching your face. You swallow and manage to breathe. “I ...”

“What? Jacob, tell me. What’s the matter?”

“There has to be some mistake.” You point toward the document.

Rebecca hurriedly reads it. “I don’t understand. It’s crammed with legal jargom A woman’s promising to give up two children for adoption, is that what this means? “Yes.” You have trouble speaking. “Look at the date.”

“August fifteen, nineteen thirty-eight.”

“A week before my birthday. Same year.” You sound hoarse.

“So what? That’s just a coincidence. Your father did all kinds of legal work, probably including adoptions.”

“But he wouldn’t have kept a business affidavit with his personal papers in his private safe-deposit box. Here, at the bottom, look at the place where this was notarized.”

“Redwood Point, California.”

“Right,” you say. “Now check this copy of my birth certificate. The place of birth is . . .”

“Redwood Point, California.” Rebecca’s voice drops.

“Still think it’s just a coincidence?”

“It has to be. Jacob, you’ve been under a lot of strain, but this is one strain you don’t have to deal with. You know you’re not adopted.”

“Do I? How?”

“Well, it’s ...”

You gesture impatiently.

“I mean, it’s something a person takes for granted,” Rebecca says “Why?”

“Because your parents would have told you.”

“Why? If they didn’t need to, why would they have taken the chance of shocking me? Wasn’t it better for my parents to leave well enough alone?”

Listen to me, Jacob. You’re letting your imagination get control of you.” Maybe. You stand, your legs unsteady, cross to the liquor cabinet, and finish pouring the drinks that Rebecca had started preparing. “Maybe.” You swallow an inch of the drink: made deliberately strong, it burns your throat. “But I won’t know for sure, will I? Unless I find out why my father kept that woman’s adoption agreement with his private papers, and how it happened that I was born one week later and in the same place that the woman signed and dated her consent form.” “So what?” Rebecca rubs her forehead. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t make a difference! Your parents loved you! You loved them. Suppose, despite Lord knows how many odds, suppose your suspicion turns out to be correct. What will it change? It won’t make your grief any less. It won’t affect a lifetime of love.”

“It might affect a lot of things. ”

“Look, finish your drink. It’s Friday. We still have time to go to temple. If ever you needed to focus your spirit, it’s now. ”

In anguish, you swallow a third of your drink. “Take another look at that adoption consent. The woman agrees to give up two babies. If I was adopted, that means somewhere out there I’ve got a brother or a sister. A twin.” ’

“A stranger to you. Jacob, there’s more to being a brother or a sister than just the biological connection.”

Your stomach recoils as you gulp the last of the scotch. “Keep looking at the consent form. At the bottom. The woman’s name.”

“Mary Reilly.”

“Irish.”

“So?” Rebecca asks.

Go to temple? Think about it. Have you ever heard of any Irish who . . . ? It could be I wasn’t born Jewish.”

Your uncle’s normally slack-jowled features tighten in confusion. “Adopted? What on earth would make you think—?”

You sit beside him on the sofa in his living room and explain as you show him the documents.

His age-wrinkled brow contorts. He shakes his bald head. “Coincidence.”

“That’s what my wife claims.”

“Then listen to her. And listen to me. Jacob, your father and I were as close as two brothers can possibly be. We kept no secrets from each other. Neither of us ever did anything important without first asking the other’s opinion. When Simon—may he rest in peace—decided to marry your mother, he discussed it with me long before he talked to our parents. Believe me, trust me, if he and Esther had planned to adopt a child, Yd have been told.’

You exhale, wanting to believe but tortured by doubts. “Then why . . . ?” Your skull throbs.

“Tell me, Jacob.”

“All right, let’s pretend it is a coincidence that these documents were together in my parents’ safe-deposit box. Let’s pretend that they’re unrelated matters. But why . . . ? As far as I know, Dad always lived here in Chicago. I never thought about it before, but why wasn’t I born here instead of in California?”

Your uncle strains to concentrate. Weary, he shrugs. “That was so long ago. Nineteen”—he peers through his glasses toward your birth certificate—“thirty-eight. So many years. It’s hard to remember.” He pauses. “Your mother and father wanted children very much. That I remember. But no matter how hard they tried . . . Well, your father and mother were terribly discouraged. Then one afternoon, he came to my office, beaming. He told me to take the rest of the day off. We had something to celebrate. Your mother was pregnant.

Thinking of your parents and how much you miss them, you wince with grief. But restraining tears, you can’t help saying, “That still doesn’t explain why I was born in California.”

“I’m coming to that.” Your uncle rubs his wizened chin. “Yes, I’m starting to . . . Nineteen thirty-eight. The worst of the Depression was over, but times still weren’t good. Your father said that with the baby coming, he needed to earn more money. He felt that California—Los Angeles—offered better opportunities. I tried to talk him out of it. In another year, I said, Chicago will have turned the corner. Besides, he’d have to go through the trouble of being certified to practice law in California. But he insisted. And of course, I was right. Chicago did soon turn the corner. What’s more, as it happened, your father and mother didn’t care for Los Angeles, so after six or seven months, they came back, right after you were born.

“That still doesn’t ...”

“What?”

“Los Angeles isn’t Redwood Point. I never heard of the place. What were my parents doing there?”

“Oh, that.” Your uncle raises his thin white eyebrows. “No mystery. Redwood Point was a resort up the coast. In August, L. A. was brutally hot. As your mother came close to giving birth, your father decided she ought to be someplace where she wouldn’t feel the heat, close to the sea, where the breeze would make her comfortable. So they took a sort of vacation, and you were born there.”

“Yes,” you say. “Perfectly logical. Nothing mysterious. Except . . .” You gesture toward the coffee table. “Why did my father keep this woman’s adoption agreement?”

Your uncle lifts his liver-spotted hands in exasperation. “Oy vay. For all we know, he found a chance to do some legal work while he was in Redwood Point. To help pay your mother’s hospital and doctor bills. When he moved back to Chicago, it might be some business papers got mixed in with his personal ones. By accident, everything to do with Redwood Point got grouped together.”

“And my father never noticed the mistake no matter how many times he must have gone to his safe-deposit box? I have trouble believing ...”

“Jacob, Jacob. Last month, I went to my safe-deposit box and found a treasury bond that I didn’t remember even buying, let alone putting in the box. Oversights happen.”

“My father was the most organized person I ever knew.”

“God knows I love him, and God knows I miss him.” Your uncle bites his pale lower lip, then breathes with effort, seized with emotion. “But he wasn’t perfect, and life isn’t tidy. We’ll probably never know for sure how this document came to be with his private papers. But this much I do know. You can count on it. You’re Simon and Esther’s natural child. You weren’t adopted.”

You stare at the floor and nod. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me. Just go home, get some rest, and stop thinking so much. What happened to Simon and Esther has been a shock to all of us. We’ll be a long time missing them.”

“Yes,” you say, “a long time.”

“Rebecca? How is . . . ?”

“The same as me. She still can’t believe they’re dead.”

Your uncle’s bony fingers clutch your hand. “I haven’t seen either of you since the funeral. It’s important for family to stick together. Why don’t both of you come over for honey cake on Rosh Hashanah?”

“I’d like to, Uncle. But I’m sorry, I’ll be out of town.”

“Where are . . . ?”

“Redwood Point.”

