Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  Jess and Richard both nodded.

  “So why the hell does she want us to leave now? And why the sneaking around in the woods?”

  “I expect she didn’t want anyone to see us together,” Jess said. “I think she changed her mind about wanting me to meet Melanie.”

  Richard closed his eyes. “If only I’d had some idea of how deeply troubled Karin has been all these years.”

  Ginny snorted. “Collecting sea glass in her spare time? Wasn’t that a clue?”

  “I never thought …” he said, dropping his face into his hands. “Oh, God, I just didn’t know …”

  Jess reached out her hand and touched Richard’s arm. “Richard,” she asked, “I’m still a little confused. First of all, why did Karin do it? After all this time, why did she choose now to get in touch with me? And another thing … she put the note in an envelope I had written to you, Richard. One of the letters I’d sent you when I was at Larchwood. What was she doing with that? How did she get it?”

  “Don’t ask him,” came a voice from the doorway, “he never even saw those letters.” Karin walked into the room wearing an orange sarong—the same color orange as the flash of fabric Jess had seen in the woods. She carried what looked like an old cigar box. “I’m sorry about your foot, Jess. I never intended for you to get hurt …”

  “What letters, Karin?” Richard interrupted then shot a glance at Jess. “You wrote me letters while you were at Larchwood?”

  Ginny groaned. “Letters isn’t the word for it. Every damn day, where was Jess? Curled up on her bed with that scented stationery …”

  Taking Jess’s hand, Richard said, “I never got any letters, Jess. I had no idea.…”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Karin said, holding out the cigar box. “They were all forwarded to Jess’s father.”

  Even Ginny was lost now. But Richard took the box from his sister and opened it. Then he removed a stack of pink envelopes, tied with a ribbon.

  “There’s a newspaper clipping there, too,” Karin said. “From Jess’s wedding. That’s how I found out her married name. That’s how I was able to track her down in Greenwich.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jess said, staring at the stack of old letters. “Where did you get these?”

  Karin laughed, but it was a laugh of neither amusement nor joy; it was a sad, melancholy laugh that sent a wave of compassion through Ginny that she did not know she possessed. “I found everything in a secret compartment of an old rolltop desk,” she said.

  With a frown, Richard asked, “What old rolltop desk?”

  “The one I bought a few years ago at that yard sale.”

  Richard shook his head. “Wait a minute. You bought a desk at a yard sale and it had my letters inside? That doesn’t make sense, Karin.”

  “Yes, it does,” she replied. “I bought it from the people who owned one of the big houses in West Chop. The house I cleaned every summer when I was young. The house that was rented to a man who called himself Harold Dixon.”

  Ginny leaned gingerly against the wall, trying to decipher what was being said. She glanced at Jess, who seemed as puzzled as Richard. Then Karin continued.

  “All along I knew it was foolish,” Karin said, her eyes taking on a faraway look, “to fall in love with a summer person. But he was so handsome and kind to me. And he did not mind when mother died and I could not go away with him because of Mellie. He did not mind. He just kept coming every summer and loving us both—Mellie and me. I didn’t know his name was not Harold Dixon. I did not know his real name was Gerald Bates.”

  The room grew still. The air grew heavy. And then Ginny figured out what Karin was saying. At about the same time as Jess did.

  “My father?” she asked. “Was it Father?”

  “I called him Brit and he called me Yank,” Karin said. “I did not think that he would lie to me.”

  Jess turned as pale as the too-often bleached hospital sheets. “No …” she began to protest.

  “Yes,” Karin said, tears filling her eyes. “And he loved me, really he did. At first I guess he came only to see Mellie. To watch her grow up. To make sure she was safe. I don’t think he planned to fall in love with me. But he did. Really he did.” In the silence Karin toyed with the sea glass pendant around her neck. “But then he didn’t come back,” she continued. “He never came back and all these years later those people had the yard sale and oh, how I wanted that desk. It’s where he used to work in the study when he was on the island. I wanted it to remind me of him. It wasn’t until I was looking for a place to keep the best of my sea glass that I came across the secret compartment. It wasn’t until then that I knew who he was.”

