by Sarah Jio
After an examination and some tests, Dr. Larimere returned with a grin on his face. “Mrs. Littleton,” he said, “looks like you’ve got a case of the influenza that’s been going around this town.”
I nodded. “Good, so it’s nothing serious, then?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “But there is something else.” He reached for a typed page inside my medical chart. “These results just came back from the lab. I’m pleased to tell you that you’re expecting a child.”
“What?” I said. It had never occurred to me that I could be pregnant. “This can’t be,” I said, in shock.
“It can,” he said.
I shook my head. “How far along am I?”
“Still very early,” he said, still grinning. “But, nevertheless, with child. Now, you better get home to that husband of yours and tell him your good news. That is bound to cheer up a man in his condition.”
All I could do was stare straight ahead.
“Mrs. Littleton,” the doctor finally said. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m fine,” I said, forcing a smile and walking toward the door. But I wasn’t fine. Nothing would be fine from this point forward because of one simple fact: This baby wasn’t Bobby’s; it couldn’t have been. It was Elliot’s.
Chapter 13
March 12
I decided to call Annabelle before Bee and I left for Evelyn’s funeral. So much had happened here that I’d forgotten about all I’d left behind in New York, including Annabelle.
“Annabelle?”
“Hi, Em!”
“I miss you,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. So much has been going on here.”
“Is everything OK?”
“Sort of,” I said. “But first, how are you?”
“Good,” she said without much fanfare, and then she dropped a bomb. “It’s official. I’m finally going to face my narcissist romantic nature and admit it: I am falling for Evan again.”
“Annabelle, really?”
“Yes,” she said. “We had dinner and talked, and I think we’re getting back to where we were.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” I told her. Annabelle deserved to find love more than anyone I knew, maybe even more than I.
“And what about the whole jazz thing?”
She laughed. “I’m working on him.”
I filled her in on Greg and Jack, and Evelyn.
She seemed particularly saddened by the news of Evelyn, but then, Annabelle cries during Kleenex commercials.
Bee motioned to the clock. It was time to go. She was a pallbearer and didn’t want to be late, which meant arriving an hour early just in case of traffic, even though there was never traffic on Bainbridge Island.
“Sorry, Annie, I’ve got to go,” I said. “We’re leaving for the funeral now.”
“No worries,” she said. “Just call me when you can.”
The funeral was to be held at Saint Mary’s Church, which made me remember Esther’s ill-fated confession. Saint Mary’s is more of a cathedral than a church, with its ornate detailing, gold-plated finishes, and cherub-painted ceiling. There is a lot of money on the island, and it shows.
Bee told me to go ahead and take a seat, that she’d join me later, once she’d helped carry Evelyn’s casket to the front of the church. I could see tears in her eyes as she looked around the sanctuary, but her gaze stopped at the sight of Jack escorting an older man into the church.
I waved, but Bee looked away quickly and joined her fellow pallbearers.
Evelyn had chosen to be buried in a small cemetery on a quiet corner of the island, and when we arrived, I could see why. The place didn’t feel like a cemetery. It was more akin to a park, one you’d want to return to, maybe with a picnic blanket and a good book, or a date and a bottle of wine. A sliver of the Seattle skyline, including the Space Needle, completed the view.
At least two hundred people attended the funeral, but just a handful of close friends and family came to the burial, roses and tissues in their hands. Henry was there too, as was Evelyn’s late husband’s family, and some of her nieces and nephews.
The priest said a few words, and then the cemetery staff slowly eased the casket into the ground. Everyone gathered around to throw in a rose or two and say their farewells, which is when I noticed Jack in the distance. He wasn’t gathered around Evelyn’s grave like the rest of us. Instead, he stood near a headstone a few hundred yards away with the older man he’d been with at the church. His grandfather? I couldn’t make out his face to check for a family resemblance. I watched as the older man handed Jack something. I squinted, trying to make out the shape in Jack’s hands, and could see that it was a black box, small enough to tuck into his jacket pocket, which he did. Jack looked in my direction, and I quickly turned my gaze back to Evelyn’s grave, which is when I realized that Bee wasn’t standing by my side, where she had been moments ago. Worried, I tiptoed away from the mourners and found her in the car, slumped over in the passenger seat.
“Bee?” I said, knocking on the window.