The major airport nearest your destination is at Salinas. There you rent a car and drive west to the coast, then south past Carmel and Big Sur. Preoccupied, you barely notice the dramatic scenery: the windblown cypresses, the rugged cliffs, the whitecaps hitting the shore. You ask yourself why you didn’t merely phone the authorities at Redwood Point, explain that you were a lawyer in Chicago, and ask for information that you needed to settle an estate. Why did you feel compelled to come all this way to a town so small that it isn’t listed in your Hammond atlas and could only be located in the Chicago library on its large map of California? For that matter, why do you feel compelled at all? Both your wife and your uncle have urged you to leave the matter alone. You’re not adopted, you’ve been assured, and even if you were, what difference would it make?

The answers trouble you. One, you might have a brother or a sister, a twin, and now that you’ve lost your parents, you feel an anxious need to fill the vacuum of their loss by finding an unsuspected member of your family. Two, you suffer a form of midlife crisis, but not in the common sense of the term. To have lived these many years and possibly never have known your birth parents makes you uncertain of your identity. Yes, you loved the parents you knew, but your present limbo state of insecure uncertainty makes you desperate to discover the truth, one way or the other, so you can dismiss the possibility of your having been adopted or else adjust to the fact that you were. But this way, not being certain, is maddening, given the stress of double grief. And three, the most insistent reason, an identity crisis of frantic concern, you want to learn if after a lifetime—of having been circumcised, of Hebrew lessons, of your bar mitzvah, of Friday nights at temple, of scrupulous observance of sacred holidays—of being a Jew ... if after all that, you might have been born a gentile. You tell yourself that being a Jew has nothing to do with race and genes, that it’s a matter of culture and religion. But deep in your heart, you’ve always thought of yourself proudly as being completely a Jew, and your sense of self feels threatened. Who am I? you think.

You increase speed toward your destination and brood about your irrational stubborn refusal to let Rebecca travel here with you. Why did you insist on coming alone?

Because, you decide with grim determination.

Because I don’t want anybody holding me back.

The Pacific Coast Highway pivots above a granite cliff. In crevasses, stunted misshapen fir trees cling to shallow soil and fight for survival. A weather-beaten sign abruptly says Redwood Point. With equal abruptness, you see a town below you on the right, its buildings dismal even from a distance, their unpainted listing structures spread along an inwardly curving bay at the center of which a half-destroyed pier projects toward the ocean. The only beauty is the glint of the afternoon sun on the whitecapped waves.

Your stomach sinks. Redwood Point. A resort? Or at least that’s what your uncle said. Maybe in 1938, you think. But not anymore. And as you steer off the highway, tapping your brakes, weaving down the bumpy narrow road past shorter, more twisted cypresses toward the dingy town where your birth certificate says you entered the world, you feel hollow. You pass a ramshackle boarded-up hotel. On a ridge that looks over the town, you notice the charred collapsed remnant of what seems to have been another hotel and decide, discouraged, that your wife and your uncle were right. This lengthy, fatiguing journey was needless. So many years. A ghost of a town that might have been famous once. You’ll never find answers here.

The dusty road levels off and leads past dilapidated buildings toward the skeleton of the pier. You stop beside a shack, get out, and inhale the salty breeze from the ocean. An old man sits slumped on a chair on the few safe boards at the front of the pier. Obeying an impulse, you approach, your footsteps crunching on seashells and gravel.

“Excuse me,” you say.

The old man has his back turned, staring toward the ocean.

The odor of decay—dead fish along the shore—pinches your nostrils. “Excuse me,” you repeat.

Slowly the old man turns. He cocks his shriveled head, either in curiosity or antagonism.

You ask the question that occurred to you driving down the slope. “Why is this town called Redwood Point? This far south, there aren’t any redwoods.”

“You’re looking at it.”

“I’m not sure what ...”

The old man gestures toward the ruin of the pier. “The planks are made of redwood. In its heyday”—he sips from a beer can—“used to be lovely. The way it stuck out toward the bay, so proud.” He sighs, nostalgic. “Redwood Point.”

“Is there a hospital?”

“You sick?”

“Just curious.”

The old man squints. “The nearest hospital’s forty miles up the coast.” “What about a doctor?”

“Used to be. Say, how come you ask so many questions?”

“I told you I’m just curious. Is there a courthouse?”

“Does this look like a county seat? We used to be something. Now we’re . . .” The old man tosses his beer can toward a trash container. He misses. “Shit.” “Well, what about . . . Have you got a police force?”

“Sure. Chief Kitrick.” The old man coughs. “For all the good he does. Not that we need him. Nothing happens here. That’s why he doesn’t have deputies.” “So where can I find him?”

“Easy. This time of day, the Redwood Bar.”

“Can you tell me where . . . ?”

“Behind you.” The old man opens another beer. “Take a left. It’s the only place that looks decent. ”

The Redwood Bar, on a cracked concrete road above the beach, has fresh redwood siding that makes the adjacent buildings look even more dingy. You pass through a door that has an anchor painted on it and feel as if you’ve entered a tackle shop or boarded a trawler. Fishing poles stand in a corner. A net rimmed with buoys hangs on one wall. Various nautical instruments, a sextant, a compass, others you can’t identify, all looking ancient despite their gleaming metal, sit on a shelf beside a polished weathered navigation wheel that hangs behind the bar. The sturdy rectangular tables all have captain’s chairs.

Voices in the far right corner attract your attention. Five men sit playing cards. A haze of cigarette smoke dims the light above their table. One of the men—in his fifties, large chested, with short sandy hair and a ruddy complexion—wears a policeman’s uniform. He studies his cards.

A companion calls to the bartender, “Ray, another beer, huh? How about you, Hank?”

"It’s only ten to five. I’m not off duty yet,” the policeman says and sets down his cards. “Full house.”

“Damn. Beats me.”

“It’s sure as hell better than a straight.”

The men throw in their cards.

The policeman scoops up quarters. “My deal. Seven-card stud.” As he shuffles the cards, he squints in your direction.

The bartender sets a beer on the table and approaches you. “What'll it be?” “Uh, club soda,” you say. “What I . . . Actually I wanted to talk to Chief Kitrick. ”

Overhearing, the policeman squints even harder. “Something urgent?”

“No. Not exactly.” You shrug, self-conscious. “This happened many years ago.

I guess it can wait a little longer. ”

The policeman frowns. “Then we’ll finish this hand if that’s okay.”

“Go right ahead.”

At the bar, you pay for and sip your club soda. Turning toward the wall across from you, you notice photographs, dozens of them, the images yellowed, wrinkled, and faded. But even at a distance, you know what the photographs represent, and compelled, repressing a shiver, you walk toward them.

Redwood Point. The photographs depict the resort in its prime, fifty, sixty years ago. Vintage automobiles gleam with newness on what was once a smoothly paved, busy street outside. The beach is crowded with vacationers in old-fashioned bathing suits. The impressive long pier is lined with fishermen. Boats dot the bay. Pedestrians stroll the sidewalks, glancing at shops or pointing toward the ocean. Some eat hot dogs and cotton candy. All are well dressed, and the buildings look clean, their windows shiny. The Depression, you think. But not everyone was out of work, and here the financially advantaged sought refuge from the summer heat and the city squalor. A splendid hotel—guests holding frosted glasses or fanning themselves on the spacious porch—is unmistakably the ramshackle ruin you saw as you drove in. Another building, expansive, with peaks and gables of Victorian design, sits on a ridge above the town, presumably the charred wreckage you noticed earlier. Ghosts. You shake your head. Most of the people in these photographs have long since died, and the buildings have died as well but just haven’t fallen down. What a waste, you think. What happened here? How could time have been so cruel to this place?

