by A. J. Banner
“She does look a lot like you,” the librarian says. “You must be related to her.”
“But I’m not. Who was she?”
“I wasn’t here back then, but you might want to ask Doug.”
I fold the photograph into my pocket and ride my bicycle up the main road, eventually turning left at the gnarled Western red cedar. A soft rain has begun to fall. The bumpy, overgrown driveway gently slopes downhill, winding through a meadow and a copse of trees. A log house appears in a clearing, a plume of smoke rising from the chimney. I park my bike and take the stone footpath to the front porch. I climb the steps with a pounding heart. Before I raise my hand to knock, the door swings open. Doug Ingram peers at me through sleepy eyes. He’s wearing a loose-knit sweater, jeans, and slippers. His white hair flies wild, as if he last brushed it a decade ago.
“I thought I was dreaming,” he says. “But I wasn’t, was I? You look so much like Malinda.”
“I’m Kyra Winthrop. Remember?”
He looks confused. “What are you doing here?”
I show him the picture. “The librarian found this in the archives.”
His gnarled fingers tremble, and his eyes soften with sadness. He looks up at me. “Why don’t you come in?”
I enter a bright room full of rustic wood furniture, the walls adorned with watercolor paintings of the island—the ocean views through the mist, the cedar forest, deer, and seashells. The smell of pine. The coffee table, made of a sliced stump, is neatly stacked with magazines. A fire crackles in a woodstove in the corner.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he says, shuffling to his left, through an open doorway to a small kitchen. I hear pots and pans clanking, and he comes back out looking at me and shaking his head. “Remarkable.”
“When did you know her? Malinda? This photo was taken nearly forty years ago.”
“Was it, now? Time flies. I’ve been here a lot longer than that.” He points to a faded photograph of men squinting in the sun in green army fatigues, sweating, with their caps pulled down over their faces. One shirtless man has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The man kneeling at the far right in the front row looks familiar.
“That’s you,” I say, pointing at the man. He’s young, handsome, and clean-cut. The man in the photograph from the library. “When was this taken?”
“Circa 1964. I was barely out of high school.”
“You were in Vietnam. How did you end up here?”
“Had to come up this way for alternative service. Heard about the islands. Lasqueti, Waldron, the likes. I settled on Lasqueti first. After the war, I came down here.”
“Those were your army buddies? In the picture?”
“Lost three over there. Two more to Agent Orange. Only one still alive, last I heard.”
“I’m sorry about your friends.”
The kettle whistles, and he disappears again, returning with a tray holding a white teapot and two matching teacups on saucers. He pours two cups and hands me one. The liquid smells smoky.
“Lapsang souchong,” he says. “My daughter’s favorite.”
“You have a daughter?”
“Out near Bellevue. Works for Microsoft.”
“How often do you see her?”
“It’s been years.” He sips the tea, returns the cup to the saucer, his fingers trembling. “She writes to me, wants me to visit. I know what she’s got up her sleeve. She wants to put me in one of those old folks’ homes.”
“Did she say that?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Maybe she just wants to see you. You’re her dad.”
“I was a bad father, left when she was little. She can’t believe I’ve been thinking of her all these years. But I have.”
“You could visit her. She can’t force you into a retirement home. It’s your choice.”
“Not much is our choice in this life,” he says, looking into his teacup. He puts the picture of him and the woman on the coffee table between us.
“Who was she?” I say. “Malinda?”
“Her full name was Malinda Winthrop.”
Winthrop. Malinda Winthrop. My mind does a flip. The liquid thickens in my cup. I can’t get my bearings. Winthrop, Malinda Winthrop. “Are you sure? Winthrop?”
“Winthrop. Her married name. It’s been so long. You’re related to her?”
“I only look like her. Coincidence.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says.
“This means I’m married to her son, Jacob Winthrop. Doesn’t it?”
“Ahhh. Yes.” His eyes narrow. “She did have a son. It’s been so long.”
“We’re living in the house on the bluff, the one they used to stay in.”
He nods, his eyes sad. He seems suddenly much older and frailer than he was only a minute ago.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what was your relationship with her?”
“My memory isn’t so good anymore. I don’t remember dates or when exactly she left for good, but I remember her. Like it was yesterday. Her voice, her hair. Her perfume.”
“You painted such a beautiful likeness.”
“It was love at first sight. For me, anyway.”
“You fell in love with a married woman.”
“Everyone fell in love with Malinda. Couldn’t help it. She was an angel.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I was a commercial fisherman in those days. Met her in the harbor. She didn’t have a son yet. But she was married. It was her husband’s yacht. Big-time businessman. All pompous and whatnot.”
“Did you two become involved at that time? You and Malinda?”
“No, we weren’t involved yet. Her husband was a bloody bastard, but she stuck by him.”
“How do you mean?”
“It was a long time ago now . . . He treated her like dirt. Beautiful, kind woman like that . . . He hit her. She tried to cover it up but it was obvious to everyone around her.”
“He must have charmed her in the beginning. Before his true personality emerged?”
He touches the picture gently, as if he’s touching Malinda herself. “I thought for sure she would leave him. I told her I would always be here for her. She knew where to find me.”
