The Violets of March

by Sarah Jio

  “No,” Bee said. “Let it rest.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I have to.”

  She shrugged. At the heart of it all, Bee was reasonable.

  “Emily,” she said, “you must remember that what’s done is done. There’s no changing the past. In all of this, I’d hate to see you lose sight of your own story.” She paused for a moment. “Isn’t that why you came here?”

  I acknowledged her concern with a nod.

  We sat there together in silence, except for the seagulls outside, flapping around above the house almost frantically, until I found the courage to tell her I was leaving. “I’m going home to New York.”

  Bee looked wounded. “Why? I thought you were staying until the end of the month.”

  “I was,” I said, looking out at the sound and doubting my decision. Have I given things enough time? “But everything has gotten, well, so complicated.”

  Bee nodded in agreement. “It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing, has it?”

  “It’s been a beautiful few weeks, Bee, a transforming time, and I owe it to your hospitality, and your love,” I said. “But I think it’s time for me to go now. I think I need time to process what I’ve experienced.”

  She looked as if she felt betrayed. “And you can’t do that here?”

  I shook my head, and my resolve strengthened even more when I thought of Jack. “I’m sorry, Bee.”

  “OK,” she said. “But don’t forget, this is your home. Don’t forget what I told you. It’s yours now and will be yours officially whenever I go. . . .”

  “Which will be never,” I said, forcing a laugh.

  “But it will happen, sooner than both of us think,” she said matter-of-factly. The ache in my heart told me she spoke the truth.

  March 19

  A day passed in which I did nothing but think—about Esther and Elliot, Bee, and Jack. I thought of my mom, too, and the following day I curled on the sofa in the lanai and dialed her familiar number. “Mom?”

  “It’s so good to hear your voice, honey,” she said.

  I realized I may never completely understand my mother’s ways, but excavating Esther’s story had come with an unexpected benefit: I could now see her in a new light. After all, she was just a child who had lost her mother.

  “Mom, we need to talk about something,” I said.

  “Is it Joel?”

  “No,” I said, pausing to consider how I would proceed. “About . . . your mother.”

  She was silent.

  “I know about Esther, Mom.”

  “Emily, where is this coming from? Did your aunt tell you something? Because—”

  “No. I found something, something that belonged to your mother—a diary that she wrote about her life. I read it, and I know what happened to her, at least up until the end.”

  “Then you know that she left us, that she left me,” she said, her voice suddenly tinged with anger.

  “No, Mom, she didn’t leave you—at least, I don’t think she intended to. Grandpa threw her out.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, he made her leave, to pay for what she did. And, Mom, there was a tragedy that night, the night she disappeared. I’m trying to unearth the answers for you, for me, for Elliot, and for—”

  “Emily, why? Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just let it be?” Her sentiments mirrored Bee’s, for the same reasons, perhaps. They were both scared.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have this sense that I’m supposed to find the answers for her.”

  There was more silence on the other end of the line.

  “Mom?”

  “Emily,” she finally said. “A very long time ago, I tried to find those answers too. I wanted more than anything to locate my mother, to meet her, but mostly to ask her why she left—why she left me. I tried, believe me, I tried. But my search turned up nothing but emptiness and heartache. I had to make a decision to stop looking. I had to let her go. And when I did, I knew, deep down, that I had to let the island go too.”

  I wished I could look into her eyes then, because I knew I’d be able to see the part of her that had been missing for so long. “Mom, that’s just it,” I said. “You may have given up the search, but I can pick up where you left off.”

  She exhaled deeply. “I never wanted you to know about any of this, Emily,” she said. “I wanted to protect you from it. And it worried me to see that you were taking after her—your creative gifts, your spirit, even your appearance. I knew Grandma Jane could see it, just as I did, that you’re the spitting image of Esther. ”

  My mother’s words were like a needle and thread, sewing disparate fabrics of my life together into a perfect seam. I remembered that ill-fated afternoon when Grandma Jane colored my hair years ago, and realized for the first time that it wasn’t me she had despised; it was my resemblance to Esther. It frightened her and unsettled her so much that she wanted to change the way I looked. What power Esther had over all of them.

  “The veil,” I said, remembering the hurt I’d felt when Mom had been dismissive about my wearing the family heirloom on my wedding day. “Why didn’t you want me to wear it?”

  “Because it was wrong,” she said. “On Danielle, it was different. But I just couldn’t send you down that aisle in that veil, in Grandma Jane’s veil, not when you embody so much of Esther’s spirit. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “It’s OK,” I said.

  “I just wanted, so much, for you to be happy.”

  I paused for a moment, considering my words carefully. “Mom, there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  I blinked hard, feeling the weight of what I was about to say. “Esther was pregnant the night she left, the night of the accident.”

  I could hear her breathing through tears. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

  “She was expecting a baby—Elliot’s baby, the man she loved—on the night she disappeared. It’s all in the diary. I know this has to be hard to hear, Mom. I’m sorry.”

  She blew her nose. “All these years I’ve been so angry at my mother, this woman who supposedly left me as a baby—who leaves their baby?—but now, somehow the only thing I want to know is: Did she love me? Did my mother love me?”

