Still Waters

by Misha Crews

  As Adam had said yesterday, no matter what else happened, they still had each other.

  A car rolled into the driveway, its tires crunching through the thin November frost. Jenna smiled. Speaking of Adam, that had to be him, dropping in to check on her. Fritz’s ears perked up, and he trotted across the kitchen to nose at her hand. He had heard the car, and he could tell it was almost time for Christopher to come home. He was as eager as she for their little family to be back together. She petted him absently as she swallowed the last sip of her tea. Then she stood up.

  Outside on the deck, the air was cold and thin, the sky gray. She wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her sweater tight against the chill. When had the temperature started to drop? It felt more like January than November. Her breath made little puffs on the air. She heard a car door open, then close again. She looked expectantly at the back gate. But it wasn’t Adam, rosy-cheeked and smiling, who came around the corner of the house. It was Kitty. And when Jenna saw her, she began to feel afraid.

  Kitty’s coat was misbuttoned, one side hanging down by her ankles, the other hiked up around her knees. Her hat was seated crookedly on her head, and her hair was a mess. She stumbled through the gate and up the porch stairs. Her face was as gray as the sky.

  “Is Frank here?” Kitty asked sharply before Jenna could say a word.

  “No,” Jenna answered. She stood back as Kitty stumbled past her, into the house. She followed and shut the door behind them. “Is everything all right? I was just about to leave to pick up Christopher.”

  “He’s with Frank,” Kitty said. She put a trembling hand to her forehead.

  Panic began to gather in the pit of Jenna’s stomach, but she willed it away. One thing at a time, she told herself. Kitty looked terrible: upset, even confused. Maybe she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Why don’t you have a seat,” Jenna murmured, although Kitty had already sunk into a chair. “I’ll make you some tea, and you can tell me what’s going on.”

  She was halfway to the stove when the phone rang. The harsh jingling made her jump.

  Kitty looked up. Her eyes were wide and dancing with frantic chaos. As Jenna lifted the receiver, she saw that her own hand was trembling, although she couldn’t have said exactly why.

  Before she could speak, she heard Frank’s voice at the other end of the line, low and urgent. “Jenna,” was all he said.

  She closed her eyes. “Frank, what’s going on?”

  “I have Christopher.”

  At the sound of those words, her panic solidified, coming together abruptly like water droplets, forming clouds of horror in the pit of her stomach. “You have him? What are you trying to tell me — that you’ve kidnapped my son?”

  Kitty moaned. The sound resonated harshly through Jenna’s bones. She gritted her teeth.

  “Is that Kitty?” Frank asked. “Is she there with you?”

  “Yes, she’s here, and she looks upset. What the hell did you say to her? What have you done? Frank, where is my son?”

  “The truth has to come out,” Frank said. “Kitty knows the place.”

  Then he hung up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  JENNA DROVE KITTY’S CAR. IT WAS faster than her old Ford and more reliable. Kitty sat limply in the passenger seat, arms wrapped around herself to keep warm. Her face was pale, her eyes dark and lost-looking.

  Jenna kept a firm grip on the steering wheel, determined not to think about the look she had seen in Frank’s eyes the last time she had seen him, or the cold, resolute sound of his voice on the phone. Her fingers trembled, but her lips were pressed tightly together.

  It was only after they had been on the road for a while that Jenna dared to speak. “What happened?” she asked harshly.

  Kitty’s answer tumbled out immediately. She must have been waiting for the question. “Bill was down the street visiting his friend Jasper. I was in the kitchen cooking. The phone rang, and I answered.” She swallowed.

  “It was Frank?”

  “Yes. He said that he had picked Christopher up early from school. I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought maybe Frank didn’t know about…about Christopher. What you told us, I mean. I said something like, ‘Take him home and make sure his mother tells you the truth about him.’

  “But he seemed not to hear me. He just said, ‘The truth must come out. When it does, Christopher will come home.’” Kitty’s voice began to tremble. Jenna released her grip on the steering wheel long enough to take Kitty’s hand and squeeze it.

