Seashell Season

by Holly Chamberlin

  Anyway, the social worker people had already told me about my abduction shortly after Dad’s arrest. Would there ever have been a good way for anyone to tell me that my entire life was a lie? Would there ever have been a good time for me to hear it? No.

  At first, I didn’t believe them. Maybe, I thought, Dad had been hit over the head during the arrest and was suffering a concussion or some other type of brain injury that was making him talk gibberish and claim to be a deranged kidnapper when he wasn’t that at all, just my sometimes stupid father. But the social worker people had the proof. My father had abducted me from my mother when I was just two months old. No doubt about it. And my mother, my birth mother, was alive and well and living in Maine.

  Now, a few days later, I was finally going to see Dad face-to-face. My criminal, lying father. In a visitors’ room in jail. No bail, as he’s considered a flight risk.

  I had questions. A lot of questions. And I wasn’t going to make this conversation easy on him.

  “Tell me this, Dad,” I said, before I said hello or Are you okay? In fact, I never did say those things. “How can I be sent back to live with my mother if my mother is dead? You told me that she died when I was six.”

  “She isn’t dead,” he said. He looked awful, like an old man. “I was . . . mistaken.”

  Mistaken? I thought. How could you be mistaken about something like someone being dead? He was wrong, is what he was. But did that mean he had lied to me, or had someone told him a lie?

  Don’t let him off the hook, I told myself. He screwed up your entire life. He’s got to pay for it.

  “You told me she was a violent drug addict. If that was true, how could I be sent to live with someone dangerous like that?”

  Dad said nothing. Silence.

  “Were you lying?” I asked. Of course I knew he’d lied. But I wanted him to admit that to me.

  More silence. Then, he cleared his throat and said, “I acted for the best.”

  I felt a wild rage overtaking me. “For whose best?” I shouted.

  If that was all he was going to say to justify his actions . . .

  “Why’d you steal the car, Dad?” I pressed, leaning across the table where we were sitting. “Why’d you do something so stupid?” I really have to know the answer to that, I thought. Because if he hadn’t stolen it and gotten caught, none of this crap would be happening to me.

  He mumbled something about needing money, a sure thing, a guy had promised him it was all arranged.

  In other words, bullshit.

  This man sitting at the ugly metal table across from me, not meeting my eye, was not the man I had thought him to be all my life. But what had I thought him to be? Not a hero. Not a great man. Just my father.

  All the questions I still had to ask him!

  Had she, my mother, my normal, not-drug-addicted mother, ever tried to find me? Oh yes. There was a massive search, an intense manhunt. Every house within miles of Yorktide was searched from attic to basement and back again. Ponds were drained and rivers were dragged. There were volunteer search parties and official search-and-rescue teams, complete with dogs. Even the FBI made an appearance. (How did my father know all this? I wondered. Maybe he had followed the news somehow? Or maybe he was telling me a story again, creating a tale of what probably happened based on a TV show he’d seen.) People were questioned over and over again. But the police could find no hard evidence and no trace of my father and me, so after about a year the case was declared cold. Not closed, not solved, just—dead.

  Had we ever come close to being found out? Yes, he told me. A few times. At least, he’d thought someone might be on to us. It was what kept us moving, the real reason . . . A lot became clear to me then. Like the time we were living in the nicest place we’d ever lived, a really cool private house we were renting with a garden full of cacti of all kinds and a small swimming pool. We were happy there. And we still had months on our lease and the landlady had already told us she’d let us sign another one. So why did we suddenly leave, losing our first and last months’ security deposit and probably doing something illegal by just walking away from a signed contract? Because Dad thought someone was on to us. I see that now, but then I believed his story that the landlady was upping the rent to a price we couldn’t afford and it was “best to get out while we could.” I know. It makes no sense. But I was a kid. A kid who for a long time kind of worshipped her father, the only family she had, and who believed every piece of crap that came out of his mouth.