  “She loved you,” I said without hesitation. It was what Esther would have wanted me to say, I told myself, and it was what my mother needed to hear.

  “Do you really think so, honey?”

  The tone of her voice—raw, honest, devoid of any pretense—forever changed the way I thought of my mother. At her core, she was just a little girl longing for a maternal bond. How she hid a lifetime of heartache and issues of abandonment, I’ll never know, but she was wearing it all on her sleeve now, and it made me admire her in a way I didn’t know I could.

  “Yes,” I said, reaching my hand up to the nape of my neck. “And there’s something I’ve come across that I think she’d like you to have.” I unclasped the starfish necklace and held it in my hand, nodding to myself. Esther would have wanted her daughter to have it.

  I had an hour before Bee planned to drop me off at the ferry terminal for the trip to Seattle to catch my flight. I packed my suitcase, tucking the treasures I’d collected on the island inside. But after I lay my mother’s childhood scrapbook on top of my cosmetic case, I shook my head. It didn’t belong in New York. It belonged here, on the island, for my mother to find again. She’d be back—I knew she would—and when she returned, she needed to make this discovery, on her own.

  I remembered the photo Evelyn had left for me, and I could think of no better place for it than at home in the pages of the scrapbook. I leaned back against the bed and opened the book, turning to the last page, which was blank except for four black photo corners and the handwritten, flower-adorned word above: Mother. I carefully set the photo in place and then closed the scrapbook, gently setting it inside the drawer of the bedside table. I wanted to give it to her, but I knew in my heart that she needed to find it herself. />
  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” I said to Bee a few minutes later. I closed the back door quickly behind me before she could protest.

  My thoughts mirrored the ominous clouds lurking over the beach, gray and swollen. How will Henry respond to the questions I have for him? Did he see my grandmother alive that fateful night? What did she tell him before driving over the cliff ?

  I walked up the creaky steps that led to his front porch. I hadn’t noticed the cobwebs in the windows, or the catawampus doorframe, so jagged and splintered. I took a deep breath and knocked. And waited. And waited some more.

  After a second knock, I thought I heard something or someone inside, so I moved closer to one of the windows and leaned in and listened: footsteps. They were definitely footsteps, hurried footsteps.

  Through the window, I could see the living room, which was empty, and the hallway that led to the back door. I looked closer and noticed movement toward the rear of the house, followed by the sound of a door closing. Quickly, I ran around the side yard. There were the violets again, watching, waiting, in their wise way, as Henry’s car barreled out of the garage and onto the gravel driveway. I waved and yelled, hoping he’d stop, but he kept on, his car cloaked in a cloud of dust. Our eyes met for a moment in his rearview mirror, but he didn’t stop.

  “Good-bye, dear,” Bee said, tears streaming down her cheeks as she dropped me off at the terminal. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “Me too,” I said. Though I was leaving two stories unfinished on the island, mine and Esther’s, I had to go. The air was thick with memories and secrets, and I was finding it difficult to breathe.

  “You’ll be coming back soon, won’t you?” Bee said with sadness in her eyes.

  “Of course I will,” I replied. Even if I wasn’t so sure myself, Bee needed the reassurance. I squeezed her tight before joining the other passengers and making my way to the boat. My final act on the island was to place a copy of Esther’s diary, which I had painstakingly photocopied in town, into an envelope addressed to Elliot and drop it into a mailbox.

  I was leaving the island I loved, and like my grandmother may or may not have done so many years before me, I left without knowing if I’d ever return.

  Chapter 19

  March 20

  I woke up in my New York bed the next day, back in my New York life, with my old New York problems. They seemed almost frivolous in contrast to the perplexing events of Bainbridge Island: an unsolved family mystery and an unfinished love affair. Scratch that; there were zero messages from Jack on my phone—a finished love affair.

  If I’d thought I was going to get a cheerful welcome home from Annabelle, I was mistaken. “You shouldn’t have left, Em,” she said in a way that no other friend could. “You need to go back.”

  “I thought I could do some thinking here,” I said. “Maybe do some writing.”

  “I hate to sound blunt, darling.” She said “darling” with a distinct air of sarcasm. “But haven’t you said that for the last, what, five years?”

  I looked down at my hands, tugging at my pinkie the way I do when I’m nervous.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You know that I just want to see you happy, right?”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “Good.” Then she paused, and looked back at me a bit mischievously. “Because the maid of honor in my wedding has to be happy.”

  My mouth fell open. “Annabelle! No way! You and Evan?”

  “Me and Evan and Herbie Hancock,” she said, proudly holding up her hand to show off the ring. “I don’t know what happened, Em. These last few weeks, we’ve just clicked. And then he took me to a Herbie Hancock show and proposed between sets. And I said yes!”

  I was happy for her, so very much, yet my insides trembled a little. Annabelle’s happiness was shining a floodlight over my solitude.

  I smiled. “So how are you going to deal with the fact that Evan isn’t really the marrying kind of name?”

  “To hell with that,” she said. “I’m going to take my chances. And he can always legally change his name to Bruce.”

