Ocracoke Early March 2020
On the ferry to Ocracoke, I tried to imagine the fear Maggie felt when
she first arrived on the island so long ago. Even for me, there was a sense of trepidation, that I was being drawn into the unknown. Maggie had described the drive from Morehead City to Cedar Island, where the ferry launched, but her description didn’t quite capture the remoteness I felt as I passed the occasional lonely farmhouse or isolated mobile home. Nor was the landscape anything like Indiana’s. Though misty, the world was lush and green, clumps of Spanish moss hanging from branches that had twisted and gnarled in the unceasing coastal winds. It was cold, the early-morning sky white across the horizon, and the gray waters of the Pamlico Sound seemed to begrudge the passage of any boat attempting the crossing. Even with Abigail beside me, it was easy to understand Maggie’s use of the word marooned. As I watched the village of Ocracoke grow larger on the horizon, it felt like a mirage that might evaporate. Before my trip here, I’d read that Hurricane Dorian had ravaged the town back in September and caused catastrophic flooding; when I’d seen the news photographs, I wondered how long it would take to rebuild or repair. Of course, I was reminded of Maggie and the storm she’d experienced, but then lately, most of my thoughts had been preoccupied with her.
On my eighth birthday, my parents told me that I was adopted. They explained that God had somehow found a way for us to become a family, and they wanted me to know they loved me so much that their hearts sometimes felt like bursting. I was old enough to understand what adoption meant but too young to really question them about the details. Nor did it really matter to me; they were my parents and I was their son. Unlike some
children, I didn’t have much curiosity about my biological parents; except in rare instances, I hardly ever thought about being adopted at all.
At fourteen, though, I was in an accident. I was goofing around with a friend in a barn—his family owned a farm—and I cut myself on a scythe that I probably shouldn’t have touched in the first place. I happened to nick an artery so there was a lot of blood and by the time I reached the hospital, my face was almost gray. The artery was stitched and I was given blood; it turned out that I was AB-negative, and obviously, neither of my parents had the same blood type. The good news is that I was out of the hospital by the following morning and pretty much back to normal soon after. But for the first time, I began to wonder about my birth parents. Because my blood type was relatively rare, I occasionally wondered if my mother’s and father’s were rare as well. I also wondered if there were any other genetic issues of which I should be aware.
Another four years passed before I brought up the subject of my adoption with my parents. I was afraid of hurting their feelings; only in retrospect did I realize they had been expecting the conversation ever since they’d sat me down on my birthday so long ago. They explained to me that the adoption had been closed, that court orders were probably necessary to open the files, and it was unclear whether I would prevail if I went that route. I might, for instance, be able to learn necessary health information, but nothing more unless the birth mother was willing to allow the records to be unsealed. Some states have a registry for just such a thing—those who are adopted and those who offered a child for adoption can both agree that they’d like the records to be unsealed—but I couldn’t find evidence of such an option in North Carolina, nor did I know if my birth mother had sought one out. I assumed I was at a dead end, but my parents were able to provide enough information to help me with the search.
They’d learned several facts from the agency: that the girl was Catholic and the family didn’t believe in abortion, that she was healthy and under a physician’s care, that she was doing her schoolwork remotely, and that she was sixteen when she delivered. They also knew she was from Seattle. Because I was born in Morehead City, the adoption had been more complex than I’d realized. To adopt me, my parents had to move to North Carolina in the months preceding my birth in order to establish state residency. That knowledge wasn’t important to learning Maggie’s identity, but it underscored how desperate they’d been to have a child and how much they
—like Maggie—had been willing to sacrifice in order to give me a wonderful home.
They shouldn’t have known Maggie’s name, but they did, partly by circumstance, partly by Maggie’s design. In the hospital, one had to pass through the maternity ward to reach the nursery, and it had been a quiet night at the hospital when I was born. When my parents arrived, only two of the maternity rooms were occupied, and one of those hosted a Black family with four other children. The other room, however, bore the name M. Dawes on a small placard near the door. In the nursery, they were also given the teddy bear, which had the name Maggie scrawled on the bottom of its foot, and all at once, they pieced together the name of the mother. It was something neither of my parents would ever forget, although they claimed never to have discussed it again, until they finally had the conversation with me.
