The Vineyard (41 page)

Just?
Olivia's thoughts turned to Ted, which wasn't a calming subject at all. If he was calling yet again, she might have to act.

Uneasy, she slipped past Susanne and picked up the phone in the front hall. “What's up?”

“There's a man here. He says he has to see you.”

Olivia hung her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her brow. “Is he five ten and kind of wiry, with short dark hair?”

“No,” Anne Marie said very quietly, “he's over six feet, heavy-set,
early sixties. He's the one who's been calling. I recognize his voice.”

Olivia straightened. If not Ted, then a friend of his? “What's his name?”

“He won't say.”

“Well, I'm not talking with him unless he does.”

Anne Marie directed her voice to the man, who was clearly right there.

With his half of the conversation inaudible, Olivia raised her brows in bewilderment to Susanne, who stood nearby. They both looked up when Natalie started down the stairs, but Olivia had barely noted her pallor when Anne Marie returned to the line.

“He says you won't know his name. He says he has something for you from your mother.”

Olivia's heart began to pound. And
this
was the man who had been calling? “Ask where he's from. Ask for ID.” Gnawing on her cheek, she glanced nervously from Susanne to Natalie, both of whom seemed to sense the import of the call.

“He's from Chicago,” Anne Marie reported. “His name is Thomas Hope. I have his driver's license in my hand.”

“I'll be right there,” Olivia said in a shaky voice and hung up the phone. “He knows my mother,” she told Susanne and Natalie on her way out, but by the time she reached her car, they were climbing in, too. She started to protest, then realized that it felt right to have them there. She had been privy to some of the most intimate aspects of Seebring history. It was fitting that they should be involved in this most intimate aspect of hers—not to mention the comfort she could find in having them there. Driver's license or not, Chicago or not, she had no idea if this man was legitimate. He could be a fraud or a scam artist. He could be a thief.

She knew how to protect herself. She was quite practiced, quite capable. But she was touched that these women cared enough to be with her.

None of them spoke during the short ride down the hill to the main road and east to the office. Olivia's hands shook. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, she tried to think what her mother might have sent. There was only one thing she wanted, but when she pulled into the office parking lot and homed in on a car with Illinois plates, she didn't see a woman inside.

She parked and went directly into the office. Thomas Hope was in the small reception area where Anne Marie sat. He turned from the window as soon as she entered.

He was indeed large, but his body carried no threat. He seemed more annoyed than angry, but even that faded when he took a look at her.

“I'm Olivia,” she announced in something of a challenge.

“Hard to miss,” he replied in a thin voice. “You look like her. You have her stubbornness, too, dragging me all the way out here, but you wouldn't take my calls, and I promised her I'd get you this.” He held out a thick envelope.

Olivia stared at it. An envelope like that could hold a week's worth of vacation plans. Carol might want to meet them somewhere lovely, like San Francisco—or somewhere fun, like Disney World. An envelope like that could hold several chapters of a memoir like the one Olivia was writing for Natalie. Carol might be wanting to tell her things—things Olivia might have read weeks ago, if she hadn't been so
bullheadedly
sure that Ted was the one on the phone. An envelope like that could hold a large, multicreased family tree. It could hold names.

Fearful, unable to reach out, Olivia wrapped her arms around her middle. “Why didn't she bring it herself?”

“She died two months ago. It took me awhile to get your number—”

Olivia's heart stopped.
“Died?”

“She had liver disease. I was calling two different apartments in Cambridge, and one didn't know where you were, and the other wouldn't tell.”

“She's
dead?”
Olivia asked, disbelieving in spite of the fact that the man must have driven two days to give her the news.

Thomas Hope nudged the envelope toward her. “The obituary's inside, along with her bankbook and all. I have some cartons in the car.” When she made no move to take the envelope, he set it down on Anne Marie's desk. Stepping around the women, he went out the door just as Simon came in.

“Who is that?” he asked, looking back, and suddenly Olivia wanted to know, too.

She ran past him, out to the parking lot. Thomas Hope was just opening the trunk of his car.

“How did you know her?” she asked, not caring that she sounded accusatory. She had a right, after the bomb he had dropped.

“We lived together.”

“Were you married?”

He picked up a small box. “Not to Carol.”

“To someone else?”

“My wife won't give me a divorce,” he said, putting the small box on a larger one and lifting the two. “Carol knew that. I never lied about it. I was always up-front. Where do you want these?”

“Liver disease. What kind of liver disease?”

“The kind you get from too much drinking. You knew she drank?”

“I didn't. Did she get the letters I sent?”

“Whatever she got is in these boxes. Where do you want them?”

“I'll take them,” Simon said, relieving him of the armload.

“Why didn't she write back?” Olivia asked.

Thomas Hope reached for another carton. “Probably because when she was sober, she didn't think she had the right.”

Didn't have the right? Didn't have the
right?
A mother always had the right. “Did she know about Tess?”

“Yes. She knew.”

Olivia was stunned. “How could she know and not want to see her?”

Simon took the second carton and disappeared.

The man closed the trunk. “That's it. She cleaned things out before she died. What you have in those boxes are some pictures and books. When she was sober, she knitted, so there's also a few of the things she made. I think she wanted you to have them.” He fished his keys from his pocket. “She didn't make a will. You're gonna have to take my word that what's here is all she had.”

He opened the door, got into the car, and started the engine.

Wait,
Olivia wanted to cry, as she stood on wooden legs.
What was she like? What did she do? Did she work? Did she laugh? Did she mention me? Did you love her?

But the words didn't come. Numb, she watched him back around and drive off. Bewildered, she looked up at Simon, who stood beside her.

“Maybe it's a hoax,” she said. “Maybe she wants me to react.”

Natalie came up with the envelope in her hand. “He said there was an obituary notice.”

