Tides of the Heart (18 page)

She wanted to hang up; she wanted to pretend she wasn’t herself, that her voice was the prerecorded message on the answering machine. She wondered if Jess would believe it if she made the sound of a beep. Instead, she sighed heavily. “Jess,” she said, “yeah, well, I’ve been busy.”

“Good,” Jess replied. “Staying busy is good.”

“Yeah, well, what’s on your mind?”

“Did you get my message? That Phillip met Dr. Larribee and that Amy was not mine?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

“Phillip is going to start looking for her,” Jess said.

Ginny flopped onto the sofa. “Don’t expect any miracles.”

Jess did not respond right away, then she asked, “Ginny? What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing.”
My husband is dead and my daughter is fucking my stepson
, she wanted to say.
What’s wrong with that?

“Ginny, it’s me. Jess. I know when something’s wrong. Besides, I thought you’d be pleased that my daughter is still alive. Well, we assume she’s still alive.”

“Sure. Whatever. But like I said, don’t expect miracles. If you’re lucky, she won’t want to meet you.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ginny snorted. “Children,” she said, “are highly overrated.”

“Did something happen with Lisa?”

Her throat constricted, the way it might if someone had encircled it with a very fat rope and was pulling it very tightly. “Oh, God, Jess,” she said, “I’ve made so many mistakes.”

“We all have, Ginny.”

“But this is the worst,” she said quietly. “Lisa is screwing
my stepson. Or I should say, he’s screwing her. In order to get to me. In order to fuck up my head because Jake left me his entire estate.” As usual, Jess had reached under her skin and somehow had gotten her to talk. As usual, Jess had made her
feel.
Damn.

“Good grief, Ginny.”

She gave up holding back. “Yeah, well, it might be tolerable if he weren’t such a waste of a human being.”

“Surely Lisa will see that.”

“Not while her hormones are raging.” Ginny stopped short of adding that, given the size and expertise of Brad’s dick, it might be a very long time.

“If it will make you feel better, I’m having some problems with Maura, too.” Jess told Ginny about the sailing trip to the Caribbean, about how Maura disapproved of Jess’s looking for her other daughter.

“And you want another one?” Ginny asked.

“I need to know, Ginny. I at least need to know what happened to her.”

Ginny closed her eyes. And then she remembered. She remembered how Jake had encouraged her. She remembered his gentle prodding, his unwavering support the day they went to Larchwood Hall, the day Lisa was there for the first time, the day Ginny at last got to meet the daughter she had given up.

“Yeah, well, keep me posted, okay? I gotta go now.” She hung up, lowered her head, and stared at the floor, the ache in her eyes finally giving way to tears.

“I need to find the statutes on adoption,” Phillip said quietly to Nicole as they stood among the racks of leather-bound volumes in the Columbia law library. He had been waiting for her for nearly an hour: “Slept late” had been her excuse. He tried not to think that meant she wasn’t as eager to see him again as he was to see her.

“Adoption?” she asked. “I thought you did corporate law.”

“I do,” he stammered. He was not ready to tell her about his efforts for Jess. It would mean telling her that he’d been adopted, which would lead him to admit that he’d met P.J., that his brother had been incensed, and that, no, he’d never had the courage to tell his mother. Telling Nicole the truth would have turned into a lengthy confession, and that did not seem appropriate for a girl he’d only just met, no matter how great the sex had been. “This is a special part of a case,” he added vaguely.

She leaned close to him; the scent of something musky lifting from her skin. He resisted the urge to slide his arm around her slight waist, to bury his face in her neck and
inhale her fragrance.
Later
, he commanded the warm tingle that returned quickly to his loins.

“Adoptions are state issues,” she said, sliding out a book. “This section is federal law.”

“Right,” Phillip said with a half smile. “I knew that.”

“State books are in the gallery. Is your client trying to adopt?”

He was confused a moment. “No. They’re trying to find the child they gave up for adoption.” Just because the Larchwood Hall records had been altered didn’t mean the state ones did not hold the truth. And it might be the fastest way to get Jess her answer.

“Wow,” Nicole said with a hint of sarcasm, “corporate law gets more complicated every day.”

Phillip shrugged and reluctantly moved away from her and her musk scent.

“Phillip?”

He stopped and turned.

“If they’re looking for the child they gave up, they’re not going to find it legally.”

Just what he needed. A children’s rights specialist who was going to give him a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t be doing this, why his “client” had no right to interfere in the child’s life. He squared his jaw. “I know that,” he said, trying to soften the bristle that had come into his voice. “But I told my client I’d make an effort.”

Nicole eyed him slowly, as if sizing him up. “Well,” she said, matter-of-factly, “there are services that do searches. Most are private. Very discreet.”

Private. Discreet. It sounded exactly what Jess would want.

“You’re not going to find them in the library, though,” she added. “But I have a friend who knows someone …”

Phillip shifted on one foot. A friend-of-a-friend was often the safest way to gain gray-area information. He suspected that with the type of law Nicole’s father practiced, there were many friends-of-friends in the family.

“That would be a big help,” he replied, not wanting her to know she had just saved his life, for the sooner he could wrap this up, the less chance there would be for Joseph to find out.

“I’ll call her tonight. After I’m finished with my own research.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Terrific.” He had no idea what to do now. Nicole had a lot of work to do. He could tell her he might as well leave, that he had nothing to look up if that was the case. But her scent filled his nostrils again. “Guess I’ll go look up some precedents on a merger I’m working on,” he said lamely, though there was no such deal in the works. Later, he would smell her musk more deeply. Later. After her work was done and her friend was contacted, and he’d felt he’d accomplished something on Jess’s behalf.

