Yes, she had known that. Richard’s family was a real family. So like the family she longed to be part of. So unlike her own. She remembered now how that had added to the hurt, that she could not become part of a good, loving family, that he had robbed her of that opportunity, too.
“Anyway,” he continued, “your father had said you never wanted to see me again, never wanted to hear from me. I was devastated.” His voice faltered. He looked away for a moment, as if stalled by emotion, stopped by a tear. Then he cleared his throat and looked back at her. “He also said you wanted nothing to do with our baby.”
It took all the strength she could find to stay seated on the swing, to not lunge straight at him and slap him and punch him and kick him until he bled. The only thing that held her back was that she wanted to see how far he would go, how big a tale he would weave to justify what they’d done.
“I believed it, Jess,” he said. “I believed it because I’d always thought you were too good for me. I believed that you wouldn’t want me, and you wouldn’t want a baby that was half mine. Can you ever understand that?”
She pushed the swing again. Richard paced the ground.
“My parents were heartsick that you were pregnant,” he went on. “They thought about the baby as my child, too—their grandchild. That’s when, together, we came up with the plan.”
“To steal my baby,” she said quickly, spurting the anger she could no longer contain.
“No, Jess. Not to steal her. To take her and raise her as our own. To raise her as a Bradley. We changed our name; we moved to the island from Connecticut. I was so young we decided it would be best for the baby—for Melanie—if everyone thought she was my parents’ child. If everyone thought she was my kid sister.”
“And what did Melanie think? What has she thought all these years?”
He sucked in a small breath. “That she is my sister.”
“Oh, God, Richard,” was all Jess could say.
He fell to his knees and took her hands in his. “She’s had a good life, Jess. A happy life. When my mother died, she was only five. But Karin took over the mother role. And she’s been a good mother figure to Mellie. She sacrificed her own chance at happiness for Melanie.”
“Karin is strange.”
Again, he lowered his head. “I know. But it hasn’t been easy for her. Mellie told me once that Karin had a boyfriend. But I never met him and I chose to ignore it. I guess I was afraid Karin would want her own life and I would have to take responsibility for … our little girl. So for much of Karin’s unhappiness now, I blame myself.”
Jess wanted, in that moment, to tell him about the letter, to tell him about the phone call his sister had made. She did not know what stopped her, but she thought it might be because she no longer saw Karin as a villain, but as a victim. A victim of her brother’s sins and her parents’ greed.
“What about the two hundred thousand dollars? The payoff my father gave you?”
He stood up and began to pace again. “Your father gave us that money to pay Miss Taylor for Melanie.”
“As far as I understand, that only cost fifty thousand. What happened to the rest?”
Richard stood still. “I don’t know where you’ve gotten your information, but the fifty thousand was a down payment. The rest went to her when Mellie was born. Part of the deal was that Miss Taylor arranged for us to come here, and she got Dad a job as a caretaker for Mabel Adams. Your father didn’t ‘pay us off,’ Jess. He gave us the money so we could get the baby that was his grandchild. So she wouldn’t be adopted by strangers.”
She must have heard him wrong. “Father did what?” she asked.
“He gave us money so we could get Mellie,” Richard repeated. “When I said that we came up with a plan
together
… well, it was really between my parents and your father. Other than that only Karin and I knew the truth.
“And Miss Taylor.”
“I have no idea how much she did or did not know. I suspect all she cared about was the money.”
Jess’s head felt light, she was suddenly dizzy. She steadied her feet on the ground, trying to digest all Richard had said, wanting to believe him, yet not being quite able. “But it’s all a lie, Richard. I wanted our baby. I wanted us … Father
knew
that …”
“I guess he thought we were too young,” Richard said. “I suppose he only did what he thought was right for you.”
Father
, she thought. How little she’d known him. She raised her chin and looked at Richard. “And now Melanie has a child,” she said. “Our grandchild, Richard. Yours and mine.”
“Yes. And she’s pregnant again. There’s another baby on the way.”
Jess clutched her stomach. “Oh, God, Richard. How can you do this? How can you keep pretending?”
