Tides of the Heart (11 page)

But that was then and this was now, and Jess didn’t think she was ready to deal with the people she’d once courted. It
had not escaped Jess that Celia had probably only hired her so she could spread the word about what Jess was doing and, of course, how she looked. Dealing with Celia Boynton was one thing, but the whole club? Where Jess’s work would be visible for all to see and critique? Where her name would be bandied about like locker-room gossip, where the men in Jess Randall’s life—or lack thereof—would become as talked-about as her drapes?

“As far as I know, she’s not seeing anyone.”

“She hasn’t, you know. Not since the divorce.”

“And she must have financial problems—why else would she work?”

The tut-tuts and whispers would be difficult to take: She’d heard them before about other former club members like KiKi Larson and Maggie Brown who had leaped—or had been thrown—into the outré black hole of divorce. But behind the gossip-monger facades, Jess always suspected that more than one woman kept her hideous marriage intact simply to avoid being served as verbal fodder at lunch.

So she had wanted to say “no thank you” to Wendell with a noble excuse that she was much too busy to devote the kind of detailed attention the club so deserved. It would have played well on the grapevine, if not on her profit statement. But the fact was that a job as large as the club’s would keep her assistants busy for several weeks and would look impressive as hell on her “Designs by Jessica” résumé.

So Jess had sent Grace, her most dependable assistant, to the club to take measurements, then had given Wendell an exorbitant price, half hoping the club’s officers would not accept her bid. Three days later, they did, just as Grace announced she was moving to Tucson because her husband had been transferred.

Then Maura had phoned to tell Jess the spring break trip was off: Liz had decided to go home with her boyfriend, and Heather did not want to go without her. What should Maura do? Jess did not know what to say, so she said, “Why don’t you come home and work on your paper for psychology?”
which, of course, was the wrong thing to say to a college sophomore. “
Mother
, you just don’t understand” was her reply, followed by an abrupt hanging up of the phone.

Even Travis had been in an uncharacteristically foul mood the past week, having bombed his math midterm because he’d come down with the flu.

The only positive thing about the week was what had
not
happened: There had been no more ominous, anonymous letters, no more nebulous, garbled phone messages.

As the cab screeched to a stop at Tavern on the Green, Jess clutched the armrest and wondered if Maura had been right—maybe it would be better to put out of her mind the remote possibility that her baby might still be alive. Then she thought about Ginny and about the note for fifty thousand dollars, and she knew that it was too late to turn back.

Grateful for having survived the ride, and promising herself—not for the first time—that she would never take a death-defying taxi again, Jess paid the driver and stepped out of the cab. Her head was aching and her heart was heavy. But then, as if whisked by a feather in a light summer breeze, her anxiety disappeared as she spotted Phillip Archambault waiting by the door.

He had not changed. His cheeks were still round and rosy, his smile warm and happy, his eyes the same vibrant emerald as P.J.’s had been. Jess felt a small ache of longing for her long-ago friend. She hugged Phillip gently, trying once more to process the fact that this tall, handsome
man
had been one of their own, one of their
babies
, who had grown into an adult.

“Jess,” Phillip said. “Gosh, you still look so young.”

Jess laughed and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Flattery, young man, will get you everywhere.”

Inside the restaurant they were escorted past long brass rails bordering richly paneled walls, past finely stenciled
glass partitions and pots of thick, green plants to a small corner table set away from the lunch crowd.

“I hope this is okay,” Phillip said after they had been seated and the maitre d’ left. “I asked for something private.”

“It’s fine.” Jess sipped from a thin crystal water glass, her pleasure in seeing him slowly giving way to the disquiet over the reason they were there. She so hoped that P.J.’s son would be supportive; she so hoped he would understand why she needed to do this. She did not need another reaction like Maura’s; if that happened, surely she would give up. And then she would never know.

“What’s going on, Jess?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Tell me about you first. Tell me how you’ve been and if you’re happy … tell me everything.”

He laughed. “Well, for starters, I’d be a lot happier if you hadn’t said this was business. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when anyone asks for a lawyer, it means there’s some kind of trouble.”

