Later, Jason lies awake in the night feeling Maris beside him, her arm draped over his chest, her head on his shoulder. It is very late, all the world still. He hears Long Island Sound in the distance. It blurs motion and time and is a sound that can summon a lifetime of memories.
But there is something more. He holds Maris close and feels the rise and fall of her breathing. The waves reach up on the beach while he stays absolutely motionless, the sea breeze floating in, the moon’s glow illuminating them, and he considers, unsure, just what he senses. After a minute, or ten, or waking from dozing, Maris turns her face up toward him and he feels her gaze. Out of the darkness, her hand reaches to his face and touches the moist streak slipping along the side of his cheek.
He takes her hand, then, and cups it in his, to his chest, before slipping his arm around her shoulders, lying close, the waves outside continuing to break.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In the light of Monday morning, Maris sees Jason’s life more clearly. She sees the ordered furniture in his beach home, everything in its place, meticulous. She sees a second, spare prosthetic leg beside his dresser. Crutches lean in the corner of the bedroom, and she sees him put a second pair of those in his truck. His day will be long and there might come a time when he’ll have to remove his prosthesis. Sitting outside on his deck, she listens to him talk in the kitchen, hearing his inflections, his pauses, as his day lengthens with each phone call: an appointment with a building contractor, with a wholesale window supplier and with two clients at their cottages, followed by an evening meeting in Eastfield. Finally he needs to stop at his condominium to work on research papers still there for a new cottage restoration. They won’t see each other until late that night.
While waiting outside for him, she checks her cell phone and calls back Eva, leaving her a message when there is no answer.
“Who you talking to?” Jason asks, bringing his coffee onto the deck.
“Evangeline.”
“Eva?”
“She left me a couple tense messages.”
“What did she want?”
“I’m not sure, she didn’t really say. Something’s up, though.”
“Do you want to stop by and see her?”
“I just can’t, there’s so much going on today. It’ll keep till I get back later.”
“I’ll come with you to your attorney’s office,” Jason insists then, his coffee on the table before him, his barn rising behind him, mid-restoration. He’s already been moving in his pencils and shields and t-squares and design rolls, along with Neil’s volumes of cottage scrapbooks. Without Neil’s presence, she sees that he couldn’t do it.
“I’ll be okay, really. I already know most of what he’ll tell me. Besides, your schedule is booked.”
“I’ll cancel.” He says it without hesitation; she takes precedence.
“No, I’ll be fine.” She sips her coffee, thinking. “Do you know what you could do though? My appointment is at one o’clock and it’s an hour drive each way. Could you stop by and take Madison out for a while? I hate to leave her alone for long.”
Jason agrees and Maris gives him her extra house key while he writes his personal cell phone number on the back of his business card. “I have to take off now. But you call me if you need me.” She takes the card from him and lets him fold her into his arms, talking into her ear. “Anytime, okay?” They kiss then and she misses him already when she feels his hands leaving her shoulders.
It is one of those crystal clear summer mornings, so she walks around his yard, looking into the barn and lingering alone on his deck with her coffee. Forty-five minutes after he left, she turns over his business card and dials the number. “Don’t talk,” she says, knowing he is with a contractor. She doesn’t want her words to compel him to respond, possibly embarrassing him. “Just listen.”
“Okay,” he answers. There are noises in the background: workers’ voices calling out, a power saw whining and a construction vehicle backing up. She imagines he bends into the call, maybe blocking his other ear to hear her over the sounds of the job site.
“There’s just something I wanted to tell you.”
“Go on.”
She smiles, picturing him at work. “I love you,” she says.
“I love you too, sweetheart. I’ll call you later.”
Only then does she feel ready to take care of something else pressing on her mind. She straightens up the kitchen and goes back to her cottage to make the other phone call that is long overdue.
“I can’t compete with someone you’ve known your whole life,” Scott says. “Especially someone from Stony Point.”
“It’s not about competition, Scott.” She opens the ring box and looks at the diamond as he talks, slipping it on her finger, then taking it off again.
“For you, it’s not. You’ve made your choice. But it is for me. Or it was, until you told me his name.”
“I’m sorry, I never planned for this to happen.”
“I know you didn’t. And I know it’s over. And it’s not just Barlow. It’s where he’s from. It’s Stony Point, Maris. I can’t compete with whatever hold that little beach has on you.”
She sets the engagement ring on the dining room table along with everything else wanting her attention. Her office at Saybrooks is anxious for her new fall designs, Eva needs to talk, and there’s that pending job offer. Surrounded by denim sketches spread across the table, she opens her laptop and sends off a couple messages to her assistant, letting her know she’ll scan the sketches into the system in a few days. Then she opens the other email that has been idle in her inbox for several days now. The Manhattan design house needs an answer this week. Will she accept their offer for a position to expand their denim line, with free design rein and a substantial salary increase? The lace curtains behind her puff out like wind in the sails, then fall back limp. Her fingers tap at the keyboard declining the offer, pausing to place a stone paperweight on the sketches lifted by the breeze slipping in, before hitting the delete key as she erases her response and keeps the email as New for now.
