“So why do you look troubled, my child? Your eyes say there’s something you’re not telling me. Are you afraid it won’t be a match?” Michaela also had the right birthday, which could be a coincidence.
“Not so much. It’s everything I heard and saw in Dublin that upset me deeply. How could they do what they did? Made money from all of them, and consciously destroyed all evidence that would have helped mothers and children to find each other again one day, or at least the mothers could find out what had happened to them.”
“I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing. Open adoptions were unheard of then, or very unusual, as was finding birth mothers on the Internet. Those were all highly confidential matters back then. It was considered information that could have ruined people’s lives if it got out.”
“That doesn’t explain why all the girls who went there were from families who could afford to pay the fees to the Church. There were no poor girls there, and no locals for that reason. And the adoptive parents were all very rich Americans. They were taking full advantage of the situation and ran it like a business.”
“It sounds that way now, but it was probably efficiently run, which is to their credit, and everyone’s benefit.”
“It was more than that, Mother. It was highly profitable. My sister calls it a baby mill, and after what I know now, having been there, I think she’s right. And after talking to the author of the book I read by the ex-nun who was a midwife there, I have serious questions about the Church, and the people who ran it. They didn’t even let the girls touch or see their babies when they were born, or hold them. It must have broken their hearts,” just as it had Melissa’s. Giving her daughter up was still an open wound for her.
Mother Elizabeth sighed as she listened. “Women who have been released from their vows are never a strong source to solidify one’s faith,” she reminded Hattie, who thought about it and nodded.
“What she saw and experienced there drove her out of the Church.”
“Maybe she would have left anyway. A weak vocation won’t hold you forever. It’s like a weak bridge, sooner or later it breaks, and if you’re standing on it, you fall into the abyss. Did she try to influence you?”
“Not at all,” Hattie said, although she knew it wasn’t entirely true. “She just shared that it had been a test of faith for her.”
“Which she failed,” the mother superior pointed out. “She didn’t stay and respect her vows. She abandoned them.”
“I think she was very deeply marked by what happened there, and her part in it.”
“We must all learn to forgive, ourselves as well as others. Our Church isn’t perfect, nor the people in it, nor any of us. I have to believe that the nuns who ran Saint Blaise’s and the convents and mother and baby homes like it had the very best of intentions while they did it. Who can blame them for only accepting stable, financially sound adoptive parents? At least the babies they adopted would be safe and never have to struggle. They didn’t make large donations to the Church in order to abuse them. And if you’ve found your niece, she sounds like she had a good life with her movie star mother, an enviable life. Who wouldn’t want that for a child they were giving up? And you forget that the girls who went there, like your sister, were barely more than children themselves, teenagers at best. What kind of life could they have given their children? A life of shame and disgrace, ostracized and shunned by their communities and the world, and even their own families. I think the nuns at Saint Blaise’s made the best of a bad situation, and it sounds like they did it quite successfully, for the benefit of the Church as well. You need to put this behind you now, Sister Mary Joseph, and thank God you found the girl, if she’s the right one. I’m sure your sister will be very grateful, particularly to know that she was adopted by people who took good care of her, and she had a good life.” The superior refused to see the sordid side of it that had shocked Hattie and Fiona Eckles deeply. “You cannot let this shake your faith in everything you believe in and have dedicated your life to. You have a strong vocation. In the life of every religious, at some point, there will come a challenge that will try to break them. You must resist that, and come out of it stronger, better, and more dedicated.” Hattie was chastened into silence, could only nod, and kissed the superior’s ring before she left her office, feeling like a schoolgirl who had been sent to the principal’s office to be reminded of the tenets and beliefs of the school. But even after Mother Elizabeth’s speech, Hattie hated everything she now knew about Saint Blaise’s and felt it was wrong. And like Fiona Eckles, her faith had been shaken by it, and possibly her vocation.
The next day Mother Elizabeth suggested to her that she spend more time in prayer until she felt better. Her trip out in the world and the people she had met there had obviously upset her.
She spent her lunch hour at the hospital in silent prayer that day, and stayed longer in chapel than the others at the end of the day. She stayed after Mass in the morning and skipped breakfast, and went to confession. But no matter what Hattie did, the test of her faith was getting the better of her. She had never fought as hard to strengthen her beliefs and cling to them, and she felt as though she were hanging onto the edge of a cliff with her bare fingers and below her yawned the abyss, waiting to swallow her.
“You’re wrestling with the devil himself,” the mother superior said when she called her to her office again. She could see that the younger nun was still having a hard time. She had hardly smiled since she got back from her trip, and she was spending all her spare time on her knees in church. She scrubbed the kitchen floors every night as penance, but nothing helped. No amount of self-denial or ardent prayer had brought relief. Hattie wondered if the superior was right, and the devil had her in his grip. But the only devil she could see were the nuns who had been at Saint Blaise’s while the girls were there, and what they had done to eliminate every trace of where their babies went.
As she continued to pray about it, the results of the DNA tests came back, and there was no question, she and Michaela Ashley Moore Foster were a match, and Melissa would be too. The index of the test was high, which was very good. For Hattie and Michaela, it was cause for celebration. She called Hattie at the convent. They had both gotten the emails with the results at the same time. Michaela sounded jubilant and Hattie smiled for the first time in weeks.
“When can I meet her?” Michaela was eager to meet Melissa now.
“I’ll go up and see her as soon as I can, and tell her,” Hattie promised. Melissa still had no idea that Hattie had been to Dublin, and Saint Blaise’s, and had found Michaela Ashley. Hattie was smiling from ear to ear and Michaela said she had cried when she read the results. Her mother was still on location, but she had decided that she wasn’t going to tell her until after she met Melissa, so she could be more reassuring about her, and assure her mother that Melissa was a decent person. “I’ll try to go up this weekend, if I’m not working. And if I am, I’ll try to trade my shifts. I can go up and back in a day if I have to. I did last time.”