The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  Julie hadn’t been able to hazard a guess about the way in which Peter would be told the truth, although she had considered different possibilities, all filled with confusion, upset, and fear. To learn that the life you’d lived so far was in many ways a falsehood. To feel the ground beneath your feet disintegrate, discover you’d been standing on water and lies.

  But when his mother’s gaze found him, Julie realized she’d gotten it wrong.

  There was no choice to be made, about where or when or how.

  And there didn’t seem to be much confusion or fear either.

  Peter studied Melinda for a moment, his eyes widening. His nostrils did a strange, fluttery thing, as if he’d detected a scent.

  Then the boy walked forward, and when Melinda saw him take the first step, she started to move, too, until they were standing in front of each other, two strangers with feathery wisps of hair and matching blue gazes, who were suddenly strangers no more.

  * * *

  They all turned as a colossal thud shook the dock. A second lobster boat was coming clumsily into harbor—his arrival making Julie’s look a bit better.

  Back in the cove, the grandmother had implied that she could have summoned a whole fleet, a battalion, with one snap of her elegantly gnarled fingers. But all she really needed was a single loyal henchman to reinforce and transport her. She’d found it in Mike Cowry, driving the largest lobster boat yet, newly painted and snazzily fitted out.

  The grandmother got off the boat before it came to a full stop, taking an ungainly, lurching step onto the dock, yet somehow giving the impression that she had disembarked with a dockhand at her service, holding her elbow to steady her.

  The grandmother’s gaze flicked to Melinda, scant notice before she uttered a command. “Get away from that child. Do you want to terrorize him? Alter his entire world? Of course you do. You’ve never had a care for anybody on earth besides yourself.” A mere twitch of her eyes. “And yet you dared to think you could be a mother.”

  Melinda moved as if she’d been yanked by a rope, a set of reins, or a chain. She sent Peter a quick, halting smile before taking several steps away. Her shoulders flattened into a sunken plane, her head turned, and she stood gazing out to sea, unblinking despite the now-blinding orb of the sun, with tears rolling soundlessly down her cheeks.

  Satisfied and sure, the grandmother switched focus. The old woman transferred her attention to Julie, who stood at the edge of the dock.

  “You,” she intoned. Then her voice erupted in a scream so ragged and hysterical, it seemed to come from a different person entirely. “You were supposed to be broken! Laura Hutchins called you a mound of wretched, guilt-plagued ash!”

  Now that hurt. Julie had actually thought she’d done pretty well in that interview.

  She faced the grandmother. “Broken people like things to be fixed, Mrs. Hempstead. And I’ve never seen a life—not even my own sorry one—that needed more fixing than yours.”

  For just a second, the corners of Melinda’s mouth lifted. Then she whispered to Peter, “Let’s take a little walk while they talk things out, okay? There are hot drinks in the station. Do you like cocoa?”

  Peter shrugged. “Sure.” He broke into a jog, heading straight for the building, before turning back and waiting for Melinda. “Are you coming?”

  His mother quickened her step, giving a joyful nod. “Oh yes, I am!”

  Seeing them walk off, the grandmother let out a wordless shriek, charging at Julie, who stood so close to the edge of the dock that spray sprinkled her. If the grandmother pushed her into the water, she would have time to put a halt to Melinda’s new and tenuous attempts at caretaking. To take Peter for her own again before Julie could even make it back to land and lend Melinda a hand in battle. Julie had just seen the woman cow her daughter; she understood now how her mad manipulations worked.

  As the grandmother came at her, Julie grabbed hold of her wrist.

  And they both went into the sea.

  * * *

  The grandmother’s wet dress slapped Julie, a weighty, drenching shroud. Her fingers clawed at Julie’s skin. Julie struggled to loosen the woman’s hold on her so that she could make it back to shore first. Kicking free of the cloth, she started to swim.

  One strong hand settled around her leg.

  Then the grandmother was upon her, an eel-like length of muscle on top of Julie’s back, driving her down beneath the surface.