  “What is my mother’s name?” I asked him. “You told me it was Sabrina. It’s not, is it?”

  “No. It’s Verity.”

  I laughed. Verity. In other words, truth. How ironic.

  “So Marni Armstrong isn’t my real name, is it?” I asked, though by now I knew the truth about this, too. Thing is, I wanted to hear the truth from him, for once in my life. “The name she gave me when I was born.”

  “No. Gemma. That was your name. Gemma Elizabeth.”

  That is my name, I thought. Gemma. How freakin’ weird.

  “And your real name is Alan,” I said. “Too bad. I kinda liked Jim.”

  He attempted a smile, if you can believe it.

  “How old am I, really?” I asked.

  “Only a few months older than you think you are. You were born in March. The twenty-sixth.”

  “What else did you lie about, Dad?”

  But he would say no more. He just sat there, eyes shifting slowly from one side of the room to the other, never alighting on mine. He’s crazy, I thought. My father is a crazy person.

  “Why, Dad?” I persisted. “Why did you do it, if my mother wasn’t trying to kill me, and she wasn’t, was she? Why!”

  The guard then asked me to leave. I mean, he told me I had to go. I was upsetting people, I guess. The social worker put her hand against my back and kind of guided me out of the room. I didn’t look back.

  Since that day I sometimes think it would have been better if I’d never learned the truth about the kidnapping. Ignorance is bliss, right? If Dad had to go to prison for stealing that car, then fine. I’d be there when he got out, pissed at him but also glad to have him back so we could pick up our life where we’d left off. The same old me, Marni Armstrong, not who I am now, a total stranger to myself. At least, that’s the way it feels. A stranger with an entire history of what might have been dogging her every footstep.

  But that could never have happened, the past remaining a secret, because my idiot father’s fingerprints were on file from some silly offense when he was a teenager, and there was no way he could run away from that reality.

  When I left the prison that day, I didn’t care if I never saw my father again. Part of me still doesn’t, but that part gets smaller every day, now that I’m thousands of miles away from him. I do want to see him again, and I worry it’s going to be years before I’m able to. It’s not cheap to fly almost all the way across the country, and I’m not sure if Verity would allow me to go even if I did have the money. And would the social worker people let me see him again? I just don’t know. I try not to dwell on stuff like that. I try to stay calm and tell myself to be patient. Dad’s lawyers will tell him what to do and say when he gets to court. He’ll do and say what they tell him to, serve his time, and, if he focuses and has a little bit of luck, he’ll get out early on good behavior. And then we can be together again.

  That’s what I want.

  Chapter 20

  “What did you bring me?”

  I held up the white paper bag. “Sustenance in the form of a ham and cheese on rye, yellow mustard, one pickle.”

  David smiled. “She knows me so well.”

  I took the chair on the other side of David’s desk. He might be head of the department, but his office is no bigger than that of the other department staff, which is to say it’s tiny. And the disorder that reigns supreme within its four walls gives the impression that the room is an even tinier space.

  David, you see, is the cla
ssic messy, absentminded, downright sloppy professor, from his threadbare cardigans to his wild uncombed hair to the reading glasses he’s always losing. Often enough, he eventually finds the glasses on the top of his head or hanging around his neck. To be fair, this is not at all a studied presentation. He’s just not a neat guy. But he’s intelligent and kind and funny and loving, so frankly, it doesn’t matter that in addition to being sloppy, he’s also very handsome and well built. My priorities are in the right place, but I am a mere mortal after all.

  Have I mentioned that David’s academic specialty is mid- to late-nineteenth-century British fiction? The novels of everyone from George Gissing to George Eliot, from George Meredith to Anthony Trollope, from Elizabeth Gaskell to William Make-peace Thackeray are crammed onto shelves that are close to buckling under the weight. Of course, there’s also a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare, and one of every other volume any self-respecting professor of literature must have, from Norton Anthologies, to The OED, from tomes by Harold Bloom to works by Dennis Donohue.

