Once she had planned to make a necklace for Mellie—a beautiful necklace that would reach to her waist and sparkle with all the colors of the sea. She had wanted to give it to her for her fourteenth birthday. But then Brit had not returned, and Karin’s world fell apart, and Mellie was too old for handmade junk anyway, even though she would have pretended it was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen just because Karin had made it and Mellie felt sorry for her.
Nine-ten, eleven-twelve.
Karin wondered if Jess would have ever expected that a daughter of hers would wear glass instead of diamonds, pieces of old bottles instead of trinkets from Tiffany’s.
Sighing, she dumped the rest of the glass on the bed and picked up the cigar box that held all that she needed—those things that she’d read dozens of times since she’d found them in the secret compartment of the old rolltop desk, buried away for what was surely meant to be forever, safe from Karin’s wandering eyes.
They would have been, too, if she’d not been searching for a place for her sea glass, a place to hide her treasures away from the others, where only she would know where they were in case he came back to her. Then she could
show him how much she had found, and they could save them together, a symbol of their love.
Just because he hadn’t come back did not mean he wouldn’t.
But he hadn’t returned yet, and she’d found these instead. And now she knew them by heart.
“Dear Richard.” She closed her eyes as she softly recited the words that had been written on thin, scented paper. “I miss you so much. Why haven’t you come for me? Why haven’t you come to take me away, so we can be a family with our baby?”
Karin clutched the cigar box closer to her chest. “The baby kicked inside me today. Just a little kick, but I’m sure that was it. Oh, Richard, it’s so exciting! And yet I’m so frightened, because you’re not here and I haven’t heard anything and I hope you’re all right.”
She smiled and opened her eyes. Then she lifted the lid of the box and peered inside at the bundle of letters tied up in a ribbon.
“Your darling Richard survived,” Karin said into the box. “Soon we’ll know if he’ll think it was worth it.”
She picked up the sea glass again and dropped them to the floor. One-two, three-four.
Lisa wanted to talk to Ginny, mother-and-daughter, just the two of them. That had been apparent when Lisa said she wanted to make like a tourist and get away, away from the confines of the inn, away from Jess and Phillip and Jess’s problems trying to find her daughter—the things that were keeping Ginny sane right now, were deflecting the pain from the fact that rotten son of a bitch Brad had told Lisa what she had done.
She hadn’t wanted to come, but Lisa had mentioned it at breakfast and Dick had overheard and quickly produced a map just like the one Ginny had stolen off the table the other day but had to pretend she’d never seen.
“It’s the island’s biggest attraction,” Dick had said. “Not to mention the purple and blue and pink shacks where the Indians sell their souvenirs.”
So here they were, driving on a winding, narrow road where the trees on the sides were old and arthritic-looking and arched their gnarly limbs across the pavement, creating a leafy-green tunnel that was supposedly aimed toward a place called Gay Head that seemed to take as long to get to as Boston. Other than saying things like “Gee, isn’t this pretty” and “Wow, it seems so remote,” Lisa didn’t have much to say after all.
Finally, the trees began to thin, the road began to straighten, and they could see water off to the left.
“Look,” Lisa said, pointing ahead, “a lighthouse.”
It was brick and it was ancient and it was just a lighthouse stuck up on a cliff. Nothing spectacular. Not worth the trip.
But Ginny said, “Yeah, wow,” to keep Lisa happy. Then she drove up the hill and spotted the purple and blue and pink shacks that were littered with hand-painted signs that read
T-Shirts
, and
Jewelry
, and
Lobster Rolls
, and pulled into a parking space behind two giant tourist buses with Pennsylvania plates that must have been stuffed onto the ferry the way she now was into her jeans. All things considered, she was glad she had flown.
They got out of the car and climbed the hill along with the streams of camera-clad, T-shirted tourists. By the time they reached the top, Ginny was puffing and wishing she hadn’t taken Dick Bradley’s advice.
“Oh, wow,” Lisa said, looking off to the right. “This is incredible.”
Ginny stopped long enough to catch her breath and follow Lisa’s gaze to the rust-colored cliffs that looked as if they’d been finger-painted with browns and coppers and hints of gold. She wondered if the Indians had done it as part of their masterful art of drumming up tourist dollars.