“But she didn’t leave him.”
“They had the son, and . . .” He puts his cup and saucer on the coffee table, gets up, and goes to the window. “The day we started . . . it was a sunny summer afternoon. She came up those stairs, just like you did. By herself. She must’ve told her husband she was taking a walk. She must’ve decided she was ready.”
“Ready for what? To leave him?”
“She wanted to leave but she couldn’t.”
“You had an affair with her.”
He scratches a bald spot on the top of his head. “Wasn’t an affair. I was in love, like I said.”
“Was she in love with you?”
“I thought she was.”
I look down into my tea. “What happened? Your love affair ended?”
“We were together as much as we could be for a time. But she was devoted to her boy.”
“She couldn’t leave her son,” I say.
“I was supposing so. I never met the kid. But she talked about him a lot.”
“Why didn’t she bring him to you? If she loved you?”
“She said if she left her husband, he would come after her. He would have her committed. He would make out that she was crazy and take the kid. She couldn’t let him take the boy.”
“Did he find out about you and Malinda?”
“All I know is, she showed up one day and said it was over. She never came back to me. They kept visiting the island for years, on and off, but she kept her distance.”
“That must’ve been hard. To see her but not be with her.”
He looks down at his gnarled, trembling fingers. “It’s hard even now. I pleaded with her, tried to get her to see reason, but she wouldn’t budge. That man had some kind of hold over her.
It was hell for a while but time heals . . . or so they say.”
“You lost touch with her.”
“When I saw you, it was like I went right back to that time.”
I pick up the picture. “Thank you for talking to me.” My mind is turning in frantic circles. “Would you be willing to talk to me again?”
“Come back anytime. I don’t get many visitors around here.”
As I ride my bicycle home, my panic level rises. Every man marries his mother, right? There’s nothing wrong with this picture. Nothing untoward. It shouldn’t matter that I look so much like Jacob’s mother. But it does. During the four years I’ve lost, did I know about my resemblance to her? If so, did I find the likeness strange, troubling?
When I reach the house, Jacob’s not home, but he came back while I was away. He left a mug on the counter. I traipse outside through the wind to the garden. The white stakes, labeling the plants, have multiplied. In addition to the labels I found, Jacob has added new ones to mark beets, chives, garlic, and a myriad of other herbs and vegetables. But the labels are old, all of them printed in his mother’s handwriting. Every single one of them.
I turn and run back to the house. Whitecaps roar in across the sea, portending a storm.
In my office, I boot up my computer with trembling fingers. I enter “Malinda Winthrop” in the Google search box. Only a few hits appear, referring to other Malinda Winthrops. No information about Jacob’s mother. Nothing at all.
In the living room, I flip through the photo albums again. Photos of Malinda were taken from a distance. This I already knew. I search in vain for a single close-up. She’s on the yacht in a wide headband, bell-bottom jeans, and sunglasses, dangling her legs over the side. Young Jacob points out to sea. His father looks very much the way Jacob looks now—tall, handsome, with a quirky nose and a slightly lopsided grin. But Malinda is always far away. There are no photographs of Jacob as a teenager or adult before I met him.
I page through the pictures of Jacob and me, on the beach, taking a selfie, dancing at the wedding. Out to dinner with friends. The photograph of Aiden on the bluff brings back the memory of falling into his arms. Only this time, I see him hiking ahead. He turned to summon us. Come on, you two. You’re always lagging. I ran after him, but Jacob hung back, determined not to hike any faster. I caught up to Aiden, and he winked at me. We shared a secret. The photograph is printed from Jacob’s computer. The red ink was running low—Aiden’s hair shows a subtle blue tint, from the blue ink. Blue ink.
Jacob, so careful to straighten edges, to make his bed to perfection. Jacob, married to a woman who looks uncannily like his mother.
Blue-tinted photographs. Photoshop, Linny email.
On my office computer, I check my email and find a reply from Linny.
Dear Kyra,
Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I was out on a research run. What an amazing place this is. But I miss you. As for the giraffe, too bad you can’t find the carving! I’ll ask my mom about getting you another one, but I can’t guarantee a replacement. She may not go back to Kenya—she’s got a few other countries on her radar. But I’ll check with her. Don’t worry, we’ll have many new gifts for you. Xo,
Linny
I push my chair back, her words pulsating across the screen. No, it can’t be. A man so careful, so meticulous. He has no idea. How else could he reply? He couldn’t possibly know the truth. He swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker. Masquerading as Linny, he couldn’t reply the way Linny would reply. I could’ve done a better job of impersonating her. I know her so much better than he ever did. I know the secret she kept about her mother. Pretending to be Linny, I might’ve replied:
Dear Kyra,
What are you talking about? You must’ve forgotten. Growing up, I decided the minute I could leave home, I would fly and fly and fly. So I did. I made a point of flying as often as I could, as far as I could. I did not want to be trapped at home like my mom was, stuck in her small world. They say when you get on a plane, 60% of the people around you—six in ten, that is—are afraid of flying. They worry the plane will crash. They’re afraid of turbulence. The fear comes from your utter lack of control. You’re hurtling through the air at four hundred miles per hour, thirty thousand feet above earth. If there’s an accident, it’s catastrophic. In a plane, there is no such thing as a fender bender. You’re going to die a sudden, horrible, fiery death.
