Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  He never did.

  And yet she smiled now. She’d come down to the beach this morning to walk and smile and congratulate herself on a job well done. Because after what they’d done to her, the others now would suffer, too.

  At first, she hadn’t thought her plan would work. But now it had. She’d been afraid that Jessica Bates Randall would not receive her message. Or care about it if she did.

  But Jess had.

  And Jess did.

  And now Jess was coming. Here to the Vineyard.

  She watched the sand filter through her toes and wondered how life as she knew it—as she had been tricked into knowing it—would change. And if they’d all be sorry that they’d destroyed hers … her one chance at happiness sucked out with the tide.

  A sparkling glimmer caught her eye. She bent down and scraped a few grains of damp, low-tide sand. Beneath the grains—just waiting for her to find it—was a perfect amber specimen of precious, smooth sea glass. She picked it up, slipped it into her pocket, and smiled again.

  Chapter 14

  Boston Harbor murked below, a bowl of gun-metal water rimmed on one side by the blue Atlantic, on the other by the gray landscape of tall city buildings that stood too close together.

  Ginny looked out the small window of the plane, down to the place she had not seen in thirty years, the town she had once called home. As the plane descended, an invisible cord tied itself around her neck. With each breath, it tightened. Her heart began to softly pound; her chest began to sweat. Inside her head, a low buzz droned; her ears closed up; the seat in front of her grew fuzzy, out of focus. Her knees grew weak and watery, as if the blood and bones within had somehow turned to liquid—cold, numbing liquid.

  She gripped the tray table and closed her eyes. Jesus Christ, she thought. Jesus H. Christ. She did not know how long it had been since she’d had one of these attacks. Not since she’d been living in L.A., not since she’d put the past behind her.

  “Please close all tray tables and return your seat to the upright position.”

  The words came from overhead, from somewhere in the ceiling that spun above her now, that swayed and swirled with each slow-motion of the air around her, the air she fought to breathe.

  “Miss?” Another fuzzy voice. This one closer, louder, with a hollow, gurgled echo as if spoken through a microphone submerged in a tub of water. “Miss? You have to put up your tray table.”

  Ginny’s eyes followed the sound and landed on a young woman dressed in navy blue with a neat white collar and small golden wings pinned to her lapel. She was standing in the aisle smiling down at Ginny. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “How much longer until we land?” Ginny somehow found the strength to ask.

  “Only a few minutes now.” She smiled again.

  Ginny did not return the smile, but stared out the window once again and wondered what she’d have to do to get the pilot to turn back.

  Then she remembered he was dead. Not the pilot. Shit, she hoped the pilot wasn’t dead. No. It was her stepfather who was dead. That filthy piece of crap who had forced himself upon her so many, many times—that rat bastard Ginny dared not push away, for if she had, he would have beat her mother. Again and again, he would have beat her. Not that he hadn’t anyway. But only when Ginny was not around, only when she could not give him what he wanted.

  He is dead, he is dead, she repeated over and over to herself in a twisted, manic mantra. Dead, dead, dead.

  And then she remembered the night it happened.

  She’d been asleep, awakened by a sense of something pressing on her mouth. Her eyes flew open.

  “One sound and you’re dead,” he’d whispered in the darkness.

  Her head began to ache; her heart began to bleed. She’d thought she was safe at Larchwood Hall. She’d thought he’d never find her there, that he would never learn about the baby.

  He stretched a wide piece of tape across her mouth; he tightly wound more around her wrists.

  “Is it my kid in there?” he laughed, his penis waving in her face—his hard, straight penis, poking at her mouth, then pushing at her swollen abdomen.

  And then he ripped her nightgown off and shoved his dick between her legs.

  “It’s mine, isn’t it?” he growled with acrid, foul breath.

  Suddenly, all Ginny could think of was the baby inside her. The living little person who had not asked to be conceived, who had not asked to be a product of Ginny’s stepfather and his drunken, abusive trysts.

  With more might than she knew she possessed, Ginny heaved her legs together, crushing his tight and throbbing balls.

  He screamed.

  He rolled from the bed to the floor, dragging her along.

  She kicked.

  He screamed again.

  And then Ginny saw a figure standing in the shadows, hands raised above its head. Swiftly the hands came down, aimed directly at his back.

  The light in the room was snapped on.

  And there stood pregnant, fifteen-year-old Jess, one hand on the light switch, looking at the blood that spurted from his back, from the deep thrust that she’d made with the pair of sewing shears.

  Her stepfather was dead.

  Jess had killed him.

  And thanks to the dickhead sheriff, Bud Wilson—who’d been downstairs screwing Miss Taylor while Ginny was fighting for her measly life—no charges were ever filed.

  And Ginny—and her mother—at last had been set free.

  Her breathing slowed now; her heart eased. She opened her eyes as the feeling returned to her knees; her eyesight came back into focus. She looked out the window again; the big plane floated lower toward the city: the Prudential Center, Fenway Park, the lazy Charles River. Places she had never wanted to see again as long as she lived. Now she was back. Because Jess needed her. And because, thanks to Jess, that filthy piece of crap was dead, had been dead for nearly thirty years. For that, Ginny owed her.

  As the runway rose to meet them, Ginny also knew she owed Jess for bringing Lisa back into her life: the once-unwanted baby who had become the only family Ginny had left, the only remaining part of her that walked the earth, would ever walk the earth. Whether or not she chose to walk it next to that creep of all time, Brad, was Lisa’s choice. In the meantime, maybe there was a way to salvage what might be left of the birth mother-daughter relationship. Jake would have wanted it that way.

  The wheels screeched on the asphalt; Ginny had made it home. And as they taxied to the gate, she wondered if the real reason she’d come back east was not for Jess at all, but because Lisa was in New Jersey—a do-able drive from the island, should the opportunity arise.

  Jake used to say “Opportunity has no way of knocking if it doesn’t know you’re home.”

  Ginny had never been certain exactly what the hell that meant, but Jake had built a great production company, so it must have worked for him.

  With that in mind, and a convenient hour to kill before the shuttle left for the Vineyard, she found herself standing at a phone booth in the far end of the concourse, dialing New Jersey information.

  “Mrs. Andrews,” Ginny said moments later, “this is Ginny Edwards. Did Lisa make it there yet?”

  “Oh, my. Can you imagine? They drove clear across the country for the twins’ graduation.…”

  “Yes, I know. Is she there now?”

  “No. She went for a drive. With Brad.”

  The mention of his name made Ginny’s heart began to pound again. No, she commanded herself. He cannot hurt you. After all, it was only Brad. He was not her dead stepfather, and he had no power over her no matter how hard he tried. “Well,” she said, carefully forming each word, “please tell Lisa I’ll be on Martha’s Vineyard for a few days.” She gave Mrs. Andrews the name of Mayfield House in Vineyard Haven “in case she needs to find me.”

  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 M
assachusetts 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 ma
n 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.”