Alice wondered what it had been like for Jeremy. She’d missed practically his whole childhood. Oh, what she would have given to have been there even for the tough times! The tears and tirades, the awkward prepubescent years. Instead, she’d had only his infrequent letters that she’d scrutinized like tea leaves, struggling to read some meaning in them. Now, she ventured cautiously, “Have you spoken with Jeremy? About me, I mean.”
Denise shot her a guarded look. “We don’t see him as much as we used to. He’s been pretty busy with his afterschool job.”
“How does he seem to you?” All day the question had been beating like a moth’s wings against the window in her heart where Alice had kept a light burning all these years.
“Okay. Really, Alice, he’s
okay
. He’s a great kid. And so smart! I really think he has a shot at the Ivy Leagues.”
“I know he’s smart,” Alice replied sharply. “I’m his mother, remember?”
“I didn’t mean . . .” her sister started to say, but it was too late: the old pain surfaced, punching through the wall Alice had carefully constructed around her emotions. Suddenly it was all too much. She felt dizzy and disoriented, like when waking from a deep sleep, her head still clouded with fragments of a dream. Only this was no dream.
“I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, realizing she’d been unfair to take it out on Denise.
Her sister cast her a woeful look. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you. And I’m not making it any easier, am I? It’s just that I don’t know how much to tell.”
Alice’s response was immediate and unequivocal. “I want to know about my son.”
Denise sighed. “Well, as far as I can tell, he’s coping pretty well. But it hasn’t been easy for him, either. He hears things at school. You know how it is. Kids can be so mean. My advice is to take it slow. He’ll need time to get used to you being back in his life.”
Denise turned onto Fox Valley Road, which hadn’t been resurfaced since Alice had last traveled it, judging from all the potholes. They splashed through one after another, each new, bone-jarring lurch seeming to echo Alice’s thoughts.
The only thing that had gotten her through all those years in prison was knowing she’d be coming home to Jeremy one day. Now apparently she was considered an intrusion. How was she supposed to deal with that? How did you take it slow when you only know one speed? “I’m not here to make things harder for him,” she said quietly, gripping tightly to the door handle as they bounced through yet another pothole, mud flying up to spatter the windshield.
“I know, hon. And I’m sure it’ll all work out. It’s just that it’s not going to happen overnight.” Denise reached over to pat her on the knee.
It was strange seeing Denise cast in the role of big sister. Growing up, she had been the one who could never get it together. Forever on a diet in the hope of being able to fit into smaller clothes, and in a perpetual state of disarray that extended from her flyaway hair to the mess on her side of the closet they’d shared. Now, glancing down at the trash littering the floor at her feet—torn receipts and crumpled straw wrappers, an empty coffee container and something that might have been a Barbie doll poking out from under a T-shirt—Alice saw that not much had changed. Yet Denise had become the stable one. The one with all the answers. While she, Alice, had none.
The rain had tapered off by the time they pulled up in front of Denise’s rambling farmhouse. It was a good halfhour’s drive from town, but, as Denise liked to say, where else could they have gotten such a spread? Ten acres with its own pond and a barn that housed a horse, chickens, and a pet pig named Mirabelle—a 4-H project that Taylor hadn’t been able to part with.
As she climbed out, Alice took note of Gary’s cruiser, parked next to one of those seventies’ gas-guzzlers, full of
dents, which had to be Ryan’s. Her anxiety mounted. She and Gary had in the past always gotten along well but she hadn’t seen him since she’d last been to this house and she didn’t know quite what to expect. Would he be standoffish or welcome her with open arms? There was another concern as well: He wasn’t just her brother-in-law; he was the law. And in prison, it was the law you answered to. Some of the COs had abused that power, seeming to take pleasure in harassing the inmates: writing up bogus charge sheets, giving out work orders when they knew you had a class or were expecting a visitor; making you wait for hours, sometimes days, for your meds. Even now, the thought of someone in uniform caused Alice to break into a sweat.
She was climbing the steps to the porch when the front door swung open and a figure emerged: a big man in jeans and a flannel shirt, square and solid as an appliance built to last. “Alice. Good to have you back.” Gary stepped forward to give her an awkward hug. He smelled of aftershave, his close-cropped sandy curls still damp from the shower. The receding hairline was the only concession to the years. That, and the few extra inches around his middle.