My first thought was the same as probably everyone my age: Google. I typed in Maggie Dawes and Seattle and up popped a biography of a well- known photographer. Obviously, I couldn’t be certain then that she was my mother, and I scoured the rest of her photography website without luck. There were no references to North Carolina, no references to marriage or children, and it was clear that she now lived in New York. In her photograph, she looked too young to be my mother, but I had no idea when the portrait had been taken. As long as she hadn’t been married—and taken her husband’s name—I couldn’t rule her out.
There were links on her website that connected to her YouTube channels and I ended up watching a number of her videos, a habit I continued even while in college. Though most of the technical information in her videos was incomprehensible to me, there was something captivating about her. I eventually uncovered another clue. In the background of the work studio in her apartment hung a photograph of a lighthouse. In one of her videos, she even referenced it, noting that it was the photograph that first inspired her interest in the profession back when she was a teenager. I froze the video and took a picture, then Googled images of North Carolina lighthouses. It took less than a minute to figure out that the one on Maggie’s wall was located in Ocracoke. The nearest hospital, I also learned, was in Morehead City.
Though my heart skipped a beat, I knew it still wasn’t enough to be absolutely certain. It wasn’t until three and a half years ago, when Maggie
first posted that she had cancer, that I became convinced. In that video, she noted that she was thirty-six, which also meant that she’d been sixteen years old in 1996.
The name and age were right. She was from Seattle and had been in North Carolina as a teenager, and Ocracoke seemed to fit as well. And, when I looked hard enough, I thought I even noted a resemblance between us, though I admit that might have been just my imagination.
But here was the thing: while I thought I wanted to meet her, I didn’t know if she wanted to meet me. I wasn’t sure what to do and I prayed for guidance. I also began to watch her videos obsessively—all of them— especially the ones about her illness. Oddly, when discussing cancer on camera, she radiated a kind of offbeat charisma; she was honest and brave and frightened, optimistic and darkly funny, and like a lot of people, I felt compelled to keep watching. And the more I watched, the surer I was that I wanted to meet her. In no small way, it felt as though she’d become something akin to a friend. I also knew, based on her videos and my own research, that remission was unlikely, which meant I was running out of time.
By then, I’d graduated from college and had begun working at my dad’s church; I’d also made the decision to further my education, which meant taking the GRE and applying to graduate schools. I was fortunate enough to be accepted at three terrific institutions, but because of Abigail, the University of Chicago was the obvious choice. My intention was to enroll in September of 2019, like Abigail, but a visit to my parents changed all that. While I was there, they asked me to move some boxes into storage; after hauling them to the attic, I came across another box. It was labeled MARK’S ROOM, and curious, I lifted the lid. There I found some trophies and a baseball mitt, folders filled with old schoolwork, hockey gloves, and numerous other keepsakes that my mom hadn’t had the heart to throw out. In that box, alongside those items, was Maggie-bear, the stuffed animal that shared my bed until I was nine or ten years old.
The sight of the bear, and Maggie’s name, made me realize again that it was time to make a decision about what I really wanted to do.
I could do nothing, obviously. Another option was to surprise her in New York with the information, perhaps have lunch together, and then return to Indiana. That’s what I assume many people might have done, but it struck me as unfair to her, given what she was already living through, since
I still had no idea whether she even wanted to meet the son she’d long ago given up for adoption. Over time, I began to consider a third option: perhaps I could fly to New York to meet her, without informing her who I was.
In the end, after much prayer, I chose the third option. I initially visited the gallery in early February, tagging along with a group from out of state. Maggie wasn’t there, and Luanne—trying to distinguish between buyers and tourists—barely noticed me. When I stopped by the gallery again the following day, the crowds were even larger; Luanne looked harried and barely able to keep up. Maggie was absent again, but it slowly began to dawn on me that beyond having a chance to meet Maggie, I might be able to help her at the gallery. The more I thought about it, the more the idea took hold. I told myself that if I eventually had the sense that she wanted to know who I was, I would reveal the truth.
