Tides of the Heart (6 page)

When Jess handed her daughter the letter on blue paper, she sipped her hot chocolate and waited for the look of disdain to appear on her daughter’s face. It was there in an instant.

“Who sent it?” Maura asked.

“I don’t know. But I expect it’s the same person who left that message.”

“It was hard to tell if that was a man or a woman.”

“I know.”

“But whoever it is, is saying your baby is still alive.”

“I know.”

“Mom? Is that possible?”

“I have no idea, honey.”

“But I remember the picture of Amy that Mrs. Hawthorne brought you,” Maura said flatly. “Amy must have been yours, Mom. She looked just like you.”

“Maybe I only wanted her to look like me.”

Maura picked up her mug, strode to the sink, and dumped the remaining contents down the drain. “But, Mom, you don’t know who’s doing this. It could be some wacko with a huge mental pathology.”

Jess refrained from commenting that if Maura truly intended to become a psychologist, she’d better learn a few other terms besides “batty” and “wacko.”

“No matter who it is,” Jess replied, trying to soften the edge in her voice, “the person obviously knows I gave a baby up for adoption.”

“So?”

“So someone is either trying to get me to connect with
my baby, or knows Amy is dead and is trying to drive me out of my mind.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. There’s not much I can do.”

Suddenly her daughter turned around. “I think you should ignore it, Mother. For one thing, maybe it’s time for you to let go of the past.”

Jess blinked. “Excuse me? I didn’t ask for this, Maura.”

“Didn’t you? It seems to me you opened the door when you decided to search for that baby.”

Cellophane anger crinkled across Jess’s shoulders. She reminded herself of what Maura’s therapist had once said: that Maura suffered from guilt over having become pregnant herself at age sixteen. If not for that, Jess would never have searched for her own baby, would never have learned that Amy was dead, and would never have gone through with the divorce. Maura’s miscarriage had possibly only deepened her distress. Still, Jess had hoped that several years and many thousands of therapy dollars later, her daughter would have dealt with it. Dealt with it and healed.

“To begin with, that was nearly five years ago,” Jess said defensively—uncomfortably—now. “And I wanted to find my baby because it was unfinished business in my life.”

“And now some psycho has come out of the woodwork and is probably going to try and get money out of you.”

“What does money have to do with this? I don’t hide anything anymore.”

“No, Mom,” Maura said brusquely. “I guess you don’t. But maybe the rest of this family would prefer it if you did.” She plunked her mug in the sink. “I’m going to Eddie’s,” she said, stalking out of the room.

Jess stayed in her chair, silent in her anguish. Certainly, she had not expected this to be Maura’s reaction. She had not expected her to be so judgmental. She wondered if this had anything to do with Eddie’s country club influence. Then she took another sip of lukewarm hot chocolate and wondered if Travis would feel the same way as Maura, and
if Chuck, the eldest, would follow suit. If Chuck ever returned from Boston, and if she could ever be sure he was in no way involved.

Why did this have to happen now, just when her life seemed to be coming together, just when it had settled into a level of comfort, of routine days and predictable nights?

Jess closed her eyes. Surely it would be better to ignore the whole thing than to upset her family like this, or to give in to the risky hope that her baby might still be alive. She knew, in her heart, that Amy Hawthorne had been her’s—didn’t she? And that Amy was gone, Amy was dead.

Quietly, Jess rose from her chair, went to the answering machine, and erased the garbled message.

Just after midnight the telephone rang. Jess’s eyes sprang open. She lay there, staring at the dark ceiling of her bedroom. Her pulse was racing, her hands shaking.

The phone rang again,

She turned onto her side and flicked on the light. She stared at the receiver that rested in its cradle.

It rang again.

It must be her
, she said to herself. Or whoever this person was who was determined to drive her mad.
Well
, she thought defiantly,
whoever it is, is not going to get to me or my family. Even if it is my family. Even if it is Chuck.

She grabbed the phone.

“Mom?” the voice on the other end asked. “Did I wake you?”

Maura.

“Yes, honey,” she said, her pulse easing back, her heart slowing. “What is it?”

“I decided to stay at Eddie’s tonight,” she said. “It started snowing and I know you hate it when I drive in the snow.”

“Okay, honey,” Jess said, even though she knew she was
condoning something she didn’t want to condone. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

There was a pause, then Maura added, “Mom? I’m sorry about our fight this afternoon. I love you.”

“Me too, honey.”

Afterward, Jess couldn’t sleep. Mixed with her anxieties about Maura and Eddie was the certainty that the blue-papered letter and the phone message were going to make her and everyone around her crazy if she didn’t do something. If she didn’t learn the truth.

She could not exactly go to Martha’s Vineyard, stand in the middle of the island, and demand to know who had sent her the letter. But there was somewhere else she could start. Someone else who might be able to help.

Mary Frances Taylor had retired to Falmouth after a career steeped in unwed mothers and other women’s babies. As for herself, she was an unhappy old maid, or at least that’s what the girls at Larchwood Hall had presumed until the night Bud Wilson emerged from her bedroom, zipping his pants, hair all askew. The night that had turned so … hideous.

But Jess could not allow herself to remember that night now. She needed to stay focused on her mission.

After a night of broken sleep, she dressed warmly and left a brief note for Maura saying only that she’d gone out of town. She hoped to return before Maura went back to Skidmore: maybe there would be news to tell her—news that would settle this once and for all.

The four-hour ride helped Jess put things into perspective, or at least into a perspective that she could accept. She decided that Charles could not have done this; he would not be this inventive. If he needed money, he would find a more direct route. Even more important was Jess’s realization that Chuck would not do this. He might take after
Charles, but he was her son, too. And though they weren’t terribly close, they rarely argued; they rarely took the time.