  Kitty took a breath and continued. “He sounded so queer. Not like himself at all. I thought maybe he’d been drinking, but then I realized that it was something else. Something worse.”

  “What?”

  “I think he’s gone a little mad.”

  The gentle tone in Kitty’s voice chilled Jenna to the bone. Frank used to call her a savage, bloodless and cruel. She’d thought it a joke, his way of teasing her and poking fun at her upbringing. But now she looked back on the comments in a new light. Was he testing her, wanting to know how far she could go? Was he trying to teach her a lesson? Why on earth was he doing this?

  The truth must come out, he’d said, then hung up before she had a chance to tell him. She wanted to scream at him: It has come out, you idiot! I told them! They hate me, but I told them everything!

  But she hadn’t told them everything, had she? Jenna blinked. Oh.

  She shook her head to clear it. She couldn’t let herself think about that now. “Did you tell Bill what happened? Did you call the police?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Kitty said miserably. “Frank told me not to talk to anyone, and I was too scared to disobey him. I just put on my coat, picked up the car keys, and walked out the door.”

  Jenna shook her head, disgusted with herself. “I didn’t call the police, either. No one knows what’s happening. No one but us.” How could she have been so stupid? Frank wasn’t a professional criminal. If the police had shown up instead of her and Kitty, he most likely would have given up without a fight.

  Or, she thought, he might have hurt Christopher. It was too terrifying to contemplate. She just didn’t know.

  She shifted gears, feeling a cold, comforting weight in her coat pocket. It was her grandfather’s World War One revolver, the same one Lucien had always carried as his service weapon. Jenna had kept the Pistole Revolveur locked in a box at the top of the closet. When Frank had hung up the phone, she’d gone straight to the closet and pulled down the box. The revolver was still there, cleaned after the last use and ready to go. She had loaded it and slipped it into her coat on the way out the door. The truth was, Jenna didn’t think she would be able to use it, especially not on someone she had loved the way she had once loved Frank. But like Scarlett O’Hara, she could shoot straight if she didn’t have to shoot too far, and this was not the time to wonder what she might do if the situation called for it. She just had to pray that she would not have to find out.

  Cracks in the ice, Adam had said. He didn’t know how right he had been.

  Christopher. She felt her need for him squeezing her, drawing out her breath. Her arms felt empty, her heart shriveled with pain at the thought of him in trouble. The world was big and wide and cold, and she needed to find her little boy and bring him home safely.

  And that was when she realized that yes, of course she could shoot Frank if she had to. She would tear and claw and bleed to get her son back. Her gloved hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. Just let him see how far she could go if he threatened to hurt her little boy. He might be very surprised.

  Then again, he might not.

  “We need help,” Jenna said sharply.

  She didn’t realize she’d spoken the thought out loud until Kitty turned her head and said, “What? No, Frank said not to call anyone. If he sees the police — ”

  “We’re not going to call the police.” Jenna’s eyes found what she’d been searching for. She braked and pulled abruptly to the right, i
nto the parking lot of a gas station, where a sign with the black symbol for telephone was creaking in the wind. “I’ll be right back.”

  Without waiting for Kitty’s protest, she got out of the car and entered the phone booth, pulling the door shut behind her. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to collect herself and remember the number she wanted to call. Then she pulled a dime from her coat pocket and deposited it in the slot. When the dial tone buzzed in her ear, she dialed Adam’s work number.

  Midge answered the phone. “Davenport,” was all she said.

  “Midge, it’s Jenna.”

  There was a slight pause, during which Jenna pictured Midge sitting at her desk, lips pursed, trying to decide what to say. Then, “Jenna, hello. Adam’s not here right now, can I take a message?”

  Jenna’s heart sank. “Is there any way to reach him?”

  “He’s out at the job site, and the remote office has been having trouble with the phones. I can try, but it may not work.”

  “Midge, listen to me.” Jenna gripped the phone with both hands, struggling to stay calm. “I have an emergency, and I need help.”