  Julie bucked, throwing the grandmother off, but the woman hurled herself forward, swimming and lurching beside her until she got her hands around Julie’s throat. It was shallow enough to stand here, but the grandmother had Julie in her grasp, and she pulled her back toward deeper water, dragging her by the neck.

  The grandmother’s fingers were weakening; she couldn’t maintain such a choking grip for long. With air restored, feet madly treading water beneath her, Julie thrashed back and forth, attempting to push the grandmother away.

  The grandmother’s hands moved lower, settling onto Julie’s shoulders, then suddenly, she drew Julie close in the water. Julie blinked her vision clear of burning droplets. For the oddest moment, it seemed the grandmother intended to embrace her.

  Julie had time to stare into the woman’s lightless blue eyes, read not just hatred, but outraged disbelief in her gaze. She twisted around just in time to see the submerged rock below the skin of the sea. The grandmother pulled Julie toward her. She was going to use her force, the full weight of her body, to dash them both against the rock.

  But Julie was beneath and would hit first.

  She curled her legs underneath her, relying on the grandmother’s furious grip to keep the two of them afloat. The grandmother used the last vestiges of her strength to draw Julie another inch or two forward, so near that Julie could smell the brine and age on her breath. Then the grandmother gave a vicious shove, driving Julie onto the rock.

  Julie’s tucked feet scraped first, a long, sandpaper razoring that sent a vaporous cloud of blood into the sea. Kicking off the stone surface, Julie hurtled her body sideways, letting the grandmother fall on top of it instead.

  The sound of the impact was muffled by the water. It wasn’t possible to tell how hard the grandmother had landed until she floated to the surface, facedown in the sea.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Fighting to catch her breath, Julie treaded water some distance away from the inflating balloon of the grandmother’s dress.

  Pounding boots along the dock, then somebody leaned over the side.

  Bobby Croft.

  He got his hands underneath the grandmother’s arms and heaved her out of the water. He flipped the woman’s body over and pressed hard on her chest.

  Mike Cowry staggered off the lobster boat, shambling over to study the grandmother’s prone form. He’d been there the whole time Julie and the grandmother had been struggling in the water.

  Melinda and Peter appeared halfway down the dock; from behind, Bobby seemed to sense their presence and threw one arm out.

  “Take the child back to the station!” he commanded, and Melinda turned, grasping Peter’s hand in hers and weaving with him between the people just starting to assemble.

  Bobby knelt down, did two chest compressions, then started rescue breaths. A plume of water erupted from the grandmother’s mouth. Bobby leaned back on his heels while the woman coughed and gasped. When her sputtering had ceased, and her chest rose up and down in something like a steady motion, Bobby got to his feet and bent over her.

  “Bob Croft? Is that you?” Even recovering from a near drowning, flat on her back on a dock, the grandmother managed to adopt an imperious expression. “What do you think you’re doing, standing over me?” Her hair lay plastered in strings to her scalp; loose flesh on her arms and legs was exposed, fishy and pale.

  “I’m arresting you, Maryanne. For assault. Possibly at
tempted murder.”

  Maryanne Hempstead let out a hawking laugh, but started coughing again, her breath stolen for another few moments. Finally she quieted and just lay there, eyes open and blinking, as she stared up at the sky.

  “I work in various capacities for the port of Duck Harbor. And recently, I was deputized.” Bobby’s hand moved to his waist, where he unclasped a pair of handcuffs. Easing the grandmother into a sitting position, he pulled her wrists behind her back. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—” And here Bobby broke off, delivering the last line a second time with dignity and just a lick of relish before continuing on to the rest. Then, hauling the grandmother to her feet, Bobby took a quick look behind him. “Michael Cowry?”

  The man darted a quick look at Bobby.

  “That fancy boat you just gaffed at my dock was reported stolen by its owner an hour ago,” Bobby told him. “You’d better come with me too.”

