The Second Mother
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2020 by Jenny Milchman
Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Sarah Brody
Cover image © Mike Dobel/Arcangel Images
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Milchman, Jenny, author.
Title: Second mother / Jenny Milchman.
Description: Naperville, IL : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019055787 | (trade paperback)
Classification: LCC PS3613.I47555 S43 2020 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055787
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part II
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Part III
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Part IV
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Part V
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Excerpt from Wicked River
One Year Before
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
This one is for my brother and sister, Ezra and Kari, and for our parents, Alan and Madelyn, who made sure all our summers in Maine were times of beauty, peace, and togetherness.
Part I
Finding Mercy
Chapter One
Julie Mason found the ad on Opportunity.com, the site she frequented the most, in part because of its optimistic name. It seemed the essence of simplicity: clear and unambiguous in meaning. May as well have been called NewLife.com, although that might’ve sounded a little religious.
Looking to start all over again? the site’s marketing message beckoned. We can help. Julie just lurked, had never taken an actual step forward with any of the opportunities that were posted. So far it was enough to read the listings, imagine other lives.
This latest post fit her qualifications, though, and its old-fashioned wording drew her eye. Like a classified ad from days of old, all those small, perfect squares lined up in columns above and below a newspaper fold. So many people searching for a second chance, and so many chances on offer.
Julie wasn’t the only one with something to leave behind.
This particular opportunity seemed to come from a world that time forgot, one that had vanished in the crush of modern-day life, which had also crushed Julie.
Opportunity: Teacher needed for one-room schoolhouse on remote island in Maine. Certification in grades K–8 a must.
Julie read the post a second time, then a third, before glancing down at the clock in the corner of the screen. Nearly noon. Four whole hours gone since she’d sat down at the computer. This was how time passed for her these days, not in a fluid, comprehensible stream, or even streaking by, falling-star fast. Instead, it was as if time had a beast lapping at its heels, taking great, gobbling bites.
David wouldn’t be home for hours still. And if she was going to give some thought to a real, actual opportunity, then she should eat lunch. That was what normal people who inhabited normal lives—lives where things moved, and changed, and were accomplished—did around noon.
The only problem was that she wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t think there was likely to be much food in the house anyway. Over the past year, they’d been subsisting on supermarket salads and sandwiches, pizza for a diversion. David had never really gotten the hang of grocery shopping. That had always been Julie’s task, along with housecleaning, which explained why the floors were gritty under
foot, and the furniture languished beneath an opaque veil of dust like discards from Miss Havisham’s attic.
Their finances were probably in tip-top order, however. And the yard looked shipshape, green and blooming at this height of summer, while never overgrown. Ole didn’t-miss-a-step David saw to that.
Julie pushed the chair back from the desk she and her husband shared, its wheels grinding bits of dirt into the floorboards. David did the aforementioned finances here, and once, a long, long time ago, eons to her mind, Julie had used the laptop to communicate with the parents of her fifth-grade students and keep up with work on the school portal.
One year.
As of five days ago, it had been exactly a year, which meant that Julie had already lived this date, another July 28, without Hedley. Each day in which her daughter didn’t take part was a new ordeal to be gotten through, a fresh cut in Julie’s skin.
She stood up, legs wobbly from inactivity, or perhaps from the prospect of leaving the house. But maybe if she went out to a place where she could see and smell food, it would trigger her appetite. Her shorts slid downward alarmingly on her hips; Julie couldn’t recall the last full meal she’d eaten.
Nowadays she nibbled. Bites here and there. Partial plates.
She patted her empty pockets. Cash and keys. That was the first step.
* * *
In Wedeskyull, New York, a town almost as remote as the island Julie had just read about, you didn’t have to worry about locking doors. Julie skipped the step of locating her purse; how would she possibly find it in the unkempt clutter of the house? A quick peek in her closet, where her bag usually hung, revealed a tangle of clothes and the teetering stack of her old CD and DVD collection—soundtracks, shows, and musicals sequestered away now that she no longer played them for Hedley.
Julie settled for taking the Ford’s extra keyless remote along with money from David’s neat stack of emergency bills.
Her husband’s punctilious ways kept their lives in order, and had probably enabled them to survive this past year. Without heat, you could die during an Adirondack winter. Every log in David’s woodshed lay like a soldier in a bunk, and his barn looked like a Home Depot ad: carefully maintained equipment and tools, each stray screw and nail stored in a tiny box or tray. David also kept an online calendar, color coded for both him and Julie. Only lately had his methods started to register on her as smart and utilitarian, but also hollow, devoid of the emotion she craved. The life.
NewLife.com
Julie gave a hard shake of her head. That wasn’t right. She’d go online again as soon as she got back, open the bookmarked tab for Opportunity.com—that was its name—then reread the post about the one-room schoolhouse. Both activities might take up enough of the day that sleep could be a reasonable next step, aided by some liquid assistance combined with half of one of the pills Dr. Trask had prescribed. Julie was down to three-quarters of a bottle from her last refill, and carefully conserving. In Wedeskyull and the surrounding towns, meds were no longer dispensed with a free hand. But Julie wasn’t going to think about what would happen when her supply ran out, how she would ever sleep more than five minutes at a stretch again. Trask knew she was still relying on pharmaceuticals; maybe he’d have mercy.
Julie scuffed across the driveway, the heels of her flip-flops flapping loosely. Had even her feet shrunk, every bit of her diminished now, whittled away?
She started the Ford, its wheel feeling alien in her hands, as if the power steering had failed. Every inch of rotation was arduous, effortful. The road, once she backed out of their drive, didn’t look familiar. Had it always been this steep and winding? The SUV seemed poised to topple at the start of a hill, fall nose over tail, like a kid rolling down a lawn.