  A small sculpture, an abstract bird in cherrywood I made for David a few years back, sits on top of a filing cabinet alongside an ancient coffee maker and a badly done bust of Mark Twain. At least, I think it’s supposed to be Mark Twain. Some guy with a mustache anyway. David inherited the piece from the previous tenant of the office. I don’t know why he hasn’t stowed it away somewhere dark.

  David cleared a space on his desk for our sandwiches and water bottles, and I spread out our lunch.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  I took a bite of my sandwich—tuna salad—chewed, and swallowed before answering. “I am tired. David, there are so, so many questions I want to ask Gemma. Did her father take her to church? Did they have a Christmas tree each December? When was the last time she went to a dentist or a doctor? Alan didn’t seem to keep records of such things, at least not as far as anyone can tell. What sort of books does she like to read, what sort of music does she like to listen to? So, so many questions.” I laughed, but there was nothing amusing about the moment. “I feel I should just give her a questionnaire, get it all over with at once. What’s your favorite color? On a scale of one to ten, rate your feelings about peanut butter and jelly.”

  David reached across his desk and took my hand in his. “Don’t be impatient,” he said. “You’ll learn about her over time.”

  “But I want to know about her now,” I protested, aware I must sound petulant and childish. “So I can be a good mother to her.”

  “You’ll be a good mother by letting her take what time she needs to open up to you.”

  “Easier said than done!” I could hear that my voice had taken on a slight note of panic. “What if I miss a vital clue to her health or her happiness, all because I’m ignorant of almost everything about her? Then I’ll have failed her as seriously as her father failed her.”

  “Verity.” David’s tone was commanding. “Take a deep breath. I know this is hard. I can’t imagine how hard.”

  “Too hard,” I said quickly. “That’s how it feels at some moments. But I know I can’t make this about me. It has to be about what’s best for Gemma, even though I’ve been the one living with this empty, needy space inside me for seventeen years.”

  “Speaking of empty and needy, eat your lunch.”

  I did, finishing the sandwich quickly—I find myself to be very hungry these days—and wishing I’d bought a cupcake to go with it.

  “Soledad Valdes called me,” I said, sitting back in the very uncomfortable guest chair. “It wasn’t a surprise. The woman who accompanied Gemma to Maine told me someone would be checking in with us.”

  “And?”

  I shrugged. “And she was very nice, as always. She asked how things were going. I told her we were fine. She asked if I needed any help, someone to talk to, or if I thought Gemma would benefit by seeing a therapist.”

  “Reasonable questions.”

  “Yes. I told her no, we were doing fine on our own, but that I wouldn’t hesitate to reach out if necessary.”

  “And would you? Just asking.”

  I was angry for about half a second, and then I wasn’t. David knew about my not very successful experiences with professional therapists and support groups in the past. Of course he’d wonder if I’d reject that avenue of help.

  “Yes,” I said firmly, “I would reach out. Now that Gemma is in my care, everything has changed.”

  “Good,” he said. “What else? Your face is all screwed up.”

  “Is it?” I rubbed my fingers along my eyebrows, as if to smooth away the lines of tension. “It’s just that sometimes I catch Gemma looking at me with what I’m sure is amused contempt.”

  “Verity,” David said with mock sternness.

  “No, David, I’m sure I’m not imagining it. And other times I wonder if she hates me, and then I think, she doesn’t care enough to hate me. I’m beneath her notice.”

  “She does care about you,” David said, “and about what you think of her. I know it. And she doesn’t hate you.”

  I felt momentarily annoyed. “How can you be so certain?” I demanded. “You haven’t even met her yet!”

  “Because,” David answered calmly, “I’m far more objective than you are. I’m more objective than you can be. You so want her to love you that you perceive any word or gesture—or look—short of abject adoration as hatred or, as you said, amused contempt.”

  I sighed. “Maybe you’re right,” I conceded.

