Sins of Innocence

by Jean Stone

  Perhaps because Susan’s and P.J.’s children were both boys, Jess had not felt the connection as keenly. But now as she watched Ginny’s daughter, she was increasingly apprehensive about finding her own. Watching Lisa, so polished and mature, reminded Jess, once again, that her daughter was no longer a child.

  “I don’t consider it fucking,” Lisa was saying to her costar. “I consider it performing a service for the under-privileged men of the world.”

  Jess closed her eyes. It could have been Ginny talking.

  As Act III ended, Jess smiled at the conclusion: Lisa/Madeline, the hooker, had transformed the wife of the genteel man into a streetwalker. The curtain came down, and a smattering of applause rose in the theater. The stage was lit again, and the cast came out to take their bows. Jess clapped as loudly as she felt she could, watching Lisa the entire time, feeling a growing uneasiness about what she was to do next. Suddenly the lights dimmed again, then the house lights came on. On unsure legs Jess stood up, and made her way backstage.

  Monday, October 4

  It seemed a most appropriate day: Today would have been her mother’s sixtieth birthday.

  Jess sat in her car, staring through the afternoon sunlight at the home in front of her: a Georgian redbrick mansion, flocked with perfectly trimmed hedges and big oak trees, their leaves beginning to show a first hint of amber. Lacy drapes hung at the twin bow windows on either side of the white wooden double front door; a three-car garage stood apart from the main house, as though looking up to it in awe. The name on the shingle at the foot of the drive read HAWTHORNE.

  She hadn’t phoned. She knew that by coming here she was risking meeting Amy herself, but it was Monday again, and chances were she’d be out. Plus, part of Jess, if she was honest with herself, hoped no one would be home.

  “I’ve done it for Susan, for P.J., and for Ginny,” she said aloud. “Now it’s my turn. It’s my turn.”

  She got out of the car slowly, her thoughts churning over and over, in synchronization with her stomach. “It’s the right thing to do,” she tried to reassure herself.

  She walked up the long, circular driveway, her head bent. Why didn’t I drive in? she wondered, then instantly knew the answer: Driving into the driveway would have seemed a true invasion on their lives. She could not see the irony of that thought.

  Jess raised a quivering hand and pressed a finger on the doorbell. From inside the house she heard melodic chimes. She stood, waiting, hearing the sound of her thumping heart above the rustle of the oak leaves in the autumn breeze.

  The door opened. A woman stood there. A small, gray-haired woman. A small, gray-haired, pleasant-looking woman.

  “May I help you?”

  Beyond the woman Jess could see a wide foyer, a huge staircase, a crystal chandelier. A Waterford chandelier. Like the one in Jess’s dining room.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. For a moment she wasn’t sure the words had come out at all.

  “Yes?”

  Jess looked eye-to-eye with the woman. Her daughter’s mother. The woman who raised her, cared for her, loved her. The way she had done with Maura. Maura and the two boys. A flash of heat struck her. She couldn’t do this to this woman.

  “May I help you?” the woman repeated.

  Jess closed her eyes. She has a right to know. My daughter has a right to know.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne,” Jess began, as she slowly opened her eyes. “My name is Jessica Randall.” She felt as though she were talking to a woman who might be old enough to be her own mother. She felt a great need to show her respect.

  “Yes?” The woman shifted on one foot, not a sign of impatience as much as a sign of age.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, I’ve come to talk with you about your daughter, Amy.” The words were out. It was too late to turn back.

  Jess thought she saw the color drain from the woman’s face.

  “My daughter?”

  Jess was confused. It seemed as though the woman didn’t know who she was talking about. Had Miss Taylor made a mistake? God. Was she at the wrong house?

  “Yes,” Jess said. “Amy.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Mrs. Hawthorne, please don’t misunderstand.”

  “I’m sorry, young lady, but I don’t understand at all.” Her face had grown tight; the friendliness had disappeared.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, you adopted Amy when she was an infant, am I correct?”

