Island Girl (17 page)

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Authors: Lynda Simmons

BOOK: Island Girl
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I leaned in close, lowered my voice to a whisper. “But what if there is no next generation, Mom? What if you, me, and Grace are the end of the line?”
She looked back at me. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you? Deny yourself the joy of a child just to spite me.”
She was trying her best to be patient, to keep the fight from starting. But the button was right there, and someone needed to push it. “You don’t have to worry too much, Mom. Grace is young. She might have another baby one day.”
“I can’t imagine she’d ever want to go through that again.”
I smiled and pushed that button a little harder. “You never know. There may be another man waiting right around the corner.”
“Let’s hope not. We’ve already seen where that leads, haven’t we?” She wrapped her arms around herself again, stared across the field at the flashing lights of an approaching ambulance. “I always knew there’d be trouble the moment men came sniffing around. What that boy did to her was tantamount to rape.”
I almost laughed. Pretty Bobby Daniels had been many things—vain, cowardly, dumb as dirt, to name a few—but sexually abusive? Hardly. Grace met him at the coffee shop on the main floor of my building shortly after she moved in with me. He was the new barista, she was new to espresso. He taught her all about lattes and the importance of milk texturing—and he always poured a teddy bear face on top of her coffee.
After a few weeks, Grace started borrowing my makeup and humming while she was getting dressed, and I knew Bobby was teaching her about more than lattes. But she was twenty-five for chrissakes. And every movement, every smile told me she was having fun. So we had “the talk” because I was sure Ruby had never told her anything about birth control, and I let her go, I let her grow up.
Bobby told her from the beginning that he was only passing through, that he was traveling cross-country to find himself. I expected Grace would cry when he left, even miss him for a while, but I wasn’t ready when she bought herself a backpack and said she was going to join him on the hunt. “You need to find yourself first,” I told her. But she only laughed and said she already knew where she was, and she wanted to be somewhere else. What could I do? Tell her I’d lied about the importance of travel and freedom? Become my mother and hold her back? Of course not. So I gave her my telephone card and made her promise to call me—and Ruby—every Sunday to let us know she was okay.
I made sure I was in a public place when I told Ruby, but that still didn’t stop her from shoving my face against a bus shelter. That was when we officially stopped talking.
She tried everything to get Grace back. Private investigator, social services, even told police she’d been kidnapped, but nothing worked. Grace was an adult in everyone’s eyes but hers, and there was nothing she could do but wait for those weekly calls.
Being Grace, she kept her word. No matter where they were—Winnipeg, Calgary, Galiano Island—my phone rang precisely at noon every Sunday. She always sounded happy. Said Bobby was taking good care of her. She was gone for seven months. Then one day, the phone rang on a Saturday. A local call. Grace trying not to cry. “I’m downstairs,” was all she said. “And I can’t find my key.”
“Bobby didn’t rape Grace,” I said evenly. “She wanted him. She loved him.”
Ruby turned her head slowly, like an owl. Looked at me like I was the slow child, the one who didn’t grasp everything the first time around. “She loved the idea of him,” she said. “Like any little girl loves the idea of Prince Charming and happily ever after. But there was no happily ever after for Grace and her baby, was there?”
“His name was William, Mom.”
She held up her hands and walked away. “I am not getting into this with you again. Everyone knew I would have gladly looked after both Grace
and
that little boy—”
I was right behind her. “You can’t even say his name can you.”
She rounded on me. “I would have gladly looked after
William.
Loved him and raised him as my own. All you had to do was let her come home.”
“She didn’t want you to raise him. All she wanted you to do was help her learn how to be a mother herself.”
“Grace was never equipped to be a mother. It still shocks me that social services allowed her to take that infant home.”
“If you’d been there, you’d know that they were happy to see her take her son home. She was a fabulous mother, completely devoted—”
“And yet she killed him.”
The breath caught in my throat. “You can’t honestly believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” Her shoulders slumped and she turned away. “He died in her care. That’s all that matters.”
“And when you found out, you weren’t sad for an instant, were you? Your own grandson and you didn’t feel a goddamn thing.”
She shook her head, hand fluttering at her throat. “You have no idea what I felt.”
“Devastated, I’m sure.” I took a step toward her, crowding her, stalking her. “But now she’s back on the Island. That should make you happy.”
She backed up a step. “I’m happy she’s safe. And you don’t know it, but she’s flourished since she’s been home. She’s working again, she bikes every day. She even has a hobby.”
I laughed and closed the space. “You are so oblivious.”
She shoved me backward, reclaiming her ground. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just know that I applaud your decision to take yourself out of the picture now that you have Alzheimer’s. And rest assured that once you’re gone, I will do everything in my power to get Grace on a ferry and off that island for good. Until then, you keep telling yourself she’s fine.”
I turned and started walking away, heading east to the Duck and a fresh start to happy hour.
Ruby followed me for a few steps. “Where are you going? Liz, come back here.” She stopped and made her final stand. “Elizabeth Lucille Donaldson, how dare you walk away when your family needs you.”
I laughed and kept going. “I learned from the best, Mom. The very best.”
GRACE
 