  * * *

  Jenna and Kitty spent the rest of the trip in silence. Jenna drove as fast as she dared, realizing that if they got into an accident, Christopher would be the one to pay the price.

  Finally the river came into view, long and gray and sluggish along the shoreline. Jenna pulled the car onto the short grass by the water. She looked in all directions, hoping to catch a glimpse of Christopher, of Frank, or his car — anything, anything that would indicate they were close by. But she saw nothing except dead grass and dingy water, with icy frost rimming the shoreline. A long gray dock jutted sharply out into the icy river. Rowboats were lined up along the top of it, upside down, safely stored and dry. She switched off the ignition. “Now what?”

  Kitty didn’t answer.

  Jenna looked at her impatiently. “Kitty, what do we do now?”

  Kitty turned tortured eyes toward Jenna, but still said nothing. Her face was pinched with fear.

  Jenna tried to control her temper, but she could feel anger rising up inside her, masking the anguish of her fear and guilt. She reached out and grabbed Kitty’s arm, shaking it. “Pray to God, but row for shore. That’s what you said to me when my father died, remember? It’s time to row! Now tell me what Frank said to do when we got here!”

  “Row,” Kitty whispered.

  Gibberish. Jenna collapsed backward with despair. Kitty must be out of her mind with fear. What were they going to do?

  But then Kitty gestured toward the river. Jenna turned and looked where she was pointing. When Kitty spoke, her voice was weak. “He said to take a boat and row out into the water. He’s watching us. He’ll meet us out there.”

  “And will he have Christopher?” Jenna asked thinly.

  “He said he would.”

  They looked at each other. It was madness, but what choice did they have?

  The boats were heavy. The first one that Jenna and Kitty tried to right ended up splashing, upside down, into the icy water, throwing small but frigid waves up onto the dock and over their feet. Jenna could feel her teeth begin to chatter. Underneath her wool coat she wore only her housedress and sweater. She hadn’t even thought to put on socks underneath her boots, so desperate had she been to get out of the house and find her son. She clenched her jaw.

  “We have to be careful,” she told Kitty. “We can’t let ourselves get injured, or we may not be able to help Christopher. We have to be careful for him, okay?”

  Kitty nodded.

  Slowly, with powerful determination and much screaming of muscles, they managed to flip the next rowboat into the water. They watched it bob, almost weeping with relief at their success. Then they climbed in.

  It had been years since Jenna had rowed a boat. After getting herself and Kitty positioned as safely as possible, she inserted the oars into their hooks and moved them back and forth carefully, trying to get a feel for what she was doing.

  The boat began to move. Each stroke took them farther from shore, and sent frosty droplets flying into the air and sprinkling back down again. Occasionally the heavy wooden oars would encounter a thin coating of ice floating on the hoary water, but they broke through easily and moved on. Jenna’s fingers grew cramped with cold and strain. Her arms burned with the unaccustomed exertion, and her lungs ached with each gulp of frigid air.

  When it seemed like they were far enough out, she stopped and pulled the oars back into the boat with them.

  They sat in silence, under the gray and unforgiving sky. Jenna could hear nothing but the lap of the water against the wood of the little wooden boat, and the terrifyingly delicate chink of ice drifting against itself.

  Her eyes scanned the shoreline, but found no sign of Frank.

  Cold wind blew soundlessly against Jenna’s ears. Her breath made lacy clouds of steam in the air. Her fingers and toes were already beginning to lose feeling. She flexed them determinedly, then tucked her hands under her arms, preparing for the eventual row back to shore.

  Whenever that might be.

  Suddenly it seemed possible to her that Frank might have no intention of coming to meet them at all. Maybe he would leave them out here all night to freeze to death. She had an image of floating out here in this tiny boat, she and Kitty. With darkness creeping across the sky, and frost crawling over their skin, killing it, turning it black and hard….

  “The truth must come out,” Kitty said abruptly.

  Jenna started. Those were the first words that had been spoken between them since they climbed into the boat. “What?”

  Kitty repeated herself. “That’s what Frank said to me on the phone. ‘The truth must come out.’ Do you know what he meant by that?”

