Tides of the Heart (37 page)

She had to walk slowly. The trail was narrow, the uneven ground blanketed with roots and twigs and rotted leaves and pine needles. She stepped over acorns and threaded her way along the path, following the markers of red arrows, wondering with each step what was going to happen, uneasy that the woods seemed to grow more dense with each turn of the trail, and that the sun was no longer able to peek through the tall pines that surrounded her.

She thought about turning back. Soon, Jess knew, it would be dusk. Getting out of the woods would be difficult. Yet Richard … Richard was waiting. He had sent the note in the envelope of one of her letters—he could have written it on anything, but he’d chosen that to show her … what? That he had kept her letters all these years?

As she continued her cautious trek, Jess began to fantasize that Richard was waiting in a clearing, a beautiful, pine-needle-covered clearing, that he had a soft spread laid on the ground, a wicker hamper of cheese and fruit, a bottle of wine. She dreamed that he would tell her how much he loved her, how he always had, and always would. As she felt these thoughts and dreamed these dreams, Jess felt like that fifteen-year-old little girl once again, waiting for him at the window of Larchwood Hall, waiting for the boy who had not come then, but perhaps would come to her now.

“I’ve been such a fool,” he would say. Then she would
sip wine and he would sip wine and he would kiss her as she had never been kissed in thirty years, a kiss of love—real, true love.

She tripped on a root, but quickly regained her balance and kept walking. Another fork in the trail: the red arrow pointed right. She stepped over a log and followed the path. Then, just as the trail began to straighten, Jess felt the ground go out from beneath her. Her right foot snapped as she went down into a hole, a shallow, ragged hole. “Damn!” she shouted.

She tried to get up but her leg would not move. She cried out in pain. “Richard!” she called. “Help!”

The trees swirled above her, the air grew quite still, and a sudden thought cut through her pain: If Richard had saved her letters all these years, then he must have read them back then; he must have known how much she wanted their baby; he must have known her father was lying.

She did not want to close her eyes: she wanted to sort out the confusion, to sort out the agony. But the pain that crawled up her leg was stronger than her will. Then, just before she passed out, Jess saw a flash of orange fabric float through the woods, heading away from her.

He had forgotten about Jess. Phillip sat upright, pushed back the sheets and looked at the clock. Seven-ten.

“God,” he said, “I fell asleep.” Not that it was surprising. Lisa had unleashed a passion in him that Phillip had never known, a passion that left him feeling weak, drained, and more incredibly out-of-breath-kind-of-lucky than he’d ever felt in his life. He ran his hands through his hair and tried to wake up. Then he felt her fingernails skate down his naked back. “You are so irresistible …” he said, turning to Lisa and tracing his hand over her flesh.

He kissed her softly, his passion rising again.

“Phillip,” she whispered. “Oh, Phillip …”

He stopped. “I have to meet Jess.”

She raked her fingers through his hair. “I know. I know.”

He lingered a moment longer, studying her body, wanting to remember every inch, every soft curve and every gentle fold. “Oh, God,” he said, then rolled onto his side and got up. “I hate this.”

“Me, too.”

He walked to the window and looked out. “I wonder why the desk didn’t call. I wonder where she is.”

“Call the inn,” Lisa suggested.

He did. Jess was not there: she had not yet returned. He checked downstairs. She had not called, had not left any message.

He pulled on his jeans and scratched his head. On the other side of the bed, Lisa dressed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “She wanted to leave at seven-thirty. It’s almost that now.” He looked out the window again. “And it’s practically dark out. Where the hell is she?”

Lisa combed her hair and repaired her smudged makeup. “I think we’d better go find her.”

Phillip nodded, sadness filling him. He would probably never see Lisa again.

“I’m glad you came to see me,” he said.

She reached her arm around his neck and kissed him in reply. He put his arms around her and pulled her body into his.

Karin raced down to the beach, her sarong flying behind her, her heart beating like an Indian drum through the light fabric of her T-shirt. She dropped onto the sand, threw back her head, and wailed a loud, lowly wail into the wind and the graying sky.

It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way. Yes, she had wanted revenge. Revenge against this woman called Jess who had lived the life of a socialite lady while Karin raised the daughter she’d thought Jess had not wanted … while Karin sacrificed the love of the only man she’d ever
loved because somehow Mellie had become her responsibility, her unexpected lot in her unimportant life.

But she loved Mellie, really she did. She did not regret raising her. What she hated was what a fool she had felt like when she’d learned the truth. How she had felt used. How she had felt betrayed.

But now something had happened to Jess. Karin dug her fingers into the bits of shells and stone and stinging grains of West Chop Beach. She pulled her hands to her face and drew her palms down her cheeks, grinding the roughness into her flesh, hoping the pain would erase what had happened.

“It isn’t my fault!” she sobbed.

But she knew that it was.

She had wanted to tell Jess to get off the island. To take her friends and leave, to say that Jess had no business there after all, and that her fat California friend had no business sleeping with Karin’s father. She had wanted to tell her, but then Jess tripped and fell. Karin had seen it happen. She knew right away someone would blame her. So she had circled back and watched. She had seen Jess pass out.

An ache clutched her stomach now, and Karin fell forward, her hair splaying onto the sand, her tears dripping onto the beach. She knew what she needed to do.

She had to find Richard and tell him what happened. Because fair or not, Jess was Mellie’s real mother, and Jess had been innocent—a victim of society, a victim of life. She had also been the woman Richard had once loved, and the mother Mellie would have, if she had but known.

And if there was one thing Karin knew, it was what pain felt like, what the tear of deep-cutting pain felt like. She had felt it when Brit’s letters started coming back marked “unknown.” She had felt it that first summer when he did not return. That summer, and every summer thereafter.

