Tides of the Heart (23 page)

Feeling satisfied at what she’d done, Ginny said goodbye, checked her watch, then went to find a Mrs. Fields concession to celebrate her return to Massachusetts with a half dozen chocolate-macadamia nut cookies.

Jess leaned against the rail of the ferry from Woods Hole, a kaleidoscope of thoughts turning through her mind like the sun’s sparkling prisms dancing on the churning water.

There were so many questions that funneled into these few: Did Richard have her—
their
—baby? Who had tried to contact her? And would she have the courage to confront whatever awaited on the other shore?

Holding tightly to the rail, she tried to tell herself that no matter what happened, she was lucky. She had her three children, she would always have them, despite the speed bumps along the road of their lives. If Maura chose to distance herself from her over this, there was little Jess could do except pray that someday Maura might understand. Or at least forgive her for what she had to do.

She had lied about this trip. Well, not lied, exactly, but she had not quite told the truth. “I’m meeting my friend Ginny on Martha’s Vineyard,” Jess had told Maura and Travis. “Ginny’s husband died recently, and we’re going to spend a few days together.”

Travis had told her to have a great time.

Maura—who knew quite clearly who Ginny was and how she had come to be her mother’s friend—had not exactly helped her pack, but neither had she begun another fight. Jess wondered if her daughter had forgotten that the
obscure note had been postmarked Vineyard Haven, or if Maura had simply—gratefully—not made the connection.

Jess tilted her face up to the warm spring sun now with a silent prayer of thanks that Chuck had not been involved in this; that Charles hadn’t, either. She did not know how she could have handled such betrayal. Then she felt a twinge of guilt that she’d accused them in the first place.

Maybe they deserved it
, a small voice inside her said.

She shook her head and looked off toward the coastline that grew larger as the engines chugged ahead—a curving, sculpted coastline, where a fleet of mismatched sailboats bobbed in lazy waves and huge, timeworn homes stood up on bluffs above the dunes and peered across the water with big, foreboding window-eyes.

She wondered if one of them was Mayfield House, the home once owned by Mabel Adams, whoever she once had been; if Richard had lived there, if their daughter had played along the beach and watched the ferry come across and wondered what the world was like beyond.

The engines slowed and she gripped the rail, reminding herself that there were many things she did not know, but that she was moving closer, closer to the truth.

Then the purser announced it was time for passengers to return to their vehicles. It was also, Jess knew, time to return to the past.

Mayfield House did not hug the coastline but sat atop a hill above the densely packed center of Vineyard Haven. It was not far from the pier, though it took Jess several minutes to traverse the narrow, hilly, one-way streets that rose up from the ocean, a land mass swollen by the gods. At last she found the sign. She took a small, short breath and steered into a driveway made of broken shells that crunched beneath her wheels. She stopped and stared at what she saw.

Mayfield House was not the small, quaint inn Jess had
expected. Instead it was a sprawling, stately, huge white house with buttercup yellow shutters and a sweeping wraparound veranda. The lawn was lush and manicured; the entire place was protected by a tall, thick border of privacy hedges. It clearly appeared to be the estate of a wealthy family—a
very
wealthy family. She wondered if Phillip had been wrong, and if perhaps it had been her father’s money, after all, that had secured this place for Richard’s family thirty years ago, when two hundred thousand dollars was—as Ginny had so aptly put it—a freaking fortune.

She parked her car and slowly turned off the ignition. She sat for a moment, gazing at the gardens that bordered the house—wide, well-tended gardens thick with yellow tulips. Stepping out of the car, Jess inhaled the scent of the nearby sea, the salt and the seaweed, the lobsters and the driftwood, grown damp and pungent with the tides. She wondered if her daughter had been raised here, to know these scents as if her own, to know the spray of salt upon her cheeks, the island wet within her bones.

“Jessica Randall?”

The voice came from the veranda. Jess looked up and saw a tall, thin woman whose long, dark hair was streaked with white, who was oddly clothed in a plain white T-shirt and a sarong of orange flowers that hugged her hips and snaked down her long legs to touch the porch floor. She also wore a crooked smile that looked almost like a smirk.

“Yes,” Jess answered. “Hello.”

