GUNNED by Elaine Macko Page B

He said it was my fault and that was the end of it. It wasn’t something he was ever going to forgive me for, so he left. He tried to make a new life for himself, but drinking got the best of him. He went through another divorce and never did have any more children.”
    The kettle whistled and Rhoda Newman got up and poured hot water in the mugs and then placed a small box of teabags on the table.
    “And you, Mrs. Newman?”
    I didn’t really have to ask. The pain in her eyes told me everything. This woman was stuck in time. She had never moved on after the death of her child. She sat there quietly, with absolutely no makeup and her lifeless dark brown hair pushed over her ears. I could tell she must have been quite pretty thirty years ago, but a hard life had taken its toll.
    “We moved here shortly after she died. Neither one of us could stand to be in the little house where we were living a happy life. Ira moved out about a year later and I just stayed here. I’m the benefits manager for a firm in Stamford. I go to work and I come home. That’s my life if you can call it a life.”
    Annie reached over and touched Mrs. Newman’s hand. “How did your daughter die?” she asked softly.
    “I was a wild thing. I grew up in a strict Jewish family, and then after junior college I went wild. I had quite a few boyfriends and I started doing drugs and drinking. Then I met Ira. He was a good guy. I settled down, though I still did the drugs for a while. Then I got pregnant. We were thrilled, but I knew nothing. My relationship with my mother was pretty much over because of my wild lifestyle. I went to a clinic a few times, but nothing like they do now with all the doctor visits and the care and vitamins and tests.
    “Anyway, I had the baby. It was rough so they did a C-section. I was pretty sick for a couple of days afterward and Ira was so busy at work. It would have been nice to have had my parents with me, but a friend came to keep me company. Then Ira and I took Erika home. She was beautiful, tons of hair, and she slept well. I turned into a good mother. And then I noticed she didn’t seem to develop as quickly as the other babies. Her breathing was labored, she seemed lethargic. She was slow to learn things and she started to get sick a lot. We took her in for tests and she had something called Shone’s Complex. It had something to do with her heart. They said she was born with it and there was nothing to do and they weren’t sure what caused it. But Ira wouldn’t listen to anything they said. He blamed me and my lifestyle and nothing I could say or the doctors could say would change his opinion. Maybe if I had taken better care of myself they would have noticed it before she was born. Lots of people survive with it, but Erika wasn’t one of the lucky ones. She had several operations and we had hope.” Rhoda Newman took a deep breath and then let it out. “She kept getting sick all the time and then she died.”
    “I’m so very sorry,” Annie said. She was still holding Mrs. Newman’s hand, while I was trying my best not to cry in front of the woman.
    Rhoda Newman reached for another napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “Ira couldn’t take it. I wanted to go and get counseling, work our way through the pain, but by that point he was just a shell of a man. After he left me, I, well, I never wanted to meet anyone again. I didn’t want to have any more kids because what if it happened again? I just wasn’t into trying anymore.”
    “Did you tell all of this to Mr. Spiegel” I asked.
    “Oh, no. I just told him that Erika was dead so it didn’t matter what he thought. I told him to be happy with the daughter he had and to go away.”
    “Mrs. Newman, did you ever feel that Erika wasn’t your daughter? Did you ever think for a moment that she had been switched?”
    “No, never. I didn’t see her the first day because I was so sick, but when I saw her I remember thinking she looked like my mother, what with