The wary look in his cop’s eyes didn’t match his words of welcome. He obviously had mixed feelings about her reemergence into their lives; Alice understood, and she didn’t blame him. It was awkward, given his line of work and who he ultimately answered to. “Good to
be
back,” she said, with forced cheer. “How have you been, Gary?”
“Oh, you know me. Just chugging along. Your sister keeps me busy when I’m not on patrol. If it were up to her, I wouldn’t have a moment to myself,” he teased, slinging an arm around Denise’s shoulders and grinning as though they were posing for a family photo.
“Listen to you,” said Denise, giving him an affectionate jab with her elbow. Turning to Alice, she explained, “I’ve been trying to convince him to run for county commissioner. We’ll need him on our side when they vote on the Spring Hill project.”
Alice didn’t know much about the project, except that Denise and her fellow activists had been campaigning against it for weeks. Some big housing development slated for Spring Hill that they were trying to block. She was familiar with the area, though; it was the virgin tract that bordered on their grandmother’s old property. Nana used to take her and Denise on hikes there when they were young, pointing out all the different birds and flowers and insects along the way. Now it seemed Denise was determined that it remain untouched for future generations to enjoy.
“I keep telling her if she’s so worked up about it, she ought to run for office herself,” Gary said.
“She’d have my vote,” replied Alice with a laugh, before remembering that as a convicted felon she’d lost that right. Her smile fell away, and she could see from Gary’s expression, an odd mixture of pity and disdain, that the same thought had occurred to him.
As she followed them into the house, Alice recalled what a wreck it had been when they’d first bought it. Their every spare hour had been spent scraping and sanding and painting, restoring the old floors and woodwork until they gleamed. They’d made it into a real showpiece, though at the moment it looked like a tornado had hit it: The living room floor was strewn with construction paper cutouts, discarded socks and shoes, and random items of clothing, while dirty plates and glasses lined the coffee table, along with an empty milk jug and a half eaten plate of chocolate chip cookies.
“Guys! Look who’s here!” Denise called to the two children at the center of the chaos. “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she apologized, “but you didn’t give us much notice.” A teenage boy with his father’s sandy curls and athletic build looked up from the computer screen that was occupying his attention. On the sofa, a slight, dark-haired girl dressed in a rumpled Brownie uniform looked away from the TV to stare at Alice.
Alice scarcely recognized her niece and nephew. Ryan had been the same age as Jeremy when she’d last seen him—Alice and Denise used to jokingly refer to Ryan and Jeremy as the twins—and Taylor an infant in Denise’s arms. It was a shock when Ryan rose to greet her, easily as tall as his father, sporting a small diamond stud in one ear. She remembered him as a sweet-natured little boy, and it was a relief to see that he hadn’t changed when he stepped forward to hug her: a fleeting impression of body heat, musky boy’s scent, limbs bumping up against hers. His face was red when he stepped back.
“This must seem weird to you,” Alice said, to put him at ease.
“Kind of.” He shuffled from one foot to the other, smiling shyly.
“Well, it’s pretty weird for me, too,” she confided. “You probably don’t even remember me.”
“I remember playing over at your house when I was little,” her nephew said.
“You and Jeremy were always building forts.” Alice smiled at the memory. Made of cardboard and stuff scavenged from the garage, those forts usually collapsed with the first rainfall or heavy gust of wind.
“I’m still at it,” he said, with a grin. “Only now it’s called Shop.”
“Well,” she said. “I see I have some catching up to do.”
“It’s cool that you’re here. You can have my room, if you like,” he said, making Alice fall in love with him all over again. Ryan was the kid who made you smile even when he was getting into mischief.
“Thanks, I appreciate the offer, but the sofa will do just fine,” she said. She turned to her niece, now peering out from behind her brother. “You must be Taylor. You were just a baby the last time I last saw you. And just look at you now.” She was blossoming into a real beauty, with Denise’s clear blue eyes and porcelain skin.
