“Why?”
Natalie’s eyes returned to her lap. Her brows rose. “Probably because I was doing so many other things. Our social life was more active in the fifties and sixties. We joined the yacht club and started giving parties. I was active with community groups. All that took time, on top of what I did at the vineyard. As the children grew older, there was less custodial work, so I focused on those other things.”
“But you were here with them every morning and every night,” Olivia argued. She would have given anything to have her mother do that. “You were physically present.”
Natalie didn’t let herself off the hook. “Physically present, mentally afield. I … I don’t think I gave them the time or attention they needed. I think they resent that to this day.”
Olivia agreed with her there. Susanne had actually talked about special treatment given to one child and not the rest. “What about Brad?”
Natalie shifted in the wing-back chair. When she settled again, she looked as though she had braced herself. “Brad was my oldest.”
“I know.”
“He was the first son.”
“Yes.”
“Greg was born eighteen years later. Our lives were very different then. We were more prosperous.”
“Was Greg a surprise?”
“No. We wanted another child.”
But there was something in the way she said it, a small hesitancy.
Seeming to sense it, too, she said quickly, “I love Greg. I loved him from the minute he was born. I’ve followed his career in ways he doesn’t know about.”
Olivia tried to read between the lines. “But you were conflicted about having a third child?”
It was a minute before Natalie continued. Nodding, she said, “I was thirty-six. My days were already full.”
“Then why?”
“Alexander and I were going through one of those periods of strain that I mentioned.”
“You had a baby to save the marriage?”
She came alive. “I know, I know. Folks your age think that’s the worst reason to have a child, but it is not, Olivia. It is not. Alexander wanted another child. He said that he’d missed the early years with the others. He was happy when I got pregnant, which made me happy. And I did get Greg in the deal.”
Greg, who never knew his older brother.
Olivia came forward. Quietly, she asked, “What happened to Brad?”
For a minute, Natalie was perfectly still. Then her mouth moved, lips pursing and releasing. She moistened one corner and the other, and raised her eyes to Olivia. The sadness there was breathtaking.
Brad was born during those early dark days after the men went off to war. Given the circumstances, the maternity ward was surprisingly upbeat. There were many of us in the same situation, young and a little frightened, giving birth to our babies with no daddies in sight. We were a sorority of sorts, actually kept in touch for years afterward.
I was in labor for nearly a day before Brad was born, but from that moment on, he was a delight. He was quiet and sweet. He smiled from the time he was a month old—and no, it was not gas. Those smiles were real. I swear he knew how badly I needed them during those days with so much worry and fear.
It was always like that—Brad being attuned to my moods and my needs. When I was feeling lonely, he was at his most cuddly. when I was feeling blue, he would just grin with a mouth full of rice cereal. How not to laugh with him? How not to think that something was indeed right in the world? This child was a gift. Many a Sunday I sat in church giving thanks for him.
Susanne was born two years later. It was a much easier delivery, and I knew the routine of caring for an infant, so she just kind of fit into the family, and Brad was good. There were no jealous outbursts, no temper tantrums in a bid for attention. Of course, he got his share of that anyway.
Susanne would say he got more than his share. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps I did take her for granted. She wasn’t demanding. She did what she had to do without a fuss—ate, slept, grew. I always saw her as being like me. I assumed she would grow up to do the same things I did.
Brad was something else. He was male. He had a world of opportunities. I wanted every option open to him—and he showed the promise of all that. He learned to read when he was four and excelled in school, but he knew how to handle it. He had an innate modesty and an outward gentleness, which made him popular. He was the captain of whatever team was on the playground. He had friends, friends, and more friends. He was kind. Other children gravitated toward him.
I have to say one thing here. I don’t think Susanne looked at the whole picture. I may have favored Brad. I may have taken her for granted. But once their initial strangeness with each other disappeared, she was the apple of her father’s eye. Alexander was far stricter with Brad than he ever was with her. If Brad were here today, he would vouch for that.
But he isn’t here, and you want to know why.
Give me a minute. Losing a child has to be the most painful thing a parent can possibly experience. It’s always difficult for me to discuss.
So unexpected. Brad was the picture of health. Always. He never had colic. He never had colds. He was strapping and strong, tall and confident for his age at nine and ten. Then he turned eleven, and barely a month later he developed a fever.
The fear was instant. All around us, polio had reached epidemic proportions. We sent Susanne to stay with friends who had no children. We prayed that we were wrong.
The fever went on for six days before we saw another symptom, and then it was terrifying, because we knew. We knew. Our healthy boy—our strong boy couldn’t raise his head from the bed or lift his legs. It was a classic case. I was with him all hours of the day, putting warm towels on his legs when the muscles spasmed, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. When he began to have trouble breathing, we brought him to the hospital.
I will never forget the sight of my child in an iron lung. I will never forget the helplessness I felt when he looked at me, silently begging me to make him better. He knew what was wrong with him. He knew what could happen. He was old enough for that.