“It sure was pretty once,” a husky voice says behind you.

You turn toward Chief Kitrick and notice he holds a glass of beer.

“After five. Off duty now,” he says. “Thanks for letting me finish the game. What can I do for you? Something about years ago, you said?”

“Yes. About the time that these photographs were taken.”

The chief’s eyes change focus. “Oh?”

“Can we find a place to talk? It’s kind of personal.”

Chief Kitrick gestures. “My office is just next door.”

It smells musty. A cobweb dangles from a corner of the ceiling. You pass a bench in the waiting area, go through a squeaky gate, and face three desks, two of which are dusty and bare, in a spacious administration area. A phone, but no two-way radio. A file cabinet. A calendar on one wall. An office this size—obviously at one time, several policemen had worked here. You sense a vacuum, the absence of the bustle of former years. You can almost hear the echoes of decades-old conversations.

Chief Kitrick points toward a wooden chair. “Years ago?”

You sit. “Nineteen thirty-eight.”

“That is years ago.”

“I was born here.” You hesitate. “My parents both died three weeks ago, and ...”

“I lost my own dad just a year ago. You have my sympathy.”

You nod, exhale, and try to order your thoughts. “When I went through my father’s papers, I found . . . There’s a possibility I may have been adopted.”

As in the bar, the chief’s eyes change focus.

“And then again maybe not,” you continue. “But if I was adopted, I think my mother’s name was Mary Reilly. I came here because . . . Well, I thought there might be records I could check. ”

“What kind of records?”

“The birth certificate my father was sent lists the time and place where I was born, and my parents’ names, Simon and Esther Weinberg.”

“Jewish.”

You tense. “Does that matter?”

“Just making a comment. Responding to what you said.”

You debate, then resume. “But the type of birth certificate parents receive is a shortened version of the one that’s filed at the county courthouse.”

“Which in this case is forty miles north. Cape Verde.”

“I didn’t know that before I came here. But I did think there’d be a hospital. It would have a detailed record about my birth.”

“No hospital. Never was,” the chief says.

“So I learned. But a resort as popular as Redwood Point was in the thirties would have needed some kind of medical facility. ”

“A clinic,” the chief says. “I once heard my father mention it. But it closed back in the forties.”

“Do you know what happened to its records?”

Chief Kitrick raises his shoulders. “Packed up. Shipped somewhere. Put in storage. Not here, though. I know every speck of this town, and there aren’t any medical records from the old days. I don’t see how those records would help.” “My file would mention who my mother was. See, I’m a lawyer, and—”

The chief frowns.

“—the standard practice with adoptions is to amend the birth certificate at the courthouse so it lists the adopting parents as the birth parents. But the original birth certificate, naming the birth parents, isn’t destroyed. It’s sealed in a file and put in a separate section of the records. ”

Then it seems to me you ought to go to the county courthouse and look for that file,” Chief Kitrick says.

“The trouble is, even with whatever influence I have as a lawyer, it would take me months of petitions to get that sealed file opened—and maybe never. But hospital records are easier. All I need is a sympathetic doctor who . . . ” A thought makes your heart beat faster. “Would you know the names of any doctors who used to practice here? Maybe they’d know who ...”

“Nope, hasn’t been a doctor here in quite a while. When we get sick, we have to drive up the coast. I don’t want to sound discouraging, Mr. . . . ?” “Weinberg.”

“Yeah. Weinberg. Nineteen thirty-eight. We’re talking ancient history. I suspect you’re wasting your time. Who remembers that far back? If they’re even still alive, that is. And God knows where the clinic’s records are.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.” You stand. “The county courthouse. Thanks for your help.”

“I don’t think I helped at all. But Mr. Weinberg . . . ?”

“Yes?” You pause at the gate.

“Sometimes it’s best to leave the past alone.”

“How I wish I could,” you tell him, leaving.

Cape Verde turns out to be a pleasant attractive town of twenty thousand people, its architecture predominantly Spanish: red-tiled roofs and clean bright adobe walls. After the blight of Redwood Point, you feel less depressed, but only until you hear a baby crying in the motel room next to yours. After a half-sleepless night during which you phone Rebecca to assure her that you’re all right but ignore her pleas for you to come home, you ask directions from the desk clerk and drive to the courthouse, which looks like a hacienda, arriving there shortly after nine o’clock.

The office of the county recorder is on the second floor, at the rear, and the red-haired young man behind the counter doesn’t think twice about your request. “Birth records? Nineteen thirty-eight? Sure.” After all, those records are open to the public. You don’t need to give a reason.

Ten minutes later, the clerk returns with a large dusty ledger. There isn’t a desk, so you need to stand at the end of the counter. While the young man goes back to work, you flip the ledger’s pages to August and study them.

The records are grouped according to districts in the county. When you get to the section for Redwood Point, you read carefully. What you’re looking for is not just a record of your birth but a reference to Mary Reilly. Twenty children were born that August. For a moment that strikes you as unusual—so many for so small a community. But then you remember that in August the resort would have been at its busiest, and maybe other expecting parents had gone there to escape the summer’s heat, to allow the mother a comfortable delivery, just as your own parents had, according to your uncle.

You note the names of various mothers and fathers. Miriam and David Meyer. Ruth and Henry Begelman. Gail and Jeffrey Markowitz. With a shock of recognition, you come upon your own birth record—parents, Esther and Simon Weinberg. But that proves nothing, you remind yourself. You glance toward the bottom of the form. Medical facility: Redwood Point Clinic. Certifier: Jonathan Adams, M.D. Attendant: June Engle, R.N. Adams was presumably the doctor who took care of your mother, you conclude. A quick glance through the other Redwood Point certificates shows that Adams and Engle signed every document.

But nowhere do you find a reference to Mary Reilly. You search ahead to September in case Mary Reilly was late giving birth. No mention of her. Still, you think, maybe she signed the adoption consent forms early in her pregnancy, so you check the records for the remaining months of 1938. Nothing.

You ask the clerk for the 1939 birth certificates. Again he complies. But after you reach the April records and go so far as to check those in May and still find no mention of Mary Reilly, you frown. Even if she impossibly knew during her first month that she was pregnant and even if her pregnancy lasted ten months instead of nine, she still ought to be in these records. What happened? Did she change her mind and leave town to hide somewhere and deliver the two children she d promised to let others adopt? Might be, you think, and a competent lawyer could have told her that her consent form, no matter how official and complex it looked, wasn't legally binding. Or did she—?

“Death records, please,” you ask the clerk, “for nineteen thirty-eight and ’thirty-nine.”

This time, the young man looks somewhat annoyed as he trudges off to find those records. But when he returns and you tensely inspect the ledgers, you find no indication that Mary Reilly died during childbirth.

Thanks, you tell the clerk as you put away your notes. “You’ve been very helpful.”

The young man, grateful not to bring more ledgers, grins.

“There’s just one other thing.”

The young man’s shoulders sag.

This birth certificate for Jacob Weinberg.” You point toward an open ledger.

