Abandoned

by Allison Brennan

  Her house wasn’t far from the boating club, just over a mile. Her dad wasn’t home, which was good, because whenever she asked about her mother he became very quiet and sad. She still didn’t quite know what happened between them, and she didn’t want her dad to be sad. All that mattered to her was that her mother left and her dad stayed and she loved him for it.

  She went up to her dad’s bedroom. There was a den downstairs, but he didn’t keep the really important papers in the den. He kept them in a locked drawer in the desk in his bedroom. The lock was basic, and she popped it easily enough.

  Most of the folders, all of which were neatly arranged, related to the house, insurance, and taxes. She ignored those. She pulled out the folder EVE.

  Every one of her report cards was in here. A card she’d given her dad for Father’s Day one year with her handprint on it. She barely remembered making it—she’d been in kindergarten. Inside she’d drawn two stick people, one much taller than the other, with big round heads and circle hands with impossibly long fingers. The short figure had long yellow hair. Each had a smile. She’d written in painstaking block letters:

  MY DADDY AND ME

  BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

  The i in friends was smaller and sort of above the r and e, having been added after she wrote the card, probably when her teacher told her she spelled it wrong. Or maybe she’d looked on someone else’s card and realized she messed up. She didn’t realize her dad had kept this, or the other mementoes, and it made her smile.

  Her birth certificate was in a manila envelope. It was a copy, and she didn’t find an original. She’d seen this before, when her dad enrolled her in school, and then when she had to provide proof of her age for the boating club. She’d been born in Miami-Dade County in Florida on January 12.

  GENEVIEVE NORA TRUMAN

  Mother: MARTHA ELEANOR REVERE

  Father: GABRIEL JOHN TRUMAN

  She glanced down at her mother’s birthplace: California.

  Molly said that the reporter had been left with relatives in California.

  Eve’s heart was pounding in her chest and she couldn’t make it slow down. She almost couldn’t think.

  She desperately wanted to talk to her dad, but he’d been acting strange all week, ever since the sheriff came to talk to him Tuesday night. He had to know that the reporter was staying at the resort, right? He’d always told her that her mother had problems, that she didn’t want to be a mother, and he was sorry about that. Sometimes it made her sad, but not for a long time because her dad was totally cool and he always did stuff with her.

  Maybe he didn’t know about the reporter. Her dad didn’t care much about the resort, only the boats. He spent all his time either working on the boats or sailing the boats. He knew everything about the Chesapeake Bay, took charters out, and the only time she’d seen him truly happy was on the water. He’d even gotten to like the tours he gave every week.

  Eve folded her birth certificate and stuffed it in her back pocket, closed the drawer, and left. She needed to find her dad. Something was weird here, and she didn’t know what, but she knew he would have the answers.

  * * *

  It took half the morning for Gabriel to work up the courage to go and talk to Maxine Revere, and then she wasn’t at her cottage. He waited twenty minutes, staring out at the sea, wishing he knew what to do.

  He couldn’t tell Eve that he wasn’t her father. Eve had often asked about her mother—especially when she was younger. Gabriel had been vague for a while, but when she pushed, he said that their relationship had been brief, they’d been young, and her mother didn’t want to be a mother.

  She left you with your grandma and never came back. She had some problems, and I wish I could spare you from the pain and sadness, but know that I love you more than anything, Eve.

  Eve knew that her mother’s name was Martha, because when she asked Gabriel couldn’t think of a believable lie. He didn’t want Eve to look for her. She’d once asked, when she was twelve, if he had loved her mother. He was honest.

  “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Was it a mistake?”

  “No.”

  “But you didn’t love her.”

  Talking to your preteen daughter about sex was extremely uncomfortable. He’d enlisted the help of Brian’s sister to explain female anatomy, and Eve loved Jenna like an aunt. But this wasn’t the sex talk, it was even worse.

  “You are the best thing that ever happened to me, Eve. So no, it wasn’t a mistake because you are a miracle. Always remember that.”

