Denise started rocking slowly, pushing herself back with her toes. “So now they’re your sisters,” she snorted. Seconds later it was, “What kind of tapes?”
“About his life. He talked about how he left his family in Oklahoma and went to Texas to work in the oil fields. And he talked a lot about how you met.”
“That’s it?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “He told how the two of you came to California and what it was like when Frank and I were born.”
Her mother rocked faster.
“And what happened when Frank died.”
Denise reached for her coffee, took a sip, and then paused to stare at Elizabeth over the rim of the cup. “Do you believe him?”
How could her mother not realize that she damned herself simply by asking the question? “Why would you think his version was different from yours?”
Trapped. Denise’s gaze darted around the room as if the answer were hidden there. “You know as well as I do that Jessie always put his own spin on things.”
“This wasn’t something he’d put a spin on, it was just plain wrong. You lied to him about why Frank joined the Army.”
Long seconds passed before Denise lifted her gaze from her lap and looked at Elizabeth. There were tears in her eyes. “I had to. I was afraid of what Jessie would do to me if he ever discovered the truth. You never saw that side of your father. He kept it hidden from you and Frank.”
“Are you saying you were physically afraid of him? That he hit you?” She’d overheard a hundred fights between them, but she’d never seen her father raise a hand to her mother or to anyone else. The only spankings she and Frank had ever received were from their mother. She’d seen her father angry, especially the night Frank sneaked out to meet his girlfriend and caught the barn on fire, but even then Jessie had been in control of himself.
“You don’t know what Frank meant to your father.” Denise clasped her hands and started rocking again. “The two of them were boards cut from the same tree. Every time I looked at Frank I saw Jessie.” She rocked harder. “After your father left us it was everything I could do to look at Frank sitting across the table from me every night.”
Elizabeth couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “You hated Frank because he looked like Daddy?”
“He didn’t just look like him,” Denise insisted. “He acted like him. He even thought the same things in the same way. No matter what it was, Frank took Jessie’s side over mine. There was no pleasing him, no way for me—” She stopped and stared at Elizabeth. “You were there. You know how it was. You must remember how Frank defied me at every turn.”
“He thought you hated him.”
“He hated me—just like Jessie. Do you know how hard it is to love someone who feels that way about you? But it didn’t stop me from trying. God knows I tried. He was my son. I wasn’t going to give up on him. Not after seeing what happened to you when your father gave up on us, how it broke your heart.”
“Jessie said you were the one who asked for the divorce.”
Denise jerked as if ducking something Elizabeth had thrown. Her mouth opened and immediately snapped shut again.
“He said that you told him you’d found someone else.” Elizabeth had tried, but couldn’t remember another man in her mother’s life. If she’d dated, she’d done it in secret.
“I was desperate,” Denise stuttered. “I thought if I told Jessie someone was interested in me he would come around more. I did it for you. You were a little girl then. You needed a father.”
“Is that why you told him you were married when he came to see Frank?”
“By then all I wanted was to hurt him, to show him I’d moved on.” Her chin quivered. “He didn’t care. All he cared about was seeing you kids. I meant nothing to him.”
“It had to occur to you that he would find out eventually.”
“I didn’t think about that.” Tears flowed freely, unheeded. “I had this stupid ring that I’d picked up at the five-and-dime, and I showed it to him. All I wanted was for him to pay attention to me. You don’t understand how it was between us. You can’t. And I’m sure it wasn’t something Jessie talked about on those tapes of his. It tore me up inside that he didn’t need me as much as I needed him. I’d been in love with him since I was thirteen. I didn’t know how to stop loving him.”
A profound sadness hovered over Elizabeth like a cloud. “Why did you send me to Grandma’s?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“You would have told Jessie about the fight between me and Frank, that I was the one who took him to the recruiter. I was going to keep you there until Frank came home.”
“A whole year?”
Denise held her hand out in a pleading gesture. “I knew Frank would never tell Jessie what happened. Even while he hated me he protected me. But I couldn’t trust you not to tell. I was afraid. You didn’t see your father when he came to the house looking for Frank.”
The pieces were coming together like letters in a crossword puzzle. “You never sent my letters to Daddy.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“I couldn’t.”
“And you never called him about coming to my wedding.” The cloud enveloped her.
“You would have said something. He would have found out. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“He tried to see me, didn’t he?” The emptiness, the anger, the hurt she’d carried like precious cargo throughout her life slipped from her shoulders, replaced with a profound sorrow. “How did you stop him?”
“Why are we talking about this? What difference does it make now?” Denise left the rocking chair and crossed to the patio door, staring outside at the postage stamp–sized backyard, her back to Elizabeth. “Jessie’s dead. In a couple of years, I will be, too. It will all be over. Why can’t you leave it alone?”
“How can you even ask that?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. It sure as hell mattered fifteen years ago when I refused to see him and then eight months ago when I walked away from my last chance to see him. Do you have any idea what you stole from me?”
