The Memory Keeper's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

as if he were walking in a dream. The nurse studied him with her blue unreadable eyes. He returned her gaze, unflinching, and at last she nodded, a movement so slight as to be almost imperceptible.
    "The snow," she murmured, looking down.
    But by midmorning the storm had begun to abate, and the distant sounds of plows grated through the still air. He watched from the upstairs window as the nurse knocked snow from her powder-blue car and drove off into the soft white world. The baby was hidden, asleep in a box lined with blankets, on the seat beside her. The doctor watched her turn left onto the street and disappear. Then he went back and sat with his family.
    His wife slept, her gold hair splayed across the pillow. Now and then the doctor dozed. Awake, he gazed into the empty parking lot, watching smoke rise from the chimneys across the street, preparing the words he would say. That it was no one's fault, that their daughter would be in good hands, with others like herself, with ceaseless care. That it would be best this way for them all.
    In the late morning, when the snow had stopped for good, his son cried out in hunger, and his wife woke up.
    "Where's the baby?" she said, rising up on her elbows, pushing her hair from her face. He was holding their son, warm and light, and he sat down beside her, settling the baby in her arms.
    "Hello, my sweet," he said. "Look at our beautiful son. You were very brave."
    She kissed the baby's forehead, then undid her robe and put him to her breast. His son latched on at once, and his wife looked up and smiled. He took her free hand, remembering how hard she had held onto him, imprinting the bones of her fingers on his flesh. He remembered how much he had wanted to protect her.
    "Is everything all right?" she asked. "Darling? What is it?"
    "We had twins," he told her slowly, thinking of the shocks of dark hair, the slippery bodies moving in his hands. Tears rose in his eyes. "One of each."
    "Oh," she said. "A little girl too? Phoebe and Paul. But where is she?"
    Her fingers were so slight, he thought, like the bones of a little bird.
    "My darling," he began. His voice broke, and the words he had rehearsed so carefully were gone. He closed his eyes, and when he could speak again more words came, unplanned.
    "Oh, my love," he said. "I am so sorry. Our little daughter died as she was born."

Chapter 2 March 1964 Part II
    AROLINE GILL WADED CAREFULLY, AWKWARDLY, ACROSS't the parking lot. Snow reached her calves; in places, her knees. She carried the baby, swathed in blankets, in a cardboard box once used to deliver samples of infant formula to the office. It was stamped with red letters and cherubic infant faces, and the flaps lifted and fell with every step. There was an unnatural welling quiet in the nearly empty lot, a silence that seemed to originate from the cold itself, to expand in the air and flow outward like ripples from a stone thrown in water. Snow billowed, stinging her face, when she opened the car door. Instinctively, protectively, she curved herself around the box and wedged it into the backseat, where the pink blankets fell softly against the white vinyl upholstery. The baby slept, a fierce, intent, newborn sleep, its face clenched, its eyes only slits, the nose and chin mere bumps. You wouldn't know, Caroline thought. If you didn't know, you wouldn't. Caroline had given her an eight on the Apgar.
    The city streets were badly plowed and difficult to navigate. Twice the car slid, and twice Caroline almost turned back. The interstate was clearer, however, and once Caroline got on it she made steady time, traveling through the industrial outskirts of
    Lexington and into the rolling country of the horse farms. Here, miles of white fences made brisk shadows against the snow and horses stood darkly in the fields. The low sky was alive with fat gray clouds. Caroline turned on the radio, searched through the static for a station, turned it off. The world rushed by, ordinary and