Too much else is pressing in on her, including Eva, who she tries calling again, wondering what has her so upset. Still no answer. “I’ll stop by after my appointment today,” Maris says in a voicemail. “We’ll have coffee and talk.”
She shuts off her phone then and sets it aside on the table so there won’t be any interruptions as she prepares for her attorney’s appointment. The secret of her own family challenges her like no design assignment ever has, so she turns to the old box from her father’s house. Everything in it is some sort of hint. Slipping her hand into the folds of a soft baby blanket, she pulls out the black and white snapshots there. Their edges have begun to curl with age, but even though so much time has passed, Maris recognizes the rooms: the kitchen where something always simmered or baked, the formal living room for family visits, the paneled family room where chairs were meant for curling up on with good books.
Even though the prints are black and white, she knows the colors: the green appliances, the rich cherry wood of the mantle clock, the gold brocade sofa, the honey pine walls.
And even though she can’t remember her, Maris knows the woman in them. She searches her mother’s face, her eyes, her expression, and craves something she might see with her own eyes, some truth that explains a second child, a daughter who she had to love as much as she did Maris. But the photographs hold their secret well.
She turns back to the box. Everything in it is evidence of a second baby’s life: the knitted baby cap, the family christening gown, a swaddling blanket, the home movie film, the empty small box from an Italian jeweler. Someone didn’t want this child forgotten. She collects the photographs and reaches for the baby blanket to tuck back in the box. While fussing with the blanket over the table, a small manila envelope she missed before slides out from a fold.
And suddenly nothing is more important as she drops the blanket, carefully opens the envelope clasp and slips
out the contents. Two items fall to the table … another photograph, this one an old five-by-seven black and white print, and a yellowed identification card.
Maris picks up the photograph and angles it beneath her table lamp. A ship deck is crowded with people off to one side looking out over the water at a distant view. Far in the background, behind a misty veil, rises the Statue of Liberty. The photographer, standing to the stern, frames the picture to capture a large portion of the bow of the boat.
And one person on deck catches Maris’ eye. A young girl of about fourteen turns her back on the crowd and faces the camera. Her clothing is plain and drab: a long gray dress over which a heavy black coat falls to below her knees. On her feet she wears a scuffed pair of black leather high-top boots. Her thick, dark hair is pulled back in a loose bun and a knitted wool scarf drapes over the back of her head with the ends wrapped loosely at her throat.
The resemblance is clear. She sees the wide-set eyes and prominent jawline of her mother, though it isn’t her squinting into the early light of day decades ago. In one hand, the girl grips the handle of a leather travel trunk, while the other hand clutches a large paper, some sort of travel authorization. Maris knows, before turning the picture over, that this is her mother’s and Aunt Elsa’s mother. This young girl, her dark eyes gazing steady at the camera, is her maternal grandmother. On the back of the photograph, her mother had written the notation Mama waiting for the ferry at Ellis Island.
Why would this be saved? What significance does it have in the baby’s life? She scans the crowds of immigrants dressed in dark clothes, the women’s heads wrapped in shawls and scarves against the damp harbor air. They lean on the rails of the ship looking to New York. The planks of the deck’s floor are wood and a staircase rises to a second level where the ship’s uniformed crew mans the operations.
The answer jumps out at her then. The ship’s name is painted directly below the rails of the upper deck, on the far side of the boat. She squints and angles the photograph to read it clearly.
This is the ship that brought her grandmother to America. Surprising tears burn her eyes as the one word says it all. It explains why the box of mementoes was kept, the photograph saved, the baby named.
Evangeline.
She drops the photograph on the table and picks up the yellowed identification card. Her eyes race over it, searching out more details. The heading is in bold print … Inspection Card. Beneath that, in smaller letters, it reads … Immigrants and Steerage Passengers. It lists her grandmother’s name as well as the Port of Departure, Naples, Italy. But it is the next line that confirms everything.
Name of Ship … Evangeline.
Outside, a robin sings and the cicadas buzz in the trees. She turns to look out the window, to know the truth of this one moment. She is here, at Stony Point. The sea breeze stirs. Summer lingers. But the card holds the other truth, the one that changes everything. That shifts her world. Information about medical and quarantine inspections have been stamped on it, dates and numbers.
But none of that matters to her now. Only one thing does.
The baby she’s been looking for hadn’t died.
Maris just found her. She’d been given up for adoption and is very much alive.
No one responded to Eva’s birth parent search, nor would they ever, because her parents are Maris’ parents. And they have both died. Theresa and Ned are somehow involved, too, bringing Maris into their home during all those years the two sisters were separated.
And no one ever told them. Not one word. Ever.
Eva is her sister. Evangeline.
Maris stands and backs away from the mess on the table, from the evidence, from the random sketches she’d finished up, from her cell phone off to the side. She’s seen enough and figured out enough. Attorney Riley will fill in the rest. It is time to leave.