  Jenna’s heart sank. This was the moment when she had to tell Kitty about Joseph and Maya. After telling her the truth about Christopher, this seemed like a small secret in comparison.

  So why was it so difficult to speak? It was as if fear had crammed its fist down her throat, gagging her. She closed her eyes and thought of Christopher. “Kitty — ”

  “Because I do,” Kitty interrupted.

  Jenna sagged weakly on her plank seat. “What?” she asked again.

  Kitty looked her full in the eyes. “I know what Frank was talking about. Oh, God, this is all my fault.”

  She withdrew her gloved hand from the pocket of her coat. In it was a small, thick piece of paper, folded several times. She shoved it roughly toward Jenna. “I’m sorry,” she said brusquely. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  Jenna took the paper, unfolded it and stared blankly at a familiar sight. It was the photograph of Bud, Maya, and Joseph — the same one she had found in Bud’s drawer all those years ago. This copy was heavily creased, and dirty, as if it had been folded and unfolded many times over the years.

  Jenna looked up at Kitty. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say,” she said. “This picture — ”

  “That woman is your sister,” Kitty said bleakly. Then she amended the statement. “Well, your half-sister.”

  “This woman?” Jenna felt shock rip right through her, blinding and hot. For a moment, she forgot everything: her guilt, her secrets, even her son. She searched Kitty’s face for the truth.

  “Yes.” Kitty swallowed. Her face was gray with cold and grief. “Her name is Maya Sinclair. Her mother was…a friend of your father’s when you lived in Chicago. You probably don’t remember her. You were only three at the time.”

  But Jenna did remember. She had seen a photograph of the woman sitting on Maya’s mantle piece. Jenna looked down at Maya’s face, and suddenly she saw the resemblance. Maya’s graceful carriage and flashing eyes were her mother’s, but the arrogant tilt to her head, and the square line of her jaw were all Lucien. “Dominique.”

  Kitty looked out over the water, lips trembling.

  Jenna continued softly. “That was the woman’s name: Dominiqu
e. She was a painter. I remember her now. She was a beautiful woman, very gay, always laughing. She gave me a watercolor set that I kept for years.” Another memory flashed. “And she painted that picture that Lucien loved. The one he took everywhere with him. The one I gave to Adam.”

  “Your father loved her very much. When you left Chicago and went to the Netherlands, he asked Dominique to marry him and come with you, but she refused. Her life was in Chicago, and she was happy there. She wanted him to take an early retirement from the government and stay with her, but of course he would never do that. So he left. He didn’t know about the child until later. After Chicago, you moved overseas, and when you came back to Burke, he finally convinced Dominique to come east so he could be near his daughter. Dominique had remarried by that time, and she had a little boy. I think his name was Alan, or something.”

  Alexander, Jenna corrected silently. She didn’t dare to speak.

  Kitty continued. “Lucien helped them find a house, a friend of his was able to line up a good job for Dominique’s husband. The husband was friendly with Lucien, he knew that Lucien was Maya’s father, although I’m not sure that Maya herself was ever told. Before Lucien died, he asked me to help take care of Maya, who was sixteen at the time. Dominique had passed away a few years before that, and Maya lived with her stepfather while she finished high school. I would sometimes go and visit her — ”

  “Why?” Jenna finally broke in. A tight ball of anger had been growing inside her as she listened to Kitty speak. Secrets, she thought. Lies. Frank was right. They’re all around us.

  Kitty blinked. “Why, what?”

  “Why did Lucien ask you to look after Maya? And why didn’t he ever tell me about her?” Jenna heard her voice break, and she struggled for control.

  Kitty’s face softened. “Oh, sweetheart, don’t be hurt. He was afraid to tell you about Dominique or Maya. You were so young, and this was the ‘30s after all. The world is much more tolerant now.”

  Jenna laughed bitterly. “I guess that maybe tolerant is a relative term. He should have told me. I was twenty when he died. That’s plenty old enough to hear the truth.”