Of all the places Zodwa might have expected to find comfort, it would never have been in this place with this woman. She nods but the tears undermine her answer.

“I’ll look at our records but I don’t recall a newborn being brought in then. I remember the babies, you see.”

And suddenly Zodwa understands that what she mistook for lack of feeling was this woman’s defense mechanism against feeling too much.

“Let me go see.” The woman leaves Zodwa for ten minutes and when she returns, she shakes her head. “There were older babies but no newborn males brought in. Have you checked the orphanages near the camp?”

“No.”

“Sometimes babies are taken there or they get abandoned and end up there. It’s worth a try.”

Zodwa closes her eyes and feels a spark of hope she never knew she was so desperately seeking.

Is it possible that Leleti took her baby to such a place? That she took her grandson away from her daughter because she thought he stood a better chance raised by strangers than by Zodwa?

I took him . . . He is gone . . . I did it for you and for him.

Zodwa grabs the woman’s hand, squeezing it hard before turning away. Hope is a trail of bread crumbs that she will follow.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Delilah

4 June 1994

Johannesburg General Hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa

The nurse sounded panicked when she heard my voice. “Delilah? I didn’t think you were going to call today.”

I called the ICU every day at 7:00 a.m. but had slept in late that morning since I’d been doing a lot of worrying about things I couldn’t control: Daniel’s condition; the baby, whose homecoming was being expedited since the orphanage was so overcrowded; and the constant hovering threat of the Coetzee family.

They’d upped their intimidation tactics by leaving poisoned wild animals on our doorstep every few days, and the last one had been eviscerated, its innards trailing down the stairs. I was edgy all the time and the slightest noise outside had me up and peering through the curtains. Exhausted from the lack of rest, I’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep in the predawn hours, only waking just before nine.

“Rachel? What’s wrong? What’s happened?” I’d been on a first-name basis with the ICU nurses for a while.

“It’s Daniel,” she said. “His organs all started shutting down last night. They’re taking him off life support at eleven o’clock. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m on my way.”

Like during my first sojourn from the hospital to the farm, I didn’t remember anything of the trip back beyond whispering, “Please, please, please, please.” I repeated the entreaty over and over, the litany the closest I’d come to prayer in forty years.