It was a complicated matter, though. If I received a job offer—and I didn’t even know whether a job was available at that time—I would have to defer graduate school for a year, and though I assumed Abigail would accept my decision, she likely wouldn’t be happy about it. More importantly, I needed my parents to understand. I didn’t want them to think that I was somehow trying to replace them or didn’t appreciate all they had done for me. I needed them to know that I would always consider them my parents. When I returned home, I told them what I’d been considering. I also showed them a number of Maggie’s videos about her battle with cancer, and in the end, I think that’s what did it. They, like me, knew I was running out of time. As for Abigail, she was more understanding than I expected, despite the wrench it threw in our longstanding plans. I packed my bags and returned to New York, unsure how long I would stay and wondering whether it would work out. I learned everything I could about Trinity’s and Maggie’s work, and eventually brought my résumé to the gallery.
Sitting across from Maggie during my interview was the most surreal moment of my life.
* * *
Once I was hired, I found a permanent place to live and deferred graduate school, but I’ll admit there were times when I wondered whether I’d made a mistake. In my first few months, I barely saw Maggie, and when we did cross paths, our interaction was limited. In the autumn we began to
spend more time together, but Luanne was often with us. Strangely, though I’d wanted to work in the gallery for personal reasons, I discovered that I had an aptitude for the job and eventually came to enjoy it. As for my parents, my dad chose to refer to my work as “a noble service”; my mom simply said she was proud of me. I think they anticipated that I wouldn’t be home for Christmas, which was why my dad arranged the trip to the Holy Land with members of the church. While it had always been a dream of theirs to go, I think there was a part of them that didn’t want to be at home during the holidays if their only child wasn’t around. I tried to remind them frequently of my love for them, and how much I’d always cherish them as the only parents I ever knew or wanted.
* * *
After Maggie opened her gift, she asked me countless questions—how I’d found her, details about my life and my parents. She also asked me whether I wanted to meet my biological father. She might, she speculated, be able to offer enough information to get me started on a search, if that’s what I wanted. Though my curiosity had originally been piqued because of my rare-ish blood type, I realized that finding J didn’t interest me in the slightest. Meeting and getting to know Maggie had been more than enough, but I was nonetheless touched by her offer.
In time, Maggie grew so exhausted that I accompanied her on her cab ride home. After helping her inside, I didn’t hear from her again until midafternoon. We spent the rest of Christmas Day together at her apartment, and I finally got to see the photo of the lighthouse firsthand.
“This photo changed both our lives,” she mused out loud. I could only agree.
But in the days and weeks after Christmas, I realized that Maggie didn’t really know how to be my mother and I didn’t know how to be her son, so for the most part we simply became closer friends. Though I’d called her Mom when I gave her the teddy bear, I reverted to Maggie after that, which felt more comfortable to both of us. She was nonetheless thrilled about meeting Abigail, and the three of us had dinner together twice while she was in town. They got along well, but when Abigail enveloped Maggie in a goodbye hug, I noted that Maggie was growing smaller with each passing day, the cancer stealing away her substance and heft.
Right before the new year, Maggie posted the video that updated her prognosis, and then contacted her family. As she’d anticipated, her mom
pleaded with Maggie to return to Seattle, but Maggie was unequivocal about her intentions.
Once Luanne returned from Maui, Maggie filled her in regarding both her prognosis and my identity. Luanne, who insisted she’d known something was up all along, informed Maggie that we needed to spend as much time together as possible, so she promptly scheduled my vacation. As the new manager—both Maggie and Trinity agreed she was the obvious choice—it was her decision, and it allowed Maggie and me the time we needed to fill in any blanks we hadn’t yet shared about our lives.
My parents came to New York in the third week of January. Maggie wasn’t bedridden yet, and she asked to speak to the two of them privately as she sat on the couch in her living room. Afterward, I asked my parents what they’d discussed.
