by Sarah Jio
“How long have you lived here?” I was eager to satisfy my curiosity regarding the female in his life—or his former life.
He looked up at the ceiling as if trying to calculate the years. “About nine years,” he said.
“Wow, that long? Have you always lived here alone?”
“No, I had a roommate for several years,” he said. He didn’t offer whether the roommate had been male or female.
“Well, you’ve really done a nice job with the place. It’s lovely.”
Greg helped himself to more chow mein. “I just keep thinking about running into you at the market the other day, out of the blue like that.”
I swallowed a bite of dim sum. “Me too. Honestly, you were the last person I expected to see that morning.”
He turned to face me. “I always hoped we’d see each other again.”
“Me too,” I said. “I used to play this little game with myself. Whenever I’d come across one of those Magic 8 Balls, I’d shake it and ask, ‘Will I ever kiss Greg again?’ And you know what? I never got a no. Not even once.”
Greg looked at me with a teasing face. “And what else do you consult your Magic 8 Ball about?”
I grinned and sank my teeth into another spring roll, deciding not to tell him that I’d actually consulted the 8 Ball at Annabelle’s apartment the day before my divorce went through.
We finished our dinner and Greg kept my wineglass filled so efficiently, I lost track of the number of glasses I’d drunk.
It was dark outside, but under the light from the moon I could make out a patch of flowers through the French doors in the back. “I want to see your garden,” I said. “Can you give me a tour?”
“Sure,” Greg said. “It’s my little piece of heaven.”
I felt a bit woozy as I stood up, and Greg must have noticed because he held my arm as we walked out onto the slate stone patio. “Over there, those are the hydrangeas,” he said, pointing to the far left corner of the yard. “And here is the cutting garden. This year I have daylilies, peonies, and dahlias coming up.”
But I wasn’t looking at the cutting garden. Just below the kitchen window stood a row of tulips, white with striking red tips. They were brilliant nestled against the house’s yellow siding, and I walked over to have a closer look. I’d never seen them before, of course, but I felt as if I had. They were identical to the ones Elliot had given Esther in the diary.
“These tulips,” I said, a little astonished, “they’re beautiful.”
“Aren’t they?” Greg said in agreement.
“Did you plant them?” I asked, almost accusingly, as though I expected him to have Elliot upstairs, bound and gagged in a bedroom closet.
“I wish I could take credit,” he said. “But they’re volunteers. They were here when I bought the house. They’ve been multiplying over the years. There must be three dozen now.”
I reminded myself that the diary I was reading was probably only a story, not reality. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder if Elliot and Esther had once walked this island, perhaps in this very spot.
“Who did you buy the house from?” I asked.
“He paused to think. “I can’t remember her name,” he said. “She was an elderly woman whose kids were moving her into a retirement community.”
“Where? Here on the island?”
“No, I think it was Seattle.”
I nodded and looked back down at the tulips. They were breathtaking.
“Hey,” Greg said, “why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” I said, reaching down to pick one of the flowers. “I guess I just have a thing for stories of the past.”
Greg looked at me in the way that used to make me wild. “I wish our story had a different ending.”
I felt his breath on my skin, inviting, beckoning, but there was that voice again, the cautionary voice. “Let’s open our fortune cookies,” I said, breaking free from his gaze.
“Nah, I hate fortune cookies.”
“Come on,” I said, reaching for his hand.
Once we were seated on the couch, I handed one cookie to Greg and kept one for myself. “Open it.”
He cracked his open and read the tiny piece of paper in his hands: “ ‘You will find the answer to what you are searching for.’ See?” he said. “Totally meaningless. You could read into that a million different ways.”
I opened mine and stared blankly at the words: “ ‘You will find true love in the present, by looking to the past.’ ”
“What does yours say?” Greg asked.
“Nothing significant,” I said. “You’re right. It’s nonsense.” I carefully tucked the scrap of paper into my pocket.
Greg inched closer. “What if it isn’t nonsense? What if it means something? About us?”
I remained motionless as his hands caressed my face, then I closed my eyes as they traveled down my neck and shoulders to my waist.
“No,” I said, opening my eyes and pulling away from his arms. “I can’t, Greg. I’m so sorry.”
“What’s wrong?” He looked wounded.
“I don’t know,” I said, disoriented. “But I think my heart is elsewhere.” What I didn’t say was that “elsewhere” meant, plain and simple, Jack.
“It’s OK,” he said, looking at his feet.
“I guess I better go,” I said awkwardly as he stood up to get his keys. Before I got into the car, I ran back to the garden and retrieved the tulip I’d picked.
Greg drove me back to Bee’s and before I got out of the car he said, “He’s a lucky guy, whoever he is.”
“Who’s a lucky guy?”
“The guy who ends up with you.”
Chapter 10
March 9
I could hear the phone ringing in the living room the next morning, ringing so intently and consistently that it jarred me out of a perfectly pleasant dream. Isn’t Bee going to get it?