  “Yes. That’s no secret.”

  Jess stared at the woman and suddenly saw what looked like a veil of understanding cross the woman’s face.

  “Oh, dear,” the woman said, and put her hands to her face.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne.” Jess forced her words to come out stronger, louder. “I am Amy’s birth mother.”

  “Oh, dear,” the woman repeated. “Oh, my dear.” Then the woman started to weep.

  This wasn’t what Jess had expected. Anger, maybe. Defensiveness. Denial. Something else. Not this.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, please.” Jess was whispering again. “I don’t want to cause you any problems. I came to you first, so that Amy would have a choice as to whether or not she wanted to meet me. I thought that today … with all the publicity that’s going on about birthrights …” Jess rambled, aware that she was babbling now, unable to stop. “… I thought Amy might be curious. I wanted to give her the chance …”

  Mrs. Hawthorne shook her head vigorously. “No,” she said. “You are the one who doesn’t understand.”

  Jess felt a horrible knot in her stomach. Something, she knew, was very wrong.

  “Our Amy,” the woman stammered. “Our Amy was eleven years old. It was nearly fourteen years ago.”

  The woman in the doorway became haloed in black light. Jess blinked. The blackness did not recede.

  “She was on her bicycle,” the woman continued. “It was a drunk driver.” She feigned a laugh. “Can you imagine? A drunk driver at four o’clock in the afternoon?”

  The blackness swept over Mrs. Hawthorne’s entire body. Jess fell to the pavement. The last thing she remembered was a stabbing pain at the back of her head.

  “She’s coming around now.” The words were distant. They belonged to a man. A familiar voice. She opened her eyes. Two figures stood over her. One was a blur in a white coat. The other … the other was … Charles.

  Jess closed her eyes again.

  “Honey? It’s me. You’re in the hospital. You gave us quite a scare.”

  “What happened?” Her words were weak; her head throbbed.

  “You’ve got a slight concussion. You fainted and hit your head.”

  Jess rolled onto her side; a searing pain ripped through her skull. She moaned.

  “You might want to lie still,” came another male voice. “I’m Dr. Coe. The concussion is mild, but you have a few stitches at the base of your skull. Apparently you hit your head on the edge of a planter. You’re lucky to have come out of this without more serious injury.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Doctor, may we be alone now?” Charles asked.

  “Certainly.”

  Jess heard footsteps pad across the floor, then a door opened and closed. Charles sat on the edge of the bed. Jess stiffened; she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne called the ambulance. Then she looked in your wallet and called the house. DelRose contacted me.”

  Jess didn’t want to know how much Charles knew.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Four o’clock. You’ve been out a few hours.” He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. Jess pulled away from his touch.

  Charles stood up quickly. “Dammit, Jess, where the hell is your pride?”

  She licked her lips. They were dry, already cracked from the stale air in the hospital. “I have nothing to be ashamed of. I told you before, I’m tired of keeping secrets from my family.”

  He smacked the
side of the nightstand.

  “This never would have happened if you hadn’t let Maura get pregnant,” he hissed.

  “Charles,” Jess said, “leave. Go back to your condo in the city where you can remain untouched by all the things in life that don’t agree with you.”

  He turned on his heels and stormed out the door. Even through her headache, Jess felt relief. She laid her head back on the pillow and started to doze. Then there was a light knock on her door.

  “Yes?” Jess asked.

  The door opened, and an older woman stood there.

  “Jessica? How are you feeling?”

  Her heart warmed. “Mrs. Hawthorne,” she said. “Come in. Please.”

  The woman came in and stood beside the bed. In her hand was a small envelope.

  “I’d like to apologize,” Mrs. Hawthorne said.

  “Apologize? No.” Jess started to shake her head, but it hurt too much. “I’m the one who should apologize. I never meant …”

  “Sssh, dear. You had no way of knowing.”

  Jess started to cry. “I never got to see her, you know. Could you tell me what she was like?”