“What about it?”

“It lists Esther and Simon Weinberg as his parents. But it may be Jacob was adopted. If so, there’ll be an alternative birth certificate that indicates the biological mother’s name. I’d like to have a look at—”

“Original birth certificates in the case of adoptions aren’t available to the public. ”

“But r m an attorney, and—”

“They’re not available to attorneys either, and if you’re a lawyer, you should know that. ”

“Well, yes, I do, but—”

“See a judge. Bring a court order. I’ll be glad to oblige. Otherwise, man, the rule is strict. Those records are sealed. I’d lose my job.” *

“Sure.” Your voice cracks. “I understand.”

The county’s Department of Human Services is also in the Cape Verde courthouse. On the third floor, you wait in a lobby until the official in charge of adoptions returns from an appointment. Her name, you’ve learned, is Becky Hughes. She shakes your hand and escorts you into her office. She’s in her thirties, blond, well dressed, but slightly overweight. Her intelligence and commitment to her work are evident.

The clerk downstairs did exactly what he should have,” Becky says.

But apparently you don't look convinced.

“The sealed-file rule on original birth certificates in the case of adoptions is a good one, Counselor.”

“And when it's important, so is another rule: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“Important?” Becky taps her fingers on her desk. “In the case of adoptions, nothing's more important than preserving the anonymity of the biological mother.” She glances toward a coffee pot on a counter. “You want some?”

You shake your head. “My nerves are on edge already.”

“Decaffeinated.”

“All right, then, sure, why not?”

She pours two cups, sets yours on the desk, and sits across from you. “When a woman gives her baby up, she often feels so guilty about it . . . Maybe she isn’t married and comes from a strict religious background that makes her feel ashamed, or maybe she’s seventeen and realizes she doesn’t have the resources to take proper care of the child, or maybe she’s got too many children already, or . . . For whatever reason, if a woman chooses to have a child instead of abort it and gives it up for adoption ... she usually has such strong emotions that her mental health demands an absolute break from the past. She trains herself to believe that the child is on another planet. She struggles to go on with her life. And it’s cruel for a lawyer or a son or a daughter to track her down many years later and remind her of . . .”

“I understand,” you say. “But in this case, the mother is probably dead.”

Becky’s fingers stop tapping. “Keep talking, Counselor.

“I don’t have a client. Or to put it another way, I do, but the client is . . .” You point toward your chest.

“You?”

“I think I . . . ” You explain about the drunk driver, about the deaths of the man and woman that you lovingly thought of as your parents.

“And you want to know if they were your parents?” Becky asks.

“Yes, and if I’ve got a twin—a brother or a sister that I never knew about—and ...” You almost add, if I was born a Jew.

“Counselor, I apologize, but you’re a fool.”

“That’s what my wife and uncle say, not to mention a cop in Redwood Point.”

“Redwood Point?”

“A small town forty miles south.”

“Forty or four thousand miles. What difference does . . . ? Did Esther and Simon love you?”

“They worshiped me.” Your eyes sting with grief.

“Then they are your parents. Counselor, I was adopted. And the man and woman who adopted me abused me. And that’s why I’m in this office to make sure that other adopted children don’t go into homes where they suffer what I did. At the same time, I don’t want to see a mother abused. If a woman s wise enough to know she can’t properly raise a child, if she gives it up for adoption ... in my opinion she deserves a medal . . . and deserves to be protected.

“I understand,” you say. “But I don’t want to meet my mother. She’s probably dead. All I want is ... I need to know if. . . The fact. Was I adopted?”

Becky studies you, nods, picks up the phone, and taps three numbers. “Records? Charley? How you doing, kid? Great. Listen, an attorney was down there a while ago, wanted a sealed adoption file. Yeah, you did the right thing. But here’s what I want. It won’t break the rules if you check to see if there is a sealed file.” Becky tells him the date, place, and names that you earlier gave her. “I’ll hold.” Minutes seem like hours. She straightens. “Yeah, Charley, what have you got?” Becky sets down the phone. “Counselor, there’s no sealed file. Relax. You’re not adopted. Go back to your wife. ”

“Unless,” you say.

“Unless?”

“The adoption wasn’t arranged through an agency but instead was a private arrangement between the birth mother and the couple who wanted to adopt. The gray market.”

“Yes, but even then, local officials have to sanction the adoption. There has to be a legal record of the transfer. In your case, there isn’t. ” Becky looks uncomfortable. “Let me explain. These days, babies available for adoption are scarce. Because of birth control and legalized abortions. But even today, the babies in demand are WASPs. A black? A Hispanic? An Oriental? Forget it. Very few parents in those groups want to adopt, and even fewer Anglos want children from those groups. Fifty years ago, the situation was worse. There were so many WASPs who got pregnant by mistake and wanted to surrender their babies . . . Counselor, this might offend you, but I have to say it.”

“I don’t offend easily.”

“Your last name is Weinberg,” Becky says. “Jewish. Back in the thirties, the same as now, the majority of parents wanting to adopt were Protestants, and they wanted a child from a Protestant mother. If you were put up for adoption, even on the gray market, almost every couple looking to adopt would not have wanted a Jewish baby. The prospects would have been so slim that your mother’s final option would have been ...”

“The black market?” Your cheek muscles twitch.

“Baby selling. It’s a violation of the antislavery law, paying money for a human being. But it happens, and lawyers and doctors who arrange for it to happen make a fortune from desperate couples who can’t get a child any other way. ”

“But what if my mother was Irish?”

Becky blinks. “You’re suggesting . . . ?”

“Jewish couples.” You cringe, remembering the last names of parents you read in the ledgers. “Meyer. Begelman. Markowitz. Weinberg. Jews.”

“So desperate for a baby that after looking everywhere for a Jewish mother willing to give up her child, they adopted . . . ?”

“WASPs. And arranged it so none of their relatives would know.”

All speculation, you strain to remind yourself. There’s no way to link Mary Reilly with you, except that you were born in the town where she signed the agreement and the agreement is dated a week before your birthday. Tenuous evidence, to say the least. Your legal training warns you that you’d never allow it to be used in court. Even the uniform presence of Jewish names on the birth certificates from Redwood Point that August so long ago has a possible, benign, and logical explanation: the resort might have catered to a Jewish clientele, providing kosher meals, for example. Perhaps there’d been a synagogue.

But logic is no match for your deepening unease. You can’t account for the chill in the pit of your stomach, but you feel that something’s terribly wrong. Back in your motel room, you pace, struggling to decide what to do next. Go back to Redwood Point and ask Chief Kitrick more questions? What questions? He’d react the same as Becky Hughes had. Assumptions, Mr. Weinberg. Inconclusive.

Then it strikes you. The name you found in the records. Dr. Jonathan Adams. The physician who certified not only your birth but all the births in Redwood Point. Your excitement abruptly falters. So long ago. The doctor would probably be dead by now. At once your pulse quickens. Dead? Not necessarily. Simon and Esther were still alive until three weeks ago. Grief squeezing your throat, you concentrate. Dr. Adams might have been as young as Simon and Esther. There’s a chance he . . .