“I have to, Jess. Melanie is, well, she’s sweet and she’s gentle, and she’s so much like you. But Karin and I made a promise to my mother on the day she died that Melanie would never know the truth about her birth. Melanie can’t find out now, Jess. It’s too late, and it wouldn’t be fair.”
And in that instant, with those words, Jess knew that Richard was right.
Phillip walked up the hill with Lisa by his side, headed in the direction of the West Tisbury School. He supposed he should feel guilty about Nicole, but decided there would be time enough to deal with that when he returned to New
York, when he went back to the real world where mothers and brothers had expectations of you and where big-time television stars didn’t walk next to you on back streets of the Vineyard.
“I think we should start by coming right to the point,” Lisa said. “I think we should ask her if she knows she was adopted.”
Phillip shook his head. “She’s not like us, Lisa. Melanie wasn’t adopted, remember?”
Lisa frowned, the lightest little wrinkle carving itself across her forehead. “Oh. You’re right. Then what should we say? We can’t just come out and ask if she knows that her brother is really her father.”
“Maybe we should just introduce ourselves. Then tell her we’re there to talk with her about a baby scam that happened in the sixties. Lead into it a little more gently.”
Lisa smiled. “I’m not great at being gentle. I guess I get that from my mother.”
Phillip laughed. “She’s a character, you know that?”
“Yeah. And right now I’d give anything to fix this mess I’ve made for her with Brad. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.”
He did not want to tell her the best idea he’d come up with was to fly to L.A., hunt down the jerk, and push his red Porsche off the side of a cliff. “Well, I know you can’t give Brad any money. Once you start, he’ll never stop asking for more. Can’t you go to the police?”
“And risk having it leaked to the tabloids?”
“Oh. Right. What about Ginny? What does she want to do?”
“Simple. Kill him.”
“And you?”
Lisa closed her eyes. “I only want it to end. I’m so ashamed of myself for getting involved with him. He’s not even my type. He’s flamboyant and crass. I guess I was just needy. And he was there.”
In that moment, she was no longer a Hollywood star.
She was frightened and hurting, a plain old all-American girl in shorts and a T-shirt who had trusted the wrong man and was paying too steep a price. Phillip gently put his arm on her shoulders. “It’ll be okay, Lisa,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.” He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know how, but he was determined to help. The hell with the expectations that awaited him at home.
They walked for another few minutes in silence, then Lisa pointed up ahead. “There it is,” she said. “That must be the school.”
He smiled and dropped his arm from her shoulders, musing at his entanglements with his birth mother’s friends and wondering if P.J. would be walking beside them if she were still alive. Then he decided that maybe she was here; maybe it was her spirit that had been encouraging him all along.
“Should we just go in the front door?” Lisa asked.
“Follow me,” Phillip said. With renewed spirit, he climbed the stairs.
The school was not at all like the one Phillip had gone to in Fairfield—the shiny, bright, new school with sparkling windows and pristine corridors befitting the inflated tax dollars contributed by the community. Lisa, however, said it was a lot like what she grew up with in her New Jersey town. Old. A little too dark. With echoes in the hallways of too many children of too many generations.
Their first stop was the office.
“We need to speak with Melanie …” Phillip stopped, realizing he did not know her married name. “Gosh,” he said to the weather-worn woman who stood at the counter, “I’ve forgotten her married name. Bradley was her maiden name. She has a daughter named Sarah.” He tried to smile as he spoke, tried not to look as if he was being clandestine.
“Melanie Galloway,” the woman said. “She’s teaching her class right now. I’m afraid she can’t be disturbed.”
Lisa stepped forward. “If you could just tell us what room she’s in, we could wait in the hall.”
The woman shook her head. “Sorry. No civilians are allowed to wander the halls. This is a school. We have children to protect.”
Phillip wondered if the woman was a weekend warrior with the National Guard. “We’re old friends from college,” he lied, subtly taking Lisa’s hand and trying not to be distracted by her smooth, warm touch. “We’re honeymooning on the island and we’d really love to see Melanie.”
The woman scowled. “If you want to wait in the office, I could send her a message to let her know you’re here. She’s only teaching half days this week on account of her daughter broke her leg. Her class will be over in twenty minutes.”
