He groaned. “Don’t let my freckles fool you. I’m not exactly an imbecile.”
She laughed then asked, “What about Maura? Is she there?”
“I don’t know. Let me check.”
Before she could tell him to stop, never mind, he covered the receiver and shouted, “Hey, Maura! Mom’s on the
phone!” She took a deep breath and waited, hoping her voice would not betray what was really going on in her heart, that she really needed to talk to Maura, to remind herself of what was important in life.
“Maura!” Travis shouted again. Seconds passed. She must not be home. A wave of anxiety passed through Jess for needing her daughter too much. Then she heard a click on the line.
“Mom?” It was Maura.
Jess sat up straight. “Yes, honey. I just called to say hi.”
“Where are you?”
Her eyes danced around the room as if she’d forgotten where she was. “I’m still here,” she said quickly. “On Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Oh. Is your friend still there?”
“Ginny? Yes. We’re having a good time.”
“Oh.” There was silence a moment. “Mom, what are you doing there?”
“I told you. Ginny recently lost her husband. I’m trying to help her …”
“Did you find your baby?” Her tone was sharp-edged as a razor.
Reality collided with fantasy again. Maura and Travis might be grounding for Jess, but they were not—could not be—her whole life. Sometimes, like now, Jess had feelings of her own. Feelings that she needed to address or that would haunt her forever.
“I figured out what you’re doing, Mom,” Maura continued. “Some lady named Loretta Taylor called yesterday. She wanted you to know she found out for sure that Mabel Adams was dead.”
“Yes,” Jess replied slowly, “I knew that.”
“She mentioned the Vineyard. I told her you were there. She said you must have found your baby. Then she hung up.”
Jess did not, could not, reply.
“Mom, I thought you were going to stop all this stuff.”
“Honey …”
“It’s not fair, you know. Not to me. Not to Travis.”
Jess noted that Maura had not mentioned Chuck, as though her older brother were no longer a part of the family, just because he lived in Manhattan and was close to their father. Apparently, Maura’s week in the islands had done little to reglue the bond between father and daughter after all.
“Honey, I’m not asking you to understand,” Jess said. “Any more than you asked me to understand when you went on spring break with your father.” She felt guilty for the silence that once again draped over the line. “I need to do this for myself, Maura. Please accept that. And please accept that it has nothing to do with you.”
After a moment, Maura said, “I only wish you had been honest with us in the beginning. About the real reason for your trip.”
“How would you have reacted?”
“I would have told you I hated what you were doing.”
The veins in her head constricted more tightly. “And I would have tried to explain that we are all entitled to have some privacy, and some respect for our feelings,” she said. “Perhaps you haven’t learned that in one of your psychology classes yet.”
“Okay, Mom,” Maura replied brusquely. “I get the message.”
Jess cleared her throat. “Well, then, I’ll see you when I come home. We’ll talk then, okay?”
After a heartbeat, Maura replied, “Sure, Mom. See you.” She hung up the phone and left Jess sitting on the edge of the bed, receiver in hand, wondering if things could ever be the same between them again, yet filled with resolve that Ginny was right. Life had no guarantees against pain. And if Jess didn’t get this over with once and for all, she would regret it for the rest of her life. She would stop acting so childish and she would go and meet Richard, and Maura would get over it or Maura would not.
• • •
Ginny bought a hand-knit sweater for Consuelo, a gold charm for Lisa—the map of Martha’s Vineyard with a small diamond chip—and a tie-dyed, short dress for herself. The dress was a “trapeze,” the politically correct nineties term for a “tent,” that actually looked good on her, skating over her newly-formed lumps and bumps as if they weren’t there at all. Not that she cared much how she looked, since—for once in her life—she wasn’t looking for sex. But she had to admit the brief flirtation with Dick Bradley had set off
something
—nothing scintillating, maybe, but something that, well, that felt good. He had a generous smile and a warm laugh, and, what the hell, if Jess decided to stay another day or two, Ginny might as well take advantage of the opportunity to see if her libido would ever return. And maybe she could get him to tell her the truth about Melanie, about what really happened thirty years ago. After all, she thought, leaving the dress shop, men say things in the bedroom that they’d never say in the parlor—especially if the parlor was loaded with clocks ticking and tocking all over the place, reminding the male species that time was, indeed, marching on and their heart might give out before the top of the next hour.
