Thankfully, her discharge from the hospital had not taken long. Phillip had been waiting for her: Phillip, her new caretaker, it seemed. Jess smiled as she leaned her crutches against the sideboard and sat down at the long mahogany table. She was lucky to have him in her life. If only P.J. could have witnessed Phillip’s wonderful, sensitive spirit and his bright, eager soul. At least P.J. had known her son for a few months; at least she had not died without seeing him.
“Jess,” Phillip said now, as he entered the dining room. “Lisa will be right down. Ginny said it might take her a little longer. She’s upstairs shouting something about being crippled and wondering if she’ll be able to get handicapped plates for her car.”
Jess laughed. “I guess she moved around too much yesterday.”
“She should have let the hospital doctor check her out.”
“Ginny likes to do things her way. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Phillip smiled and took a seat next to Jess. “I wonder what Richard is planning to do.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he wants to give us complimentary ferry tickets so we’ll leave as soon as possible.”
Running his hand along the table’s smooth edge, Phillip asked, “You still care about him, don’t you?”
Jess didn’t know what to say. How did one explain to an almost-thirty-year-old man that life doesn’t always live up to your expectations, and that dreams are sometimes better left as just dreams? Then she thought about Phillip and the struggles he’d had, and she realized that perhaps he already knew.
She rested her hand on his. “Part of me will always love Richard,” she said. “For the time that we had, for the love that we shared. But that was a long time ago, Phillip. And now I know it’s time to go.”
“I agree,” Ginny spoke from the doorway, interrupting their moment. “But I figure I won’t be out of here until sometime around the turn of the freaking century.”
Ginny limped into the room, leaning on Dick. Jess smiled at the concept of Ginny leaning on
anyone.
Lisa entered behind them and went directly to sit on Phillip’s other side.
And then Richard came in. “Well,” he said, “I see you’re all here.”
She blinked and looked up at the man whom, yes, a part of her always would love.
“As requested,” Ginny said, sitting stiffly on the hard chair that Dick had pulled out for her.
Richard nodded and turned his head back toward the door. “Karin?” he asked. “Come on in.”
Today her sarong was purple, her T-shirt, blue. Karin drifted into the room and sat close to Richard, and Jess tried not to stare, tried not to imagine Father with her, summertime lovers for so many years.
Around the table, no one spoke. Then Dick cleared his throat. “Before Richard begins, I’d like everyone to know that Karin has agreed to go into therapy. In fact, we’re going together. I think this family could use a little counseling after … well, after all we’ve been through.”
Jess held back her smile.
Therapy
, she thought, remembering the valuable hours and years spent in poorly decorated offices, working to find a sense of herself and a balance with her children. She had first expected perfection; she had quickly realized it was not possible. Progress was the key. And still, today, they progressed.
“But first we’re going to start with a little old-fashioned honesty,” Richard was saying. “We’re going to clear out the cobwebs of the past and accept where it takes us from here.”
Jess did not know what he meant. Then she heard the front door open, the soft banging of the screen behind it. And before she could say anything—before anyone could—Melanie walked into the room.
Jess sat perfectly still. Phillip reached under the table and took her hand.
“Richard,” Melanie said. “Sorry we’re late. We got tied up in traffic. I can’t believe it’s so heavy, and it’s only the beginning of June.”
The tall windows in the room were wide open. A slight breeze drifted in from the ocean. And yet Jess could not seem to catch her breath, could not seem to find any air.
Her voice
, Jess thought. Her voice was so soft; her voice was so sweet. It was not like Maura’s. Was it like … hers?
“Mellie,” he said, “I’m glad you made it. Have a seat.”
She looked around at the room full of strangers, then sat, with confidence, next to Dick, the man who she thought was her father.
Without hesitation, Richard began. “Mellie,” he said, “we’re all here to tell you a story … a story that’s going
to surprise you, shock you, and probably totally piss you off.”
Jess lowered her head and listened.
“A long time ago,” Richard said, “I fell in love with a young girl named Jess.”