No
, she reasoned as she steered the car off Route 28, neither Charles nor Chuck could be behind this. Then she wondered if Maura would call this denial.

Winding her way through narrow side streets lined with Cape Cod-style houses and canvas-covered boats in snow-crusted yards, Jess finally located the driveway of the cottage Miss Taylor shared year-round with her sister, Loretta. She turned off the engine and studied the small house in front of her: the cozy, many-paned bungalow that her old housemother called home. The shingles were grayer than Jess remembered, weathered in the salt air to a soft, faded silver; the white picket fence, which had been dotted with beach roses when she was last here, now stood unsteadily in the late afternoon light, decidedly in need of a coat of fresh paint. Edging the lawn were clusters of withered hydrangea bushes, whose once fat blue blossoms were brown now, brittle-looking and barren. But even more disturbing was the stillness—the vacant feel of the tourist-free street, the ghost-town numbness of desolation, the wintertime loneliness of a summertime haven.

She wondered if it was the same way on Martha’s Vineyard.

Uncertain what she would say to Miss Taylor, suddenly weighted with dread, Jess reluctantly emerged from the car and stepped into the stillness.

She took a deep breath of damp sea air and tried to convince herself that Miss Taylor would know if the letter and the phone call were anything more than a prank—or if there was a chance there had been some mix-up, that Amy had not been hers, that her baby was still alive.

Jess walked along the ice-dotted flagstone path, regretting not having worn boots.

At the front door, she rubbed her hands together, then rang the bell. “Please be home,” she whispered at the wooden door.

After a moment, she heard the shuffle of feet from within. Jess wondered how old Miss Taylor would be now—nearly eighty, perhaps. Loretta would be even older from what she remembered about the only time she’d seen the woman five years before.

At last the door opened. It was Loretta, a bit more bent over, her bluish skin more translucent than before.

“Loretta Taylor?” Jess asked.

The woman scowled. “What is it? What do you want?”

Jess cleared her throat. “I met you several years ago,” she said loudly, as if the woman were deaf as well as old. “My name is Jessica Randall. I’ve come to see your sister?” She wondered why the last sentence had come out like a question.

“You’re wasting your time,” Loretta Taylor grumbled. “My sister is dead.”

The door started to close. Jess raised her hand to stop it from shutting. Quickly, she said, “Wait. Tell me what happened.”

“Last summer. The damn cigarettes finally got her.”

Jess closed her eyes and pictured Miss Taylor, a bright slash of red painted on her lips, a nonfilter cigarette dangling from her hand, staining her fingers in brown-yellow tinge. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she managed to say. “I didn’t know …”

“Well, you do now.” Loretta abruptly closed the door, leaving Jess alone on the stoop.

Jess slipped her hands into her coat pockets and stared at the door, as if waiting for it to open again, as if expecting Miss Taylor would be there this time, saying what a terrible tease her sister was and always had been, and why didn’t Jess please come in and sit down.

She stared at the door, but it did not open. Slowly, Jess realized that it would not. She stood there, feeling a dull pull on her heart, the pull of yet another loss, another thread torn from the fabric of her life.

Miss Taylor was gone.

Miss Taylor was dead.

As the blunt knife of reality carved a new hollow inside her, Jess also realized that without Miss Taylor, she might now never know the truth. Miss Taylor, the one person Jess had been able to trust.

The sky grew darker. A sudden spray of sleet began to pelt her face.

Maybe she was just a little bit horny. Ginny sat on the edge of her bed and laughed, knowing that being a little bit horny was probably like being a little bit pregnant.

She touched her hand between her legs; she slowly rubbed the warm, dry spot within.

Nothing.

Not the tiniest tingle nor the dewiest drop of moisture hinted that her hormones needed tending to.

She flopped her naked body back on the bed where she’d been for nearly forty-eight hours and flung her hand over her head.
God
, she thought,
I’m not even freaking horny.

She closed her eyes. Why was she feeling so uncomfortable, so damned displaced, as if her mind had left her body and was floating around in outer space, looking for another ride? Looking for a better place to live?

She wondered if this was grief: the kind of shit those mindless people on those mindless talk shows went on and on about, as if they were the only ones who’d ever been screwed by life.

Somehow, Ginny doubted if her problem was simply grief. She’d been there. She’d done that. But grief for her
had always meant a time of living, a time of screwing, a time to reaffirm the fact that she was still alive, that she was still a person. Grief was party time. Grief was not the time to lie across the bed naked and alone, touching herself to see if she had any desire left at all. Touching herself and coming up with a sad, pathetic nothing.

No, this couldn’t be grief. She shuddered at the thought that maybe Jake had had the last of Ginny’s sex, that he’d had the last of her predictable, gushable, wondrous orgasms. As a lover, he hadn’t even been that good, with a smaller-than-average uncircumcised penis that spent more time drooping toward his balls than pointing up at her. It had been, she knew, the reason he’d tolerated her escapades with all the others—the tight-assed, washboard-stomached others whose dicks knew where to go and how to make her beg for more.

But something had happened after Ginny found Lisa. Something weird and strange. For finally she’d stopped running; she’d stopped needing more. She had her husband; she had a daughter. They both wanted to be a part of Ginny’s life, though who the hell knew why.

She rolled onto her side now and ran her hand across her flesh, over the humps of her firm, silicone-implanted breasts, bought and paid for with Jake’s money, like everything else in her life.

It had been a miracle that he’d never learned about Brad.

Pinching her nipple, waiting for the spark between her legs that did not come, Ginny thought about the night she’d fucked Jake’s son.