As she headed for the bookstore—
Bunch of Grapes
, the sign read, which seemed fairly absurd for the name of a store on an island called the Vineyard in a town where no alcohol was allowed—she thought she heard her name being called from across the street. She looked over and there stood Phillip on the curb, waving his arm like he was hailing a cab.
“Ginny!” he shouted across the traffic-clogged one-way street. “Lisa’s here. Come on over.”
She didn’t bother to go to the crosswalk. A guy in a pickup truck blasted his horn, but Ginny refrained from giving him the finger. She might have, if Lisa had not been within eyeshot. Lisa had learned enough about Ginny’s
character flaws in the past few days to last a lifetime and a half.
“So what’s going on?” Phillip asked, pulling a folding chair out for Ginny to sit at their table. “Is everyone staying until tomorrow?”
Ginny dropped her bundles and plopped herself down on the chair, which wiggled and wobbled on the uneven bricks. “We don’t have much choice. But I don’t know what Jess intends to do. Old Man Bradley told me Richard is coming back tomorrow. I don’t know if she’s going to see him or not.”
“Not see him?” Lisa asked. “Why would she not see him after all this?”
Ginny shrugged as a waitress appeared. “I’ll have a burger and fries,” she said, then looked down at her bags and thought about the tie-dyed trapeze that lay inside. “No, change that. I’ll have a salad. With oil and vinegar on the side.” She might not drop the twenty pounds that she’d gained since Jake died in one afternoon, but she damn well might feel more like flirting if she weren’t such a water-retaining blob.
The waitress left. Ginny reached into her bag, pulled out a small box, and set it down beside Lisa’s plate. “For you,” Ginny said. “Happy Memorial Day.”
Lisa’s eyes lit up. She’d probably looked just like that when she was a kid, Ginny thought, at Christmas or on her birthday. Lisa’s family had probably been big on presents, not like Ginny’s mother, who’d never been able to afford much besides cigarettes and booze, though during the holidays they were packaged to look like they were tied in red bows.
Lifting the lid slowly, Lisa peeked inside. She took out the gold charm. “Oh, Ginny,” she exclaimed, leaning over and kissing her cheek. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Ginny shrugged. “I just wanted you to know … well, I’m glad you came.” She did not add that what she was
really glad about was that Brad was not here, that he was back in L.A.
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” she said, with a look in her eyes that told Ginny she knew exactly what Ginny had been thinking, and that it was okay. “I wish we could have done something to help Jess, though. She’s such a nice woman.”
“Well, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” Ginny said with a laugh. “Or until I do whatever it is I decide to do.”
“Ginny,” Phillip said, “Lisa and I have been thinking that maybe there is something she and I can do.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow.
“We thought we could go to Melanie. Maybe if the two of us talked to her … we’re the same age … we were both adopted …”
Without hesitation, Ginny shook her head. “I think Jess would shit if you ever did that.”
“Why?” Lisa asked. “She walked into our lives and shocked the hell out of us. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is …” Ginny began, then was distracted by that sensation of being stared at by someone.
Ginny turned her head. And there, on the opposite side of Main Street, stood Morticia. Watching.
“Shit.” Ginny got to her feet. “I’m sick of this crap.” She began to move just as Phillip jumped up and took hold of her arm.
“No, Ginny, please,” he said. “Leave it alone.”
“That woman is a freaking fruitcake.”
“I know. But she’s got some kind of problem. Leave her alone.”
“You talked to her?”
“Only by accident. She thought I was someone named Brit. I tried to talk to her, but she blew me off.”