  That seemed to satisfy her, and over time, she stopped asking questions.

  But what if this reporter—Eve’s sister—talked to her? Eve was a smart kid; if the name Martha came up, she would remember that her mother was named Martha. How could he keep the only family on her mother’s side away from Eve? Was that fair to her?

  He didn’t know, but what wasn’t right was that this woman was here stirring up all this shit and threatening him and Eve, using truth as a weapon. This truth could destroy his relationship with his daughter.

  When the reporter wasn’t back by noon, Gabriel went to the restaurant and looked for her. He told the bartender to call him if she came in.

  What if she had gone to find Eve herself? What if that damn woman didn’t just give him time to think about what he should do—what he could do.

  He grabbed a resort golf cart and drove around to the junior boating club, on the other side of the harbor from the resort. He saw Eve’s boat in its slip, perfectly polished, sails down and stowed, her lines expertly tied. She wasn’t there. He saw Jason talking to one of the Henderson girls—he knew the Hendersons, of course, two of their kids worked for the resort during the summers while they were in college.

  He walked over.

  “Hi, Mr. Truman,” Jason said.

  “Jason, hello. Prepared for tomorrow?”

  “Thanks to Eve—I swear, she took one look at my ropes and knew exactly what I’d done wrong.”

  “Good, the weather should be perfect, with a brisk breeze coming in from the Atlantic.”

  “First race of the season, even if it doesn’t count.”

  “That’s why they’re called exhibitions—you can check out your competition. Have you seen Eve? I thought she’d still be here.”

  “She said she was going home,” Jason said.

  The Henderson girl said, “I invited her and Jason over for dinner—my dad’s roasting a pig. You came over for Labor Day, right? Just like that. There will be plenty. You’re more than welcome to join us, too, Mr. Truman.”

  “Thank you for the invitation, I’ll talk to Eve and see what she wants to do. She might not want her dad tagging along.”

  “There’ll be lots of parents,” the girl said. “It’s Wyatt’s birthday, everyone wants to see him.” She rolled her eyes. “He just loves that he’s the most popular person at any party.”

  Gabriel thanked the kids, but he was thinking about Eve. Why had she gone home? It was Saturday morning, not even lunchtime, and Eve loved being outdoors especially when it was such a nice day—a bit cool and windy, but clear. She should be studying the weather charts, triple-checking her supplies, running through the course in her head. Talking to her team. What she usually did the day before a race.

  He called her cell phone. It went to voicemail after four rings.

  He drove home, but Eve wasn’t there. His heart raced. He didn’t want to panic, but he didn’t know where she could be. Why she wasn’t answering her phone? What if that reporter had tracked her down? Told her that she was her sister? That they had the same mother?

  Would it be all that bad? No one knew Eve wasn’t his biological daughter, except for Brian. And while some people might suspect it because he hadn’t been here when Martha left Eve with Emily, they wouldn’t say a word. Or they pushed it out of their minds, forgot about it. Sixteen years wasn’t long in a small town, but no one liked Jimmy. He’d hurt a lot of people. Gabriel ha
d always felt the need to clean up Jimmy’s messes. Emily would give the shirt off her back to someone less fortunate, not only because she was a good person, but because she felt so guilty about raising a son who had stolen from friends and family.

  Gabriel needed to tell Eve the truth himself, before Maxine Revere talked to her. The whole truth—because if that reporter learned that Eve wasn’t his biological daughter, and she told Eve, she might never forgive him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Max was missing something.

  When she returned to the cottage from the Hendersons’ house, she made herself lunch and mixed a mimosa. She sat on the deck and ate, drank, and tried to clear her thoughts. Focusing on the ocean waves was relaxing, and her mind kept drifting back to the postcards.

  Why had her mother sent her postcards of art she had stolen—or knew had been stolen? What could she have possibly thought Max could do about it? The six years between abandonment and Martha’s death was summed up in sixteen postcards that evidently meant something more than Max had realized.