Jocelyn’s friends didn’t arrive on the next ferry or the one after. In fact, they didn’t come at all because some boy named Josh sent a message inviting everyone to his house. I was still spinning the wheel on that iPod, trying to get it to come on without having to ask her how, when her phone made that funny half ring that meant she had a message, not a call.
She was so mad when that message came in, she said, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Then she got on the phone with someone named Maddison and it sounded like Josh’s parents were going out and that meant a party. Not a birthday party or a dinner party, but the kind of party my mom used to warn me about. The kind with beer and boys and God knew what else, and Jocelyn wanted to be there so bad I was afraid she’d say to heck with what her dad wanted and get on that ferry anyway.
But just like she didn’t climb out the window earlier, she didn’t get on the ferry then either. She just yelled and said the f-word a lot and told this Maddison that she hated her dad, but I didn’t think that was true. I’ve seen what hate looks like, and that wasn’t it.
“We can still go to the Carousel,” I said when she hung up.
“With you?” She curled her lip. “Nice try,” she said, and started walking back to her house.
“You forgot your bike,” I called, but she gave me the finger and kept going. So I put the iPod in my pocket, picked up both bikes and followed. It wasn’t easy walking two bikes at once, but if I went nice and slow and made sure they didn’t get too far apart, I could manage. The hard part was getting them up over the Algonquin bridge and then keeping them from running away on the other side. That was a killer.
When I reached her gate, I pushed the bikes through one by one, and left them next to the front porch stairs. Jocelyn was already inside, sitting on the couch, eating bread and peanut butter. I took the lasagne out of the freezer anyway and turned on the oven. “It’s good you’re having something now,” I said. “Because this will take a while.”
“Like I give a shit.” She pointed the remote at the television. I couldn’t see the screen, but I could hear the theme from
CSI: Miami,
which changed to the song from
The Simpsons.
She kept clicking the remote while she punched numbers into her cell phone again. A commercial for cheese with chanting monks was quickly interrupted by a trailer for a new Angelina Jolie movie. “It’s me,” she said to whoever answered.
I would have liked to watch the movie trailer, but Jocelyn kept flipping channels while she talked.
CSI. Law & Order. Two and a Half Men.
The cheese monks again
.
She was back at
The Simpsons
when my mom banged open the front door and hollered, “Mark’s hurt. I need you now!”
That brought Jocelyn to her feet, the phone and remote still on the couch while we both raced to the door. “What happened?” she demanded.
“Liz happened,” my mom said as Mark limped through the door.
Jocelyn looked at me. “Who’s Liz?”
“My sister.”
“She was at the protest,” my mom said.
“Why?” I asked.
My mom threw up her hands. “Who knows why she does anything? But when Mark spotted her, she ran off like some sort of criminal. He went after her, a taxi came out of nowhere, and the next thing I know, he’s on the ground. Did Liz care? Of course not. That girl is so—”
“Why aren’t you in a hospital?” Jocelyn cut in.
“Because even the paramedics agreed that I’m fine.” He looked over at my mom. “And Liz didn’t run like a criminal. She ran because she was scared.”
“Of what?” my mom asked.
“You, mostly.” He tried to smile at Jocelyn. “Hi, honey. Have you had dinner?”
“I don’t care about dinner. Where exactly did the taxi hit you?”
Before he could answer, Mary Anne and the rest of the protesters came through the door, everyone talking at the same time about Liz and her friends and how lucky Mark had been with that taxi. On the television, Homer Simpson chased a dog with a fluffy tail.
When no one was looking, Jocelyn shoved me against the wall. “Is your whole family whacked?”
I shoved her back. “We’re not whacked. My sister just doesn’t get along with my mom.”
“Your sister doesn’t get along with anyone,” my mom said. “And if I ever hear of you speaking to her, if she ever tries to contact you—”
“Ruby, relax,” Mary Anne said, putting an arm around her shoulder, trying to lead her away from me, to keep my secret safe. “Why don’t you sit down? In fact, why doesn’t everybody sit down. Grace and I will make a pot of tea.”
“What we need is ice.” My mom brushed Mary Anne’s arm aside and pointed a finger at me. “I meant it, Grace. If Liz ever contacts you, I want you to tell me right away.”
“Ruby, let it go,” Mark said. “And I don’t need ice.”
But my mom already had the fridge open and ice cube trays in her hands and we both knew there was no point arguing. While Jocelyn sat with her dad and the protesters found spots on the floor, I put on the kettle and tried to make sense of what was going on, tried to put the pieces together, but nothing fit right. I needed to talk to Liz, find out what was going on, why she’d been at the protest.
I knew she had a cell phone, but I never called because lately my mom had started checking the history on our phone all the time. Writing down what came in, what went out. “I’m on the phone so much every day,” she’d say. “I can’t be expected to remember everything.”
I didn’t really get what she was talking about, but I understood that there could be no more secret calls made from our house. But if I could sneak out for a minute, I could use Mary Anne’s phone. All I needed was for my mom to stop watching me.
She held the ice pack out to Mark. “Put that on your knee. Jocelyn, don’t let him take it off for ten minutes.”
Mark closed his eyes. “Does anyone have an aspirin?”
“I have Advil,” one of the Bobs said and brought him the bottle with a glass of water.
Jocelyn crouched down on the floor in front of him. “Will you finally admit that this whole Island thing was a horrible mistake so we can go home?”
He reached out to touch her hair. “Honey, please,” was all he said, but everyone could tell what was coming next, including Jocelyn.
“I don’t believe this.” She ran up the stairs to her room and slammed the door. This time, she took her cell phone.
“She’ll be fine,” Mark said.
“But what about you?” my mom asked.
On the other side of the room, Homer Simpson cheered, Lisa blew her saxophone, and my mom looked confused. “What the hell is that?”
“
The Simpsons
,” Mary Anne said. “It’s that episode where—”
My mom put her hands to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t care what it is. Someone turn off the noise!”
Mary Anne grabbed the controller and pressed the button. The room fell suddenly, scarily quiet. “Ruby,” she asked, “are you okay?”

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