  Mrs. Hawthorne’s eyes filled with tears. “Amy was the sweetest little girl you could ever meet. She was everything in the world to my husband and me. We had tried so hard to have our own children.…”

  Jess reached up and took the woman’s hand. “She was your child, Mrs. Hawthorne. She was your little girl, not mine.”

  The woman smiled. “We only have you to thank for our time with her. It must have taken a lot of courage to give her up.”

  Jess felt herself scowl. “Courage? Oh, no. Fear, maybe. Certainly not courage.”

  “It might help you to know you gave us a gift that was most precious. For that, we will always be grateful.”

  Jess wiped her tears. She could not speak.

  “I’ve brought along something I thought you might like to have,” Mrs. Hawthorne continued. She tucked the envelope into Jess’s hand. “It’s her school picture. Taken just before … just before the accident.”

  Jess looked into the woman’s wet gray eyes. She opened the envelope and took out the small square snapshot. It was of a little girl, with pale blue eyes, a small oval face, light brown wispy hair, and a bright, happy smile. It was a little girl who looked exactly like Jess.

  She closed her eyes and held the picture to her breast. “I shall treasure this always. Thank you so much.”

  “Amy knew she was adopted, you know,” Mrs. Hawthorne continued. “And every year, on her birthday, before she blew out the candles on the cake, we said a little prayer of thanks for the mother who was so unselfish that she gave her to us.”

  Jess noticed that the woman’s hands were trembling. “For a long time I was afraid you’d come looking for Amy. I was afraid you’d want her back. But my husband kept reassuring me that couldn’t happen.” The woman reached over and squeezed Jess’s hand. “I wish I could say that if Amy were still with us, I would have welcomed you the way I’ve done. I’d like to think I was secure enough to do that. But the truth is, I don’t know what I’d’ve done. I might have asked you to leave.”

  “Mrs. Hawthorne, I can’t thank you enough for being so kind to me,” Jess said.

  “It was the least I could do. Because of you, we had many years of happiness.”

  The woman stood up.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hawthorne,” Jess said again. “For everything. Especially for the picture.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” the woman said, and quietly left the room, leaving Jess with the photo, the testament of the past.

  * * *

  Later that evening the children came to see her: Chuck and Maura, and then Travis, who hesitated only a moment at the door. The ache in her head had eased, and she was glad to see them.

  “Geez, Mom,” Travis said, once he realized she was going to live, “don’t ever do that again, okay? You scared the shit out of us.”

  Jess smiled and tousled his hair. “How many times have I asked you not to swear?”

  Travis shrugged.

  “He can’t help it,” Chuck said. “He’s a dork.”

  “Enough!” Jess laughed. “I’m fine. But I’ll be better when they let me go home tomorrow.” She looked at her children. “Come closer, all of you. There’s something I want to tell my family.” She felt as though the time had come. She needed, at last, to be honest with them. She needed to pull the ranks of her family close together and dispel the shadows once and for all. They moved close. Chuck stood; Maura sat on the edge of the bed; Travis sat close beside her. Maura put her arm around him. They are all so young, Jess thought. So young. And they will have so much pain ahead of them. But if I can teach them anything, it will be to always hold their heads high, to not be afraid of life, and most of all, to never be ashamed of themselves.

  “I want to tell you about a little girl,” she began.

  Travis groaned. “Is this going to be another one of those ‘when I was your age’ stories?”

  Chuck gently slapped his brother’s head. “Shut up, dork.”

  Jess laughed. “No, it’s not one of those. It’s about another little girl. A little girl I didn’t have a chance to know.”

  And then Jess told them the story. She started with Richard, her first love. She told them about Larchwood Hall, and about the others. And with only a heartbeat’s hesitation, she told them about killing Ginny’s stepfather. She ended by taking out the photo Mrs. Hawthorne had given her. She tried not to pay attention to their reactions: It would, Jess knew, take some time for them to fully understand everything she had just said.