Do you remember the horrible plane crash not long ago, the one in which the plane started to plunge for no apparent reason? All those people killed, after a death spiral during which they must have known, must have realized, what was happening? Consider what the families of those victims must endure thinking about their loved ones—knowing they were going to die, unable to help themselves.
I lived that with Brad. He grew weaker and weaker. He struggled to breathe, struggled to open his eyes, but the knowing was there right up to the end. His body gave out before his brain did. It was … the worst experience of my life.
Natalie finished speaking. She sat for several minutes, wearing the pain of that experience on her face. Then, without another word, she rose and left the office.
Olivia didn’t move for a long time, and when she did, it wasn’t to write down what she had heard. Leaving her paper and pencil on the computer desk, she went off in search of Tess.
Twenty-four
NATALIE LOSING BRAD was like Simon losing Liana, all the more tragic with a child, such potential lost. No one went through life without knowing death. But a child—a child was all innocence and hope.
Olivia felt a compelling need to hug Tess. It wasn’t until she was out beside the flagpole that she realized Tess was sailing—and even then, the need remained strong enough for her to consider driving to the yacht club to wait at the dock. She might have done just that if Susanne hadn’t opened the screen door and called, “Phone, Olivia!”
Given her frame of mind, Olivia’s first thought was that there had been a sailing accident. Rushing back to the house and up the stone steps, she must have looked terrified, because Susanne said a calming, “It’s just Anne Marie.”
Just? Olivia’s thoughts turned to Ted, which wasn’t a calming subject at all. If he was calling yet again, she might have to act.
Unea
sy, she slipped past Susanne and picked up the phone in the front hall. “What’s up?”
“There’s a man here. He says he has to see you.”
Olivia hung her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her brow. “Is he five ten and kind of wiry, with short dark hair?”
“No,” Anne Marie said very quietly, “he’s over six feet, heavy-set, early sixties. He’s the one who’s been calling. I recognize his voice.”
Olivia straightened. If not Ted, then a friend of his? “What’s his name?”
“He won’t say.”
“Well, I’m not talking with him unless he does.”
Anne Marie directed her voice to the man, who was clearly right there.
With his half of the conversation inaudible, Olivia raised her brows in bewilderment to Susanne, who stood nearby. They both looked up when Natalie started down the stairs, but Olivia had barely noted her pallor when Anne Marie returned to the line.
“He says you won’t know his name. He says he has something for you from your mother.”
Olivia’s heart began to pound. And this was the man who had been calling? “Ask where he’s from. Ask for ID.” Gnawing on her cheek, she glanced nervously from Susanne to Natalie, both of whom seemed to sense the import of the call.
“He’s from Chicago,” Anne Marie reported. “His name is Thomas Hope. I have his driver’s license in my hand.”
“I’ll be right there,” Olivia said in a shaky voice and hung up the phone. “He knows my mother,” she told Susanne and Natalie on her way out, but by the time she reached her car, they were climbing in, too. She started to protest, then realized that it felt right to have them there. She had been privy to some of the most intimate aspects of Seebring history. It was fitting that they should be involved in this most intimate aspect of hers—not to mention the comfort she could find in having them there. Driver’s license or not, Chicago or not, she had no idea if this man was legitimate. He could be a fraud or a scam artist. He could be a thief.
She knew how to protect herself. She was quite practiced, quite capable. But she was touched that these women cared enough to be with her.
None of them spoke during the short ride down the hill to the main road and east to the office. Olivia’s hands shook. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, she tried to think what her mother might have sent. There was only one thing she wanted, but when she pulled into the office parking lot and homed in on a car with Illinois plates, she didn’t see a woman inside.
She parked and went directly into the office. Thomas Hope was in the small reception area where Anne Marie sat. He turned from the window as soon as she entered.
He was indeed large, but his body carried no threat. He seemed more annoyed than angry, but even that faded when he took a look at her.
“I’m Olivia,” she announced in something of a challenge.
“Hard to miss,” he replied in a thin voice. “You look like her. You have her stubbornness, too, dragging me all the way out here, but you wouldn’t take my calls, and I promised her I’d get you this.” He held out a thick envelope.
Olivia stared at it. An envelope like that could hold a week’s worth of vacation plans. Carol might want to meet them somewhere lovely, like San Francisco—or somewhere fun, like Disney World. An envelope like that could hold several chapters of a memoir like the one Olivia was writing for Natalie. Carol might be wanting to tell her things—things Olivia might have read weeks ago, if she hadn’t been so bullheadedly sure that Ted was the one on the phone. An envelope like that could hold a large, multicreased family tree. It could hold names.
Fearful, unable to reach out, Olivia wrapped her arms around her middle. “Why didn’t she bring it herself?”
“She died two months ago. It took me awhile to get your number—”
Olivia’s heart stopped. “Died?”
“She had liver disease. I was calling two different apartments in Cambridge, and one didn’t know where you were, and the other wouldn’t tell.”