On the tenth ring I stood up, groggily, and walked out to the living room.
“Hello?” I said in a tone that let the caller know how I felt about being disturbed at seven forty-five a.m.
“Emily, it’s Jack.”
My eyes shot open. I recalled writing my cell phone number on a scrap of paper the night I visited his house. So why is he calling the landline?
“I’m sorry for calling so early,” he said. “I’ve been trying your cell, but it’s going straight to voice mail. Anyway, if it’s not too early . . .”
“No,” I stammered. “It’s not too early.” My voice sounded more eager than I’d anticipated.
“Good,” he said, “because I wondered if you wanted to meet me for a beach walk this morning.”
“Now?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You have to see what’s happening on the shore right now. Can you meet me in ten minutes?”
As I trudged down to the beach, I could see Jack way ahead—well, a speck that was Jack. We waved as we walked toward each other.
“Morning!” Jack shouted from his vantage point on the shore, which was several hundred feet away.
“Hi!” I yelled back.
When we finally met, he pointed ahead. “The thing I want to show you is around the bend.”
“The thing?”
He smiled. “You’ll see.”
I nodded. “How did your trip to Seattle go?”
“It went well,” he said. And that was all. “Sorry I didn’t call sooner,” he added, without offering an explanation.
We rounded the point, and followed the beach a little farther as it curved around the hillside. Jack stood still for a minute, looking out toward the sound.
“There,” he said softly.
“Where?” I said, and then I saw it, a spout of water streaming up into the air, and then something enormous undulating beneath the sea.
I smiled like a child who has just been dazzled by a jack-in-the-box. “What was that?”
“An orca,” Jack said with pride.
Bee always spoke of orca sightin
gs, but even during all those summers on the island, I had never seen one with my own eyes.
“Look!” Jack exclaimed. There were two now, swimming close together.
“They come through here every year at this time,” he said. “I’ve always loved it. I used to sit here, right here”—he paused and pointed to a boulder about the size of a large stump, embedded in the sand—“when I was a boy and watch the whales go through.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of the water. “They’re spectacular,” I said. “Look at the way they’re swimming, with such strength, such purpose. They know where their journey is taking them, even without a map to guide them.” Then I paused as a thought struck. “Jack?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You said you were here as a boy. Were you ever here during the summers?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling a private smile. “Every summer. The house I live in now, it was my family’s old beach house.”
“So why didn’t I ever meet you during those summers?”
“I wasn’t allowed to go down that way,” he said, pausing. “Toward your aunt’s house.”
I grinned. “I wasn’t allowed to come up this way, either,” I said. “You’d think I would have seen you at least once.”
His eyes met mine. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
He shook his head playfully.
“I’m sorry,” I said, racking my brain and wishing I could recall something, anything. “I don’t.”
“You were fourteen—and beautiful, if I might add,” he said. “My dog had gotten off his leash, and he ran down in front of your aunt’s house. You were lying on a beach towel with another girl. You were wearing a bikini. A pink bikini. And Max, my dog at the time, ran right over to you and licked you on the face.”
“That was you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“Oh gosh,” I said. “I do remember being licked by that dog.”
“Yeah,” he said, “you didn’t seem too happy about it.”
“Oh, and then he ran away with my sandal in his mouth,” I said, and as I did, the memories came rushing back.
“Some way to impress a girl, huh?”
I cocked my head to the right and looked at him in a new light. “Oh my gosh, I remember you,” I said. “You were really skinny?”
“Yes.”
“Braces?”
He nodded.
“That was you?”
“Yep, in the flesh.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What?” Jack said, pretending to be hurt. “You mean you didn’t find a tall, gangly kid with braces and acne attractive?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, no it’s not that, it’s just that, well, you’re just so different now.”
“No, I’m really not,” he said. “I’m exactly the same. Except the acne’s cleared up. You haven’t changed much yourself. Except you’re even more beautiful than I could have imagined you’d be.”
I didn’t know what to say, so instead I just smiled, a smile that started inside and traveled to my face, where it stayed for the rest of the morning.
“Hey, want to come up to my place?” he said. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“I’d love to,” I replied. And without thinking, I reached down and grabbed his hand, and he instantly weaved his fingers into mine, as if we’d done this a hundred times before. So what if he had been on a date the night before? So had I. We were even. What mattered now was that we were together.
I sat at the stool at Jack’s kitchen island and watched as he ground the coffee beans and then cut five oranges in half and sent them through the juice press. Then he pulled out a bowl and started cracking eggs. I sat there, mesmerized by his movements in the kitchen. He was swift, yet precise. I wondered if Elliot had ever made Esther breakfast.
“I hope you like French toast,” he said.
“Like?” I said. “Too small of a word. I love French toast.”
He grinned and continued whisking. “So,” he said, “did your aunt tell you any nasty stories about my family?”
“No. She won’t give me any details. Any chance you can fill me in?”