Upstairs, she splashes cold water on her face, pats it dry and runs a brush through her hair. She lifts the blue velvet bag from her dresser top and slips out her gold pendant, the evening star rising above the sea. Her hands shake as she tries to clasp it behind her neck. Elsa, a world away, had at least tried to hold on to two little girls. For certainly the empty jewelry box from the attic once held a similar pendant for Eva. Where is it? What ever became of Elsa?
A large black denim duffel sits on her closet shelf and it doesn’t take long to open her dresser drawers and throw in enough necessities and a change of clothes to get her through a few days. She hurries back downstairs to the dining room with the tote over her shoulder, slips her laptop into it, grabs her purse and leaves the rest, the photographs and sketches and diamond ring and Identification Card and cell phone, leaves it all behind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maris sits across from Attorney Tom Riley in a comfortable seating arrangement, a low round table between them. She is dressed in black, black denim bell bottoms with a crochet inset in the bell and a black halter top. She wears a wide gold watch, sea glass earrings and her pendant. Her eyes follow the attorney’s moves as he sorts through papers in front of him.
“Renee called me on my vacation,” he begins. “She told me you were upset and we assumed it could be only one thing.”
“I know that Eva is my sister,” Maris answers. His eyebrows move, just barely, but she registers his surprise that she knows.
“We thought it had something to do with that. So I asked Renee to get some papers together that might help.”
Maris sits on an upholstered chair, crossing her legs in front of her. “Why was Eva’s identity kept from me?”
“Let’s start here. You might want to look at these before I begin.” He sets a bundle of correspondence on the table. “Your father thought that these might mean something to you. And to Eva. He asked me to hold onto them, and I think it’s time you had them.”
Maris thumbs through the envelopes stamped with international postmarks. They are letters from Italy, mailed to her and Evangeline, that her father intercepted over the years. She slips one out of its envelope and reads a flowery card celebrating her name day. Inside, in lovely script, Elsa had written a friendly note. I have a big garden and the plants love the summer sun. I think of you when I’m in my garden, you must be growing so quickly. Enjoy your special day! And God bless you. The cards came in birth years of significance … a few when they were children, then one each as they arrived at sixteen, eighteen and finally twenty-one. Maris glances at two or three, then sets the bundle in her lap, her fingers wrapped around it.
Elsa had never given up. Never.
“Why did my father keep these from me? I would have loved corresponding with her, receiving her letters from Europe. My God,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this.”
Attorney Riley speaks slowly. “Attorney Fischer worked with your father on the adoption back then. When he retired, he filled me in on the case details. Apparently after your mother’s death, your father was overwhelmed, especially with the idea of raising two young children alone. You were older, three years old. But a baby was too much. He didn’t see how he could manage it.”
“So what does that have to do with Elsa?”
“A lot. She was furious with his decision to place Eva up for adoption and even offered to come here from Italy to stay with him for six months or so, to help.”
“She would have done that? Given up her life for all those months?”
“Without a doubt. Elsa was very close with your mother and knew she wouldn’t want her two daughters separated.”
Attorney Riley stands then and walks to the large paned window, leaning against the tall sill before continuing. “Your father wouldn’t budge, Maris, and arranged a semi-open adoption. That way he could place the baby with a family who would take good care of her instead of have her suffer under a very trying situation with him working fulltime and raising two babies, essentially.”
“Semi-open. What does that mean?”
“He had a choice in selecting the adoptive couple, and
did meet them before the adoption. Everything was on a first-name basis only and he also arranged to receive updates on Eva’s life, on her health and milestones, at least once a year. The Lanes would send these via Attorney Fischer. But other than that, he relinquished all contact with Eva. You and Eva were so young, he thought your memories of each other would fade. You’d never know the difference and would have better lives this way.”
“So you’re saying that he did this out of love?”
“Absolutely. He may have been misguided by his grief. Don’t forget the horrible way he lost your mother. But he loved Eva.”
“But we were sisters.”
“I know, and you had two people who cared about you in different ways. Louis and Elsa. As your father, Louis had the legal right to make his decision. The argument was so heated between them that Elsa finally did come to the States to try to stop the adoption. But she got here too late. Eva was gone.”
Maris glances at the cards in her hands, feeling the heavy defeat Elsa had suffered.
“She was devastated,” Attorney Riley continues. “Words were spoken that could never be taken back. You know how things get said in the heat of the moment. Elsa wanted the adoption reversed and your father cut ties with her then. He also might’ve been afraid she’d one day tell you the truth about Eva. But he couldn’t stop her cards from coming. I think Elsa always hoped for a letter back from you. You can see by the cards addressed to Eva, too, at your home, that she never accepted the adoption.”
“Is my aunt alive? I’ve looked online, but can never find her, no name, address.” She glances at the envelopes. “But I never knew her married name.”
“Renee did a little research. She still lives at the address on those envelopes. From what I understand, she’s lived there in Milan for several years now.”
“Milan?”
“Yes. She owns a clothing boutique there. It’s very well-established.”
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