But how to find him? The Redwood Point Clinic went out of business in the forties. Dr. Adams might have gone anywhere. You reach for the phone. A year ago, you were hired to litigate a malpractice suit against a drug-addicted ophthalmologist whose carelessness blinded a patient. You spent many hours talking to the American Medical Association. Opening the phone-number booklet that you always keep in your briefcase, you call the AMA’s national headquarters in Chicago. Dr. Jonathan Adams? The deep male voice on the end of the line sounds eager to show his efficiency. Even through the static of a long-distance line, you hear fingers tap a computer keyboard.

“Dr. Jonathan Adams? Sorry. There isn’t a . . . Wait, there is a Jonathan Adams Junior. An obstetrician. In San Francisco. His office number is . . .” You hurriedly write it down and with equal speed press the numbers on your phone. Just as lawyers often want their sons and daughters to be lawyers, so doctors encourage their children to be doctors, and on occasion they give a son their first name. This doctor might not be the son of the man who signed your birth certificate, but you have to find out. Obstetrician? Another common denominator. Like father, like . . . ?

A secretary answers.

“Dr. Adams, please,” you say.

“The doctor is with a patient at the moment. May he call you back?”

“By all means, and this is my number. But I think he’ll want to talk to me now. Just tell him it’s about his father. Tell him it’s about the clinic at Redwood Point.” The secretary sounds confused. “But I can’t interrupt when the doctor’s with ...”

“Do it,” you say. “I guarantee the doctor will understand the emergency.” “Well ... If you’re ...”

“Certain? Yes. Absolutely.”

“Just a moment, please.”

Thirty seconds later, a tense male voice says, “Dr. Adams here. What’s this all about?”

“I told your secretary. I assumed she told you. It’s about your father. It’s about nineteen thirty-eight. It’s about the Redwood Point Clinic.”

“I had nothing to do with . . . Oh, dear Jesus.”

You hear a forceful click, then static. You set down the phone. And nod.

Throughout the stressful afternoon, you investigate your only other lead, trying to discover what happened to June Engle, the nurse whose name appears on the Redwood Point birth certificates. If not dead, she’d certainly have retired by now. Even so, many ex-nurses maintain ties with their former profession, continuing to belong to professional organizations and subscribing to journals devoted to nursing. But no matter how many calls you make to various associations, you can’t find a trace of June Engle.

By then, it’s evening. Between calls, you’ve ordered room service, but the poached salmon goes untasted, the bile in your mouth having taken away your appetite. You get the home phone number for Dr. Adams from San Francisco information.

A woman answers, weary. “He’s still at. . . No, just a minute. I think I hear him coming in the door.”

Your fingers cramp on the phone.

The now familiar taut male voice, slightly out of breath, says, “Yes, Dr. Adams speaking. ”

“It’s me again. I called you at your office today. About the Redwood Point Clinic? About nineteen thirty-eight?”

“You son of a—!”

“Don’t hang up this time, Doctor. All you have to do is answer my questions, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“There are laws against harassment. ”

“Believe me, I know all about the law. I practice it in Chicago. Doctor, why are you so defensive? Why would questions about that clinic make you nervous?” “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“But you make it seem that you’re hiding something if you don’t. ”

You hear the doctor swallow. “Why do you . . . ? I had nothing to do with that clinic. My father died ten years ago. Can’t you leave the past alone?”

“Not my past, I can’t,” you insist. “Your father signed my birth certificate at Redwood Point in nineteen thirty-eight. There are things I need to know.”

The doctor hesitates. “All right. Such as?”

“Black market adoptions.” Hearing the doctor inhale, you continue. “I think your father put the wrong information on my birth certificate. I think he never recorded my biological mother’s name and instead put down the names of the couple who adopted me. That’s why there isn’t a sealed birth certificate listing my actual mother’s name. The adoption was never legally sanctioned, so there wasn’t any need to amend the erroneous birth certificate on file at the courthouse.” “Jesus,” the doctor says.

“Am I right?”

“How the hell would I know? I was just a kid when my father closed the clinic and left Redwood Point in the early forties. If you were illegally adopted, it wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Exactly. And your father’s dead, so he can’t be prosecuted. And anyway it happened so long ago, who would care? Except me. But, Doctor, you’re nervous about my questions. That makes it obvious you know something. Certainly you can’t be charged for something your father did. So what would it hurt if you tell me what you know?”

The doctor’s throat sounds dry. “My father’s memory.”

“Ah,” you say. “Yes, his reputation. Look, I’m not interested in spreading scandal and ruining anybody, dead or alive. All I want is the truth. About me. Who was my mother? Do I have a brother or a sister somewhere? Was I adopted?” “So much money.”

“What?” You clutch the phone harder.

“When my father closed the clinic and left Redwood Point, he had so much money. I was just a kid, but even I knew that he couldn’t have earned a small fortune merely delivering babies at a resort. And there were always so many babies.

I remember him walking up to the nursery every morning. And then it burned down. And the next thing, he closed the clinic and bought a mansion in San Francisco and never worked again.”

“The nursery? You mean like a plant nursery?”

“No. The building on the ridge above town. Big, with all kinds of chimneys and gables.”

“Victorian?”

“Yes. And that’s where the pregnant women lived.”

You shiver. Your chest feels encased with ice.

“My father always called it the nursery. I remember him smiling when he said it. Why pick on him?” the doctor asks. “All he did was deliver babies! And he did it well! And if someone paid him lots of money to put false information on birth certificates, which I don’t even know if he did ...”

“But you suspect.”

“Yes. God damn it, that’s what I suspect,” Dr. Adams admits. “But I can’t prove it, and I never asked. It’s the Gunthers you should blame! They ran the nursery! Anyway if the babies got loving parents, and if the adopting couples finally got the children they desperately wanted, what’s the harm? Who got hurt? Leave the past alone!”

For a moment, you have trouble speaking. “Thank you, Doctor. I appreciate your honesty. I have only one more question.”

“Get on with it. I want to finish this.”

“The Gunthers. The people who ran the nursery.”

“A husband and wife. I don’t recall their first names.”

“Have you any idea what happened to them?”

“After the nursery burned down? God only knows,” Dr. Adams says.

“And what about June Engle, the nurse who assisted your father?”

“You said you had only one more question.” The doctor breathes sharply.

“Never mind, I’ll answer if you promise to leave me alone. June Engle was born and raised in Redwood Point. When we moved away, she said she was staying behind. It could be she’s still there.”

“Could be. If she’s still alive.” Chilled again, you set down the phone.

The same as last night, a baby cries in the room next to yours. You pace and phone Rebecca. You’re as good as can be expected, you say. You don’t yet know when you’ll be home. You try to sleep. Apprehension jerks you awake.

The morning is overcast, as gray as your thoughts. After checking out of the motel, you follow the desk clerk’s directions to Cape Verde’s public library. A disturbing hour later, under a thickening gloomy sky, you drive back to Redwood Point.

From the highway along the cliff, the town looks even bleaker. You steer down the bumpy road, reach the ramshackle boarded-up hotel, and park your rented car. Through weeds that cling to your pant legs, you walk beyond the hotel’s once splendid porch, find eroded stone steps that angle up a slope, and climb to the barren ridge above the town.

Barren with one exception: the charred timbers and flame-scorched toppled walls of the peaked, gabled, Victorian structure that Dr. Adams Jr. had called the nursery. That word makes you feel as if an icy needle has pierced your heart. The clouds hang deeper, darker. A chill wind makes you hug your chest. The nursery. And in 1941 . . . you learned from old newspapers on microfilm at the Cape Verde library . . . thirteen women died here, burned to death, incinerated—their corpses grotesquely blackened and crisped—in a massive blaze, the cause of which the authorities were never able to determine.

