Chapter 43: Stillborn
Summary
- Elizabeth is surprised by Miss Parker's job offer and finds out that Parker knows about her daughter Madeline's birth circumstances.
- Wilson, a representative of the Parker Foundation, explains their secular mission supporting critical scientific research, hinting that they are interested in both Elizabeth's and Calvin Evans's work.
- Wilson's mention of orphanages triggers Elizabeth's memory of a man with shiny cuff links who visited the boys home where Calvin once lived.
- Elizabeth temporarily turns "to stone" when Wilson casually talks about upgrading equipment, implying that he may be connected to the man in Calvin's past.
- She interrogates Wilson about the foundation's funding, specifically regarding the Catholic orphanage in Sioux City, leading to an awkward pause in the conversation.
- Elizabeth starts to suspect that the job offer is a ruse to acquire Calvin's scientific work posthumously.
- After a tense exchange, Parker asks Wilson to leave so she can speak to Elizabeth privately.
- Elizabeth confronts Parker about her true intentions, questioning her relationship with Wilson and the foundation's practices.
- Parker reveals the biases and constraints she faces as a woman in control of a foundation but still needing Wilson, a man, to cosign financial decisions.
- Elizabeth accuses Parker of being interested only in Calvin's leftover work ("the boxes"), not in hiring her.
- Parker initially seems confused by Elizabeth's accusations but slowly reveals her own painful story.
- Avery Parker shares a personal story of a young girl who was sent to a Catholic home for unwed mothers and was told her baby was stillborn, only to discover years later that her child had been put up for adoption and ended up in an orphanage in Iowa.
- It's revealed that Avery Parker is Calvin Evans's biological mother and that she has spent years searching for him.
- The chapter ends with Avery Parker, in tears, asking Elizabeth for permission to meet her granddaughter — Calvin's daughter.