“I told him that you blamed him for Frank’s death and that you refused to see him.” Denise’s shoulders slumped and she crossed her arms over her chest as if trying to pull into herself. “None of it mattered. He still wanted to see you. I . . . I convinced him otherwise.”
“How?”
“I answered his letters and signed your name.”
An impotent rage filled Elizabeth, usurping the corners of her heart and mind where love and understanding had resided. “What kind of monster are you? How could you hear me crying in my room at night, how could you watch me sitting on the porch waiting for the postman, how could you wipe my tears on my wedding day when I realized he wasn’t coming, how could you—”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” Denise shouted. “I was the one who stayed home and took care of you when Jessie was off in the oil fields or at those parties in Hollywood. I was there when you were sick. I made your breakfast every morning, took you to school, and tucked you in bed every night. I always put you first. Always. I loved you the best way I knew how.”
Elizabeth couldn’t give what her mother needed. Her own pain was too consuming, too new to have found boundaries, still bottomless, still expanding.
“I think about Frank every day.” Denise put her hands over her face. Her breath caught in a sob. “Every day I ask for forgiveness. When will it end? When will the day come that I’ve been punished enough? I loved him, too, you know.”
Elizabeth reached for her purse. “I’m going home.”
“Go ahead. Do what your father did. Walk out on me. It’s what Frank did, too. I may have taken him to the recruiter, but he didn’t have to sign those papers. He could have told them that he didn’t want to go, that joining the Army was my idea.” She followed Elizabeth to the door. “I’m not the only one to blame. His dying was just as much his fault as
it was mine.”
“My God, Mother. Did you hear what you just said?”
Denise grabbed Elizabeth’s arm. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. You’re forcing me to say these things. I’m afraid of losing you, too. I’m eighty years old, Elizabeth. I don’t have much time left.”
“You want me to feel sorry for you because you’re old?” The injustice choked her with rage. “You’ve had thirty-six years that Frank missed.”
“I didn’t send him to Vietnam,” she shot back. “The Army did.”
“Is that how you’ve lived with what you did?” Elizabeth wanted to leave and never come back, but she knew that wasn’t possible. Eventually she would forgive Denise for this, the way she had forgiven all the other seemingly unforgivable things her mother had done over the years. She needed time. And she needed distance. “Don’t call me—I’ll call you.”
“I’m your mother.”
“I’m a mother, too,” Elizabeth shot back. “But I never—not for one moment—believed that gave me the right to play God with the lives of my children.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Rachel
Rachel put her hands on the balcony railing at the Whale Watch Inn, closed her eyes, and listened to the waves hitting the shore thirty feet below. The air was still, a calm between tides, a time when the earthy smell of the pine and cedar forests surrounding the inn mixed with the ocean’s salt spray and created an intoxicating fragrance. A gull called in the distance. Rachel opened her eyes and saw a lone pelican skimming the water, headed north for the day’s foraging.
She’d lived on mountains and in the desert, in cities, and once, when her mother hired on as a cook, on a ranch three hours from the nearest town. Only the ocean imbued her with a sense of home. She was at peace here, the waves settling her mind and soul the way an infant calmed listening to the sound of its mother’s heartbeat.
Jeff came up behind her, swept her hair aside, and kissed the nape of her neck. “What time do you want to leave?”
“Never.”
“Sounds good to me.”
She turned and slipped her arms around his waist. Tilting her head back, she looked into his eyes. “I love you.”
Jeff took her hand and put it on his chest. “Did you feel it?”
“What?”
“My heart is skipping beats.” This time he kissed her on the lips, his mouth open, his tongue gently touching hers. “I’d given up ever hearing that from you again.”
“From now on I’m going to tell you so often that you’ll get bored hearing it.”
He cupped her face with his hands and stared deeply into her eyes. “That can’t happen. I will never forget how empty my life was without you.”
“I can’t wait to tell the kids.”
He smiled. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m pretty sure they’ve figured it out already. I heard Cassidy tell Ginger that we were going away this weekend to decide what to do with all the furniture from your apartment.”
“What did Ginger say?”
“That we could have a garage sale.”
“Does everyone know?”
He gave her a disappointed look, wildly exaggerated. “So, what you’re saying is that I should take back the welcome home banners?”
Rachel laughed. “Pretty sure of yourself, were you?”
“Determined. There was no way I was going to let this weekend end any other way.”
She turned to face the ocean again, snuggling her back into Jeff’s chest. “I’m almost afraid to say this.” She made a fist and knocked on the wooden railing in an uncharacteristically superstitious gesture. “But I’ve never been happier than I am at this moment.”
“Not even on the day we were married?”
“Our wedding was a naive kind of happiness that just happened. This one we had to earn.”
“And when the kids were born?”
“I thought my heart would burst.” She crossed her arms and laid them on his where they circled her waist. “Today is cumulative—like all of those happy times rolled into one.” She laughed. “I can’t believe how corny I sound.”