  “Mom,” Maura said with tears in her eyes as she held the picture, “she looks just like you.”

  “I know, honey.” Then she told them of her plans for the reunion.

  “You’re not going through with it now, are you?” Maura wanted to know. “Now that your baby is …”

  “I have to,” Jess said. “For the sake of the others. I started this, and I have to see it through. Who knows? Maybe some good will come out of it for one of us.”

  Travis’s mouth had dropped open the moment Jess had begun to talk, and now he finally spoke. “Geez,” he said, “I can’t believe you killed a guy.”

  Somehow, Jess thought sadly, a thirteen-year-old boy is more captivated by killing than by babies.

  “That took a lot of courage,” Maura said. “She was protecting her friend.”

  “I was,” Jess confirmed. “I’ve never wanted anything to hurt the people I care about. The people I love. And that includes all of you. I hope you know that.” She looked directly at Chuck, who was staring at the floor.

  “Is this why Dad left?” Travis asked. “Because of your baby? Because he found out you murdered the guy?”

  “No,” Jess said. “Your father always knew about those things. Amazingly he loved me anyway.”

  “It was because of me,” Maura answered her brother. “It was because I was pregnant.”

  Chuck snapped quickly around. “What?”

  “I said I was pregnant. I lost the baby. The night I cut myself.”

  “Jesus,” Chuck said. “Do any of the kids in school know about this?”

  Jess reached out and touched her oldest son’s arm. She hated the way he was so much like Charles, the way Father had been. Maybe there was still time to change him. Jess knew she had to at least try. “We’re all in this together, Chuck,” she said quietly. “We are a family, and families stick by one another, no matter what.”

  “Yeah, well it doesn’t look like Dad is sticking by us.”

  “Your father will do what he has to do. As for us, we’ll only get through this if we remember how much we love each other. And that means no secrets between us. No secrets. Ever again.” She looked at her family, nestled around her. Chuck’s anger showed; Travis was simply still too stunned; and Maura, for the first time since she’d told Jess she was pregnant, looked at peace. Jess could only hope that, in time, they w
ould all truly understand.

  CHAPTER 16

  Thursday, October 7

  Susan

  Bert had come with her, even though Susan had insisted she was perfectly capable of handling this herself. They sat in the shabby office of Attorney James Sullivan now, waiting for the lawyer to arrive. Susan tried to ignore the gum-snapping receptionist and the coil spring that had protruded through the dog-eared sofa upholstery and was digging into the back of her thigh.

  “I wonder why he’s late,” Bert commented.

  “And I’ve been wondering why it took us two weeks to get the appointment. It certainly doesn’t look as though he’s in great demand.”

  The receptionist overheard. “Mr. Sullivan should be back soon,” she said flatly. “I told you, he’s in court.”

  Susan sucked in her cheeks and nodded.

  He walked in a few minutes later, the picture of a Vermont lawyer, dressed in a plaid shirt, pale tie, and chinos, and sporting a weathered complexion framed by unruly, too-long hair. Unfortunately he didn’t look to be over the age of thirty. Certainly not nearly as old as the furnishings in this dump.

  “My apologies,” he said as he extended his hand to Bert. “You must be Mr. Levin.”

  “He’s not Mr. Levin,” Susan said, but Bert stood and shook his hand anyway.

  “Bert Hayden,” he said.

  “I’m Ms. Levin,” Susan said, “and I’m the one with the problem.”

  “Ms. Levin. Come right this way.”

  He marched into an inner office without bothering to shake Susan’s hand. Vermont, she thought. All the class in the world.

  The furniture in here wasn’t any better than that in the waiting room. The lawyer settled into a chair behind what looked to be an old oak schoolteacher’s desk and motioned for Susan and Bert to sit on yet another lumpy sofa.

  Susan didn’t wait for him to go through the usual amenities: She spoke quickly, telling him that Lawrence had threatened to take away her son.

  “How long have you been divorced?” James Sullivan asked with what Susan thought was as much professionalism as he could muster.