Sea Change

by Karen White

  He looked down at our clasped hands for a moment, then slowly let go before settling himself back against the sofa.

  “All right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “The second time Adrienne went under was after I’d found out about the pregnancy. She said that she wanted to see her mother again, before her mother got sick. She didn’t want the only picture she had of her biological mother to be the one of her so ill. And I thought it was a good idea.”

  I reached for his empty glass and stood, his story almost unbearable to hear. I could only imagine what it had been like to live it. I poured a generous amount of Scotch into the glass and returned, placing it in Matthew’s fingers.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “So I did. And we were back in the garden that we’d found the first time.” He paused. “But she found another door and went through it.”

  He jerked to a stand, the Scotch sloshing over the edge of his glass and onto the floor, but neither one of us moved to wipe it up. With angry steps, he walked back to the window, although the world outside was now black, the colors of the day swallowed by the night.

  “What did she see?” I asked, but I already knew.

  “Georgina.”

  The word echoed in the empty room, flitting like a ghost around the furniture, coming to rest in the space separating Matthew and me.

  He took a sip from his glass before continuing. “I listened as she told this remarkable story—because that’s all I thought it was—about a woman who’d lived here two hundred years ago. What I found so remarkable was that Adrienne told the story as if she were the main character. And when I brought her out of the session, I let her think that I believed that she was the reincarnation of Georgina Smith.”

  He returned to the chair opposite me, as if he, too, found it easier to think when we weren’t so near each other. “It was after that that she became obsessed with my family history, gathering all that data in her briefcase, visiting the archives in Savannah. And I humored her, just happy to see that she’d found something to distract herself from her diagnosis, something to occupy her mind and give her satisfaction that her job never seemed to be able to deliver.”

  I attempted a smile. “So it must have been something of a shock when I went under hypnosis to find out why I couldn’t remember breaking my legs as a child, and instead started talking about Pamela and Georgina.”

  His eyes met mine, but he wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  Hesitantly, as if my mouth knew I didn’t really want to know, I asked, “Did she tell you how Georgina died?”

  Studying me carefully, he said, “Yes. She did.” He leaned forward again, his elbows resting on his knees. “She told me how Georgina sent her sister off with the British, to punish Pamela for taking the one thing Georgina wanted but could never have. She must have believed that she could make Geoffrey believe that his wife had deserted him, so that even if Pamela returned, he wouldn’t want her back.”

  I closed my eyes. Geoffrey. “But she was sick, with tuberculosis, I think. She must have known she was dying. That she would have no chance to be with Geoffrey even with Pamela gone.”

  “I can’t believe I’m talking about all of this as if it’s real. But it can’t be. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m not asking you to believe it, Matthew. Just listen and open your mind. A leap of faith, remember?”

  He nodded, and then continued with Adrienne’s story. “Until the end, Georgina thought the British doctor would have medicine for her. But she also believed that he was too concerned with Pamela, and putting Pamela’s needs before Georgina’s. It enraged her, believing as she did that she had always placed second in everyone’s affections except her mother’s. And her mother had died while Pamela was attending to her, adding more fuel to Georgina’s growing sense of displacement.”

  I recalled my conversation with Tish about the second grave found near Thomas’s, and how they were sure the remains were those of a woman. “Did Georgina die that day, too?”

  “According to Adrienne, yes.” He sighed heavily, as if finally letting go of the years of secrets, unraveling them like yarn. “I didn’t want to tell you any of this, thinking it was all a figment of Adrienne’s imagination. Even when you started talking about Pamela and Thomas Enlow, and your reaction to the sketch of the house as Adrienne had seen it through Georgina’s eyes. I didn’t want Adrienne’s story to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m still not sure.”

  Neither one of us spoke for a few moments. Finally, I said, “What happened to Georgina?”