“She’s dead?” Olivia asked, disbelieving in spite of the fact that the man must have driven two days to give her the news.
Thomas Hope nudged the envelope toward her. “The obituary’s inside, along with her bankbook and all. I have some cartons in the car.” When she made no move to take the envelope, he set it down on Anne Marie’s desk. Stepping around the women, he went out the door just as Simon came in.
“Who is that?” he asked, looking back, and suddenly Olivia wanted to know, too.
She ran past him, out to the parking lot. Thomas Hope was just opening the trunk of his car.
“How did you know her?” she asked, not caring that she sounded accusatory. She had a right, after the bomb he had dropped.
“We lived together.”
“Were you married?”
He picked up a small box. “Not to Carol.”
“To someone else?”
“My wife won’t give me a divorce,” he said, putting the small box on a larger one and lifting the two. “Carol knew that. I never lied about it. I was always up-front. Where do you want these?”
“Liver disease. What kind of liver disease?”
“The kind you get from too much drinking. You knew she drank?”
“I didn’t. Did she get the letters I sent?”
“Whatever she got is in these boxes. Where do you want them?”
“I’ll take them,” Simon said, relieving him of the armload.
“Why didn’t she write back?” Olivia asked.
Thomas Hope reached for another carton. “Probably because when she was sober, she didn’t think she had the right.”
Didn’t have the right? Didn’t have the right? A mother always had the right. “Did she know about Tess?”
“Yes. She knew.”
Olivia was stunned. “How could she know and not want to see her?”
Simon took the second carton and disappeared.
The man closed the trunk. “That’s it. She cleaned things out before she died. What you have in those boxes are some pictures and books. When she was sober, she knitted, so there’s also a few of the things she made. I think she wanted you to have them.” He fished his keys from his pocket. “She didn’t make a will. You’re gonna have to take my word that what’s here is all she had.”
He opened the door, got into the car, and started the engine.
Wait, Olivia wanted to cry, as she stood on wooden legs. What was she like? What did she do? Did she work? Did she laugh? Did she mention me? Did you love her?
But the words didn’t come. Numb, she watched him back around and drive off. Bewildered, she looked up at Simon, who stood beside her.
“Maybe it’s a hoax,” she said. “Maybe she wants me to react.”
Natalie came up with the envelope in her hand. “He said there was an obituary notice.”
Olivia hesitated before finally taking the envelope, and then held it for a long minute before looking inside. The newspaper clipping was at the very front of the papers, a small square, ineptly cut. The obituary was brief. The only survivors listed were Olivia and Tess.
Olivia reread the notice. Feeling suddenly empty and lost, the only thing she could think to say was, “I always thought there might be someone else.”
Natalie put a consoling hand on her arm.
“Is there anything we can do?” Susanne asked.
Olivia tried to think, but it wasn’t like there was a funeral to plan. There weren’t even any phone calls to make. The only thing to do was to tell Tess, and how hard could that be? Tess had never met her grandmother. Carol had never been part of their lives. Olivia hadn’t talked about her in anything but a passing way. She had never raised Tess’s hopes, had never shared the dream that one day they would be reconciled, three generations of a family, together and happy.
But the dream was an impossibility now. As the reality of that sank in, Olivia felt a panicky need to do something … anything. Frantic, she looked at Simon, then at Susanne and Natal
ie.
“I think I … need to run.” She went to her car.
Simon was there, bending down to the window when she slid inside. “Are you okay?” he asked with such gentleness that she teared up.
She forced a smile through the tears. “Yup. I am.” She started the car and waited only until he stepped away before backing up and heading out. Minutes later she was at the house, running up the stone steps, through the foyer, up the stairs, and into the wing. Minutes after that she headed back down, wearing a singlet, shorts, and sneakers. She hit the front drive and, without bothering to stretch, broke into a jog.
She set a brisk pace going down the drive and picked it up when she turned onto the road. The air was warm, the afternoon sun strong. Heat radiated from the pavement, broken into waves by the occasional car that passed.
Her lungs hurt after a bit, then her legs, but she didn’t care. Thinking that pain was more fitting than numbness, she quickened the pace again. She was sweating now, pushing it off the tip of her nose with the back of her hand.
Hitting the pavement with the rhythmic slap of her sneakers, she passed Simon’s road and ran on, one mile, then another. When she reached a path on the right that led to the shore, she took it for a third mile. Here, on dirt, the slap of sneakers was duller. It faded the closer she came to water, and was completely drowned out by the sound of the surf when she left the path and emerged onto rocky headlands.
She ran from one boulder to the next until she reached a chasm too wide to cross, so she ran in place there, breathing hard, sweating profusely. Several sailboats were in sight. She wondered if Tess was in one—hoped that she was—hoped that she would stay out there awhile because Olivia wasn’t ready to talk, to explain, to deal with her emotions. Waves thundered against the rocks, sending spume high enough to spray her with a sea salt. It was refreshingly cool, mixing all too soon with her own sweat and tears.
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