Phillip looked at Lisa. Lisa nodded.
“Just give me your names,” the woman said, pen poised over a pad.
“Our names?” Phillip asked.
Over half glasses, the woman peered at them. “I presume you have names.”
Lisa laughed. “We really planned to surprise her. Maybe we’ll just wait outside on the steps.”
“It’s up to you. You’ll know her when you see her. Melanie Galloway hasn’t changed since she came here as a student herself.”
Phillip did not mention that unless she hadn’t changed from when she was in the hospital nursery, chances were they would have absolutely no idea what she looked like.
Outside on the stairs, Lisa sat on the concrete and put her face in her hands. “This is hopeless,” she said. “We’ll never recognize her.”
“Yes we will.”
“How? Do you think she looks like Jess?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll just look for a woman our age with a little girl on crutches. There can’t be too many of them, can there?”
Lisa smiled up at him. “You are really quite brilliant, Counselor.”
He turned his head so she wouldn’t see him redden. He did not tell her that that was how Jess had spotted Melanie; better that she think he was brilliant. He smiled up at the cloudless day and wished he could capture this feeling and hold on to it forever, wished he could reach out and hug P.J. right now and tell her how grateful he was to have been born.
“Did you ever wonder about your father?” Lisa asked suddenly.
“My birth father?”
“Well. Yes.”
Looking back to the sky, he answered, “P.J. told me about him, that he was a boy she’d dated in college, that he wouldn’t admit he was … responsible.” He smiled at the memory of that sunny day when they’d sat in Central Park and P.J. told him about Frank. He smiled because he knew that her words were enough, that Phillip did not need to know the man. He turned to Lisa now and asked, “What about you?”
She laughed. “Mine is a long story for a different day. I was thinking how nice it will be for Melanie. To know both her parents.”
Phillip nodded just as the large door opened and children began scurrying down the stairs. Lisa stood up and moved next to him: together they scanned the heads for a little girl on crutches, for a mother protectively helping her child.
But among the young faces and old faces of the students and teachers, there were no kids on crutches, no legs sealed in plaster.
And then they stopped coming. The door closed behind the last of the crowd. And Phillip stood staring at Lisa, and Lisa at Phillip.
“Maybe her daughter didn’t come to school today,” Lisa said. “Maybe she walked right past us and we didn’t even know it.”
“Maybe,” Phillip replied, feeling less brilliant than he had in ages, and embarrassed that Lisa had witnessed his failure.
She couldn’t let them do it. From across the street, Karin stood behind a thick-trunked old oak tree and watched the two of them scan the crowd, no doubt looking for Melanie, no doubt looking for Sarah.
But it was not the right way. Melanie needed to learn this from Jess, to learn it from Richard. Not from a couple of kids, whoever they were. Not from a woman named Ginny who was trying to use sex to lure the truth out of a lonely old man. No, Mellie should not learn this from them. Jess and Richard would be kinder, more gentle. It would hurt Mellie less.
She smiled now at how clever she’d been. As soon as she’d realized what these two kids were up to, she’d called the school office and told May Weston, the receptionist, to have Melanie get Sarah and wait for Karin in the school cafeteria, that Karin wanted to see them, that they should not leave the building until she arrived. As always, Mellie would do whatever Karin asked.
And thank God May Weston ruled the school—and had since practically the turn of the last century—like a secret service agent. Thank God May Weston was an islander, and despised the tourists as much as Karin did.
She leaned against the tree and waited and watched, until at last the pair gave up and started back down the road. Then she crossed the road and headed into the school. She’d have to remember to bring May some sea glass the
next time she was around. Just as soon as all these damn people left this damn island and life was back to whatever was normal. She would have to find a way now to hurry that along.
“If you’re worried about leaving me here with Dick Bradley, don’t be,” Ginny said to Jess. “I’m in the best hands I could ask for unless they were Jake’s, and that’s pretty impossible, so I might as well be grateful for what I’ve got.”
Jess walked to the window of the room where Ginny lay prone, unable to move more than her lips. “I can’t believe this has happened to you,” she said.