“She wanted to thank us for adopting you,” my mom said with barely restrained emotion. “She said that she felt blessed.” My mom, toughened by the confessions associated with her profession, seldom cried, but in that instant she was overcome, her eyes brimming with tears. “She wanted to tell us that we were wonderful parents, and that she thought our son was extraordinary.”
When my mom leaned in to hug me, I knew what had touched her most was that Maggie had referred to me as their son. For my parents, my decision to come to New York had been more difficult than I’d realized, and I wondered how much secret turmoil I’d caused them.
“I’m glad you were able to meet her,” my mom murmured, still holding me tight.
“Me too, Mom.”
* * *
After my parents’ visit, Maggie never made it to the gallery again, nor was she able to leave her apartment. Her pain medication had been increased, administered by a nurse who came by three times a day. She sometimes slept up to twenty hours at a stretch. I sat with her during many of those hours, holding her hand. She lost even more weight and her breathing was ragged, a wheeze that was painful to listen to. By the first week of February she was no longer able to rise from her bed, but in the moments she was awake, she still found a way to smile. Usually, I did most of the talking—it was too much effort on her part—but every now and then, she would tell me something I didn’t know about her.
“Do you remember when I told you that I wanted a different ending to the story of Bryce and me?”
“Of course,” I said.
She gazed up at me, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. “With you, I got the ending that I wanted.”
* * *
Maggie’s parents came to stay in February, settling in at a boutique hotel not far from Maggie’s apartment. Like me, her mom and dad simply wanted to be close to her. Her dad remained quiet, deferring to his wife; most of the time, he sat in the living room with the television tuned to ESPN. Maggie’s mom occupied the chair near the bed and wrung her hands compulsively; whenever the nurse arrived, she demanded explanations for every adjustment to Maggie’s pain medicine, as well as other aspects of her care. When Maggie was awake, her mom’s constant refrain was that what was happening wasn’t fair, and she repeatedly reminded Maggie to pray. She insisted the oncologists in Seattle might have been able to do more and that Maggie should have listened to her; she knew someone who knew someone who knew someone else who also had stage IV melanoma but was still in remission after six years. She sometimes lamented the fact that Maggie was alone and had never gotten married. Maggie, for her part, endured her mother’s anxious nattering patiently; it was nothing she hadn’t heard her entire life. When Maggie also thanked her parents and told them that she loved them, her mom seemed nonplussed that Maggie felt she’d needed to say those words at all. Of course you love me! I could picture her thinking. Look at all I’ve done for you, despite the choices you made in your life! It was easy to understand why Maggie found her parents draining. Her parents’ relationship with me was more complicated. For nearly a quarter of a century, they’d been able to pretend that Maggie had never been pregnant at all. They treated me warily, like a dog that might bite, and kept both physical and emotional distance. They asked me little about my life but overheard quite a bit when Maggie and I were talking, since her mom tended to hover whenever Maggie was awake. When Maggie asked to speak to me alone, Mrs. Dawes always left the room in a huff, which only made
Maggie roll her eyes.
Because her children were young, it was harder for Morgan to visit, but she made it out on two separate weekends. On her second visit in February, Maggie and Morgan spoke for twenty minutes. After Morgan left, Maggie
briefed me on their conversation, cracking a wry smile despite her now- constant pain.
“She said that she’d always been jealous of the freedom and excitement of my life.” Maggie gave a weak laugh. “Can you believe that?”
“Absolutely.”
“She even claimed that she often wished we could trade places.”
“I’m glad the two of you were able to talk,” I said, squeezing her birdlike hand.
“You know what’s craziest, though?” I raised an eyebrow.
“She said it was hard for her growing up because our parents always favored me!”
I had to laugh. “She doesn’t really believe that, does she?” “I think she does.”
“How could she?”
“Because,” Maggie said, “she’s more like my mom than she realizes.”