“Look!” Lisa exclaimed, like a ten-year-old kid. “A telescope!
Do you have a quarter?” Ginny dug one from the bottom of her purse and handed it to her daughter, who darted toward a pole that had an instrument on top with two black eyeholes and looked more like the head of an alien than a telescope.
With an audible sigh, Ginny crossed the fenced landing and stood next to Lisa.
“Those are the Elizabeth Islands,” Lisa said, her eyes fixed through the alien eyes, her finger pointing past the cliffs and over the water to a few dots of green on the horizon.
“That’s nice,” Ginny said. What else were you supposed to say? Until Jake, most of her sight-seeing had consisted of oohing and ahhing in dimly lit bars. She pulled a roll of Life Savers from the pocket of her denim shirt, popped two in her mouth, and brushed her windblown hair from her face. “Why did you really want to come up here, Lisa?”
“To see the cliffs.” The hum of the contraption stopped, and a
click
told Ginny that Lisa’s quarter had run out. Lisa stepped back. “I want to pay him off,” she said, still looking out over the water.
“What?”
“I have enough money saved to pay Brad half of what he’s asking. If you can come up with the other half, he’ll leave us alone.” She folded her arms against her waist.
“Over my dead body,” Ginny replied. “To begin with, you’ve worked hard for that money. I won’t have you using it for something that was my fault.”
“Look, Ginny, I’m as much at fault as you are. I didn’t tell you when I started seeing Brad because I knew you’d be upset.”
Ginny couldn’t argue with that. But Lisa was her daughter. Surely the parent should be more responsible than the child. She stared off toward those lumps called the Elizabeth Islands and wished with everything she had that Jake were there. Jake would have known what to say. Jake would have known what to do.
“I want to pay him, Ginny. I want this over with.”
Her gaze dropped to the water, to the waves that broke and splayed their foam over the rocks below. “With people like Brad, it’s never over,” she said. “He uses sex as a power play to fulfill his greed.”
A pair of seagulls glided across the sky.
“The sex was good,” Lisa said quietly.
“With men like Brad it always is.” She did not mention that a man like Brad, or any other man, would probably never be able to make sex good for Ginny again. She did not mention that her once unstoppable lust seemed to have been buried with Jake.
“Sex always gets in the way, doesn’t it? It screws people up, wrecks friendships, and destroys families.”
Ginny looked back to the horizon. “Yes,” she replied. “Which is why I hate it.”
Lisa nodded. “Me, too. Let’s make a pact never to have sex again.”
Ginny put her arm through her daughter’s. “You’re too young to say that. As for me, well, I have no interest in it anymore.”
“Because of what happened with Brad?”
“No,” she admitted. “Because Jake is gone.”
They stood on the cliff for a long, long time, Ginny’s arm locked through Lisa’s, watching together the sun glinting off the copper cliffs and reflecting in the water below.
It was taking Jess longer to walk there than she’d expected. She had threaded her way through the side streets of Vineyard Haven: up Centre Street, crossing William, Franklin, and others, wondering all the way why she was doing this and what she planned to achieve.
“I just want to see her,” she told herself over and over. “I just want one look at her in case I never have a chance to see her again.”
She did not, however, know how she’d recognize Melanie.
Part of her believed she’d know her on sight; that a mother would instinctively know the child to whom she’d given birth, by the way she walked, the way she sounded, the way she held her head.
The other part of her told herself she was nuts. If she didn’t know Maura, would Jess instantly recognize her as her daughter?
The backs of her calves ached as she continued her climb. She tried not to think about Maura now. She tried not to wonder if Melanie would perhaps resemble Maura rather than herself, and, if she, like Maura, would think the past didn’t matter and that Jess should get on with her life.
She kept walking. The huge old homes gave way to a newer, more middle-class neighborhood—small Cape Cod-style houses shingled in gray with white picket fences and narrow driveways made of bits of ground clam shells. The trees were more abundant: maples and oaks shaded the streets with their new spring green leaves. It was quieter here than in the center of town, quieter, and devoid of the scent of salt water, the dampness of the sea, and the claustrophobic crush of the tourists.