My mother could never live with that. So she never flew. You know that better than anyone. You had to overcome your fear of flying, too . . . So I’m sorry to tell you, my mom never went to Kenya. She never brought you a carving of a giraffe. She never brought you a carving of anything. Check your memory banks, and you’ll know this is true.
Xo,
Your best friend,
Linny
I pace in my office, my breathing fast and shallow. Not only has Jacob been reading my messages to Linny, intercepting her messages to me—he’s been writing her responses. I can’t trust anything she wrote to me. I click back through her previous messages. Were any of them actually from her? At what point did Jacob start to intercept them? He may have impersonated me, too.
I look out the window at the woodpile, at the split logs carefully organized in the bin. Jacob wants to bring order to our lives, to our surroundings. Perhaps our marriage had spun away into chaos, and he’s trying to shield me from yet another truth, something worse than two miscarriages. He could be trying to protect me. Why does he not want me to contact Linny? Maybe something has happened to her.
Horrible possibilities race through my mind. Linny was on the dive with us. She died. She ran out of air. But this can’t be true. The news articles reported only two people on the dive. I have to believe Linny’s okay. Maybe she knows something, a secret Jacob doesn’t want me to discover. If I planned to leave him for Aiden, I might have told her. She might know I was ready to divorce Jacob.
I take Jacob’s latest list from my pocket, the one I found in Atlas of Remote Islands.
Photoshop
Update Keywords: Kyra, Aiden, me
Linny email
Photoshop.
Blue-tinted photographs.
In the living room, I search through the photo albums yet again. Some pictures are clearly originals, while others are printed from digital versions. The wedding photographs are all printed. Blue-tinted pictures. The color always looked off to me, but now, even more so. What is wrong?
Photoshop.
Update Keywords.
You were a hacker, weren’t you?
An ethical hacker.
We make our own world.
Back at my computer, I open Google and type “definition of keyword.” Keywords are words or phrases that describe content . . . Whenever you search . . . you type keywords that tell the search engine what to search for.
What would Jacob be updating?
I enter a benign term, “rose garden,” in Google. Instantly, a number of hits pop up for the Rose Quarter in Portland, Oregon; the White House Rose Garden; and others. For “broccoli salad,” images of broccoli salads pop up, an Allrecipes recipe, a New York Times recipe, and other variations. I type in “solar system” and the Wikipedia entry appears above NASA’s Solar System Exploration page, National Geographic, and “Solar System Facts” on Space.com.
On his list, he wrote, Update Keywords: Kyra, Aiden, me. I type “Jacob Winthrop” in the Google search box, and I’m thrown offline. You’re not connected to the Internet. My heart knocks against my ribs. I reboot the computer, but I can’t get online.
Did this happen every time I logged on? The Internet allowed my benign keyword searches but not the personal ones? I try to think back through my previous Google searches, but they blend together. I didn’t consider any connection between the keywords I entered and the Internet cutting out. I thought it was an intermittent faulty satellite connection on a remote island. But what if it wasn’t?
Did he set up my Internet connection to crash w
hen I entered certain keywords? Invariably, the Internet would work again after a few hours or the next day. Giving him time to do what? Alter the search results? The idea is far-fetched. But the dominos fall into each other, collapsing one after the other.
Photoshop.
I check the landline. Still no dial tone. I don’t even get static, nothing. I yank on my sneakers and rush out into the driving wind and rain. I’m soaked when I reach the cottage. The door is unlocked. His office is neat, tidy, cedar-scented. The woodstove is loaded with logs in a careful, symmetrical arrangement. The plush armchair invites me to sink into its cushions. Beside the burnished oak desk, the standing lamp casts its warm glow across the room. The framed photograph on the desk shows the two of us dancing at the wedding reception. In the room to my left, the weight bench and exercise equipment give up no secrets. In the supply room to the right, everything is neatly organized—paper on shelves, boxes of envelopes, his printer, boxes of ink. Extra pens.
In his office, I sit in the chair at his desk. A screen saver shows a school of bright orange fish swimming across his computer monitor. He could be hiding secrets on his hard drive. I move the mouse, and the screen saver disappears, revealing the login window reading, Enter Password. I try my name, his name, the name of our street, the island, the telephone number, my Social Security number. Nothing works. Then I try his mother’s name, Malinda. This has to work.
But it doesn’t. My husband is not stupid. That much I know. He could have hidden a hint to his password somewhere in this room. In the center drawer of his desk I find pens, envelopes, rubber bands, paper clips—the usual office supplies. In the top right drawer, bills to be paid—electricity, telephone. A paper calendar with nothing written on it.
I’m shaking, my damp clothes clammy against my skin. Outside, the crashing of waves mingles with the roar of the storm. I peer out the window. No sign of his truck on the road, but he could return at any moment. I need to log into his computer. The answers must lie here. He probably chose a complicated password. That would be the smart thing to do. Jacob is smart.