  “That he was Jess’s father …” Richard said.

  Karin nodded. “And Melanie’s grandfather. I don’t know why he had those letters here. Maybe he planned to give them to you, Richard.”

  “But how the hell did he get them?” Ginny asked. “Jess wrote them to Richard. She mailed them. More than once I saw her …” And then an idea came into her mind. “Oh, shit,” she said.

  “They were all in a big envelope addressed to Jess’s father,” Karin said. “That was when I realized that the man I knew as Harold Dixon was really Gerald Bates. I got so angry I threw the big envelope away, but the return address was from—”

  “Bud Wilson,” Ginny interrupted. The scum of a sheriff—who was also the postmaster.

  “Right,” Karin answered. “That was the name.”

  “He never sent your letters through, Jess,” Ginny said.

  Jess’s eyes were glazed, as if she were sleepwalking. “Father probably paid him not to,” she said.

  “Your father must have cared a lot about you,” Karin said. “A long time ago I thought …” She stammered a little, blinked, then looked out the window. “I thought he cared about me, too. But I haven’t seen him in so many years.…”

  Slowly, Jess began to speak. “How many years?” she asked.

  “Not since the summer of 1982. My letters after that all were returned.”

  Jess turned her face away from Karin. “He died that October.”

  If the air had been heavy before in the room, now it was stagnant, unmoving, as if someone had pushed the Pause button on the remote. Then Karin lowered her eyes and looked down at the floor. “So he did love me,” she said. “He didn’t leave me. He died.”

  “He died,” Jess confirmed.

  “Oh,” she replied, taking hold once again of the pendant she wore on a chain around her neck.

  “I never knew he came to the Vineyard,” Jess said quietly.

  “Twelve years,” Karin said. “Twelve summers.”

  “And he watched my daughter grow up.”

  “Yes. He was a good man, Jess. He loved us—Mellie and me. In his own very proper, sort of British way.” She rubbed the sea glass and closed her eyes. “I called him Brit, you know … and the called me Yank.…” And then she drifted into a world of memories where only she had been.

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell Melanie,” Lisa said to Phillip, as Phillip parked Jess’s car in the hospital parking lot.

  He turned off the ignition and smiled at Lisa. “Because she’s not like us, Lisa. Melanie has a good life. She’s not single and adrift and doing things she’s not comfortable doing. She’s being herself, or at least she seems to be.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how I hate being a corporate lawyer. Maybe it’s because I was adopted. Maybe that has nothing to do with it. But the bottom line is, Melanie seems genuinely happy. We have no right to screw that up, just because our lives are a little disjointed.”

  “Our lives? Excuse me, Counselor, but I think you should speak for yourself. My life is perfectly happy. I am a Hollywood star, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  He threw her a look. “I noticed. And I also think maybe you’re not always happy in the role of a star.”

  “You don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

  “You’re nice, Lisa. You’re a good person. What really happened between you and Brad? I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that story that after a whirlwind courtship he suddenly woke up one day and decided to blackmail you and Ginny.”

  She stared out the window, but didn’t respond. Phillip reached across the console and put his hand on hers. “Lisa, I like you a lot. I may even be in love with you, whatever that means. But I think before you go back to L.A., and continue to do whatever it is you do, you should take a look at a few things. Or you’ll wind up with another Brad Edwards and another disaster.”

  Those beautiful, irresistible topaz eyes began to water. Phillip wanted to shoot himself for hurting her feelings. But he felt he had spoken the truth, and if there was ever to be anything more between him and Lisa, he knew she had to be honest with herself. Only then would she be able to be honest with him.

  “You’re right,” she said softly. “There was more to the story.”

  Rain pelted the windshield. Phillip took her hand in his. “I’m listening.”

  “Brad was planning to take Ginny to court over Jake’s estate. He asked me for money to pay his attorneys. I couldn’t do it. I knew Jake well enough to know he must have had his reasons for doing what he did. I tried to tell Brad there was no way Ginny would have been able to convince Jake to do anything. My mother loved him. He saved her life, in a sense. He was, I think, perhaps the first man in her life she ended up not using. If he wanted her to have his money, then he really wanted it. I also knew she had tried to convince him not to do it. But he had refused.”