  “She’d told Thomas to meet her at the Smith Plantation, that Pamela was there waiting for him, and that it was a matter of some urgency. After Georgina ensured that Pamela was headed toward the coast, she returned home to find Thomas waiting there. When he discovered that Pamela was not there, he would not be persuaded by Georgina to wait any longer, and he threatened to leave.”

  Matthew paused again, his face closed to me as he remembered. “Georgina hadn’t really thought out her plan, because she would have known that she couldn’t keep the doctor waiting when the rest of the British were evacuating and he was expected to go with them. Or even that Geoffrey would find the strength to leave his bed and go searching for Pamela. Maybe her illness was interrupting her thought processes, or maybe her anger at her sister had festered so long that she wasn’t thinking clearly. Whatever the reason, she found herself in a desperate situation.”

  “And with a weapon,” I said, imagining the weight of the pistol in my own pocket, and the cold feel of the metal as Pamela had given it to Georgina.

  “Yes,” Matthew said. “Adrienne wasn’t clear on the next events, but if you believe that she was relating the last moments of Georgina Smith’s life, that would be expected.”

  We regarded each other silently, his words like sharp bullets.

  He continued. “I want to believe that what happened next was an accident, but if we believe Adrienne’s story so far, we are left to wonder how Georgina was prepared to explain Thomas’s presence on St. Simons after the evacuation and Pamela’s disappearance, unless Georgina had some plan to send him to Cumberland Island on his own. Regardless, Georgina meant only to hold the doctor at gunpoint until she knew it was too late for him to reach Pamela. Adrienne said only that Georgina was pointing the pistol at the doctor, but that a shout came from behind her, and then she experienced a blinding pain to her head before she heard the report of the gun. And then she remembered nothing else.”

  It was my turn to stare at him in confusion. I thought back to my own flashbacks of Pamela, of the last day during her desperate rush to the ocean. And how she hadn’t set out for home alone. “Jemma,” I whispered. “Georgina had Jemma with her.”

  We looked at each other in mutual realization. “It had to have been Jemma. She must have thought that Georgina meant to shoot the doctor, and tried to stop her.” I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking hard. “Tish said they found another body today, near the doctor’s grave at the Smith Plantation. They’re pretty sure it’s that of a female. There was a small puncture wound in the back of the skull. They don’t think it was a knife, but they’re not sure what it could have been.”

  I sat back on the sofa, feeling exhausted, as if I’d just relived the events of that long-ago day. “Poor Georgina. And poor Jemma.” I thought for a moment, listening again to the silence of the old house that wasn’t anything like quiet, more like a murmuring from behind the wall of years that separated us. “Nathaniel must have buried them and given them markers. Georgina might have had one, too, or maybe he kept hers unmarked so that nobody would draw their own conclusions. There’s no marker for her at Christ Church, and there’s no mention of her traveling with Nathaniel when he moved to Boston.”

  “If this all happened the way we’re thinking it did, then I’d bet that there’s a letter from Nathaniel in the archives somewhere to a friend or relative that men
tions Nathaniel sending Georgina ahead of him sometime in March of 1815. He would have needed to perpetuate a rumor he would have spread among his neighbors on St. Simons to explain Georgina’s absence. He might even have said she needed a change of scenery to escape from the stigma of her sister’s treason and adultery, since it was believed that Pamela had fled with the British.”

  I nodded, almost hearing the click of the pegs being removed from the playing board one by one, then set aside. “And Jemma must have been the freed slave who accompanied him and Robbie to Boston. Since she was mute, she either figured out a way to tell him what happened, or he witnessed it. Either way, Dr. Enlow and Georgina were dead, and Pamela had disappeared. Geoffrey must have died shortly afterward. Only Nathaniel was left to pick up all the pieces.”

  Matthew rubbed his face, and I wondered whether I looked as exhausted as he did. He surprised me by smiling. “But Robbie came back, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. His grave is in the cemetery, along with his wife and children and most of the family members between him and you. Like it was meant to be all along.”