Julie braked in the middle of the road. One advantage to living on the edge of the wilderness: there was no other car in sight to deliver a beep of protest. She felt around for the gas pedal with her foot and began again to drive.
When had she last been out on her own? After, David was always with her. And before, it would’ve been Hedley, tiny in age and size, but huge in terms of the space she took up in Julie’s life. Since her daughter’s birth, Julie hadn’t experienced much in the way of aloneness, had even resented that reality, fighting for hard-won fractions of time like every new mother: Can I just take a shower, finish a cup of tea, or better yet, a nightcap without being interrupted by this sudden, all-consuming presence?
The space in the rear of the Ford yawned, as dark and empty as a cave. They mostly took David’s car now, on the rare occasions that Julie did go out. She’d scarcely been inside this one in over a year. Oh God, Hedley’s car seat was still belted in back there, secured as required by law—so many parents got it wrong, but Julie’s closest friend was a cop—yet so unspeakably vacant.
Julie hit the brake so hard the Ford jolted, and her chest struck the steering wheel with which she’d just been doing battle.
Only this time there was a car nearby, and it sheered around the SUV with a Doppler’s whine of wind and a furious blast of its horn, making Julie throw up one of her hands in a futile, unseen gesture of apology before driving off in halting spurts and stops.
Chapter Two
Julie decided not to go to the Crescent Diner, the place her uncles and grandfather used to frequent for a bite between shifts on the job. On the rare occasions when Julie’s father and mother had eaten out, they’d also been customers at the diner. Nor did Julie choose to go to the new, upscale café in town, which her mom and dad might’ve liked, had they still been alive when it opened. Fancy salads and wraps and expensive coffee drinks that cost more than most longtime residents’ daily food budgets. “What’s wrong with plain black?” Julie could hear her uncle, the former police chief, asking.
Instead, Julie pulled up in front of a store that barely had a name, at least not one that anybody remembered. The letters on its aged sign had faded to the point of invisibility. An old-fashioned general store, or The Store to the locals, as in, I have to pick up some soap at The Store. Or pants even. Or berries, sold in season in gleaming rows of jewel-filled cartons on the front porch. Julie had a different mental name for the place, almost a term of endearment. The Everything Store. Its wares had provided distraction for a baby, enabling Julie to get shopping done during the most tender stages of new motherhood.
Her heart thrummed in her chest as she parked. She sat staring through the car window at The Everything Store’s facade till her eyes started to tear.
They have sandwiches here, Julie told herself, stabbing the button to turn off the engine. I can get something to eat.
The door opened with a welcoming jangle of bells that gave Julie a chill. She looked around before entering to see if the temperature had dropped, leaves showing their underbellies in the type of wind that preceded a thunderstorm, clouds rolling in. But the sun shone warmly in a cornflower-blue sky and the day was still, the kind of weather seen in Wedeskyull only a handful of weeks out of the year.
Julie rubbed her goose-pimply arms and went inside.
The first section to greet her was the easiest: hangers and racks with tees and sweatshirts on display, Wedeskyull silk-screened over a row of jagged mountaintops that looked like teeth. Then camouflage gear in adult and youth sizes. After that came camping and outdoors equipment, with portable hunting blinds and crossbows next. Guns were kept behind a glass case to Julie’s left, taken for granted enough in her life that their dark, threatening lengths and sleek triggers curving like grins didn’t trouble her.
Beyond the guns stood the lunch counter. Julie could swerve right now—stroll past the glassed-in case, or veer in the opposite direction, toward where moccasins sat in boxes on shelves—and avoid the area in front of her entirely.
She had shopped and browsed, hung out and played here, each stage a marker in reverse of the years of her life. Married with enough money to make purchases.
A window-shopping single woman, seeing which new goods had come in, but trying to conserve her dollars. A teenager killing time over a soda and candy with friends. A kid at her mother’s heels, or a baby in a stroller, as the mysterious tasks required to keep house were taken care of.
Julie could thread her way to the row of stools without looking and not even stumble. Perch on top of a cracked vinyl seat and order a tuna-fish sandwich and iced tea, food as simple and old-fashioned as the want ad she’d read a thousand years ago that morning. Instead, she walked forward as if pulled by a rope. The act had a compulsive, unstoppable feel, a victim returning to the scene of the crime.
These clothes were different from the ones that had faced her when she came in. Tiny onesies and miniature sweaters hand knit by local women, priced at amounts that, even in Julie’s near-mesmerized state, seemed shocking, exorbitant. Board books about nature, pairs of fur-lined booties so tiny, both would fit on Julie’s palm. Sock animals and corn-husk dolls. Slightly less frivolous items like organic teething biscuits and herbal remedies for nursing moms.
Julie spun around, turning her back, but it was too late. Memories began swarming her like wasps. She tried to bat them away, fight them off, but failed and dropped to her knees.
She couldn’t explain the sudden flurry of white; it was as if it had begun snowing right here in The Everything Store. Cloth diapers, Julie saw through blurred eyes, made of fair trade cotton, the packaging somehow torn open, no, clawed open, so that the squares fell in a pile on her lap. Julie leaned down, burying her face in the sweet-smelling heap until it grew sodden, plugging her nose and mouth.
“Um, miss? Ma’am?”
Julie looked up, and the woman leaning over her, her pregnant stomach a swell that blocked out sight of anything else, took a sudden, lurching step back.
“I think…we need some help over here!” the woman cried.
Julie bunched up the white drift of cloth in her hands, squeezing it tighter and tighter. It was like a ball, an object that could be thrown. Thrown at this horrible person with her immense belly, and her innocent, concerned face, just trying to help because she hadn’t yet learned that there were some situations that could never, ever be helped.