* * *
Other friends and acquaintances visited Maggie in the final weeks of her life. Luanne and Trinity came by regularly, and she gave them both the same gift she’d given me. Four different photo editors also swung by, along with her printer and someone from the lab, and during these visits I heard more stories about her adventures. Her first boss in New York and two former assistants made appearances, along with Maggie’s accountant and even her landlord. For me, though, all of those visits were painful to watch. I could see her friends’ sadness as they entered the room, could sense their fear of saying the wrong thing as they approached the bed. Maggie had a way of making all of them feel welcome, and she went out of her way to tell them how much they’d meant to her. To each of them, she introduced me as her son.
Somehow, in the few periods I wasn’t around her apartment, she also made arrangements for a gift for Abigail and me. Abigail had flown out again in the middle of February, and as we sat on the bed, Maggie said that she’d prepaid for a safari to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Kenya for Abigail and me, a trip that would last more than three weeks. Both of us insisted it was too much, but she waved off our concerns.
“It’s the very least I can do.”
We both hugged and kissed and thanked her, and she squeezed Abigail’s hand. When we asked her what we might expect to see, she regaled us with stories of exotic animals and camps located in the wilderness, and as she spoke, there were moments when she seemed exactly like her old self.
Still, as the month wore on, there were times when her illness was unbearable for me, and I’d need to leave the apartment and go for a walk to clear my head. As grateful as I was to get to know her, part of me felt greedy for more. I wanted to show her around my hometown in Indiana; I wanted to dance with her at my wedding to Abigail. I wanted a photograph of her holding my son or daughter, joy shining in her eyes. I hadn’t known her long, but at some level I felt as though I knew her as intimately as I knew Abigail or my parents. I wanted more time with her, more years, and in the stretches when she slept, I sometimes broke down and wept.
Maggie must have sensed my grief. When she woke, she offered a tender smile.
“This is hard for you,” she croaked out.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” I admitted. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Do you remember what I said to Bryce about that? Not wanting to lose someone has its roots in fear.”
I knew she was right, but I wasn’t willing to lie to her. “I am afraid.”
“I know you are.” She reached for my hand; hers was covered in bruises. “But never forget that love is always stronger than fear. Love saved me, and I know it will save you, too.”
They were her very last words.
* * *
Maggie passed away later that night, near the end of February. For her parents’ sake, she’d arranged for a service to be held at a nearby Catholic church, even though she’d insisted on being cremated. She met the priest only once before she passed, and per her instructions, he kept the service brief. I delivered a short eulogy, though my legs seemed so weak that I felt like I would topple over. For the music, she chose “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” from the movie Dirty Dancing. Her parents didn’t understand the choice, but I did, and as the song played, I tried to picture Bryce and Maggie sitting on the couch together on one of her final nights in Ocracoke.
I knew what Bryce looked like, just as I knew how Maggie had looked as a teenager. Before she passed, she’d given me the photographs that had
been taken so long ago. I saw Bryce holding the plywood as he was about to board up a window; I saw Maggie kissing Daisy’s nose. She wanted me to have them because she thought that I, more than anyone, would appreciate how precious they were to her.
Strangely, they were almost as precious to me.
* * *
Abigail and I arrived in Ocracoke on the morning ferry, and after getting directions, we rented a golf cart and visited some of the places Maggie had described in her story. We saw the lighthouse and the British Cemetery; we drove past fishing boats in the harbor and the school that neither Maggie nor Bryce had attended. After asking around, I even found the site of the shop where Linda and Gwen once made biscuits; it now sold tourist trinkets. I didn’t know where either Linda or Bryce had lived, but I drove every street and knew I must have passed by both of their houses at least once.
Abigail and I had lunch at Howard’s Pub, then eventually made our way to the beach. In my arms, I carried an urn containing some of Maggie’s ashes; in my pocket was a letter that Maggie had written to me. Most of her remains, in another urn, were with her parents in Seattle. Before she’d passed away, Maggie had asked me if I would be willing to do her a favor, and there was no way I could say no.