“There’s no trouble, dear, only a minor complication.” She twisted her ring and realized that, along with the eyes, Phillip had apparently also inherited his mother’s no-nonsense directness. “I really want to hear about you. You’re working in Manhattan, but are you still living in Fairfield?” Fairfield, Connecticut, had been where she’d located Phillip’s mother when she was tracking down the children for the reunion; it was not very far from where Jess had lived in Greenwich, where she had raised her three children and pretended to be happy as Charles’s wife.

“Nope,” he replied. “I hated the commute. I see Mom every week, though, on Wednesday nights. Sometimes on weekends, unless I’m stuffed in the law library, looking up cases.”

“You work hard. Your mother—I mean, P.J. did, too.”

A boyish grin crept across his round, sunny face. “It gets confusing, doesn’t it? That I have—had—two mothers?”

Jess felt her face flush. “Did you ever tell your … mother … about P.J.?”

He shook his head. “It would only have hurt her, Jess. It was probably wrong, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Sensitive
, Jess thought,
and kind. If P.J. had lived, she would be so proud of her son.
Then a mother-instinct darted through her mind: Why couldn’t Maura find someone like Phillip instead of the arrogant, spoiled boys she latched on to? Quickly, she pushed away these thoughts and asked, “Any girlfriends?”

“They come, they go,” he replied with a nonchalance Jess was not convinced that he felt. “My life is too busy these days for anything more.”

The waiter appeared and asked for their orders. Without looking at the menu, Phillip recommended the grilled salmon to Jess. “It sounds wonderful,” she said.

After the waiter left, Jess toyed with her water glass; Phillip’s eyes held steady on her face. “So,” he said firmly, “enough of this small talk. What’s your ‘minor complication’?”

There was apparently no use in stalling. She sipped her water again and cleared her throat. Then she told him about the mysterious letter, the phone call, and the fact that Miss Taylor was dead. He listened with the patience of a veteran attorney, nodding at intervals, his expression revealing neither a glimmer of surprise nor the least hint of judgment.

She told him about the note in Miss Taylor’s things for fifty thousand dollars. She even mentioned the payoff her father had given Richard’s family. Throughout it all, Jess felt oddly detached again, as if she were speaking of other people and other people’s lives.

“So what I need,” she said, “is your help. I need to know if Amy was my daughter, or if my daughter is still alive.”

He loosened the knot of his tie and fixed his emerald eyes on her. “I don’t see how I can help, Jess. I’m a lawyer, not a private investigator.”

“I don’t want a private investigator, Phillip. I don’t want to pick someone out of the yellow pages. I need someone I can trust. I can trust you.”

“But I’m a corporate attorney, Jess. I deal in takeovers and mergers and that kind of stuff.”

“Not in lost babies?”

His expression was apologetic and sincere. “I’m sorry.”

Their lunches arrived. Jess stared at the delicate presentation of the orange-pink salmon and willed herself not to cry. She was so tired of thinking about this, so tired of wondering what to do and what not to do. Closing her eyes, she decided maybe it was for the best, that maybe this was one of those clues from the universe the kids today spoke of—a clear, God-ordered message to drop the whole thing. If Phillip couldn’t help her, she would not look elsewhere. Then she felt his warm hand rest on hers.

“It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to, Jess. But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Her eyelids lifted along with her spirits. At least he didn’t seem to think she was foolish. Or wrong. “I don’t know either. That’s why I called you.”

“But even if things were different, well, we’re so busy at the office … we just landed a big account.…”

“A corporate account,” Jess commented.

Phillip nodded. Jess looked down at her wilted spinach salad. It was hopeless, she thought. The message was clear.

“Other than the housemother, who else might have known the truth?” he asked quietly.

“I made a list,” she said. “There was the doctor, of course. Dr. Larribee.” She tried not to get her hopes up when she noticed that Phillip had produced a small pad and was now making notes.

“Do you remember his first name?”

“William. William Larribee. I only remember that because I used to stare at his name badge rather than look him in the eyes. It was so embarrassing.…” She looked away again, scanning the other luncheon customers, wondering
if their lives were as complex and painful as hers had been. “But I have no idea where Dr. Larribee is, or even if he’s still alive.” She turned back to Phillip and tried to smile, reminding herself that none of this was his fault. “In fact, Dr. Larribee brought you into this world, too.”