“I’m really the last to know about the skeletons in the family closet,” he said. “All I know is that my father warned me early on that we were not welcome at Bee Larson’s house. And that scared the hell out of me as a kid. I imagined she was the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story. My sister and I were sure that if we stepped foot on her property, she’d capture us and lock us up in her dungeon.”
I giggled at the thought of that.
He nodded. “We used to think her house was haunted.”
“Well, it’s not hard to come to that conclusion,” I said, thinking of the old house’s second-story rooms, which were mostly locked, and those creaky wood floors. “Sometimes I think it’s haunted.”
Jack nodded, measured out one teaspoon of cinnamon, and whisked it into the egg mixture. “I wish I knew more about the circumstances behind all of that,” he said. “I should have asked my grandfather.”
“Oh, you saw him?”
“Yeah,” he said. “He lives in Seattle. I was just over there yesterday. I go over at least once a month and spend a few days with him.”
“Maybe you could ask him about it next time you speak to him,” I suggested. “Because, Lord knows, I’m getting nowhere with Bee.”
“I will,” he said.
Jack’s talk of his grandfather made me think of my own. I loved how, when I was a child, he’d let me spend hours with him holed up in his study. Seated at my makeshift cardboard-box desk, I’d adoringly watch him work at his big oak secretary, where he paid the bills and I pretended to type letters. Grandpa always let me lick the envelopes before he took them out to the mailbox.
Grandma Jane, on the other hand, had died quickly and suddenly, of a heart attack, and at her funeral, when my mother asked me if I’d share a memory at the church from the pulpit, I told her I wasn’t comfortable with public speaking. But the truth was more complicated than that. As I stared at her casket, I looked around. Mother was crying. So was Danielle. Why didn’t I feel anything? Why couldn’t I muster the sadness that the passing of a grandparent deserves?
“You’re lucky,” I said to Jack.
“Why so?”
“Because you’re close to your grandfather.”
“Oh, I know,” he said, dipping thick slices of bread into the egg mixture. I could hear the sizzle of the bread hitting the hot butter when he dropped each slice into the cast iron skillet. “You’d really love him too. He’s such a character. Maybe you could meet him sometime. I know he’d be crazy about you.”
I smiled. “How do you know?”
“I just know.”
The coffee machine beeped, and Jack poured me a cup.
“Cream or sugar?”
“Just cream,” I said, watching to see if he also poured a cup, but instead he reached for a glass of orange juice.
Annabelle had been doing some unscientific research on couples and coffee preferences. According to her very preliminary findings, if you could even call them findings, people who like their coffee dressed in the same manner have greater success in marriage.
I sipped my coffee, and walked into the living room, where Russ was curled up next to the fireplace. He looked cozy and teddybearish, as all golden retrievers do. I squatted down to pet him, and I noticed a small piece of green paper in the corner of his mouth. The rest of what looked like a chewed-up green file folder lay to his right. There were some loose papers scattered around him too.
“Russ,” I said, “you naughty dog. What have you gotten hold of?” He rolled over and yawned, and I saw that there were more rumpled papers beneath him, presumably papers he had planned to snack on. I picked up a slobber-drenched page and squinted. Most of the type on the page was blurred and torn, but at the top were the words “
Seattle Police Department, Bureau of Missing Persons.” I set it down, a little startled, and picked up another, which was a photocopied news clipping from the Bainbridge Island paper. It looked old—I could tell by the type—and also nearly unsalvageable.
“Emily?” Jack called out from the kitchen.
I nervously dropped the page in my hand. “Uh, I’m just here with, um, Russ. He seems to have gotten into something.”
Jack appeared around the corner with a plate of French toast in his hands, but he quickly set it down.
“Russ, go to your bed!” he shouted.
“Let me help you,” I said.
“No,” he said, one decibel below a shout. “I mean, no, sorry, you shouldn’t have to help with this mess. I’ve got it.”
I took a step back, wondering if I’d seen something I shouldn’t have. Jack tucked the file and its dilapidated and slobbered-on contents under a stack of magazines on the coffee table.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I wanted this breakfast to be perfect.”
“No big deal,” I said. “Dogs will be dogs.”
I watched Jack pile the pieces of French toast one on top of another and then dust the platter with powdered sugar.
“There,” he said, holding out a plate for me. “Your breakfast.”
I reached for my fork just as the phone in the kitchen rang.
“I’ll just let the machine get it,” he said. I took a bite and nearly swooned, but my attention drifted when I heard a woman’s voice on the answering machine.
“Jack,” began the voice, “it’s Lana. It was so good having dinner with you last night. I wanted to—”
Jack raced out of his chair and turned the machine off before she could continue.
“Sorry,” he said a little sheepishly. “That was, uh, a client. We met last night to discuss a painting.”
I didn’t like the tone of her voice. It sounded too personal, too intimate. I wanted to ask him twenty questions. No, two hundred questions. Instead I smiled politely and continued eating. I didn’t doubt that the woman was a client, but if that was all, what was he so skittish about? What was he trying to hide?