Jeff tucked his chin into her neck and whispered against her hair. “You want to hear corny—listen to this. If there was anything good that came from what I put us through, it’s realizing that I have loved and been loved beyond what I expected or dreamed, and far beyond what I deserved. If I died today I would die complete.”
The hair at the base of Rachel’s neck stood on end. She turned to look at Jeff. “Why would you say something like that? The dying part, I mean?”
He kissed her, long and with infinite tenderness. “It was just an expression. Nothing is going to happen to me, Rachel. I won’t let it. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. I’m going to be around for a long, long time.”
She couldn’t shake the uneasiness. “I don’t think I could go on without you. I know I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you could. And you would—for the kids.” He put his arm around her and guided her back inside. “It was just my stupid way of telling you how much I love you. I didn’t mean anything by it, and I sure as hell didn’t have a premonition. Now stop worrying.”
She put her arms around him. She was consumed with a need for physical contact. Whether it was making love or just holding hands, she needed and responded to his touch the way a flower responds to sunlight. “What would you say if I told you I’ve been thinking about quitting my job?”
She’d plainly surprised him. “Why would you do that? You love that job.”
“Not as much as I love you and the kids.” This was the first time since her promotion that Rachel had taken a day off so she and Jeff could be together. She’d anticipated a twinge or two, at least some worrying about the meeting that was taking place without her, but neither had happened. Now she was sorry she hadn’t taken Monday off, too. “And besides, it’s your turn. We made a deal that once the kids were in school you could concentrate on your career.”
“You wouldn’t last a month. I mean this in the kindest way, Rachel, but you’re not cut out to be a full-time soccer mom.”
She grinned. “You think?”
“I know.”
“Yeah, me, too. But in less than two months we’re going to have ten million dollars that’s going to need managing.” She hesitated telling him the rest. The idea was still forming, and the intent needed scrutiny. Her motivations were reactionary, a result of Jessie’s unscientific diagnosis of her mother’s illness. Curious, afraid it could be genetic and inherited, for the past two weeks she’d been researching schizophrenia. While her mother wasn’t a textbook case, she’d had enough symptoms that with a little education, someone, somewhere, should have picked up on her illness.
“I’ve been thinking about setting up a charitable trust,” she ventured.
“I think it sounds like a great idea. And I think you should call it the Anna Kaplan Foundation.”
“I didn’t say anything about—” She smiled, realizing that not only was he in step with her, he was walking ahead, leading the way. “I need to think about it some more. I feel like I’m a coin that’s been tossed in the air and I’m still spinning. After all the years of hating my mother, I’ve done such a complete about-face that I’m suspicious of my feelings.”
“You never hated her, Rachel. You told yourself you did because it hurt too much to admit you loved someone you believed didn’t love you back. After all, how could she love you and let you be the one who found her? Now you understand. You know about the demons that drove her and that what she did had nothing to do with how much she loved you.”
Rachel’s heart swelled with a love she had denied almost her entire life. Her eyes filled with tears. “I wish I could have helped her . . . I wish I had known.”
“And look who you have to thank that you finally found out.”
“Jessie Reed—my father.”
“Was that a note of pride I heard in your voice?” he teased.
; “Maybe.”
“I told you that you came from good stock.”
She smiled, finally believing him after all the years he’d insisted she had no reason to be ashamed of her background. “Get ready,” she warned. “I’m going to tell you again.”
“Go ahead—hit me with it.”
“I love you.”
Jeff swept her into his arms and swung her around. “I must have done something incredible in a past life to deserve you in this one.”
She gave him a seductive smile. “How much time do we have?”
“The rest of our lives.”
She laughed. “Before checkout.”
“My God, woman, you’re insatiable.” He took her to the bed, stopping to give her a kiss that was both tender and urgent. “Which makes me the luckiest man in the world.”
They stopped for saltwater taffy at a roadside stand in Gualala and for dinner at Sanducci’s, a restaurant that overlooked the ocean and encouraged lingering with slow, meticulous service. For the first time in months Rachel indulged in dessert, crème brûlée. Jeff had a rich chocolate cake topped with vanilla gelato and covered with a caramel sauce. Rachel ate all of her crème brûlée and half of Jeff’s chocolate cake.
Inside the Land Rover and on the coast highway again, Rachel adjusted her seat belt, pushing it lower, off her overly full stomach. She rolled down the window, letting the unseasonably warm air fill the car, leaned her head against the headrest, and groaned. “Why did you let me eat the rest of your cake?”
“Let you?”
She looked at him and grinned sheepishly. “I thought you were finished.”
“With the fork still in my hand?”
“Next time I’m going to skip the meal and head straight for dessert.” Turning her head to the side and snuggling against the soft leather, she looked at the sky, a glorious palate of pinks and oranges dripping from the vivid autumn sunset. The road was nearly deserted, with lights just beginning to show on the hillsides in the distance.
Jeff reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’ve been thinking. . . .”
The Year that Everything Changed Page 32