She rolled down the window. There were fresh tears on her face. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I just can’t. I can’t.”
“I know,” I said. “You don’t have to be brave. Evelyn would have wanted you to just be you.”
I reached in my coat pocket and pulled out the envelope Evelyn had asked me to give to Bee. “Here,” I said. “This is from Evelyn.”
Bee’s glossy eyes brightened for a moment and she clutched the letter to her chest. I knew she would wait to be alone before she opened it.
“Hand me your keys,” I said. “I’ll drive us home.”
Bee leaned back in her seat as I drove the car to the four-way stop, turning right onto the main thoroughfare that connected the north and south sides of the island. Few cars were out today, and the solitude matched the loneliness of the day, but then, behind us, I heard a police siren, and then another. I slowed the car and pulled over as, one by one, along with an ambulance, they filed into the entrance to Fay Park.
“I wonder what’s going on?” I said, turning to Bee. I couldn’t recall ever seeing an ambulance, or a police car, on the island.
Bee looked out the window in silence.
I pulled back onto the road, but a police officer motioned for us to stop, and I rolled down the window.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We’re redirecting traffic. The detour route is along Day Road. Just pull a U-turn and take your next right. There’s an investigation in progress.”
I nodded. “What happened?”
“A suicide,” he said. “A young one. Probably no older than twenty. She jumped right off that cliff in the park.”
I gasped. “How very sad,” I said before turning the car around.
We drove for a few miles in silence. I wondered about the woman who had ended her life just moments before. What was she running from, and whom did she leave behind? When we finally turned onto Hidden Cove Road, Bee stirred in her seat. “Always the young women,” she said distantly, her gaze cemented out the side window.
That afternoon we walked on the beach, we listened to music, we looked at old photos of Evelyn. We sulked. It was a day for remembering, and for me, reading. And by the next morning, we would both be ready to face the world again, each in our separate ways. I wondered if Esther would be too.
“You need a reprieve,” Bobby told me one day. “The way you’ve cared for me these past weeks, you’ve been a martyr. Why don’t you call up Frances and Rose and plan a lunch out or a shopping trip to Seattle? I can have my mother help with the baby.
It was a generous offer, and one I was eager to accept. I called Rose.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing later today?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Want me to come over on the next ferry?”
“I’d love that,” I said. “Bobby said I could have a girls’ day, a day off. I was thinking we could have lunch. And there’s the street fair on Main.”
“We can’t
miss the fair,” Rose said. “I’ll call Frances and invite her to join us.”
“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”
“Well,” she said, “there’s no time like the present. I’m calling her. You two will put this all behind you.”
I hoped she was right.
I was glad that Rose showed up at the restaurant first. I didn’t think I could bear to be alone with Frances.
I hadn’t told Rose about the pregnancy yet—or anyone, for that matter. But my condition would be obvious before too long.
Frances walked in and sat down at the table. “Hi,” she said blankly to both of us.
Then she turned to me. “Sorry about Bobby.”
“Thanks,” I said. It was all I could say.
“Look,” Rose said, breaking the silence at the table. She pointed out the window at a pair of schoolgirls with painted faces, sharing a brown paper bag of roasted peanuts. Their arms were linked together as they skipped down the sidewalk outside the restaurant. “The fair! Let’s go have some fun. Just like old times.”
The traveling fair made its way into town every year, usually in April, when the winter chill was a distant memory, but this year it had come early, catching us all by surprise. Every year since we were young, the three of us had reenacted our own traditions, eating cotton candy, riding the Ferris wheel, and having our fortunes read. This year we skipped the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy, and headed straight for the fortune-teller’s booth.
But something, or rather someone, stopped us first.
“Esther,” a man’s voice called out from the crowd behind us. I turned around. It was Billy.
“Oh, hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, smiling, staring into my eyes a little too long. “Your purse,” he said, handing it to me. “You left it at the restaurant a while back. I’ve been hoping I’d run into you so I could return it to you.”
He looked hurt, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.
“Thank you, Billy,” I said, with a tone of apology in my voice. It had been years since we’d dated, but every time I saw him, I was reminded of something Frances had said, about the sight of me breaking his heart all over again.
“Are you coming, Esther?” Rose called out. She and Frances were standing in front of the fortune-teller’s tent. I nodded and said good-bye to Billy.