“Do you need help with your bags?”

Jess looked back to her car. “Oh,” she said, “well, yes, if it’s not too much trouble.”

The woman did not reply, but padded across the porch and ambled down the stairs. Jess noted she was barefoot. “Karin Bradley,” the woman said, brushing a long string of hair from her face and extending a hand to Jess.

Karin
, Jess thought.
Richard’s older sister.
She had never met her when they were young, had only heard about her, had only heard that she was smart and pretty, the apple of
her father’s eye. But Karin Bradley now looked neither smart nor pretty. She looked plain and tired, an aging woman who’d had a hard, unhappy life—or maybe that was what Jess imagined, what she hoped had happened to this woman who must have played some role in stealing Jess’s child. Jess blinked back her thoughts and shook the woman’s hand: it was cool and dry, not like her own, which she was sure was too warm and perspiring.

Karin did not say it was nice to meet her or welcome to the Vineyard or any such pleasantries. Instead, she grinned that Cheshire cat grin and headed toward Jess’s car.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Jess said, following close behind, determined to act as if nothing were wrong. There would be plenty of time to give herself away later; plenty of time, once all the facts—and all the people—had come to light.

“Almost summer,” Karin replied, not revealing whether or not she found that pleasing. She opened the car door and slung a suitcase onto her shoulder, leaving the other one for Jess.

Jess grabbed the bag and trekked after Karin toward the porch and up the wide wooden stairs. “The house is magnificent,” she said, but Karin didn’t answer.

Inside the huge foyer, Jess marveled at the polished woodwork, the long marble-topped side table, and the crystal chandelier that shimmered in the light that filtered through sheer curtains hanging from tall windows. She did not know for certain, but guessed that the Oriental rug that ran the length of the massive hall was very old and had been quite expensive. She wondered if her father’s money had bought that, too.

“I’ll take your bag up to your room,” Karin said. “Wait here for my father. He’ll check you in.” She disappeared up the steep staircase, her bare feet slapping the oak stairs.

Jess stood in the foyer alone, wondering how to calm her growing trepidation or stop the nagging disbelief that she actually was there. She set down her suitcase and walked toward a set of French doors. Peeking in, she saw an enormous
living room that spanned the depth of the house. A large brick fireplace was at the opposite wall of the room; a grand piano sat at one end; a trio of sofas was clustered around dark-wood tables; and all the walls were lined with antique clocks, all reading 4:43.

“Jessica Randall?”

Jess turned to see a man of seventyish, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, with snow white hair and blue, blue eyes. The same blue, blue eyes she remembered Richard had. She touched her stomach to quiet the turmoil bubbling inside and wondered how long she could pretend to be just another tourist, a casual vacationer. “Yes,” she said unsteadily. “I’m Jessica Randall.”

o The man did not seem to recognize her. Then again, he had no reason to. She’d only met him once, more than thirty years ago, the night after her mother’s funeral when he’d come to pick up Richard at the townhouse in the city. She didn’t remember what he’d looked like either, only that he drove an old DeSoto with rust on both front fenders.

“Welcome to Martha’s Vineyard,” that man said now, handing Jess a thick brass key and a small brochure with a picture of Mayfield House on the front. His smile seemed genuine; he did not seem unhappy like his daughter. Nor did he seem to be the kind of man who would take two hundred thousand dollars, then steal a baby, too.

“Thank you,” Jess replied.

“We’ve put you in room seven. Up the stairs to the left. Breakfast is at nine. The dining room’s across the hall.” He gestured to her bag. “Would you like me to carry that up?”

“No, thanks.” The sooner she got away from him … well … perhaps the ache inside her head would stop and she’d be able to think straight once again.

He nodded. “If you need anything, just give a holler.” He started to walk away then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot. Name’s Bradley. Richard Bradley.”

No it’s not
, she wanted to shout.
Your name is Richard BRYANT and you—or Mabel Adams or someone here—kidnapped
my child.
Instead, she nodded and said, “Mr. Bradley. Thank you.”

He tipped a hat that wasn’t there and left her in the foyer, alone again, standing in the house where her firstborn may have walked, may have been raised, may have spent the first three decades of her life … and might, at any moment, step into the room.