  Everything came back to the postcards.

  Max got up, rinsed her plate, mixed a second mimosa, and went back to her den. She removed all sixteen postcards from her timeline. Martha had spent far more time with Jimmy Truman than Max had thought she would. Their relationship was neither simple nor fleeting.

  Max took the postcards to the dining table and laid them out on the table in order, message side up. The first card was a belated birthday postcard from Hawaii. That was the only postcard that specifically mentioned Jimmy Truman.

  There was a postcard every January—only one came within days of her birthday; most were weeks, sometimes months, late. The birthday postcards had the same theme: happy birthday, have fun, too bad Max didn’t know how to have fun, maybe I’ll call and chat.

  Martha had never called.

  Max had twice asked her grandmother Eleanor whether she intentionally kept Martha from her. The first time was when Max and Eleanor had a huge argument. It started after Max informed the rest of the family that her uncle Brooks was cheating on his wife. Eleanor tried the stern lecture, but Max wasn’t having it. She was angry—furious, really—that her family were hypocrites, that there was a double standard for them and everyone else. Max tossed back every rule, every lecture, every character trait Eleanor had instilled in her because Eleanor had sided with Brooks. It wasn’t until later that Max realized Eleanor hadn’t sided with her son so much as abhorred Max’s method of delivery.

  But at the time, Max was angry and upset. She asked Eleanor if she knew where her mother was and maybe now was the time Max should find her.

  She’d been fifteen.

  Eleanor was hurt, Max realized later, but at the time all Max wanted was to hurt her and she didn’t think she’d gotten under her skin at all.

  “Your mother does not want to be found. She does not want to return. I’ve heard on occasion that so-and-so saw her in one place, and another person saw her somewhere else. But never for long. She’s still transient, and is truly lost. Yet, no matter how angry I am with you right now, Maxine, I would never want you to leave me.”

  It took Max a long time before she really understood what her grandmother meant. While she was not sorry she’d exposed Brooks, she ultimately wished she’d exposed him differently. Because she’d hurt people she never wanted to hurt—namely her grandmother and her aunt Joanne, who shortly thereafter filed for divorce.

  The second time Max broached the subject was last year, when she asked her grandmother whether the postcards were, in fact, genuine—or her grandmother’s way of protecting Max from her selfish mother. Eleanor said they were all real, but she wished Martha had never sent them.

  “You were crushed with each flip, selfish, snide note. I can’t help thinking your mother intended to punish not only me, but her own daughter. And I will never begin to understand her. It’s taken me years to accept that even if I made mistakes raising Martha, who she became is not a weight I should carry. Nor should you. And yet, you carry the weight for both of us.”

  Maybe Max did. Because she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do.

  One by one, Max turned over the postcards and looked at the pictures.

  Hawaii was the first, followed by several picture postcards. A cruise ship. A French vineyard. Other similar scenes.

  The first piece of art was a Degas in April, after Max turned thirteen.

  Well, not exactly. Her birthday postcard had been from a museum in Dallas and postmarked from Dallas. The Degas was postmarked from Miami. The postcard itself had been perforated, as if it had been in a booklet of postcards. Max studied the fine print on the edge of the postcard. Nothing identified the book it had been clipped from, only identified the painting, the artist, and the year painted. In fact, it was a rather cheaply produced picture postcard.

  A Boudin, a Renoir, a Toulouse-Lautrec, and three lesser-known artists. For Max’s fourteenth birthday, a card between the third and fourth painting, Martha sent a generic beach scene from Florida. The back identified it as Key Largo.

  The seven pieces of art that Ryan Maguire said were all stolen … but there were eight paintings. The next to last postcard Martha sent was of a Caravaggio—a rather violent picture of a beheading.