Abigail and I walked down the length of the beach; I thought of the many times Maggie and Bryce had been there together. Her description had been accurate; it was austere and undeveloped, a stretch of shore untouched by modernity. Abigail held my hand, and after a while, I brought us to a halt. Though there was no way to be certain, I wanted to pick a place where Bryce and Maggie might have had their first date, a place that somehow felt right to me.
I handed the urn to Abigail and pulled the letter from my pocket. I had no idea when she’d written it; all I knew for sure was that it was on the small table beside her bed when she’d passed away. On the outside of the envelope she had scrawled instructions, asking me to read it when I was in Ocracoke.
Opening the flap, I pulled out the letter. It wasn’t long, though the writing was scratchy and sometimes difficult to decipher, a consequence of medication and weakness. I felt something else fall out as well, catching it
in my hand just in time—yet another gift to me. I took a deep breath and began to read.
Dear Mark,
First, I want to thank you for finding me, for becoming my wish somehow made true.
I want you to know how special you are to me, how proud I am of you, and that I love you. I’ve told you all of these things before, but you must know that you’ve given me one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever received. Please thank your parents and Abigail for me again, for allowing you the time we needed to get to know, and love, each other. They, like you, are extraordinary.
These ashes represent what’s left of my heart. Symbolically, anyway. For reasons I don’t have to explain to you, I want them spread in Ocracoke. My heart, after all, has always remained there. And, I’ve come to believe, Ocracoke is an enchanted place, where the impossible sometimes becomes real.
There’s something more I’ve been longing to tell you, though I know it will seem crazy at first. (Maybe I am crazy at the present time; cancer and drugs wreak havoc on my thoughts.) Yet I do believe what I’m about to tell you, no matter how far-fetched it sounds, because it’s the only thing that seems intuitively true right now.
You remind me of Bryce in more ways than you might realize. In your nature and your gentleness, in your empathy and charm. You bear a resemblance to him, and—perhaps because you both share an athletic background—you move with the same fluid grace. Like Bryce, you are mature beyond your years, and as our relationship has deepened, these similarities have become even more apparent to me.
This is what I’ve chosen to believe: somehow, through me, Bryce became part of you. When he held me in his arms, you absorbed a piece of him; when we spent our sweetest days together in Ocracoke, you somehow inherited his unique qualities. You are, then, a child of both of us. I know this might seem impossible, but I choose to believe that the love Bryce and I shared played a role in shaping the remarkable young man I’ve come to know and love. To me, there is no other explanation.
Thank you for finding me, my son. I love you. Maggie
After finishing the letter, I slid it back into the envelope and examined the necklace she had enclosed. She had shown it to me before, and on the back of the seashell pendant were the words Ocracoke Memories. The pendant felt oddly heavy, as though it held their entire relationship, a lifetime of love condensed into a few short months.
When I was ready, I placed the pendant and letter back into my pocket and gently took the urn from Abigail. The tide was going out, moving in the same direction as the wind. I stepped into the damp sand, my feet sinking slightly, and thought about Maggie on the ferry, meeting Bryce for the first time. The waves were steady and rhythmic, and the ocean stretched toward the horizon. Its vastness felt incomprehensible, even as I imagined lighted kites floating in the nighttime sky. Above me, the sun was at half-mast, and I knew darkness was coming early. In the distance, a lone truck was parked on the sand. A pelican skimmed the breakers. I closed my eyes and saw Maggie standing in a darkroom next to Bryce or studying at a battered kitchen table. I imagined a kiss when, at least for a moment, everything in Maggie’s world seemed perfect.
Now Bryce and Maggie were both gone, and an overwhelming sadness washed over me. I twisted the lid of the urn, opening it, and tipped it, allowing the ashes to scatter with the outgoing tide. I stood still, recalling flashes of The Nutcracker, ice skating, and decorating a Christmas tree before I swiped at unbidden tears. I remembered her rapt expression when she lifted Maggie-bear from the box and knew I would always believe that love was stronger than fear.
Taking a deep breath, I finally turned and walked slowly toward Abigail. I kissed her gently, clasping her hand in mine, and together, we walked in silence back up the beach.