“It’s about damn time you got here.”

The voice inside room number seven startled Jess. She dropped her bag and held her hand up to her throat. “Ginny,” she cried. “You scared me half to death.”

“Which must account for the fact your face is as white as Miss Taylor’s without her rouge.”

Jess laughed and went to hug her friend. “No one told me you were here. How was your flight?”

Ginny broke away from the hug and moved to sit on Jess’s bed—a very high four-poster bed with a George Washington bedspread and ivory lace canopy. “Long. Uneventful.” Her eyes moved around the room. “They put me down the hall in number three. I don’t have a canopy bed. I’m thinking of complaining to the management.”

“No complaints!” Jess whispered. “I don’t want to call any more attention to us than necessary, okay?”

Ginny scowled. “Why don’t you just come out and ask the old man to tell you the truth?”

Jess unzipped her bag, took out some clothes, and hung them in the small closet. “I have to go slow, Ginny. I have to be sure.”

“And you don’t want to blow your chance to meet her if she’s here.”

“Right.”

“But how will you know if you see her?”

“I’ll know.”

Ginny rolled her dark-lined eyes. “Well, don’t count on Morticia to introduce you.”

“Morticia?”

“The welcoming party in the sarong and the bare feet.”

Jess laughed again. “That’s Richard’s sister. She is a bit strange. I don’t think she was like that when we were kids.”

“A century ago.”

“Yes. I guess people change.” She removed her cosmetics and set them on the broad rim of a marble pedestal sink. “Have you … have you seen anyone else?”

“Only Dad. No twenty-nine-year-old girl and no guy who looked like he might have been the father to your kid.”

A tiny need to defend Richard swelled in Jess’s heart; she walked to the curtained window and looked down across the town, the way she had once watched for Richard from her room at Larchwood Hall, where she had waited for him to come for her and had never understood why he had not.

“Come on,” Ginny said, interrupting her thoughts. “Let’s go see if there’s a decent place to eat in this backwater town.”

Jess sighed and tried to smile. There would be plenty of time to think about Richard later.

Main Street in Vineyard Haven was alive with pickup trucks and the sounds of summer approaching: saws buzzing, hammers banging, painters painting wide white strokes across small clapboard shops.

“What a charming town,” Jess commented as they maneuvered their way along the sidewalk, dodging ladders and canvas drop cloths. “I’ve never been to the island before.”

“You’re kidding,” Ginny said. “I would have thought people with your kind of money came here the way my mother and I hung out by the hot dog stand at Revere Beach.”

“No. Before my mother died, Father traveled a lot for his business. I spent summers at the swim club. That was where I met Richard. He was a towel boy.” She heard her words trail off into memory. Quickly, she cleared her
throat. “Anyway, after Larchwood Hall, well, I stayed in England at school all year.”

“So you never saw your old man?”

“Once a year at Christmas. A little more often after Charles and I were married, but not much.”

They stopped in front of a store and watched a girl hang T-shirts in the window.

“Well, believe it or not,” Ginny said, “I was here on the Vineyard once. I was six or seven, I guess. One of my mother’s boyfriends brought us here for two days.”

“Do you remember much about it?”

“We stayed in Oak Bluffs,” she said with a snort. “Probably because they could drink there. Most of the island is dry.” She raised her hand and shook a finger like a stern schoolteacher trying to give instruction. “If the name of a town doesn’t have an O, you can’t buy liquor there.” She laughed. “It’s amazing the important stuff I’ve retained inside this brain.”

“Vineyard Haven doesn’t have an O.”

“Right. But Oak Bluffs … well, that was why we stayed there. Anyway, I remember the carousel. And saltwater taffy. You could watch them make it in the shops.”

“Did you have a fun?”

“Yeah, sure. It was a blast.” She turned to Jess and curled her lip, then continued strolling down the sidewalk.

Quickly, Jess caught up. “I wonder if this is a good place for children. An island is so … isolated.”

“I suppose it’s like anywhere else. It mostly depends on the people you’re with.”

They passed a bookstore and an art gallery and an upscale jewelry store. Jess stopped and looked at the velvet-draped display of gold charms: Nantucket baskets, lighthouses, and small triangular maps of the Vineyard.