“I’ll be sure to thank him,” Phillip said with a grin. “Who else?”

Jess recalled her list. “Bud Wilson. The town sheriff and postmaster. Apparently Miss Taylor and he … well, they were good friends. I don’t know what happened to him either.”

“What about the other girls?”

“I’ve spoken with Ginny. She has no idea. Susan is off to England. And P.J.… well, it was just the four of us.”

Phillip took a bite of his salmon and slowly chewed. “What about people not connected to that place? Who else knew that you were …”He hesitated a bit.

“Pregnant?” Jess asked. “Only my father knew. And Richard, of course. The boy who …” her words trailed off, as if it were her turn to feel awkward.

But Phillip nodded. He understood.

“This is difficult for me,” Jess said. “Thank you for being so kind.”

His brow wrinkled into a frown. Jess noted that there were far too many frown lines for someone so young. “And that’s it?” he asked. “No one else?”

She bit her lip. “Well, my ex-husband, of course. And my children. I told the children just before the reunion. And the Hawthornes, Amy’s parents. No one else.”

He ate more of his lunch, the frown lines growing deeper with every mouthful. “What’s the deal with your ex-husband?”

“The deal?” Jess asked. A small touch of that too-familiar fur ball tickled her throat.

Phillip set down his fork. “I’m not trying to pry, Jess. But often when, well, when hostilities erupt in a family, it comes from within. Especially when divorce is involved.”

He took a long drink of water. “But I’m sure you know that.”

Allowing her gaze to drift among the other diners again, Jess said, “I’ve been divorced four years, Phillip. There’s been no problem so far—and I have no reason to believe there is now.” She blinked and looked back at him. “I think our best clue is the postmark from Martha’s Vineyard. At least it’s something concrete.”

“Does anyone you know have ties to the island?”

“I only know that Miss Taylor lived on Cape Cod. I can’t imagine that’s any more than a coincidence.” Jess suddenly felt exhausted. It felt as if she’d told her life story to a boy too young to hear it.

“Tell me, Jess,” Phillip asked slowly. “What will you do if I can’t help?”

“Drop it. Leave well enough alone.”

“Well, I can’t let you do that, now can I?”

She held her breath. “But, Phillip …”

“I owe you, Jess. I had some wonderful months with P.J., but I never even would have known her if it hadn’t been for you.”

A layer of tears rose in Jess’s eyes.

“No guarantees,” P.J.’s son continued. “But I’ll at least try and find out if your baby was Amy Hawthorne or not. Beyond that,” he added with a quirky half grin, “well, like I said, I have a business to run and a brother who might kill me if I don’t hold up my end.”

“If you can find out if my baby was Amy,” Jess said, smiling and wiping her tears, “I won’t bother you with anything else. That’s a promise.”

Later that evening, Jess stared into her huge walk-in closet, trying to decide between pressing the navy faille suit or the cocoa silk dress—or slugging half a bottle of antacid instead.

She had butterflies in her stomach. As a little girl Jess had
once pictured yellow and orange and blue and green wings fluttering against her pink insides, delicately tickling the walls of her tummy. What she hadn’t understood was if it was tickling, why didn’t it make her laugh? Why did it make her feel upset instead? And why did it always happen before she had to do something really important, like reciting a poem in front of the class at Miss Winslow’s, or later, trying to impress the unimpressionable housemother at Larchwood Hall?

By the time she’d reached Larchwood, of course, Jess had known there were no pretty butterflies dancing within. She knew it was merely a symptom of nerves: rock-hard, unquietable, someone’s-out-to-get-me nerves.

The someones out to get her now, she knew, were the ladies of the country club, the Celia Boyntons and Dorothy Sanderses and Louise Kimballs of the world, women who had once been friends. Now Jess lived on the other side of the social tracks—divorced, out of touch, a working woman, for God’s sake, who no longer did lunch between tennis and golf, who no longer shopped for the sheer need to kill time.