Thirteen women. Exclusively women. You want to shout in outrage. And were they pregnant? And were there also . . . ? Sickened, imagining their screams of fright, their wails for help, their shrieks of indescribable agony, you sense so repressive an atmosphere about this ruin that you stumble back as if shoved. With wavering legs that you barely control, you manage your way down the unsteady stone slabs. Lurching through the clinging weeds below the slope, you stumble past the repulsive listing hotel to reach your car, where you lean against its hood and try not to vomit, sweating despite the increasingly bitter wind.

The nursery, you think.

Dear God.

The Redwood Bar is no different than when you left it. Chief Kitrick and his friends again play cards at the far right corner table. The haze of cigarette smoke again dims the light above them. The waiter stands behind the bar on your left, the antique nautical instruments gleaming on a shelf behind him. But your compulsion directs you toward the wrinkled, faded photographs on the wall to your right.

This time, you study them without innocence. You see a yellowed image of the peaked, gabled nursery. You narrow your gaze toward small details that you failed to give importance to the first time you saw these photographs. Several women, diminished because the cameraman took a long shot of the large Victorian building, sit on a lawn that’s bordered by flower gardens, their backs to a windowed brick wall of the . . . your mind balks ... the nursery.

Each of the women—young! so young!—holds an infant in her lap. The women smile so sweetly. Are they acting? Were they forced to smile?

Was one of those women your mother? Is one of those infants you? Mary Reilly, what desperation made you smile like that?

Behind you, Chief Kitrick’s husky voice says, “These days, not many tourists pay us a second visit. ”

“Yeah, I can’t get enough of Redwood Point.” Turning, you notice that Chief Kitrick—it isn’t yet five o’clock—holds a glass of beer. “You might say it haunts me.”

Chief Kitrick sips his beer. “I gather you didn’t find what you wanted at the courthouse.”

“Actually I learned more than I expected.” Your voice shakes. “Do you want to talk here or in your office?”

“It depends on what you want to talk about. ”

“The Gunthers.”

You pass through the squeaky gate in the office.

Chief Kitrick sits behind his desk. His face looks more flushed than it did two days ago. “The Gunthers? My, my. I haven’t heard that name in years. What about them?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? What about them? Tell me.”

Chief Kitrick shrugs. “There isn’t much to tell. I don’t remember them. I was just a toddler when they ... All I know is what I heard when I was growing up, and that’s not a lot. A husband and wife, they ran a boarding house.”

“The nursery.”

Chief Kitrick frowns. “I don’t believe I ever heard it called the nursery. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The Gunthers took in young women. Pregnant women. And after the babies were born, the Gunthers arranged to sell them to desperate Jewish couples who couldn’t have children of their own. Black market adoptions.”

Chief Kitrick slowly straightens. “Black market . . . ? Where on earth did you get such a crazy . . . ?”

You press your hands on the desk and lean forward. “See, back then, adoption agencies didn’t want to give babies to Jews instead of WASPs. So the Gunthers provided the service. They and the doctor who delivered the babies earned a fortune. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I’ve got a terrible feeling that there’s something more, something worse, though I’m not sure what it is. All I do know is that thirteen women—they were probably pregnant—died in the fire that destroyed the nursery in nineteen forty-one.”

“Oh, sure, the fire,” Chief Kitrick says. “I heard about that. Fact is, I even vaguely remember seeing the flames up there on the bluff that night, despite how little I was. The whole town was lit like day. A terrible thing, all those women dying like that.”

“Yes.” You swallow. “Terrible. And then the Gunthers left, and so did the doctor. Why?”

Chief Kitrick shrugs. “Your guess is as good as . . . Maybe the Gunthers didn’t want to rebuild. Maybe they thought it was time for a change.”

“No, I think they left because the fire happened in November and the authorities started asking questions about why all those women, and only women, were in that boarding house after the tourist season was over. I think the Gunthers and the doctor became so afraid that they left town to make it hard for the authorities to question them, to discourage an investigation that might have led to charges being filed.”

“Think all you want. There’s no way to prove it. But I can tell you this. As I grew up, I’d sometimes hear people talking about the Gunthers, and everything the townsfolk said was always about how nice the Gunthers were, how generous. Sure, Redwood Point was once a popular resort, but that was just during the tourist season. The rest of the year, the thirties, the Depression, this town would have starved if not for that boarding house. That place was always busy, year round, and the Gunthers always spent plenty of money here. So many guests. They ate a lot of food, and the Gunthers bought it locally, and they always hired local help. Cooks. Maids. Ladies in town to do washing and ironing. Caretakers to manage the grounds and make sure everything was repaired and looked good. This town owed a lot to the Gunthers, and after they left, well, that’s when things started going to hell. Redwood Point couldn’t support itself on the tourists alone. The merchants couldn’t afford to maintain their shops as nice as before. The town began looking dingy. Not as many tourists came. Fewer and . . . Well, you can see where we ended. At one time, though, this town depended on the Gunthers, and you won’t find anyone speaking ill about them.”

“Exactly. That’s what bothers me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All those pregnant women coming to that boarding house,” you say. “All year round. All through the thirties into the early forties. Even if the Gunthers hadn’t hired local servants, the town couldn’t have helped but notice that something was wrong about that boarding house. The people here knew what was going on. Couples arriving childless but leaving with a baby. The whole town—even the chief of police—had to be aware that the Gunthers were selling babies.”

“Now stop right there.” Chief Kitrick stands, eyes glinting with fury. “The chief of police back then was my father, and I won’t let you talk about him like that. ”

You raise your hands in disgust. “The scheme couldn’t have worked unless the chief of police turned his back. The Gunthers probably bribed him. But then the fire ruined everything. Because it attracted outsiders. Fire investigators. The county coroner. Maybe the state police. And when they started asking questions about the nursery, the Gunthers and the doctor got out of town.”

“I told you I won’t listen to you insult my father! Bribes? Why, my father never—”

“Sure,” you say. “A pillar of the community. Just like everybody else.”

“Get out!”

“Right. As soon as you tell me one more thing. June Engle. Is she still alive? Is she still here in town?”

“I never heard of her,” Chief Kitrick growls.

“Right.”

Chief Kitrick glares from the open door to his office. You get in your car, drive up the bumpy street, turn, go into reverse, shift forward, and pass him. The chief glares harder. In your rearview mirror, you see his diminishing angry profile. You reduce speed and steer toward the left as if taking the upward jolting road out of town. But with a cautious glance toward the chief, you see him stride in nervous victory along the sidewalk. You see him open the door to the bar, and the moment you’re out of sight around the corner, you stop.

The clouds are darker, thicker, lower. The wind increases, keening. Sporadic raindrops speckle your windshield. You step from the car, button your jacket, and squint through the biting wind toward the broken skeleton of the pier. The old man you met two days ago no longer slumps on his rickety chair, but just before you turned the corner, movement on your right—through a dusty window in a shack near the pier—attracted your attention. You approach the shack, the door to which faces the seething ocean, but you don’t have a chance to knock before the wobbly door creaks open. The old man, wearing a frayed rumpled sweater, cocks his head, frowning, a homemade cigarette dangling from his lips.