  * * *

  Julie sat on the edge of the dock, dangling her feet over the side. The salt water lit her scrapes on fire, although she hardly registered the pain. She was soaked and shivering, but couldn’t imagine going indoors, or anywhere else, to try to do something about it. She couldn’t imagine ever being warm again. Julie had experienced enough grief and loss in her lifetime to sense when it was coming and be able to ward off—if not the dread reality, then at least the slamming unexpectedness of its blow.

  Callum hadn’t come back. It had been too long. He was on Mercy, either searching fruitlessly for Depot in the sea, or else trying to figure out how to face Julie and tell her that this time, he hadn’t been able to save her dog from drowning.

  A police car arrived. Julie glimpsed a whirl of lights before she heard the car drive onto the uneven boards of the dock, tires thumping across its surface. She would have to give a statement for the second time in as many days. If only speech wasn’t another thing Julie couldn’t imagine ever taking part in again.

  Going back to Mercy was about the only thing she could foresee doing. Now more than ever, Julie wanted to stay in the last place where Depot had roamed and wandered. Wanted to continue teaching the children who’d also loved him. Maybe things would be different with both Hempstead women widows, the elder having seen the view from below at least once, while the younger no longer had to live out a lie.

  “Ms. Weathers?” said a voice behind her.

  Peter stood between his parents.

  Julie worked up a smile. For Peter, she could do it. Encourage him. Nod the boy on. It had been worth it, hadn’t it? She and Depot had risked it all, given everything they possessed, so that Peter could have a chance to live the life he was meant to.

  “Mr. Croft—” Peter snuck a look to one side. “I mean, Robert—Bobby—” Another snatched peek.

  Bobby gave the boy a crooked smile. “Whatever you want to call us. That will be just fine. And it can change, too, you know. Things can change over time.”

  Peter looked down at Julie, then took a breath. “Um, my other dad told me what you did. How you figured it all out. I just wanted to say thank you, Ms. Weathers. That was a really cool thing for you to do. That was even cooler than the play.”

  Tears burned twin trails down Julie’s cheeks. She sniffled in, wiping her face with one hand, holding the other out to the boy.

  “Ms. Weathers?” Peter said, squeezing her fingers between his own.

  Julie tried to nod.

  He wasn’t looking at her anymore. His gaze was fixed on the sea.

  “How come you’re letting Depot swim by himself? I don’t mean to be mean, but your dog’s really not that great a swimmer.”

  * * *

  Julie’s head turned so fast, she felt it in her neck, still sore from Maryanne Hempstead’s choking grip. Depot paddled alongside the dock, paws gamely churning the water. He let out his bark of reunion and staggered onto shore.

  It was impossible. A dog couldn’t swim such a distance, not in the amount of time Depot had had, especially not given his fear of the water.

  Julie raced along the dock, lowering herself over the side the instant she could manage the drop, and crouched at the seam where sea met land. Her dog barreled into her, knocking her over in the sand, his wet fur slopping her face.

  “Deep, oh my God, Depot, you’re here, what happened, are you okay?”

  Depot gave her inflamed feet a deliberate, doctorly slather, as if treating the wounds, then added a shower spray across her whole body as he shook himself madly.

  Julie heard the drumbeat of feet running across the dock.

  “He jumped,” Callum shouted. “Right out of my boat as soon as he knew you were here.” He swung his legs over the dock and took his own leap, venturing to Julie across the sand.

  Julie held out her hands, lifted her face, though she didn’t take a step away from her dog. Callum lowered his mouth to hers, and when they kissed, she tasted the salt of her tears and his ocean on their lips and their tongues.

  Julie felt herself sag in Callum’s arms, terror and relief both draining from her in a heady, tingly mix, while Callum kept her upright, pulling just a few inches away to look at her, to check.

  “It was,” she gasped.

  He shook his head, not understanding.

  She was too breathless to utter more than a word or two at a time. “Real.”

  He bent and spoke against her lips. “I don’t know if real is enough for what that was.”

  “Gross!” came a voice, and they broke apart.