Inside the tent, which was draped in exotic tapestries, a fiftyish woman with dark hair and olive skin approached us. I didn’t recognize her from previous years. “How can I help you?” she said, in a foreign accent.
“We’d like to have our fortunes read,” I said.
She nodded and then led us through an entryway lined with strings of beads. “Fifty cents each, please,” she said. It always seemed like a lot of money, but we paid it year after year in hopes of leaving with a single grain of truth.
The three of us sat down on the cushions that were scattered over the floor. The woman spread out three cards before us. “Who wants to go first?”
Rose raised her hand.
“Good,” she said, “Choose a card, please.”
Rose chose a blue card depicting an elephant. The woman gestured for her to extend her hand, which she studied intently for at least a minute. Then she looked up and smiled, and simply said, “Yes.”
She added the card Rose had chosen to a stack to her right, and then dealt out three more. “Aha,” she said. “Just as I expected. A happy life, prosperity, and joy. I see no rain clouds in your future—in fact, not even a drop of rain.”
Rose smiled knowingly. “Thank you,” she said.
“Next?”
Frances nodded. “I’ll go. Better to get this over and done with.” She had always been uncomfortable with the idea of fortune-teller readings, yet she went with us year after year.
“Pick a card, please, dear,” the woman said.
Frances reached for a purple card with a bird on the front. “This one,” she said cautiously.
“Yes,” the woman said, examining Frances’s hand. She ran her finger along the length of her palm.
“What is it?” Frances asked impatiently, retracting her hand. “What do you see?”
“My vision is not clear,” she said. “I need to consult the cards to be sure.”
She added them to the deck as she had done with Rose’s card and then dealt three more in front of Frances.
After she flipped them over, the woman’s expression clouded. “You will live a long and full life,” she said. “But your love line, there are problems there. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“What do you mean?” Frances said.
“It seems there will be two great loves in your life.”
Frances’s cheeks flushed. Rose and I giggled.
“But wait,” she continued, “there is deep grief, too. And someone at the center of that grief.”
“Stop,” Frances said. “That’s enough. That’s all I want to hear.”
“Are you OK, dear?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” she replied stiffly, rubbing her palm as if to rub off the fortune she’d just been read.
“I guess that leaves me,” I said, turning to the woman.
Before she even offered me a card, she looked into my eyes and then frowned.
“I’ll pick that one,” I said, pointing to the pink card with the dragon on the front.
The woman looked worried, as though I’d just committed a cardinal sin of fortune-telling, but she reached for my hand anyway.
My examination took the longest of all. I waited patiently as she ran over the lines of my hand again and again, as if trying to piece something together. After several minutes, she let go of my hand suddenly, as if something had startled her. Then she consulted the cards, laying three out before us.
She stared at them for a long time, and then she finally opened her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I will give you a refund.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you tell me what you see?”
She hesitated and then said, “I can’t.”
I leaned in and grabbed her hand. “I need to know,” I said with such intensity that I think it startled Rose and Frances. “I have to know.”
“All right,” she said, “but maybe you will not like what I say.”
I said nothing and just waited, waited for her to tell me this thing, this terrible thing that was my fortune.
“There is little time,” she said. “You must follow your heart.” She paused to think of the right word. “Before it is too late.”
“What do you mean, before it’s too late?”
“There is trouble here for you. Trouble for your life line.”
We all knew exactly what she meant. But Frances was the only one to react.
“Enough,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Wait,” I said. “I want to hear the rest.”
The woman looked at Frances, and then back at me. “You must write.”
“Write what?”
“Your story.”
Frances threw up her hands and walked out of the booth, leaving Rose and me there to make sense of this woman’s cryptic message.
“What story?”
“The story of your life,” she said.
I shook my head. “Why?”
She nodded. “It must be done. You must write it. Your words, dear, will have great importance for . . . the future.”
I sat up in bed and read that last line over again.
Could this be the sort of eerie hint that Evelyn gave me—that these pages are meant to be in my hands? But how could any of this have anything to do with reality, with here and now? Why would a story from the 1940s, from someone I know nothing about, have any relevance to my life? How could it? None of it made sense, yet somewhere in my heart, I was beginning to feel that maybe it did.