You reach for your wallet. “I spoke to you the other day, remember?”

“Yep.”

You take a hundred-dollar bill from your wallet. The old man’s bloodshot eyes widen. Beyond him, on a table in the shack, you notice a half-dozen empty beer bottles. “Want to earn some quick easy money?”

“Depends.”

“June Engle.”

“So?”

“Ever heard of her?”

“Yep.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Yep.”

“Here in town?”

“Yep.”

“Where can I find her?”

“This time of day?”

What the old man tells you makes your hand shake when you hand him the money. Shivering but not from the wind, you return to your car. You make sure to take an indirect route to where the old man sent you, lest the chief glance out the tavern window and see you driving past.

“At the synagogue,” the old man told you. “Or what used to be the . . . Ain’t that what they call it? A synagogue?”

The sporadic raindrops become a drizzle. A chilling dampness permeates the car, despite its blasting heater. At the far end of town, above the beach, you come to a dismal, single-story, flat-roofed structure. The redwood walls are cracked and warped. The windows are covered with peeling plywood. Waist-high weeds surround it. Heart pounding, you step from the car, ignore the wind that whips drizzle against you, and frown at a narrow path through the weeds that takes you to the front door. A slab of plywood, the door hangs by one hinge and almost falls as you enter.

You face a small vestibule. Sand has drifted in. An animal has made a nest in one corner. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. The pungent odor of mold attacks your nostrils. Hebraic letters on a wall are so faded that you can’t read them. But mostly what you notice is the path through the sand and dust on the floor toward the entrance to the temple.

The peak of your skull feels naked. Instinctively you look around in search of a yarmulke. But after so many years, there aren’t any. Removing a handkerchief from your pocket, you place it on your head, open the door to the temple, and find yourself paralyzed, astonished by what you see.

The temple—or what used to be the temple—is barren of furniture. The back wall has an alcove where a curtain once concealed the torah. Before the alcove, an old woman kneels on bony knees, her hips withered, a handkerchief tied around her head. She murmurs, hands fidgeting as if she holds something before her.

At last you’re able to move. Inching forward, pausing beside her, you see what she clutches: a rosary. Tears trickle down her cheeks. As close as you are, you still have to strain to distinguish what she murmurs.

“. . . deliver us from evil. Amen.”

“June Engle?”

She doesn’t respond, just keeps fingering the beads and praying. “Hail, Mary . . . blessed is the fruit of thy womb ...”

“June, my name is Jacob Weinberg.”

“Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death ...”

“June, I want to talk to you about Dr. Adams. About the clinic.”

The old woman’s fingers tighten on the rosary. Slowly she turns and blinks up through tear-brimmed eyes. “The clinic?”

“Yes. And about the Gunthers. About the nursery.”

“God help me. God help them.” She wavers, her face pale.

“Come on, June, you’ll faint if you kneel much longer. I’ll help you up.” You touch her appallingly fleshless arms and gently raise her to her feet. She wobbles. You hold her husk of a body against you. “The nursery. Is that why you’re here, June? You’re doing penance?”

“Thirty pieces of silver. ”

“Yes.” Your voice echoes eerily. “I think I understand. Dr. Adams and the Gunthers made a lot of money. Did you make a lot of money, June? Did they pay you well?”

“Thirty pieces of silver.”

“Tell me about the nursery, June. I promise you’ll feel better.”

“Ivy, rose, heather, iris.”

You cringe, suspecting that she’s gone insane. Just as you first thought that the expression “the nursery” referred to a plant nursery, so June Engle has made that same connection. But she knows better. She knows that the nursery had nothing to do with plants but instead with babies from unmarried pregnant women. Or at least she ought to know unless the consequence of age and what seems to be guilt has affected her mind and her memory. She appears to be free-associating. “Violet, lily, daisy, fern,” she babbles.

Your chest cramps as you realize that those words make perfect sense in the context of . . . They might be . . . “Are those names, June? You’re telling me that the women in the nursery called themselves after plants and flowers?” “Orval Gunther chose them. Anonymous.” June weeps. “Nobody would know who they really were. They could hide their shame, protect their identities.” “But how did they learn about the nursery?”

“Advertisements. ” June’s shriveled knuckles paw at her eyes. “In big-city papers. The personal columns.”

“Advertisements? But that was taking an awful risk. The police might have ...” “No. Not Orval. He never took risks. He was clever. So clever. All he promised was a rest home for pregnant women. Teel alone?’ the ad read. 'Need a caring trained staff to help you give birth in strictest privacy? No questions asked. We guarantee to relieve your insecurity. Let us help you with your burden.’ Sweet Lord, those women came here by the hundreds.”

June trembles against you. Her tears soak through your jacket, as chilling as the wind-driven rain that trickles through the roof.

“Did those women get any money for the babies they gave to strangers?” “Get? No, they paid!” June stiffens, her feeble arms gaining amazing strength as she pushes from your grasp. “Orval, that son of a . . . ! He charged them room and board! Five hundred dollars!”

Her knees sag.

You grasp her. “Five hundred . . . ? And the couples who took the babies? How much did the Gunthers get from them?”

“Sometimes as high as ten thousand dollars.”

The arms with which you hold her shake. Ten thousand dollars? During the Depression? Hundreds of pregnant women? Dr. Adams Jr. hadn’t exaggerated. The Gunthers had earned a fortune.

“And Orval’s wife was worse than he was. Eve! She was a monster! All she cared about was . . . Pregnant women didn’t matter! Babies didn’t matter. Money mattered.”

“But if you thought they were monsters . . . ? June, why did you help them?” She clutches her rosary. “Thirty pieces of silver. Holy Mary, mother of . . . Ivy, Rose, Heather, Iris. Violet, Lily, Daisy, Fern.”

You force her to look at you. “I told you my name was Jacob Weinberg. But I might not be ... I think my mother’s name was Mary Reilly. I think I was born here. In nineteen thirty-eight. Did you ever know a woman who . . . ?”

June sobs. “Mary Reilly? If she stayed with the Gunthers, she wouldn’t have used her real name. So many women! She might have been Orchid or Pansy. There’s no way to tell who ...”

“She was pregnant with twins. She promised to give up both children. Do you remember a woman who . . . ?”

“Twins? Several women had twins. The Gunthers, damn them, were ecstatic. Two for the price of one, they said.”

“But my parents”—the word sticks in your mouth—“took only me. Was it common for childless parents to separate twins?”

“Money!” June cringes. “It all depended on how much money the couples could afford. Sometimes twins were separated. There’s no way to tell where the other child went.”

“But weren’t there records?”

“The Gunthers were smart. They never kept records. In case the police . . . And then the fire . . . Even if there had been records, secret records, the fire would have ...”

Your stomach plummets. Despite your urgent need for answers, you realized you’ve reached a dead end.

Then June murmurs something that you barely hear, but the little you do hear chokes you. “What? I didn’t . . . June, please say that again.”

“Thirty pieces of silver. For that, I . . . Oh, how I paid. Seven stillborn children.”

“Yours?”

“I thought, with the money the Gunthers paid me, my husband and I could raise our children in luxury, give them every advantage, send them to medical school or . . . God help me, what I did for the Gunthers cursed my womb. It made me worse than barren. It doomed me to carry lifeless children. My penance! It forced me to suffer! Just like . . . !”

