IMMEDIATELY after the birth, to her own great shock, she almost went after the baby at once. To her own great shock, there tore through her heart a treacherous pang whenever she thought of her. Over the next year she suppressed every yearning for her, every feeling of loss. She stayed in the Bay Area, living in the Haight and working as a teaching assistant at the local state college, mostly because it wasn’t so far away from Davenhall, should she change her mind. She kept Marie’s note as though it were a receipt. Almost three years later, she came within a river of changing her mind. There were many reasons she hadn’t gone back to Davenhall before, some of them selfish, none of them contradicting the very real conviction that the child was better off with Marie than she would have been with her own mother. On rare occasions, the two women exchanged letters that Louise often couldn’t bear to open, let alone read. Then, almost three years after the baby was born, a letter came addressed not in Marie’s writing but Billy’s, and without reading that one either, knowing full well what it said, Louise sent word that she was coming, took the bus to Sacramento, and caught a ride out to the island ferry.
What do You think about The Sea Came In At Midnight?