Ginny stared at the woman who stared back at her and suddenly realized that despite what had or had not happened thirty years ago, Dick Bradley had had his share of heartache, and his share of pain. But so had Jess. And so had Ginny. And she was sick to death of all this dancing
around, all this spying and sneaking and pretending to be who and what they were not. It was time to get on with the show, whether Jess liked it or not. Jess didn’t have to confront Richard if she didn’t want to, but Ginny for one was going to find out what had happened. And Jess was going to be told the truth. And then Ginny was going to go back to L.A. and have it out with Brad, once and for all. She straightened her back. “If you kids want to talk to Melanie, I won’t talk you out of it.” She looked down at the bag that held her new dress. “As for me, I’ve got a plan of my own.”
It was long past time. Karin turned away from the trio at the café and started walking down Main Street, heading toward the only place she could ever find peace.
Tomorrow
, she told herself over and over again. If they did not do anything by tomorrow, she’d take action herself.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
She fixed her eyes on the ground and kept walking toward West Chop. Maybe today Brit would come back. If he’d never left in the first place, none of this would matter now. For if he had not left she’d have been married by now with kids of her own and it wouldn’t have mattered a damn whether or not Daddy or Richard or anyone of them cared about her. It wouldn’t matter who Mellie did or did not belong to. None of it would matter because she would have had Brit.
But maybe he would come back today. Maybe he would see her picking sea glass on the beach, the way they had picked it together. Maybe he would find a special stone, just for her. The way he had so long ago. Then she would string them together—no, not for Mellie, but for herself. She’d make a long stranded necklace and a bracelet to match and a crown of sea glass to wear in her hair. She’d wear it on her wedding day—the wedding between the Yank and the Brit that had taken so long to occur.
And she would be as beautiful as the girl in the
New York Times
clipping tucked under the ribbon tied around the letters to the young boy named Richard. She would be as beautiful as that long-ago photo, of that society girl named Jessica Bates Randall … the girl they had told her had not wanted her baby, but whose father had paid hers to raise it instead … the girl Karin had been led to believe had not wanted her baby, had not wanted Mellie at all.
And Karin had believed them. Until she had found the letters. Until she had sorted out the reality from the lies.
She lifted her gaze toward the clear island sky and felt the familiar ache in her heart that told her Brit would not come back today. Or tomorrow either, in fact.
Ginny and Lisa and Phillip had ganged up on Jess and forced her to go out for dinner with them. “A decent place,” Ginny had demanded, “where we can put some much-needed nourishment into that withering body of yours.” The truth was, Ginny had wanted to wear her new dress. The truth was, she wanted to look good when they returned to the inn after dinner. She wanted to look good because she was going to go through with her plan—come hell or high water or any other acts of God, if God would be so vindictive as to try to spoil her fun.
Phillip had found a place in Chilmark—the Red Cat, it was called—a funky place where the walls were lined with portraits of jazz greats and the food was gourmet-scrumptious.
But Ginny had been good. She’d stopped herself from cleaning her plate of lobster fra diablo and garlic mashed potatoes; she’d even passed up the chocolate cake with three layers of the fudgiest frosting she’d ever seen. Dick Bradley might be pushing seventy, but he wasn’t blind. And if she was going to get him to get it up, she’d have to look—and feel—as sexy as possible. So she opted for decaf while the others pigged out on the cake, which helped
boost her confidence, though it seemed to wane now, as she stood at the closed door of Dick Bradley’s bedroom.
Shit
, she thought.
I’m as nervous as a wedding-night virgin—if there is such a thing anymore.
She popped a mint into her mouth, lifted her hand, and knocked.
There was no answer.
She looked over her shoulder to be sure Morticia wasn’t snooping nearby. Then she sucked in her breath and screwed up her courage again. She knocked more loudly. For a moment, all she could hear was her heart beating.
Then she heard footsteps on the other side of the door.
“Go, girl,” she said to herself.
Dick Bradley opened the door. He was wearing a plaid flannel robe that looked as if it had been hastily tied around his middle—a middle that was not too paunchy for a guy his age.
Ginny smiled. “Did I wake you?”
He ran his hand through his already tousled gray hair. “Not really.”
Quickly, she placed one foot into the room before he was awake enough to realize she was there, before he came to enough of his senses to realize what she was doing. Or before she did.
“I need to ask you something.” She stepped all the way inside now and put one hand on the door. “You don’t mind, do you?”