  “So when you wouldn’t give Brad the money to fight Ginny, he came up with the blackmail plan.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And that’s when I knew for certain that he didn’t really … love me. He was only using me to get what he wanted. Just as Ginny tried to tell me.”

  “So you threw him out?”

  “What else could I do? He was asking me to choose between him and Ginny. I’d spent twenty-five years not even knowing who she was. Sure, she’s a little … different. But I love her, Phillip. She’s my mother.”

  Phillip picked up her hand and held it to his lips. “You see?” he said. “You are a good person.”

  “But I don’t care what you say, I do love acting.”

  “Acting, maybe. But being a star?”

  She smiled. “No. Actually, I hate that part. I hate seeing my picture on the covers of magazines. I hate people recognizing my face.”

  Phillip smiled. “I knew it! You’re simply too … emotional to like all that false surface stuff.”

  She slid over the console and took his face in her hands. “And just how do you know that I’m too emotional?”

  Phillip smoothed the hair from her forehead; he wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then he kissed her slowly, deeply, warmly. And she kissed him back, their tongues touching lightly at first, then more urgently, the fire igniting, the passion rising.

  “See what I mean?” Phillip said, breaking away. “Did you forget we’re sitting in a parking lot at a hospital emergency room?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said almost shyly. “I seem to forget a lot of things when you’re around.”

  “Hmm. Well, I’ll have to decide what to do about that some other time. Right now, I really do want to see Jess.”

  “Okay,” Lisa replied. “But no matter how long we stay here, I want you to know I’m going to be sleeping with you tonight.”

  The grin that spread across Phillip’s face he felt clear down to his toes.

  Unfortunately, Brad survived.

  Dick had arrived at the hospital and told Ginny the grim news: Her stepson had a nasty concussion, but was awake, alert, and being monitored down the hall from Jess’s room.

  After Phillip and Lisa had said “How are you feeling?” to Jess and “My God, Karin was behind all this?” Phillip turned to Ginny. She had not commented that the whole time they’d been in there, he’d been holding Lisa’s hand.

  “I think we should confront Brad together,” he said. “And now seems as good a time as any.”

  Ginny frowned. “Everyone around here seems to forget that I was the first one in pain. And no one seems to care that right now my back is throbbing like an abscessed tooth.”

  “Would you like me to arrange for a bed for you?” Dick asked.

  “Are you crazy? Hospitals scare the shit out of me.”

  “Then let’s at least do something positive,” Phillip said. “Come with us to see Brad. I’ll do all the talking.”

  Ginny moved her gaze from Jess in the bed to Richard by her side to Dick to Phillip to Lisa. She did not look at Karin.

  “Please, Mom,” Lisa said. “I think Phillip is right. Let’s get this over with.”

  “As for us,” Dick said, putting an arm around Karin, “I think we should leave Richard and Jess alone. They must have a few things to talk about.”

  Ginny knew she was being railroaded, but didn’t seem to have any control over it. “All right,” she reluctantly agreed. “I’ll go and see Brad. But I can’t guarantee that this time I won’t kill him for sure.”

  • • •

  “The doctor said he only needs to keep you overnight,” Richard said to Jess once everyone had left the room.

  She nodded. The pain in her foot now had been replaced by a grogginess she couldn’t shake, but the damp chill that had invaded her body out there in the woods had finally been warmed by the soft flannel sheets the nurse had put on the bed and by the presence of people, the renewal of life. “I’m so tired,” she said, closing her eyes. “And I can’t believe that Father and Karin were lovers.”

  “I knew Karin had someone, but I had no idea it was your father. I never saw him here,” Richard said.

  “You only saw him once anyway.”

  “At your mother’s funeral.”

  “The day …”

  “In the backseat …” Richard ran his hand through his hair. “God, how Karin loved it when he came each summer. She was a different person then—so happy and alive.”

