The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

“Have you seen that place?”
    “No.” He frowned. “It came highly recommended, that was all. I’ve sent other people there, in the past. I’ve heard nothing negative.”
    “It was awful,” she said, relieved. So he hadn’t known what he was doing. She wanted to hate him still, but she remembered how many nights he had stayed at the clinic, treating patients who couldn’t afford the care they needed. Patients from the countryside, from the mountains, who made the arduous trip to Lexington, short on money, long on hope. The other clinic partners hadn’t liked it, but Dr. Henry had not stopped. He wasn’t an evil man, she knew that. He wasn’t a monster. But this—a memorial service for a living child—that was monstrous.
    “You have to tell her,” she said.
    His face was pale, still, but determined. “No,” he said. “It’s too late now. Do whatever you have to do, Caroline, but I can’t tell her. I won’t.”
    It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be. He took her hand, and this felt natural to her, right. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. She felt the press of his lips on her knuckles and his breath, warm on her skin.
    If there had been any calculation in his expression when he looked up, anything less than pained confusion when he released her hand, she would have done the right thing. She would have picked up the phone and called Dr. Bentley or the police, and she would have confessed it all. But he had tears in his eyes.
    “It’s in your hands,” he said, releasing her. “I leave it to you. I believe the home in Louisville is the right place for this child. I don’t make the decision lightly. She will need medical care she can’t get elsewhere. But whatever you have to do, I will respect that. And if you choose to call the authorities, I will take the blame. There will be no consequences for you, I promise.”
    His expression was weighted. For the first time Caroline thought beyond the immediate, beyond the baby in the next room. It had not really occurred to her before that their careers were in jeopardy.
    “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I have to think. I don’t know what to do.”
    He pulled out his wallet, emptying it. Three hundred dollars—she was shocked that he carried this much with him.
    “I don’t want your money,” she said.
    “It’s not for you,” he told her. “It’s for the child.”
    “Phoebe. Her name is Phoebe,” Caroline said, pushing away the bills. She thought of the birth certificate, left blank but for his signature in David Henry’s haste that snowy morning. How easy it would be to type in Phoebe’s name, and her own.
    “Phoebe,” he said. He stood up to go, leaving the money on the table. “Please, Caroline, don’t do anything without telling me first. That’s the only thing I ask. That you give me warning, whatever it is you decide.”
    He left, then, and everything was the same as it had been: the clock on the mantel, the square of light on the floor, the sharp shadows of bare branches. In a few weeks the new leaves would come, feathering out on the trees and changing the shapes on the floors. She had seen all this so many times, and yet the room seemed strangely impersonal now, as if she had never lived here at all. Over the years she had bought very few things for herself, being naturally frugal and imagining, always, that her real life would happen elsewhere. The plaid sofa, the matching chair—she liked this furniture well enough, she had chosen it herself, but she saw now that she could easily leave it. Leave all of it, she supposed, looking around at the framed prints of landscapes, the wicker magazine rack by the sofa, the low coffee table. Her own apartment seemed suddenly no more personal than a waiting room