Page 112 of Dying to Meet You

41

This terrible admission silences both of us for a moment. I listen to a clock ticking somewhere in her home, while she blinks away tears.

“Why would he... ?” I snap my mouth shut. Even through my rage, I might already know the answer. “I’ve heard of people paying for babies. Is that what happened?”

“Possibly.” Her eyes are downcast. “That was Tim’s theory. After we first met, he started digging into the Magdalene Home. He’d come over about once a week. He sat right there.” She nods toward where I’m sitting. “And we’d just talk. He was trying to piece it together.”

“He was investigating,” I say slowly.

She nods, and another tear falls before she brushes it away.

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly. “You’d just gotten him back.”

She takes another sip of tea and takes a moment to compose herself. “For forty-five years I had so much guilt,” she said. “They told me it was my fault that he wasn’t born healthy and strong. They said it was God’s will, and I believed them. Although it didn’t take much persuasion. I already felt stupid for getting pregnant with a boy who didn’t stick around.”

“I did the same thing,” I blurt out.Not helpful, Gallagher.

But maybe this was the right thing to say, because her gaze snaps back to mine. “Really? Did you give up a baby, too?”

I shake my head. “My family has some money, and I was stubborn. Everyone wasverydisappointed in me, but I got my own way. My daughter is sixteen now.”

“Well, I was stubborn, too,” she says slowly. “At the Magdalene Home, you weren’t supposed to be stubborn. You were expected to sit down, shut up, and then give up your baby. All the girls did.”

“Allof them?”

She shrugs. “Basically. I was there in 1979, which was getting toward the end of that place. Birth control and abortion were both legal. But I was a ward of the state. An orphan. I lived in a Catholic group home. So the rules were different for me.”

“Oh,” I say softly.

“Yeah. It was a nun who figured out I was pregnant. I was seventeen. I barely understood how babies were made.” She rubs her temples. “The father was also a resident of the group home. Almost eighteen. He ran away when they realized I was pregnant.”

“Nice,” I hiss.

“I don’t even blame him.” She gives me a tired smile. “He escaped while he could. Girls raised by the Catholic Church don’t get abortions. They get married, or they give up the baby. They sent me off to the Magdalene Home to hide my shame. They treated pregnancy like a contagious disease, you know? Like I would ruin other girls with my sinful presence.”

I wish I were more surprised. But I’m not. “What was it like? At the home?” It’s a selfish question. I spend a lot of time wandering around the place, trying to picture it in years gone by.

She picks up her tea and takes a sip, her eyes unfocused, as if she’s trying to recall. “Boring, mostly. With moments of humiliation. Like being in jail, I guess. And the jailers weren’t very nice. They wanted us to feel very bad about the sins we’d committed. Helovedtalking about sin.”

“Marcus Wincott?”

Her focus sharpens onto me. “He ran that place like a dictator. Everyone feared him—the girls, and the women who worked there, too. It wasallyoung women, and a man in his midfifties. I don’t think that would fly nowadays.”

“I sure hope not.”

She looks down into her mug. “Sometimes he hit us. Never on the face. Never where anyone would see. He liked the shock value, I think. There was one really mouthy girl. Debbie? Darcy?” She shakes her head. “That one had a death wish. She slapped himback. And as a punishment, he handcuffed her to a dining chair.”

A dining chair. Holy Mary, mother of God. I know that dining chair.

“He also...” She rubs her eyes. “I think he got handsy with the girls sometimes. I heard a lot of rumors. And one night I got up for a drink of water, and I saw him disappear into another girl’s room. The next morning she had a black eye. I asked her how she got it, she said she slipped in the shower.” She shakes her head.

“That sounds...” Every word I can think of is inadequate to my horror. And now Iworkfor these people. “It sounds barbaric. And terrifying.”

She actually shrugs. “I can’t be sure about everything that happened there. He never tried anything with me. Maybe I wasn’t his type. Or maybe the girls exaggerated.”

“Do you still talk to any of them?”

She shakes her head. “I never wanted to think about that place again. Besides, we didn’t use our last names in there, which would have made it hard to find anyone I’d known. He said the name thing was for our privacy. But it was probably just another manipulation. If we didn’t know how to reach each other, then we couldn’t compare notes later.”