  “I know I’m right. You have to relax a bit, Verity. I know it’s easy for me to say. I’m not the girl’s long-lost mother. I’m not the one yearning for a relationship with her. But I worry about your happiness. You shouldn’t make things harder on yourself than they need to be.”

  “I appreciate your concern, David. I do.”

  “Even if I sound like a fusspot?” he asked with mock solemnity.

  I laughed. “A fusspot? Now that’s a word I haven’t heard in an age.”

  “My grandmother used it all the time. If someone wasn’t a fusspot, she—it was usually a female who was at the point end of her verbal daggers—then she was a hussy or a skinflint.”

  “Yikes. One of those old-fashioned formidable grandmothers, was she?” I asked.

  “She was old-fashioned even in her youth, from what I’m told. Right out of the Victorian age in terms of her code of behavior and morals. I don’t know how she got that way. Neither does my mother. Mom was the last of six children and says she knows the least about Grandmother. Her siblings, my aunts and uncles, were never willing to talk about The Family—I’m using capitals there—to the younger generations. Too painful, maybe.”

  “And your mother? Is she as formidable as Grandmother?”

  Now it was David’s turn to laugh. “Not in the least. Mom—she just turned eighty, by the way—is the sweetest, most laid-back woman you’d ever want to meet. Not weak or silly or lacking in courage. Just—nice.”

  I thought about my own mother, about how she was much like David had described his, and how I still missed her. And suddenly I remembered a line from an episode of Miss Marple, one starring Geraldine McEwan as the elderly sleuth. A character is recalling the little girl she once cared for. “Poor, motherless mite,” she says and when I first heard those three words spoken with such feeling, I immediately associated them with my daughter, wherever she was. I associated those words with me.

  I still haven’t been able to watch that episode a second time.

  “David?” I said then, not really expecting an answer but needing to ask the question. “Do you think I have a right to hate Alan? He made me a victim, but I chose him in the first place, so some of the responsibility has to be mine. But with Gemma, it’s a different situation. She definitely has a right to hate him, I think. She’s an entirely innocent victim. She didn’t ask for Alan to be in her life.” Or, I thought, for me.

  “I don’t know about anyone having a right to hate. Hate is ugly. It always seems to r
ebound on the hater. Certainly, there can be a motive to hate, but I’m not so sure it should be acted on.”

  I sighed and got up from the chair. “You’re right,” I said. “Hate is never the answer. Well, I should let you get back to work.”

  “And you want to get home and check on Gemma.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  David came around the desk and gave me a kiss. I held on to him tightly. I do love this man.

  While I drove home to Birch Lane, I thought more about what David had said about hate, and I also thought about forgiveness. For years I’ve been wondering if I’ll ever be able to forgive Alan for an act that was so ignoble, that had no purpose other than to cause me pain and deprive me of my child. Alan’s stealing away Gemma was an entirely selfish act, one with absolutely no thought for the well-being of me or, more important, of our daughter. I don’t care if Alan is officially diagnosed as mentally ill. Mental illness shouldn’t be an excuse in a case like this. I posed no threat to Alan. I did nothing to hurt him. But for all of our relationship, he saw me as an object, as a possession, not as an independent, self-determining person. And for most of our relationship, I let him do that. So maybe it’s me I can’t forgive.

  I’ve spent years wondering about that, too.

  Chapter 21

  I recognized the handwriting, of course. I’d known it all my life, that large, round, almost childishly deliberate hand. It was my father’s. The Florida postmark further identified the card as being from Tom Peterson. He would have read the news of Gemma’s return on my website. I’d always suspected he’d followed the progress of the case—or, the lack of progress—though he never mentioned as much in his annual birthday and Christmas cards to me.

  For a split second I had the impulse to bury the card way down deep in the trash. But that would solve nothing.

  I handed the card to my daughter. It was addressed to Gemma Peterson-Burns.

  “Tom and Valerie Peterson,” she read.

  “My father and stepmother.”

  “What happened to your mother?”