Gloria looked from me to Tara. “I’m quite sure she quit midwifery altogether when she left us,” she said. “I would have known if she’d gone to another practice.”
Both of us stared at her. I felt like I was slipping into a long dark tunnel. I didn’t think I could handle learning one more thing that didn’t fit with what I knew about Noelle. My brain hurt. I wanted to shout to the universe, “Noelle was not a big mystery! Stop trying to make her into one!”
“I think,” I said to Gloria, “for some reason, she didn’t want you to know she’d gone someplace else.”
With her sharp little machinelike gestures, Gloria pulled her cell phone from the purse slung over her shoulder. “Hold on.” She quickly dialed a number. “Laurie, it’s me,” she said. “Do you recall when Noelle Downie left us?” She nodded, looked at me and repeated what she was hearing, “Twelve years as of December 1,” she said. “This is my office manager on the phone and she says she remembers the date because it was the day her husband asked for a divorce. Which he didn’t get and it’s all patched up now, right, Laurie?” She smiled into the phone, while my mind scrambled to take in this bizarre information.
“Where did she go?” Tara asked.
“Did she go somewhere else?” Gloria asked her office manager. She nodded again. “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Okay, thanks. I’ll be in a little later.” She dropped her phone back in her purse. “Noelle let her certification lapse after she left us,” she said.
“What?” I said. “No way!”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.” Tara dropped down next to me on the sofa.
“Maybe this Laurie person has her mixed up with one of your other midwives,” I suggested.
Gloria shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She looked straight at me and I could practically hear her thinking what a shitty friend I was for not knowing what Noelle was up to. “I remember there being talk about it and everyone saying she just wanted to focus on the babies program,” Gloria said. “I know she was having a lot of back pain. I remember that. One of the other practices tried to get her to join them when they realized she’d left us, but she told them she was out of the business.”
“But she’s been delivering babies all this time!” I said.
“That’s true,” Tara agreed. “She’s been practicing as a midwife.”
“Are you sure?” Gloria tipped her head to one side. “Under whose supervision?”
I looked at Tara, who shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.
“She’d tell me she was with a patient sometimes,” I said, but I spoke slowly, suddenly unsure about what I was saying. Unsure about everything. Did she tell me that? I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Twelve years? This is ludicrous!” As far as I knew, Noelle had had three passions for the past twelve years: her local midwifery practice, the babies program and what she called her “rural work.” Every couple of years she’d spend a few months in an impoverished rural area volunteering her skills as a midwife. She grew up in an area like that and it was her way of giving back. Could twelve years of Noelle’s life have slipped past without us knowing what was really going on with her?
“I know I heard her mention her patients,” Tara said. If I was crazy, Tara was, too.
“I’m so sorry.” Gloria stood. “I’ve upset you both and that was the last thing I meant to do when I came here.” She leaned down to give me a quick, soulless hug, then another one to Tara. “I need to run,” she said. “Again, please accept my condolences. This is such a loss to the whole community.”
She left the room and Tara and I sat in quiet confusion for a moment. My gaze blurred on the sunroom door.
Tara rubbed my back. “There’s an explanation for this,” she said.
“Oh, there’s an explanation, all right,” I said. “And I know exactly what it is. I hate it, but we have to accept it.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“The explanation is that we never really knew Noelle.” I looked at Tara, determination suddenly taking the place of my confusion. “We have to figure out why she died, Tara,” I said. “One way or another, we need to get to know her now.”
7
Noelle
Robeson County, North Carolina 1984
Her mother stood in the middle of their living room, looking around with a worried sigh. “I hate to leave you with this mess,” she said. “The timing of this is all wrong.”
“You’re making too much out of it, Mama,” Noelle said as she ushered her mother toward the door. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Her mother looked through the open doorway to the two cars in the gravel drive. Her old Ford stood next to Noelle’s “new” car—a dented, faded Chevy she’d picked up for six hundred dollars. The weather was threatening to storm and a hot wind blew through the treetops.
“Everything’s changing so fast,” her mother said.
“For the better.” Noelle gave her a little shove toward the door. “It’s not like you ever loved living here.”
Her mother laughed. “That’s the truth.” She touched her daughter’s cheek. “It’s being apart from you. That’s the change I can’t stand.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” Noelle said. She would. But she had her future spread out in front of her and that would make up for any sense of loss she felt over being apart from her mother and leaving the house she’d grown up in. “I’m going to see you in a couple of days,” she added. “It’s not like this is goodbye.”
Her mother’s car was packed to the gills for the short trip to New Bern but not everything would fit, so Noelle had promised to bring the rest of her things to her in a few days. Then she’d have to turn around and come home to pick up her own belongings and head to UNC Wilmington.
“Remember, Miss Wilson has a spare room you can stay in on vacations.”
“I’ll remember,” Noelle said, not sure she’d ever want to stay in the house of a stranger, even if her mother would be there. Miss Wilson was the elderly sister of one of her mother’s friends. She’d broken her hip and needed a live-in aide and was hiring Noelle’s mother for the job. With Noelle going off to college on a full scholarship, the timing was right to sell the house. They’d sold it nearly overnight to a young couple from Raleigh who were looking for a place in the country. It had all happened fast. They’d donated their old furniture, but there was so much left to do.
“I love you, honey.” Her mother pulled her into a hug, then stood back and tried to smooth Noelle’s unsmoothable hair.
“I love you, too.” She gave her mother a gentle shove through the doorway. “Drive safely.”
“You, too.”
Arms folded tightly across her chest, Noelle watched