“The mothers who gave up their children and possibly later regretted it?”

“No! Like the . . . !”

What you hear next makes you retch. Black market adoptions, you told Chief Kitrick. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I’ve got the terrible feeling that there’s something more, something worse, though I’m not sure what it is.

Now you are sure what that something worse is, and the revelation makes you weep in outrage. “Show me, June,” you manage to say. “Take me. I promise it’ll be your salvation.” You try to remember what you know about Catholicism. “You need to confess, and after that, your conscience will be at peace.”

“I’ll never be at peace.”

“You’re wrong, June. You will. You’ve kept your secret too long. It festers inside you. You have to let out the poison. After all these years, your prayers here in the synagogue have been sufficient. You’ve suffered enough. What you need now is absolution.”

“You think if I go there . . . ?” June shudders.

“And pray one last time. Yes. I beg you. Show me. Your torment will finally end.”

“So long! I haven’t been there since ...”

“Nineteen forty-one? That’s what I mean, June. It’s time. It’s finally time.”

Through biting wind and chilling rain, you escort June from the ghost of the synagogue into the sheltering warmth of your car. You’re so angry that you don’t bother taking an indirect route. You don’t care if ... in fact, you almost want . . . Chief Kitrick to see you driving past the tavern. You steer left up the bumpy road out of town, its jolts diminished by the storm-soaked earth. When you reach the coastal highway, you assure June yet again and prompt her for further directions.

“It’s been so long. I don’t . . . Yes. Turn to the right,” she says. A half mile later, she trembles, adding, “Now left here. Up that muddy road. Do you think you can . . . ?”

“Force this car through the mud to the top? If I have to, I’ll get out and push. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll walk. God help me, I’ll carry you. I’ll sink to my knees and crawl.”

But the car’s front-wheel drive defeats the mud. At once you gain traction, thrust over a hill, swivel to a stop, and scowl through the rain toward an unexpected meadow. Even in early October, the grass is lush. Amazingly, horribly so. Knowing its secret, you suddenly recall—from your innocent youth—lines from a poem you studied in college. Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

You force your way out of the car. You struggle around its hood, ignore the mud, confront the stinging wind and rain, and help June waver from the passenger seat. The bullet-dark clouds roil above the meadow.

“Was it here?” you demand. “Tell me! Is this where . . . ?”

“Yes! Can’t you hear them wail? Can’t you hear them suffer?”

“June! In the name of God”—rain stings your face—“tell me!”

“Tell me, June!”

“Can’t you sense? Can’t you feel the horror?”

“Yes, June.” You sink to your knees. You caress the grass. “I can.”

“How many, June?” You lean forward, your face almost touching the grass.

“Two hundred. Maybe more. All those years. So many babies.” June weeps behind you. “I finally couldn’t count anymore.”

“But why?” You raise your head toward the angry rain. “Why did they have to die?”

“Some were sickly. Some were deformed. If the Gunthers decided they couldn’t sell them ...”

“They murdered them? Smothered them? Strangled them?”

“Let them starve to death. The wails.” June cringes. “Those poor, hungry, suffering babies. Some took as long as three days to die. In my nightmares, I heard them wailing. I still hear them wailing.” June hobbles toward you. “At first, the Gunthers took the bodies in a boat and dumped them at sea. But one of the corpses washed up on the beach, and if it hadn’t been for the chief of police they bribed ...” June’s voice breaks. “So the Gunthers decided they needed a safer way to dispose of the bodies. They brought them here and buried them in paper bags or potato sacks or butter boxes.”

“Butter boxes?”

“Some of the babies were born prematurely.” June sinks beside you, weeping. “They were small, so terribly small.”

“Two hundred?” The frenzied wind thrusts your words down your throat. With a shudder, you realize that if your mother was Mary Reilly, Irish, there’d have been a chance of your having been born with red hair. The Gunthers might have decided that you looked too obviously gentile. They might have buried you here with . . .

Your brother or your sister? Your twin? Is your counterpart under the grass you clutch? You shriek. “Two hundred!”

Despite the howl of the storm, you hear a car, its engine roaring, its tires spinning, fighting for traction in the mud. You see a police car crest the rain-shrouded hill and skid to a stop.

Chief Kitrick shoves his door open, stalking toward you through the raging gloom. “God damn it, I told you to leave the past alone.”

You stand, draw back a fist, and strike his mouth so hard he drops to the mushy ground. “You knew! You son of a bitch, you knew all along!”

The chief wipes blood from his mangled lips. In fury, he fumbles to draw his gun.

Thats right! Go ahead, kill me!” You spread out your arms, lashed by the rain. “But June’ll be a witness, and you’ll have to kill her as well! So what, though, huh? Two murders won’t matter, will they? Not compared to a couple of hundred children!”

“I had nothing to do with—”

“Killing these babies? No, but your father did!”

“He wasn’t involved!”

“He let it happen! He took the Gunthers’ money and turned his back! That makes him involved! He’s as much to blame as the Gunthers! The whole fucking town was involved!” You pivot toward the ridge, buffeted by the full strength of the storm. In the blinding gale, you can’t see the town, but you shriek at it nonetheless. You bastards! You sons of bitches! You knew! You all let it happen! You did nothing to stop it! You’re responsible, as much as the Gunthers, for killing all these babies! That’s why your town fell apart! God cursed you! Bastards! Sons of—!”

Abruptly you realize the terrible irony of your words. Bastards? All of these murdered children were bastards. You spin toward the grass, the beautiful uncut hair of graves, and lose control. Falling, you hug the rain-soaked earth, the drenched lush leaves of grass. “Poor babies! Poor sweet babies!”

“You can’t prove anything, Weinberg,” Chief Kitrick growls. “All you’ve got are suppositions. After fifty years, there won’t be anything left of those babies. They’ve long since rotted and turned into—”

“Grass,” you moan, tears scalding your face. “The beautiful grass.”

“The doctor who delivered the babies is dead. The Gunthers—my father kept track of them—died as well. In agony, if that satisfies your need for justice. Orval got stomach cancer. Eve died from alcoholism.”

“And now they burn in hell,” June murmurs.

“I was raised to be . . . I’m a Jew," you moan and suddenly understand the significance of your pronouncement. No matter the circumstances of your birth, you are a Jew, totally, completely. “I don’t believe in hell. But I wish . . . Oh God, how I wish ...”

“The only proof you have,” Chief Kitrick says, “is this old woman, a Catholic who goes every afternoon to pray in a ruined synagogue. She’s nuts. You’re a lawyer. You know her testimony wouldn’t be accepted in court. It’s over, Weinberg. It ended fifty years ago.”

“No! It never ended! The grass keeps growing!” You sprawl on your stomach, feeling the chill wet earth, hugging the fertile grass. You try to embrace your brother or your sister and quiver with the understanding that all of these children are your brothers and sisters. “God help them! God have mercy!”

“Luckier?” You embrace the grass, rubbing your face against it, wiping your tears. “Luckier? Whitman, you stupid—! The horror!” Through the rain-soaked earth, you think you hear babies crying and raise your face toward the furious storm. Swallowing rain, tasting the salt of your tears, you recite the kaddish prayers. You mourn Mary Reilly, Simon and Esther Weinberg, your brother or your sister, all these children.

And yourself.

“Deliver us from evil,” June Engle murmurs. “Pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death.”