Olivia hesitated before finally taking the envelope, and then held it for a long minute before looking inside. The newspaper clipping was at the very front of the papers, a small square, ineptly cut. The obituary was brief. The only survivors listed were Olivia and Tess.

Olivia reread the notice. Feeling suddenly empty and lost, the only thing she could think to say was, “I always thought there might be someone else.”

Natalie put a consoling hand on her arm.

“Is there anything we can do?” Susanne asked.

Olivia tried to think, but it wasn't like there was a funeral to plan. There weren't even any phone calls to make. The only thing to do was to tell Tess, and how hard could that be? Tess had never met her grandmother. Carol had never been part of their lives. Olivia hadn't talked about her in anything but a passing way. She had never raised Tess's hopes, had never shared the dream that one day they would be reconciled, three generations of a family, together and happy.

But the dream was an impossibility now. As the reality of that sank in, Olivia felt a panicky need to do something … anything. Frantic, she looked at Simon, then at Susanne and Natalie.

“I think I … need to run.” She went to her car.

Simon was there, bending down to the window when she slid inside. “Are you okay?” he asked with such gentleness that she teared up.

She forced a smile through the tears. “Yup. I am.” She started the car and waited only until he stepped away before backing up and heading out. Minutes later she was at the house, running up the stone steps, through the foyer, up the stairs, and into the wing. Minutes after that she headed back down, wearing a singlet, shorts, and sneakers. She hit the front drive and, without bothering to stretch, broke into a jog.

She set a brisk pace going down the drive and picked it up when she turned onto the road. The air was warm, the afternoon sun strong. Heat radiated from the pavement, broken into waves by the occasional car that passed.

Her lungs hurt after a bit, then her legs, but she didn't care. Thinking that pain was more fitting than numbness, she quickened
the pace again. She was sweating now, pushing it off the tip of her nose with the back of her hand.

Hitting the pavement with the rhythmic slap of her sneakers, she passed Simon's road and ran on, one mile, then another. When she reached a path on the right that led to the shore, she took it for a third mile. Here, on dirt, the slap of sneakers was duller. It faded the closer she came to water, and was completely drowned out by the sound of the surf when she left the path and emerged onto rocky headlands.

She ran from one boulder to the next until she reached a chasm too wide to cross, so she ran in place there, breathing hard, sweating profusely. Several sailboats were in sight. She wondered if Tess was in one—hoped that she was—hoped that she would stay out there awhile because Olivia wasn't ready to talk, to explain, to deal with her emotions. Waves thundered against the rocks, sending spume high enough to spray her with a sea salt. It was refreshingly cool, mixing all too soon with her own sweat and tears.

Her feet slowed, then finally she stopped. Gasping for breath, she lowered herself to the rock. When gasps turned to sobs, she put her face to her knees.

She couldn't remember the last time she had cried. The act felt foreign—or maybe what felt foreign was the depth of it. Those sobs started at the very bottom of her heart. They were deep and wrenching, reflecting a sentiment she shouldn't have felt but did.

“Olivia.”

She turned away from Simon's voice but couldn't stop crying. Once they started, it seemed, she was helpless to control the tears, or the anguish that caused them.

He didn't say anything else, just sat down beside her, facing the opposite way, put an arm across her chest, and drew her close. She cried against his arm now, still those same wrenching sobs.

In time they slowed, but mostly it was due to exhaustion. The pain remained just as overwhelming. She wasn't in control here, but was at the whim of a powerfully raw emotion. Her breath came in ragged bursts. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically, infinitely grateful to be leaning on Simon.

“Christ, you run fast,” he said, and she would have laughed if she hadn't been so spent. His arm was wet, though she had no idea whether from his sweat or her tears.

Her breath continued to come in broken bits. “She wasn't supposed—to die until—we talked.”

He stroked her head, moving his fingers through her hair.

“I wanted Tess to meet her and to like her. I wanted to like her myself. I wanted her to see me as an adult—and like me, too.”

“I know.”

“There may have been—a whole other side of her. I didn't know she drank.”

“It's done, Olivia. You can't torture yourself.”

But she did. “What a
wasted
relationship!” she cried, feeling nearly as angry as she was bereft.

He didn't argue with her, just continued a gentle stroking. When she turned to face him, he supported the back of her head. She needed that support. It buffered her from the pain.

“She couldn't love me.”

Simon said, “That's not it.”

“How do you know?”

“No mother
can't
love her child. Sometimes she just won't.”

“But why
not?”

“Sometimes she has her own issues.”

“My mother's issue was me. I came at the wrong time and did all the wrong things.”

“It wasn't you.”

“How do you
know?”

He held her back, and gently conceded, “I don't. I didn't know your mother. What I do know is that mothers are made to love. Look at you and Tess. You love her, even though she isn't perfect or always easy, but you wouldn't trade her for the world. That's what mother love is about. Your mother loved you. If she couldn't show it, the problem was with her, not with you.”

Olivia wanted to believe him. His eyes were the same blue as the skies at the end of night. She wanted to believe him
so badly
. “Maybe if she could have seen me now—seen the kind of mother I am, seen the kind of work I do and the kinds of people I work for—maybe she would have loved me
now
…”

But Carol Jones was dead. The obituary said it. Thomas Hope said it. Olivia had no reason to doubt either one. For once, she couldn't even pretend. Fantasies wouldn't help her here. She couldn't think up a single story that would make it not so.

The pain in her mind spread to her heart. Again, she felt a dire need to hold Tess.

“I have to get back,” she whispered. Separating herself from Simon, she pushed both hands over her face to erase tear streaks. Her legs shook when she stood, but Simon was beside her, and much like having Susanne and Natalie in the car earlier, it was a comfort.

Grieving, she let it be that. Nothing more.