  She grabbed her jacket. “Sorry to rush off, but I’ve got to head back to my place. I’m meeting Evan for dinner at Vive tonight.”

  I wanted to be meeting anyone for dinner at Vive tonight.

  “Have fun,” I said.

  “Oh, before I forget, there’s a box of mail on the kitchen table.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shutting the door behind her.

  But after she left, I didn’t turn on my laptop or read the mail. One hour turned into two, and then three. I curled up on the couch without bothering to remove my coat and shoes. It was the very definition of exhaustion. I just pulled a wool throw blanket over me, the one that Joel’s aunt had knitted for our wedding, the one I’d always hated but never dared give away. It was too small and made from fibers that itched bare skin, but I was cold. I pulled it up under my chin, rested my head on the cold leather pillow, and thought about Jack, and how nice it would have been if he were here with me.

  March 21

  The phone rang earlier than usual the next morning. The ring, I thought, sounded like the marriage of a screech and a fire alarm. I looked at the clock: 8:02 A.M.

  “Hello?”

  “Em, it’s me.”

  It was a familiar voice, but whose? In my post-sleep haze, it took me a few seconds to recall just where I’d heard it. The café? A movie? Then I realized who it was, and my heart halted. Looking back on that moment, I do believe the earth stopped spinning for a brief second the moment I recognized his voice.

  “Joel?”

  “I heard that you’re back,” he said softly, cautiously.

  “What do you mean you heard I was back? How did you know I left?”

  “Listen,” he said, avoiding the question. “I know this is going to sound crazy. I know you want to hang up on me right now. But the truth is, Emily, I made a horrible mistake. I have to see you. I need to see you.”

  He sounded sincere, and also sad. I dug my fingernails into my arm, just to make sure I was hearing this, just to make sure this was real. Joel still wants me, so why aren’t I feeling anything?

  I sat up and shook my head. “No, I can’t do this,” I said, remembering what’s-her-name. “For starters, you’re getting married.” The word shook me to my core. “And, by the way, thanks for that beautiful wedding invitation. How kind of you to remember me.”

  My sarcasm, however, was met with confusion. “Wedding invitation?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” I said. “You know you sent it.”

  “No,” he said. “No, there must be some mistake. I didn’t send it.” He paused for a few seconds. “Stephanie,” he finally said. “Stephanie must have sent it. It had to be her. I can’t believe she would stoop that low, but I guess I should have realized. She’s not the person I thought she was, Em. Since we moved in together she’s been paranoid about everything, but especially about you. She thinks I still love you, and, well, I—”

  “Joel, stop.”

  “Just give me a half hour,” he pleaded. “Just one drink. Seven o’clock, tonight, at that little spot around the corner from,” he gulped, “our place.”

  My grip on the phone tightened. “Why in the world should I?”

  “Because I . . . because I still love you,” he said with such vulnerability that I actually believed him.

  I tugged at the yarn on the blanket. Everything in me told me to say no, to resist that gnawing temptation, but something in my heart told me to say yes. “All right,” I said.

  It was reason enough to shower, put on some strappy shoes, and meet him for one cocktail that night. Just one.

  When I walked into the bar where we’d agreed to meet, I felt more beautiful than I had in a long time. Maybe it was the island’s effect on me, or perhaps it was the fact that Joel wanted me back. In any case, a lot had changed since I’d seen him last, and I wondered if he’d notice.

  I could see him f
rom across the room, standing there at the bar, standing in exactly the same way I’d seen him so many years ago on the day we met: kind of slouched over, leaning on one elbow, smiling that Joel smile. He was just as handsome, just as dangerous. When his eyes caught mine, I steadied myself and walked over to meet him. I could still have this man, and for a minute, that thought frightened me.

  “Hi,” he said, slipping his arm around my waist and kissing my cheek. I didn’t pull away. The way he kissed my cheek, the way I stood there beside him, it was as if we were on autopilot, or operating on muscle memory.

  “You look amazing,” he said, pointing to a table in the corner of the bar, which wasn’t really a bar. It was one of those upscale nightclub places Joel had always wanted me to go to with him when I wanted to just order in and spend the night in bed together watching SNL.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked delicately, as if he might say the wrong thing and scare me away.

  “No,” I said, a little startled by the directness in my tone. “But I’ll have that drink I promised you.”

  He smiled, and rattled off my martini order to the waitress, from memory: dirty martini, extra olives. When we sat down, I glanced around the room. There were women everywhere—beautiful women in perfect outfits, with perfect hair and perfect bodies. But for the first time in, well, I have no idea how long, Joel’s eyes were fixed on me.

  When the drinks arrived, I sipped mine slowly. If it was going to be our final drink together, I told myself, it would be OK to make it last.

  “So, how is Stephanie?” I said.

  He looked down at his hands in his lap, then back at my face. “It’s over between us, Emily.” He was careful to make sure that each word that passed his lips wasn’t wounding me. “I was a fool to think that this was love. Because it wasn’t. I didn’t love her, and I never could have. My decision was clouded. I see that now. I made a terrible mistake.”