  Jess listened to the soft rhythm of Richard’s voice, trying to imagine her father with Karin, remembering the months that she herself did not—had not wanted to—see Father, because she’d thought he had never loved her … when all along he’d been here, loving Richard’s sister, loving Jess’s baby. Capable of loving, in his own private way.

  Richard squeezed her hand now. “You’re tired,” he said. “I think we can wait until tomorrow to have our talk.”

  Slowly, she stirred. “I thought everything had been said. I told you I’m not going to pursue this with Melanie.” She rested a moment, then added, “If you think it’s best that she doesn’t know about me—about us—then I won’t interfere. I care about her happiness, Richard. I don’t want to upset that.” A wave of sleepiness came over her.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she heard Richard say as she drifted away, finally safe and warm.

  • • •

  “Blackmail is a felony,” Phillip said to the man in the bed, who was wearing a turban of bandages. “If you persist in this charade, I’ll be sure you are sent away for a very, very long time. And from what I understand, prison is not very pleasant for guys who look like you.”

  Brad did not answer.

  “Don’t think he can’t do it,” Ginny said. “Phillip is not only a good friend of mine, but he has friends in high places.”

  Ginny, of course, did not know what she was talking about, but Phillip admired her chutzpah at calling Brad’s bluff. He only hoped Brad had never heard of the likes of Nicole’s father—or his West Coast counterparts, who probably dealt not in divorce but in other legal forms of deceit. Nicole … Phillip wondered what he’d ever seen in the self-centered law student. No matter what happened next, he was lucky to have been saved from a life with her.

  He turned back to Brad. “What we’re doing is giving you a break,” he said. “Technically, we could bring you up on charges right n
ow. Attempted extortion. That would be good for at least a few years.” He knew he was shooting in the dark; it had been too many years now since he’d had a class in criminal law. But Brad had no way of knowing that.

  Finally, Brad spoke. “You can’t prove a fucking thing.”

  Phillip smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong. You did try to assault Mrs. Edwards.”

  Brad struggled to sit up. He flopped back down on the pillow and raised his fist. “She’s the one who attacked me!”

  “That’s funny,” Phillip said, “that’s not how Ginny remembers it, is it, Ginny?”

  Ginny leveled her eyes on her stepson. “He tried to rape me,” she said.

  “Bullshit!” Brad shrieked.

  “I’m sure a jury would see things differently,” Phillip said. “After all, you do not exactly have a clean record in a court of law.”

  Brad started to say something, then he gave up.

  “If I were you,” Phillip continued, “I’d cut my losses. File bankruptcy, if you have to. And sell the red Porsche. It might appease the IRS for a while. Make a new start, Brad. And, for once, try and do something constructive.”

  He put one arm around Lisa, another around Ginny, feeling a bit like a comic book hero, but sometimes comic book heroes were called for. “And whatever you do, stay the hell away from them.” He escorted the ladies toward the door in a purposefully dramatic exit. “Or you’ll regret it until the day you die.”

  In the hallway, out of Brad’s sight, Phillip moved to loosen his tie, then remembered he wasn’t wearing a tie. Ginny high-fived him and gave him a huge hug. Lisa kissed him smack on the lips. Phillip Archambault would not have traded this moment for all the McGinnis and Smiths in the world.

  “I’m okay, honey,” Jess said into the phone to Maura. “I have a small break in my foot, but I’ll be okay.” She closed her eyes and half listened as her daughter said things like, “How did it happen?” and “Are you sure you’re all right, Mom?” and “Do you want Travis and me to come there?”

  “I’m okay, honey,” Jess repeated. And she was okay. She had felt Richard kiss her forehead just before he left; she had heard him whisper, “I’m so sorry, Jess. I’m so sorry for everything.” Jess had realized then that maybe that was all she needed. Or, at least, that it was enough. Enough for her to get on with her life. She had seen her daughter; she knew she was alive, happy, and healthy. She had seen her granddaughter, the little girl who looked so much like her. Jess had seen them and now she knew. It was enough, and it was so much more than she’d had.