No one interrupted while he talked. Not a bird chirped outside. Not a buoy bell clanged. When Richard reached the part about coming to the island, about leaving Jess alone at a home for unwed mothers, gentle tears dropped into Jess’s lap. She did not dare look at Ginny. She had an odd feeling that Ginny, too, might be shedding a tear, or at least holding one back.
And then the real honesty came. “Jess had the baby, Mellie,” he said. “And that baby was you. Your grandfather gave us the money so you could come live with us. So you would always have ‘family.’ ”
He paused, as if unable to go on. Jess looked up and saw him walk to the window, fix his gaze outside to the lawn, and run his hands through his hair.
Melanie did not speak.
Jess forced herself to turn her head, to look at her daughter. “I am Jess,” she said. “I am your birth mother.”
Dick put his arm around Melanie. “Oh, honey, we loved you so much. We didn’t think Jess wanted you. We didn’t know that she’d had no choice: that her father had forced her to give you up.”
“But …” Melanie said.
“We did it for you. We wanted you to be with your family, not with some strangers … oh, honey,” Dick continued, “can you ever forgive us for not telling you the truth?”
Melanie smiled, an odd reaction, Jess thought. “But don’t you see?” she asked. “I’ve known all along.”
The room was silent.
Karin rose from her chair and padded to the fireplace at the far end of the room.
“Mother told me, Daddy,” she said to Dick. “Mother
told me all about it before she died. She made me promise never to let you know that she had. She told me about the money. It was two hundred thousand dollars, wasn’t it? She told me how you used it to pay off the woman at the home, how you used it so you could have me and raise me as your own.”
Richard began to laugh. “I can’t believe this.”
Melanie looked at Jess, her face wide in a smile. “So,” she said. “You’re my birth mother.”
“Yes,” Jess replied.
Melanie rose and moved to the other side of the table where Jess sat. She leaned down and hugged her, her thin yet strong arms enveloping her mother, her sweetness closing around Jess like a long-awaited treasure, a gift from above. “I’ve waited a very long time to meet you,” she said. “Thank you for being so brave to come here.”
Jess’s tears came again. “Oh,” she cried, “I’m not very brave at all. I’m just stubborn, I guess. Stubborn and a little bit foolish sometimes.”
“We won’t tell that to your granddaughter. Would you like to meet her?”
Jess nodded, unable to speak through her tears.
Melanie disappeared for a moment, then returned with the little girl on crutches, the little girl with wispy blond hair and rosy pink cheeks who looked so much like Jess, who focused her wide blue eyes on Jess now and clearly asked, “Are you my grandma?”
Jess could only nod. The little girl maneuvered her crutches over to Jess and gave her a hug. She smelled fresh and clean, like she’d just had a bath, and her skin was warm and soft, so soft, so little-girl soft. “My name’s Sarah,” she said.
“Sarah,” Jess said. “It’s so wonderful to meet you.”
“Why are you crying?” Sarah asked. “Is it because you have to use those crutches? Don’t cry about that. I can show you how they work.”
Jess wiped her tears and laughed. Across the table, Ginny
stood up stiffly and cleared her throat. “Well, kids,” she said to Lisa and Phillip, “I think this party can do with one less handicapped person. Let’s leave them to their family reunion, okay?”
Phillip and Lisa rose and left the room with Ginny. But not before Jess saw the tears that filled Ginny’s eyes.
He felt really good. Really good about himself, and really good about his decision.
“I’m going back to New York,” Phillip told Lisa and Ginny as they sat on the verandah. “It’s time.”
“Are you ever going to tell your mother about P.J.?”
Lisa asked.
He shook his head. “No. I think it’s best to leave it alone.” Then he smiled. “I am, however, going to tell her she can stop selecting women for me.”
Lisa smiled.
“And I’m going to do something else,” he continued. “I’m going to tell my brother that I no longer want to be a corporate attorney.” He took Lisa’s hand and studied her perfect, fine fingers.
“What are you going to do?” Ginny asked. “Be a bum?”
“Actually, I was thinking about teaching law. Spending hours in the library. I’m really much better at research than I am at practicing. Besides, it would give me time to run. I love to run, and I never do enough of it.”
“Manhattan is an awful place to run,” Lisa said. “All those buses and cars and taxicabs.”