And then Jess heard laughter; the muted, high-pitched laughter of children at play. She looked up and saw it: the Tisbury Elementary School, an old brick building with tall windows and high concrete stairs, next to which was a large playground where shiny-haired, pink-cheeked children scrambled on jungle gyms and chased one another, some singing, some shouting, and all appearing to have fun.
Recess
, Jess thought, standing still on the sidewalk, her memory drifting to the many times she had watched Chuck, Maura, and Travis at play with their friends. But none of these children were Chuck, Maura, or Travis: they were the children of strangers, island children. Scanning the happy, laughing faces, Jess wondered if this was the school where Melanie had come, if this was where she’d learned to read and write and laugh on the playground.
“Miss Gorman’s class, line up for the cafeteria,” came a
tinny voice from the end of a megaphone. “Line, up, line up, line up,” the voice commanded.
Little feet scampered to the side of the building where a dark-haired woman in a long peasant dress—Miss Gorman, Jess presumed—began organizing her charges with a stern look and a lot of finger-pointing. Jess was glad that Miss Gorman was not Melanie: she would not have been pleased to have a daughter who’d turned into a sergeant.
Her eyes scanned the playground once more, searching the small children and grown-up monitors who stood nearby with watchful eyes. Among the half-dozen adults—five women, one man—no one resembled Maura, no one resembled Jess. There was a fat one, a tall one, and three in between, but none with wispy blond hair, none that made her instincts converge in her heart to whisper “This is her. She is Melanie. She is yours.”
Just then one of the big metal doors on the building opened, and another band of children flooded onto the playground. Jess put her hand to her throat and strained to see, strained to pick out anyone who might be part of her.
And then she saw her.
She was a tiny little blond girl, so tiny that the crutches she awkwardly maneuvered seemed especially cumbersome, and the long white cast that encased her right leg seemed especially heavy.
“Sarah,” Jess whispered into the air. She twisted the ring on her finger and tried to swallow past the rising lump in her throat, the lump that told her that Sarah, was, indeed, part of her, the lump that said she was her first grandchild, born to her first daughter.
She stepped toward the fence and clung to the metal. “My God,” she said. “What a precious little child.”
Slowly, Jess moved along the fence to get closer to Sarah. If she could hear her laughter, if she could see her eyes, she would not need anything more. She would not need to know Melanie, she would not need to hurt Richard, or
interrupt their lives. She would not need to know who had sent the letter. She would need none of these things. If only she could get close enough to know for certain.
“Mommy!” The little girl’s voice was so sudden, her word so startling, it took Jess a moment to realize it was not meant for her. She blinked, then pulled her eyes from Sarah and followed her gaze to the door of the building where a young woman stood, arms folded across her thin middle, long blond hair tied back in a neat ponytail.
“Honey,” the young woman responded and hurried onto the playground toward the little girl with the crutches.
Jess watched in silence, certain her heart had stopped beating, certain she would never be able to move from this place again.
And then the little girl’s mother was close enough for Jess to reach through the fencing and touch her shoulder, close enough for her to feel the warmth of her breath.
“How are you doing, honey?” the young woman asked.
“Okay. My armpits hurt.”
The young woman bent down and gave the little girl a hug. Jess felt as if it were her arms around the child, felt as if it were her hands that were running through the wispy, light hair.
“The substitute teacher is here so we’ll go home after lunch,” the young woman whispered. “There’s pizza today.”
“I’m not real hungry.”
The young woman kept her arm around the little girl. “Well, you don’t have to eat, honey. But the doctor said you need naps this week. Maybe after your nap we’ll bake cookies. Would you like that?”
“Chocolate chip?”
“If you want. And maybe we’ll make some sugar cookies, too, and decorate them for Daddy.”
“How will we decorate them?”
“Hmm. Let’s see. Well, we could write ‘Daddy’ on one.”
“On a big one?”
“Of course! And we can make another big one, just for you, and we’ll make some pink frosting and write ‘Sarah’ across it.”
Jess thought she was going to faint. She held fast to the fence to keep herself steady, to keep herself from sliding down to the ground. “My God,” she wanted to shout. “My God, it is you! My baby, my daughter! It really is you!” But she held on tightly, afraid to let go, afraid to faint, or to fall, or afraid she might run though her feet seemed to be stuck to the sidewalk, her body unable to move.