  He stood, and I stood, too, allowing myself to be enfolded in his arms. “Do you believe it, then?” he asked. “Do you believe that you and Adrienne lived before as Pamela and Georgina?”

  “I don’t know. How can we? I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure until we die. But there’s some comfort in believing that we return to earth to get a second chance. What if that’s what we’re here for—to learn lessons or right wrongs from previous lives? Like the ultimate do-over.” I frowned, feeling my brain trying to wrap itself around all the thoughts and ideas running through it. “What if Pamela’s fateful sin was to accept things as they were, to never question what she was told? Maybe that’s why I’m here, to learn from her mistakes and try again.”

  Matthew kissed the top of my head. “Then I’d have to believe that Adrienne’s sickness was her punishment, and that she was never meant to have children or to live to be an old woman. And I don’t want to do that. Adrienne was a good person, and I loved her. I want to believe that she was born with a clean slate, that she determined her own fate.”

  I accepted his words, understanding his need to believe what he did, and knowing, too, that the truth lay somewhere in between. I nuzzled his neck, imagining I could smell the lingering scent of pipe smoke. I didn’t want to talk any more, but there was still one more thing I needed to tell him. Pulling back, I looked into his eyes. “Adrienne didn’t lose her wedding ring. She gave it to John before she died.”

  His face registered surprise.

  “She told him that it didn’t belong to her.” A thickness formed in my throat as I finally understood what she’d really meant, and it had nothing to do with it having once belonged to Matthew’s mother and other ancestors. It belonged to someone Adrienne had never met, a woman Matthew was somehow destined to meet and with whom he would fall in love. It belonged to me.

  He rested his forehead against mine. “Does John still have it?”

  I nodded. “He showed it to me. It has the word Forever engraved inside of it.” My brows puckered as I considered something else. “Pamela told Nathaniel where the hiding place was, and he must have recovered the ring and oil miniatures before he left, then given them to Robbie when he returned to St. Simons. I wonder what happened to the portraits of Geoffrey and Pamela.”

  We didn’t speak for a long time as we held each other, and I thought of a love that was meant to last forever, and of a husband promising his wife he would find her wherever she was.

  There was a short rap on the door, and we pulled apart so Matthew could answer it. I smelled the scent of talcum powder and Aqua Net before I heard the voices of my mother and Mimi.

  They crowded into the entranceway, apologizing for intruding, their faces devoid of any remorse. They stood together, instead of one in front of the other, vying for position, as I usually saw them.

  Gloria spoke first. “We know you told us you didn’t want to see us again, but we needed to see you. To ask for your forgiveness one more time.”

  Mimi stuck her thumb out at Gloria. “She won’t leave, and you know I can’t drive, so we’re stuck here.”

  All three heads turned to me expectantly.

  I couldn’t move, feeling as if I’d been standing on an escalator that had suddenly stopped. I could feel a forward momentum, but all I could do was hold on tightly to keep from falling.

  “Matthew…” I began, realizing I hadn’t told him anything about the grave in the cemetery that was supposed to be mine, and of the night that I had become Ava Whalen. Or how it seemed that I was always meant to return to St. Simons and the briny water of the marshes and the ocean that pulled at me still.

  “Matthew,” I said again, falling back onto the sofa, no longer trusting my legs to keep me standing. “I recently discovered that I’m Jimmy Scott’s sister, Christina. I was supposed to have died in the fire, but Jimmy took me out of the house so that I lived.” I bit my lip and met my mother’s eyes. I stared at her for a long moment as I wondered how anger and love could inhabit the same corner of one’s heart. “And Mama and Daddy saved my life.”

  My husband knew to step back, understanding that he’d hear the rest of the story eventually, but knowing, too, that the story wasn’t yet over.

  I looked into my mother’s gray eyes, so different from mine, yet holding within them all the years of loving me without condition, of waiting for the dreaded phone call to tell her that I was no longer hers. And of not knowing that none of it really mattered. I’d been hers and she’d been mine since the first moment I’d put my arms around her neck and rested my head against her heart.

