The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards Page A

same time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.
    "Hello?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "Hello?"
    "Mrs. Henry?"
    It was the nurse from David's new office-he'd joined the hospital staff a month ago-a woman Norah had never met. Her voice was warm and full: Norah pictured a middle-aged woman, hefty and substantial, her hair in a careful beehive. Caroline Gill, who had held her hand through the rippling contractions, whose blue eyes and steady gaze were inextricably connected for Norah to that wild and snowy night, had simply disappeared-a mystery, that, and a scandal.
    "Mrs. Henry, it's Sharon Smith. Dr. Henry was called into emergency surgery just, I swear, as he was about to walk out the door and go home. There was a horrible accident out off Leestown Road. Teenagers, you know; they're pretty badly hurt. Dr. Henry asked me to call. He'll be home as soon as he can."
    "Did he say how long?" Norah asked. The air was redolent with roast pork, sauerkraut, and oven potatoes: David's favorite meal.
    "He didn't. But they say it was an awful wreck. Between you and me, honey, it may end up being hours."
    Norah nodded. Distantly, the front door opened, shut. There were footsteps, light and familiar, in the foyer, the living room, the dining room: Bree, early, coming to pick up Paul, to give Norah and David this evening before Valentine's Day, their anniversary, to themselves.
    Norah's plan, her surprise, her gift to him.
    "Thank you," she told the nurse, before she hung up. "Thanks for calling."
    Bree walked into the kitchen, bringing with her the scent of rain.
    Below her long raincoat she wore black boots to her knees, and her thighs, long and white, disappeared in the shortest skirt Norah had ever seen. Her silver earrings, studded with turquoise, danced with light. She'd come straight from work-she managed the office for a local radio station-and her bag was full of books and papers from the classes she was taking.
    "Wow," Bree said, sliding her bags on the counter and reaching for Paul. "Everything looks great, Norah. I can't believe what you've done with the house in such a short time."
    "It's kept me busy," Norah agreed, thinking of the weeks she'd spent steaming off wallpaper and applying new coats of paint. They had decided to move, she and David, thinking that, like his new job, it would help them leave the past behind. Norah, wanting nothing else, had poured herself into this project. Yet it hadn't helped as much as she had hoped; often, still, her sense of loss stirred up, like flames out of embers. Twice in this last month alone she'd hired a babysitter for Paul and left the house, with its half-painted trim and rolls of wallpaper, behind. She had driven too fast down the narrow country roads to the private cemetery, marked with a wrought-iron gate, where her daughter was buried. The stones were low, some very old and worn nearly smooth. Phoebe's was simple, made from pink granite, with the dates of her short life chiseled deeply beneath her name. In the bleak winter landscape, the wind sharp in her hair, Norah had knelt in the brittle frozen grass of her dream. She'd been paralyzed with grief almost, too full of sorrow even to weep. But she had stayed for several hours before she finally stood up and brushed off her clothes and went home.
    Now Paul was playing a game with Bree, trying to catch hold of her hair. 't
    "Your mom's amazing," Bree told him. "She's just a regular Suzy Homemaker these days, isn't she? No, not the earrings, honey," she added, catching Paul's small hand in her own.
    "Suzy Homemaker?" Norah repeated, anger lifting through her like a wave. "What do you mean by that?"
    "I didn't mean anything," Bree said. She'd been making silly faces at Paul, and