  Peter dangled by his hands, dropping from the dock at a height that drew sharp inhalations of breath from his parents, who stood above him with their hands interlaced. The boy danced across the shore toward Depot and began unknotting hanks of the dog’s fur, coaxing strands loose between his fingers. “She was just waiting,” he said.

  Julie wasn’t sure who Peter meant. She thought he might be talking about her, awaiting her dog’s safe return.

  “My whole life for me.” Peter looked up at Julie then, his blond lashes like shafts of sun around his shining blue eyes. “I had another mother. I had a second mother the whole time.”

  Read on for an excerpt from Wicked River by Jenny Milchman

  Available now from Sourcebooks Landmark

  One Year Before

  Twigs and branches tore at her arms like razor wire, so fast was she running. Breath coming in bull puffs, stinging her nose, drying out her throat and mouth. Her feet churned the soil into clouds of dust. It hadn’t rained in weeks, the driest August on record.

  If rain had been predicted, Terry wouldn’t be here right now, caught in this mad race to a nonexistent finish line. She always checked the Weather Channel assiduously before a hike. Five-day forecasts were relatively accurate, and Terry didn’t backpack for more than three. That way, she only had to take two days off, brackets around a weekend, including time for travel. As with everything else, Terry was practical in her outdoor pursuits. She didn’t push herself to cover long distances, nor deal with things like bad weather. Trying to get a stove lit under a drumbeat of rain, slick outer gear humidifying the inside of your tent. Who needed that?

  What she wouldn’t give right now for the annoyances of a drowned-out expedition.

  He was right behind her.

  Huh, huh, huh came the breaths she fought to drag in. She could feel their pulse in her eardrums. She couldn’t keep going at this pace much longer. She’d had a head start, but the man was taller and fleeter than she, made strong by all the work entailed in the shelter he was starting to build.

  He had asked Terry if she wanted to see the shelter, and for a moment, she’d been tempted. With horrified regret, she recalled the keen insight and interest the man had exhibited in her approach to hiking and equipment preferences. His attention had been compelling. But coming to her senses—just go o
ff with a strange man in the woods?—Terry had declined, and then he had gotten angry.

  That was when she ran.

  Woods surrounded her on all sides, both cape and canopy. She broke through another pincushion of sticks, shutting her eyes to protect them, hoping the ground would stay level before her. Fat, fleshy leaves slapped at her face; then, she realized that the leaves were actually flying through the air like missiles.

  Terry twisted, shooting a look over her shoulder as she raced on.

  The man was hacking at trees with a machete, reducing their protruding branches to stubs. Whereas Terry had only her body to use as a blade, which was taking its toll on her. Bubbles of blood dotted her arms; welts stood up on the exposed part of her chest. Her shoes relentlessly beat the clods of earth, stirring up that crematorium wake of ashy dirt behind her.

  She had told the man her name. That was the thing Terry couldn’t let go of now—how susceptible she had been to his charms. “Terry,” he had echoed. “A solid, capable name.” If he had said her name was beautiful, or even pretty, the connection would’ve been lost. Terry herself was neither of those things, and she knew that her name wasn’t either. Its full version—Theresa—felt too fancy and she’d adopted the diminutive in girlhood. Terry lived alone, cooked herself solid, nutritious meals, and assisted a pool of doctors during the week, while hiking solo on the weekends. The man seemed to recognize all of this about her, and be drawn to her despite it.

  Or because of it.

  A meaty stick caught her in the back, thrown like a javelin by the man. Terry nearly went down, but stumbled and regained her footing. She was close to giving up, just stopping like a kid in a game of tag. Okay, you got me. He would in the end anyway, wouldn’t he? But no, she couldn’t die out here in her beloved Adirondacks. The man was close enough now that she could hear the hissing slash of the machete blade, feel a rainfall of slender pine needles when he sliced through the air with the weapon’s steel edge. She drilled down and found a final spurt of speed, not daring to take another look behind her.