Finding Ashley by Danielle Steel (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

around the convent, to get a better feel of it in the daylight. It was just as grim and depressing as it was at night. She left a note for the mother superior, thanking her for allowing her to stay, with a small donation for the convent. She picked up her bag then, and called for a taxi to take her to the bus terminal. She caught a bus to Dublin, and checked in to a small hotel in time to meet Fiona Eckles at the Harding Hotel for a drink. She couldn’t wait to meet her now and hear what she had to say. She felt mildly guilty for staying at a hotel, but didn’t have time to contact a convent, despite her promise to Mother Elizabeth.

Hattie recognized the woman easily from the photograph on the book. Fiona Eckles had short snowy white hair and bright blue eyes. She had a ready smile and laugh lines around her eyes. She looked like a happy person, not a tortured soul, and like a well-dressed grandmother in a navy linen suit. She had a trim figure. Hattie thought she might be seventy by then, and nothing about her style or demeanor suggested that she’d ever been a nun. She could have been a banker or an executive, and had been a college professor now for many years. She wrote nonfiction, and had published a total of four controversial books, the most recent one about wayward priests. It had been a bestseller. The writing style was simple, clear, and direct.

“I hope I can help you,” Fiona Eckles said kindly when they sat down, “but I doubt I can. I delivered hundreds of babies, maybe a thousand, while I was at Saint Blaise’s. The uncomplicated ones. The high-risk cases went to the hospital, and were seen by a doctor. And I had very little contact with the girls until they were in labor, and I knew nothing at all about the adopting parents, and never met them. Except the movie stars of course. There were a number of those. We all recognized them, and it always provided a buzz around the place when one of them showed up. We knew who they were even when they used false names.”

“My sister was there in 1988,” Hattie said, after their initial introductions, and they each ordered a glass of wine.

“I was there then, delivering babies night and day.”

“My sister calls it a baby mill.”

“She isn’t wrong,” Fiona Eckles said with a small sigh. “In the end, I thought that too. They brought them in, they made them work and go to school, delivered their babies, and charged their parents a hefty fee for keeping the girls there for several months. Then they took their babies, collected a huge fee from the adopting parents, for the Church of course, and sent the girls home two weeks after they delivered as though nothing had happened. No therapy, no counseling, just in the stirrups and out the door, while a lot of money changed hands, from wealthy people who couldn’t have babies of their own. I guess it suited everyone’s needs at the time. But I know from talking to them when they were in labor that a lot of those girls didn’t want to give their babies up, but they had no other choice. Their parents wouldn’t let them come home until they did. One girl went on a hunger strike and nearly died, and refused to sign the papers. She did in the end, though. They all did. It broke my heart to see the look on their faces when we took the babies away minutes after we delivered them. I tried to at least let the girls see them, and hold them when I could get away with it. Our orders were to take the babies away immediately, with no contact between mother and child, after everything they’d been through. We practiced natural childbirth, so there was less liability for us. The adoptive parents were usually waiting in the nursery. That was the end of it for the girls from that point on. They had no contact with their babies, no chance to hold them or say goodbye. It was very traumatic for most of the girls. All of them probably.

“After a while, I just couldn’t do it, it was too painful to watch, worse than labor and delivery. I let the nursing nuns take the babies from them. I couldn’t. I gave up midwifery and the Church when I left. In a way, it destroyed me too. I recovered, but it took a long time, and I never really forgave myself for being part of it. We had very strict orders about our protocols. That’s why I wrote the book. I wanted to make people aware, and maybe to get absolution. The Church claimed we were providing a noble service, but they never admitted how much money they made. I think we’d be even more horrified if we knew how much they made in all those years.”

“Were there local girls there too?” Hattie asked her.

“Very few. Most of their parents couldn’t afford it. There were a few socialites and aristocrats from London, the occasional French girl, or Spaniard or Italian, but mainly Americans. They could pay more to send their daughters away, and the Americans who adopted the babies liked adopting from other Americans. It was mainly a business for the Church.”

“Why did they burn the records?” Hattie asked in a sad voice. She hated to think of what her sister had been through.

“Why do you think? So no one could be contacted, no one would talk. The girls’ parents didn’t want anyone to know their daughters had given birth out of wedlock. And a lot of the adopting parents often pretended the babies were their own. They disappeared for six months, and then suddenly reappeared with a baby. Burning the records protected everyone, including the Church for what they’d made. They did it