No matter how, no matter why, Karin could not stand to bring either Mellie or Richard the kind of pain she had known.

She rocked back and forth on her knees in the sand, wondered how badly Jess was hurt, and if she was going to die.

“Her car is still here,” Dick said to Ginny. He was standing at the foot of the bed, looking helpless and perplexed.

Ginny frowned, wishing she could get out of bed. “I can’t imagine what’s happened to her.” She chewed the inside of her mouth, then realized it was time. The game was over; the jig was up. : “Dick, where is your son?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“He may know where Jess is.”

“How would he know? He doesn’t know Jess.”

Ginny looked at Dick, hating what she was about to do to this decent, gentle man. “Richard knows Jess,” she finally said. “She knew him thirty years ago.”

The weathered, tanned complexion of Dick Bradley didn’t change right away. Then a slow recognition passed over his face. He paled. “Jess,” he said. “Jessica. Oh, my God.”

“Yeah,” Ginny said. “Oh, your God.” She tried to hoist herself up again, but failed. “But right now the only important thing is that we’ve got to find her.”

Dick did not respond. He stood and stared at Ginny.

“Call your son,” Ginny demanded. “And call him right now.” Dick pulled himself from the edge of the bed and started to cross the room.

“And while you’re at it,” Ginny called after him, “you’d better check on the whereabouts of your daughter Karin, too. I think she knows who Jess is and why we’re here.”

“She does,” Phillip confirmed, as he and Lisa entered from the hall.

Dick hesitated, then slowly left the room, now looking every bit of his sixty-nine years and maybe a dozen or so more.

•  •  •

“Maybe you shouldn’t have told him.” Phillip paced from one end of the room to the other, then back again. “If he calls Richard now, it will give him a chance to—”

“To what?” Ginny asked. “Escape? We’re on a friggin’ island. It’s not as if he can get away any too quickly. The ferries are booked, remember?”

Phillip wrung his hands. In spite of the relief he had felt with Lisa, in spite of the ways she had relaxed every muscle in his body, he was now tense, rigid with fear. If only he hadn’t gone off today, walking with Lisa, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he would have seen Jess and … oh, hell. If only he hadn’t been so damn selfish, none of this would be happening. “I think we should call the police,” he said.

“Christ, is that all you ever want?” Ginny asked. “Call the police on Brad, now call the police on Jess. I don’t know how to tell you this, Mr. Attorney, but the police can’t solve all your problems.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Phillip said.

Just then Dick returned to the room. “I tried phoning Richard,” he said. “He’s left the office for the day. And he’s not home.”

“Great,” Ginny said. “What about Karin?”

“She’s not here.”

A moment passed in which no one spoke.

“I’m going to the police,” Dick finally said. “The chief is a friend of mine. Maybe they can help.”

After he’d gone again, Ginny looked at Phillip. “There’s someone else you need to try and find.”

He nodded. “Melanie.” He turned to Lisa. “Do you want to come with me?”

Ginny lay on the bed, helpless and hopeless and pissed that Jess had disappeared.

If she had been the one to vanish without a trace, it wouldn’t have mattered. Ginny knew—had always known—how to take care of herself. But she feared that even age and heartache and the experience of life had not hardened Jess enough and taught her how to survive when—if—the going really got tough. Jess had been a princess of a child, born gagging on a silver spoon, into a world where money could take care of problems. Money, not guts. Not real, run-for-your-life guts.

She fiddled on the nightstand for another pill. Maybe if the pain eased, she’d be able to think more clearly, she’d be able to figure out what the hell she could do. Jess had saved her life once, so long ago. Jess had saved her life, and now Ginny couldn’t even get out of a friggin’ bed to try to save hers.

Life
, she thought, downing the pill,
continues to suck.

Moments or hours later—she did not know which—Ginny was awakened by the sound of footsteps in the room. She opened her eyes; it had grown dark. At the foot of the bed, silhouetted in the night, was the figure of a man.

“Dick?” she asked, but he looked too tall to be Dick. “Phillip? Did you find her?”

The figure moved closer. “Well, well,” the voice said. “Imagine this. Me, finding Mommie dearest in bed.”

A chill surged from her brain to her heart to her aching spine. “Brad,” she hissed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came for my money.”

Ginny struggled to prop herself on her elbows. Lying flat on her back felt too defenseless: it was not a feeling she wanted around her stepson. “There is no money for you, Brad.”

The silhouette moved closer to the bed. Ginny winced and drew up her knees.

“I want the five hundred thousand. Or your daughter—and you—will be plastered across every tabloid from here to Djakarta.”

She glanced around the semidarkness of the room. There was nothing she could reach—the lamp was too far away, and there was no baseball bat … no gun … that she could use for a weapon, or at least a deterrent. No scissors, as Jess had used on her stepfather.

Her body broke into a shit-scared sweat, and she tried not to think about that other night … that night when that asshole had stood over her, struggling to rape her, until Jess arrived, until Jess stabbed the worthless, waste-of-a-life from him.

But now, Jess was nowhere around, having disappeared
somewhere among the fishermen and the tourists on Martha’s Vineyard.

She tried to chill down her sweat. “You’re not going to get away with it, Brad. I’ll have you arrested for extortion.”

“Extortion? That’s quite a fancy word. And I thought your vocabulary was limited to four-letter ones.”

“Fuck you, Brad.”

“Ah. Now that’s more like it. And for your information, Mommie, if when you say ‘extortion’ you’re thinking of blackmail, forget it. You’ve got my father’s money, and I deserve it.”

“He didn’t think so.”

Brad stepped closer. “Only because you influenced him.”

Ginny laughed. “You are such a loser, Brad.” She tried to sound tough, tried to sound in control. She only hoped he did not realize that she could barely move.