  “I’m so sorry, Ava—”

  I didn’t let her finish. “Please don’t. I’m still a little confused and in shock, and even a little angry, but I had a conversation with Jimmy, and he helped put everything in perspective.” I tasted salt on my lips, the same salt that ran through the tidal creeks and estuaries like a tethering ribbon from one life to the next, and I smiled. “I should be the one asking for forgiveness.”

  My throat closed, and all I could do was run to my mother and hug her fiercely, my tears melding with hers. Her arms came around me, her hands patting my back as she held me tightly, as if we’d always been this comfortable with each other, as if we both remembered how.

  “I am sorry, Ava. I’m sorry for always keeping you at arm’s length. I was too afraid that I would lose you, and knew how painful it would be if I allowed you to get too close. I should have known that it was impossible. But everything I’ve done, I’ve done because I love you. Nothing will ever change that.”

  I held her closer, finally comprehending how hard it would be to let go, and seeing that she had known that all along. Some are called to be gardeners of souls, and she’d tended hers with a blind dedication that accepted the floods and famine along with the sunshine. I couldn’t put into words yet how glad I was that she was my mother, that she had taught me how to be a good and passionate gardener. All I could do was hug her tighter and say, “I love you, too.”

  I turned to Mimi and hugged her. “You don’t have to dye your hair blond anymore,” I said, smiling through my tears.

  She ran her fingers through the blond strands, still thick and shiny like mine. “Well, maybe just a little longer—at least to get me through all the photos I’m sure we’ll be taking at the family reunion.”

  I pulled back, confused. “What family reunion?”

  Mimi and my mother exchanged a glance. “Your father and brothers and their families are all coming to St. Simons for Labor Day weekend. They all want to meet Jimmy. We’ve already found condos for all of them and paid their deposits.”

  I stared at them in astonishment before realizing that I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. It was one of a million reasons I loved them so much.

  Matthew came up beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. “Well, I’m glad we don’t have to wait until Christmas. It’l
l be wonderful having everybody together.”

  I smiled up at him and saw some of the weariness leave his eyes as he smiled back at me. “Yes,” I said, rubbing the small swell of my belly. “It will be.”

  EPILOGUE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  SEPTEMBER 2011

  The smells of barbecue wafted through the backyard as my brother Stephen took control of the grill in the new outdoor kitchen. To Jimmy’s great delight, I’d agreed to his plans for the garden, and late-summer blooms sprang from the ground in riotous displays between the new brick paths. It was partially a nod to the gardeners in my life, Gloria and Mary Anne, and partly for Adrienne, too, who’d left her garden in my care. I’d tend it well, along with the other flowers in my life, always remembering what Jimmy had taught me. Know what you want to take root, and what you want pulled out.

  Tish and Beth were there with their respective spouses, and Adrienne’s parents were there, too, along with John. Matthew and I had agreed that John should know the truth, but we’d left it up to him as to whether or not to tell his parents. We didn’t know what he’d told them, but they had accepted our invitation and greeted me warmly, and I knew the healing had begun.

  I felt Matthew beside me before I turned and saw him. He gave me the smile I remembered seeing from across the room the first time I’d seen him, the moment I’d felt as if I’d loved him my entire life. “Let’s go to the dock. I need a break from having to share you. Are you okay with that?”

  I nodded. Although I hadn’t attempted to get in a boat since my initial excursion on the creek with Matthew, the water no longer had power over me. I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable swimming in the ocean, but the mystery of the unknown had been erased, the question of why finally answered.

  The moon was full and the stars bright, making it easy to find the path and make our way onto the dock that had been strung with twinkling lights and paper lanterns for the party. Tree frogs chirped as we passed, a night bird flitting over us, startled out of its perch. The night was warm and wet, like a cocoon, as if expecting a sea change from what we’d been and understood.