Taylor gazed at her with an intentness that bordered on rudeness. Alice could only imagine what she must be thinking. The aunt that she’d heard so much about must seem a legendary figure sprung to life: the incarnation of much dark discussion between adults when it was presumed little ears weren’t listening.
“You look just like your mom,” Alice continued when she got no response. Except that her niece was slim as an arrow. Taylor lowered her eyes, wearing an embarrassed look. “But you must get that all the time. You’re probably sick of hearing it.”
Taylor’s thin shoulders lifted and fell in an elaborate shrug.
Alice tried a different tack. “Did you know I went to the same school as you?”
“Uh-huh.” The girl gave her a long, considering look, as if wondering how anyone who had gone to Woodrow Wilson Elementary could have ended up in prison.
“I didn’t have my mother as a teacher, though,” Alice forged on. “Which, I’m sure, is kind of weird. But at least you get plenty of help with your homework.”
Denise cut in before Taylor’s silence became even more uncomfortable. “Speaking of homework, if that TV isn’t off in about three seconds, you’ll be spending the weekend cracking books, young lady.” She swooped in like a commando, seizing the remote control when Taylor didn’t act quickly enough and generally creating a distraction that smoothed over the awkwardness of the moment.
At dinner, it was Denise’s lively chatter that carried them through. Gary, too, made a game attempt at conversation and Ryan brought Alice up to date on all his activities. It wasn’t much different from the family meals Alice had shared with them in the past, if you didn’t count the fact that no mention was made of the reason for her long absence—she might have been back from an extended trip, from the way everyone was acting. Listening to Denise jabber on about family doings and the latest gossip from the teacher’s lounge at school, Alice had the strangest feeling she was in a play from which lines of dialogue had been deleted.
“I ran into Aileen Findlay today at the market, and she told me that McGinty’s grandson’s in town,” Denise remarked, as she was passing out bowls of ice cream for dessert. “He came in on this afternoon’s ferry. Clark took him over to the house.”
“I wonder what he’s up to,” Gary muttered.
“You cops, you’re all alike. You think everyone has some hidden agenda,” Denise mock-scolded, giving him a swat on the arm. “Who knows? Maybe he’s planning to move here, now that he’s inherited the old man’s place. Apparently, he used to spend summers here as a kid.”
“More likely, he’s looking to sell,” Gary speculated darkly. Like many of the island’s long-time residents, he was innately suspicious of mainlanders. “I know the type. Some fancy lawyer from New York thinking he can swoop in and make a quick profit.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” said Denise, sitting down to eat her ice cream. “He appears to be at loose ends, from what Clark could see. Apparently he lost his wife on 9/11. God, can you imagine? The poor man, he probably still hasn’t recovered.” She cast a fond look at Gary, as if, for all his grumbling, she couldn’t fathom life without him. “And then to lose his grandfather on top of that . . . ”
Alice was thinking that it had to be the grandfather of the man she’d met at the ferry landing. That was why his name had sounded so familiar. “Are we talking about the same McGinty who painted Nana’s portrait?” she interjected. No one in the family had seen the actual painting, only reproductions of it, but it was a part of the family lore. There was also a bit of a mystery surrounding it. All Nana would say, if pressed, was that she and Mr. McGinty had been friendly at one time. But from the quickness with which she’d always dismissed the subject, Alice had always suspected there was more to the story.
Denise nodded. “He passed away about six months ago. You should’ve seen the crowd at the funeral! There were reporters and everything.” She paused, frowning in thought. “The odd thing was that none of his family came.” She shook her head. “Must have been some bad blood.”
“You’re right about that,” Gary put in, as he spooned ice cream into his mouth. “I remember my dad telling me it was the talk of the town when McGinty’s wife divorced him. She took the kid and moved to New York. That was the last anyone ever saw of them.”
“That’s so sad. Imagine not being able to see your own child!” Denise blurted before catching herself. Her cheeks reddened.
An awkward silence settled over the table, all eyes carefully avoiding Alice’s. It was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, and suddenly Alice had had enough. Putting her spoon down, she turned Ryan, asking in as casual a tone as she could manage, “Do you know when Jeremy gets off work? I thought I’d give him a call after supper.”