“I know. Which is why I was thinking of moving out to L.A.”
Lisa squeezed his hand. “Then I think it’s a perfectly marvelous idea.”
The August sun sizzled off the water and burned her face. Jess reached in her handbag for more sunscreen, but Maura stopped her and handed her a different bottle.
“Try this, Mom,” she said. “I like it better than the stuff you’ve always bought.”
Jess smiled and squeezed out a small dot of white lotion. She did not mention that she was beginning to realize that maybe she did not have all the answers: that maybe her children really did have sensible, grown-up minds of their own. She wondered if this was the beginning of another passage of life, then realized it didn’t really matter. They would live their own lives, have their own joys, feel their own pain. Whatever she did now, beyond being there for them, didn’t matter.
What really mattered was that Maura and Travis were with her right now, on the ferry bound for the Vineyard. What mattered was that they were eager to meet their half sister, Melanie, eager to meet their niece, Sarah. It did not even matter that Chuck had refused to come, refused to be part of his mother’s “other life,” as Charles so often referred to her past.
What mattered was that they were a family, and that though the definition of the word perhaps had shifted, family was still family if you felt it in your heart.
She rubbed the sunscreen into her cheeks now and thought about Amy—the little girl who, for five years, she’d thought had been hers. After returning from the Vineyard, Jess had gone to the Hawthornes and told them that Melanie
had been her baby, that Amy had not. And yet Jess knew that a small part of her would always grieve for Amy—the child whose life had been cut too short, the child whose birth mother had been deceived into believing she had died and never existed, the child who had been wanted and nurtured and loved by her wonderful adoptive parents.
As Melanie had been.
As Phillip had been.
As Lisa had been.
“My friends can’t believe you know Lisa Andrews’s mother,” Travis had said over and over in the car on the way to Woods Hole. Jess had teased him and asked if he thought that might give him special status at Yale. Indeed, she did know Lisa Andrews’s mother, and knew her well.
She leaned against the railing and looked off to the coastline of the Vineyard, wondering if Ginny was truly happy, and suspecting that, at last, she was. It had taken another couple of weeks for Ginny’s back to heal, then she had returned to L.A. A few days ago she’d called Jess to report that business—Jake’s business,
her
business now—was kind of a hoot and that she probably should have done something like this years ago. She also told Jess that Phillip had arrived, and that he and Lisa had become glued at the “hips, lips, and every other part in between.”
She added that Jess might want to start looking for a dress … that it looked as if there would be a wedding in the “family” soon … and “Hell, probably grandchildren won’t be far behind.” She also said she didn’t think it would take too much convincing for Lisa and Phillip to have the ceremony on Martha’s Vineyard, maybe even on the beach in West Chop. She hoped Dick would help make the arrangements.
Jess had smiled and thought about P.J., and how happy she’d have been at the way things had turned out.
She folded her arms around herself now and watched West Chop coming more clearly into view. As for herself, she still was unsure what would happen next. She only
knew that Richard had called, that he’d invited her and the children to spend the month of August on the island.
Whatever it brought, Jess knew it would be fine. She felt so much stronger now than she ever had in her life: strong enough to let Carlo and her other assistants take over her business for an entire month and not worry that it would fall into ruin; strong enough to no longer hide from Charles or from the friends they’d once had, friends who now hired her as they hired their maids. None of that mattered any longer, for Jess was Jess, and Jess was complete.
“Passengers, return to your vehicles for docking,” said a voice over the speaker on the top deck of the ferry.
Jess gathered her purse, and two of her children, and, with a wide smile and a warm feeling inside, she walked down the stairs to the hold of the ship, and waited for whatever was going to happen next.
Karin sat at the antique rolltop desk in her attic bedroom at Mayfield House, holding the note that had come in the mail.
It was written on pale pink paper—not scented, though, not like the paper of the fifteen-year-old girl who had written so many letters to Richard from Larchwood Hall, letters that Richard at last had in his possession, to do with whatever he wanted. He said he might give them to Mellie, so she would know how much she’d always been loved, so she would know her grandfather Bates—Brit—had saved them for her.