  She studied the card carefully. It was different than the others—first, it had obviously been bought in a gift shop, not torn from a book. Second, it was very specific—a Caravaggio exhibit during that time at a small Parisian museum Max had heard of only because she’d traveled extensively and been an art history major. This postcard had been created to promote the exhibit. It was postmarked from Paris, France, in the middle of May.…

  Her mother may have been pregnant then.

  It might not mean anything. Or it might be the clue to everything.

  She read the card carefully.

  Dear Max,

  I love Paris so much I wish sometimes that we’d stayed here forever. You were seven, we lived in a beautiful villa, remember? This spring has been the most beautiful yet … but I’m leaving today. Bittersweet, but no regrets.

  —Martha

  P.S. Isn’t this painting atrocious? He had talent, but it’s so depressing. Some people prefer the dark to the light.

  Was she talking about Jimmy? About someone else? No one? Considering Martha had sent these specific postcards, Max suspected there was a double meaning behind most of them. But figuring it out might be impossible.

  The last postcard meant nothing to Max at the time, but now that she was here it meant everything.

  It was a picture of a shoreline at sunset, and when Max first got it she never considered where it was. She might have looked at it at the time, but the small italic print didn’t really stand out.

  The postcard was a painting of the Chesapeake Bay—which could have been anywhere along the coastline—but it had been purchased at the Cape Haven Museum and Welcome Center. This was printed on the card. There was nothing about the image that stood out, but now Max wanted to find this exact location.

  If the seven pictures represented stolen art, maybe this last postcard represented a clue as to where to locate the pieces.

  She shook her head. Four of the pieces had already been found—one when Jimmy Truman sold it, and three when a buyer got the pieces appraised in Miami. But Truman had sold the painting in DC, which wasn’t far from Chesapeake Bay.

  And what about the Caravaggio? What about that piece was so important to Martha?

  When Max was younger, the only thing she really cared about, other than swimming and the beach, was reading. If Martha wanted to send postcards that reflected Max’s interests, they would be related to books and literature. But these were artworks—paintings, specifically, which was Martha’s love.

  Max pulled out her computer and researched the Italian artist. Nothing about this painting stood out—it had been on exhibit for two years around Europe and now was back with its owner.

  Yet …

 
She called Ryan Maguire’s cell phone. It went immediately to voice-mail.

  “Ryan, it’s Maxine Revere. I have a theory I need to run by you. Call me back, please.”

  While she waited for Ryan, she looked through images from all over the Eastern Shore, looking for the spot where this picture—the last postcard her mother ever sent her—was painted.

  * * *

  Gabriel found Eve an hour later sitting on their personal boat in the Havenly clubhouse. He had bought the twenty-six foot boat when Eve turned ten. Time, weather, and neglect had nearly killed it, but it had a good frame and the engine wasn’t completely shot, so together they had restored it.

  It was seaworthy now, and they’d taken it out for the first time last summer. There was more detail work to do, and Gabriel loved to work on it. Eve did, too, but she was a teenager with teenage interests. Swimming. Competing. Boys.

  Still, they spent a few hours every week out here on the Emily. She hadn’t wanted to name the yacht after herself, which was Gabriel’s idea, but had instead suggested her grandmother. “I was five and a half when Grandma died, but I still miss her.”

  His mother would have said she was embarrassed to have her name on a boat, but secretly be pleased.

  Eve was sitting at the stern. The boathouse was closed, the water gently lapping against the hull. They’d taken her out of dry dock just last month for the first voyage of spring, but hadn’t had time since.

  She looked at him. She’d been crying. Her tear-stained face broke his heart.

  He walked down the narrow walkway and climbed on board. He sat across from her. “Hey.”

  She stared at him. There was no fear in her expression, just sorrow and confusion.

  “Eve, what’s wrong?”

  “I think you know, Dad. You’ve been acting weird all week.”

  Tell her.

  He didn’t want to. But if he lied now, she would never trust him again.

  “It’s about the reporter from New York, isn’t it?”

  “Is she my sister?”