They picked up a vegetarian pizza on their way back to Nicole’s. Phillip would have preferred to go to his place—where they could sit at a real table, drink wine from real glasses instead of plastic cups, and eat off real plates instead of paper towels. But his apartment was thirty blocks from Columbia, and if it meant he could spend the night with Nicole again, it was worth the inconvenience. Besides, he thought now as he sat on the edge of the bed juggling a pizza slice while Nicole phoned her friend, it was apparent that she’d changed the sheets.

“Got it,” she said, after hanging up. She walked toward him, holding out a scrap of paper towel on which she’d written a phone number. “It’s a woman named Marsha Brown. She does adoption searches.”

Phillip took the paper and looked at the number, noting the absence of an area code. “Where is she?”

“Right here in Manhattan.”

With a small disappointment, Phillip realized the woman probably only did searches for New York State. He had not, after all, told Nicole that he needed Connecticut. “Perfect,”
he lied. “Now sit down and eat your pizza,” he said, patting the mattress.

“Gulp it might be a better term,” Nicole said, picking a slice from the box. “I have to study tonight.”

He got the message. “Oh,” he answered, folding the paper towel scrap and slipping it into his jeans. “I understand.”

“I knew you would,” Nicole responded. “Dating someone who’s been through law school has its advantages.”

He took another slice of pizza, pleased that at least she’d described them as dating, yet unhappy that it meant he’d be sleeping alone tonight.

Jess had decided that she really needed to get a life. Waiting for Maura to come out of her snit, waiting for Phillip to find her other daughter, waiting to finish the country club job while worrying about who she would run into next—it was all making her miserable.

So Jess had done the unthinkable: She’d called Kiki Larson, the grande dame divorcée. That was how she’d ended up sitting on a hard chair in a cappuccino café, sipping a mocha latte and listening to a bearded man read poetry.

It was awful.

“This is fun,” KiKi said to Jess, sweeping her black-fringed shawl over one shoulder.

Jess wondered how soon she could tactfully leave. Thank God she’d brought her own car.

The man finished one poem, then started another. Maybe KiKi had heard he was single, and that was the real reason they were here.

KiKi leaned toward her. “You have to admit it’s better than listening to those horticulture speakers Louise Kimball was always digging up.”

Jess had always found the occasional gardening lectures at the monthly club meetings interesting—a welcome
change from the who’s-doing-what-to-whom gossip that had become mainstay entertainment among the ladies.

“Speaking of the club,” Jess whispered, “I’m afraid I have to go shortly.”

“Go? But darling, we just got here. You have to give it a chance.”

She smiled. “I have to be at the club early to install the new drapes. And I’m really exhausted.”

KiKi rolled her eyes.

Jess stood up and picked up her purse. “It’s been … great,” she lied. “I’ll be in touch.”

As she left the café, she decided that if this was a “life,” maybe she’d rather not get one.

Monday morning Jess met her assistants at the club at eight o’clock—an hour at which she’d be assured of not running into any of her old friends. Though it was now April, the grounds were still too wet for golf, so she should be safe from interruptions—at least long enough to have the draperies hung before the arrival of the lunch crowd.

Standing back, she surveyed the floor-length drapes as her assistants adjusted the coordinating scarf across the top of the traverse rod. They had done a good job, even though Grace was now gone. Jess was especially impressed with Carlo’s perseverance and attention to detail: perhaps his work had been overshadowed by Grace’s. Jess made a mental note that Carlo could become her second-in-command and could nicely take some of the workload off her.

Smiling at this revelation and at the work now finished before her, Jess felt more satisfied than she had in a long, long time. The butter yellow and hunter green had been a perfect choice for the room; the new wallpaper was up, the carpet had been installed, and it looked like a new room in a new place.
If only it were a new place
, she thought. If it were a new place it might be somewhere she might enjoy
going, where she might enjoy being escorted by … whom?

She stopped herself from laughing out loud. Last night had confirmed what she’d always suspected: Life spent alone was far preferable to the struggle of trying to fill it with a man—any man—just because everyone else was doing it. For now, the only man in her life would be Carlo, and the only relationship they would have would be on opposite sides of the sewing machine.

“A little to the right,” she instructed him now, making sure the fall of the scarf was loose and lovely, looking as if it were not rigid, but casual.

From the ladder, Carlo nodded, then looked past Jess at something that had caught his eye. He tugged the scarf slowly to the right. “Is this okay?” he asked.

“Looks good to me,” said someone behind her.

Jess stared at the drapery, her good mood dissolving like sugar in hot tea. She did not want to turn around. She knew the voice and did not want to be feeling the way she was feeling. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Now let’s do the same in the dining room.” She was surprised that her words came out so evenly. She was not surprised that her feet were pinned to the floor, unable to move.

“You’ve done a wonderful job,” the voice said again.

Jess did not reply.

“Jess?”

She sighed and slowly turned. “What is it, Charles?” He was tanned and healthy-looking, his light brown hair made blond by the Caribbean sun, the whites of his eyes looking whiter, the teeth that showed with his smile looking brighter. “I heard you were re-doing the place. It looks great.”

“Only the banquet and dining rooms.” She picked up her bag and headed toward the dining room. “And we have work to do, so if you’ll excuse me …”

He stepped forward and touched her arm. “Have you talked with our daughter?”

Jess’s mouth went dry; spiny needles prickled up her back. “She called to say she was back safely at college.” She did not want to meet his eyes. She did not want to talk with him. And more than anything, she wished he’d get his hand off her arm.

“She told me what you’re doing,” he said.

“Everyone at the club knows I’m redecorating.”

“I meant about that other thing. That baby.”