by Mia March
“I didn’t mean all the stuff I said to my mother,” Alexa said, tears streaming. “But I’m still so mad at her.”
Isabel sat down next to the girl. “My mom isn’t here for me to talk to, for me to tell her I didn’t mean half, a quarter, of what I said—especially the last thing. But your mom lives just two towns over. She’s a fifteen-minute drive away.”
“But I do hate her. Even if I really don’t,” Alexa said, and started to sob again.
Isabel understood this girl so well and from a place so deep inside her that she wished she could come up with just the right thing to say. But that would take time. Trust. And Alexa to mature some.
So Isabel put her arms around Alexa, who went ramrod stiff, and held her. Isabel told her about the letter she and June had found the other day. About the bunny who’d died, about much more than that between the lines, and how the letter, their mother’s words, ended up soothing both of them in different ways all these years later. As Isabel talked, it didn’t take as long as Isabel thought it would for Alexa to go all Jell-O–like against her.
It was after nine when Isabel told Alexa she’d better go let her dad know what had happened to her and their eight thirty date, and that she’d be back.
“You don’t have to come back,” Alexa said, her voice low and shaky. “You should go on the walk. With my dad and Happy.”
Isabel smiled at her. “Let me talk to your dad.”
Downstairs, in the hallway, Isabel ran into June. “He’s in the parlor,” June said. “About twenty minutes ago, I told him I’d go see what was keeping you and reported back that you and Alexa were deep in conversation. He glanced up the stairs as though deciding whether or not to intervene, but then went into the parlor with a sigh and the beer I gave him.”
Isabel squeezed her sister’s hand. “Thanks, June.”
She went into the parlor, where Griffin sat staring straight ahead at the painting of the original three captains, his elbows on his thighs. The beer sat untouched on the end table.
He stood up when he saw her come in. “What happened up there? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Alexa opened up to me. Took a while, but she opened up. I can’t tell you how good it made me feel to help her feel better about things, about herself.”
Griffin’s look of shock made her smile. “Whatever you said must have really broken through. Thank you, Isabel.”
“I’ll bet if you go up and talk to her now, she’ll be open to it. We can go for that walk once she falls asleep. Or another night. Go to your daughter.”
This was what having children in your life meant, Isabel knew. Complications, interruptions. Drama. It was all give-and-take. And for every bit of sacrifice, every bit of heartrending, there was something magical and beautiful.
Isabel watched from the doorway as Griffin headed upstairs.
June appeared from the office and leaned close to Isabel. “And you were worried that you wouldn’t be a good mother.”
CHAPTER 17
June
June stood in front of a dusty, old wooden floor mirror in the basement of the inn and put on the red wool car coat. The collar still smelled faintly of her mother’s perfume—or that may have been June’s wishful thinking. She’d found the coat hanging in a garment bag on a rack of old coats. Her mother’s L.L. Bean orange down parka. Her dad’s brown leather bomber jacket. A few other wool coats that June didn’t remember. Maybe they were Lolly’s.
Her mother had been four inches taller than June’s five feet four, so the coat was a bit big; it would probably fit tall Isabel perfectly. But June loved the coat, loved how it felt, how it comforted her and reminded her of her mother. With her auburn hair and “spring” coloring, June never thought she could wear a true orange like this coat was, but it seemed to bring out a glow in her complexion, in her hazel-green eyes. Then again, maybe that was just wishful thinking too. In any case, the coat made her feel happy. Just a couple of months from now, the weather would turn November cool and she’d use it as her everyday coat.
She took it off and hung it back up, sliding it to the left toward her pile of treasures growing by the side of the rack. June picked up one of the photo albums in her pile, full of old photos of the Miller sisters, June’s mother and Lolly as children, growing up in Wiscasset, a beautiful town not too far from Boothbay Harbor. June sat down cross-legged on an old, round braided rug and flipped through the album. June found herself focusing on her aunt Lolly. She stopped at a photograph of teenaged Lolly standing in front of her family’s yellow Cape Cod in a lavender prom dress with a corsage pinned to her chest, a handsome guy at her side.
Harrison? June wondered, thinking of the mystery man her aunt had spoken of the day after June had found out John Smith had died. Lolly had come upstairs to the attic bedroom and found June curled up in the fetal position and facing the wall, tears running down her cheeks. June had been unable to stop crying. Unable to stop thinking about what-ifs. About the loss of her dream. About loss, period. The one constant. But she’d been so humbled by Lolly’s climbing the stairs all the way to the third floor, when it was so difficult for her, that she’d bolted up, apologizing to Lolly for making her worry, making her come all the way upstairs.
“I would do anything for you girls,” Lolly had said, sitting down on the edge of June’s bed. “When your heart is broken, so is mine, even if you’d never know it.” She glanced at June for a moment, then looked away. “I think I know just how you feel, even if what I went through was different.”
“Uncle Ted.”
Lolly had shaken her head. “No. Not him. Harrison. A man I once loved. While I was married.”
June caught her gasp and waited for Lolly to continue. Lolly Weller had had an affair?
“Do you remember how it was between Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County? I once had something like that. It was a love like that. But it couldn’t be and that was that. I grieved the end a very long time. And sometimes, when I think of him, my heart aches like I just said that final good-bye. But do you know what saved me?”
June had so many questions, but they’d have to wait. “What?”
“This may sound a little backwards, but—a man who I thought was so amazing, so special, loved me like crazy. That saved me. Gave me what I needed to go on. It’s what I tucked inside my heart and soul and moved on with.”
That was exactly how Henry’s admission of love had made June feel. She had so many questions for Lolly.
“Aunt Lolly, when—”
“I’m not feeling very well and think I need to get back down to bed,” Lolly had interrupted in a voice June knew well. That voice said, Don’t talk back, don’t ask questions. Just do what I say. June would respect her aunt’s need for privacy and do just that.
What Lolly had said had helped immeasurably. Because she’d never believed that John had cared, June hadn’t thought of her feelings for John, his for her, in that way: that the guy she’d thought was so amazing and special and beautiful had felt that exact way about her, and that was a gift.
In the days that had followed, over breakfast, over dinner, when she’d drop in on Lolly to bring her tea or one of Kat’s creations, June wanted to ask about the man, this Harrison, and she’d tried once, but Lolly had cut her off and changed the subject to Kat’s wedding reception dinner choices. June had understood that Lolly must be trying to be protective of Kat’s feelings about love and marriage, especially concerning Lolly and her late husband, Kat’s father. So June tucked away the nugget Lolly had shared and let it stay at that.
Between Lolly’s story and reading her mother’s letter to Isabel, June had found the strength, the words, to write the letter she’d started and stopped so many times since she’d seen that obituary. But she wrote it, addressed it to Eleanor and Steven Smith, and sent it three days ago, along with a photo of Char
lie as a baby and Charlie now. Every time June’s phone rang, she jumped.
Her phone didn’t ring often. Marley called with sweet updates about Kip, who was true to his word about commitment and was building a sleigh crib with his own hands. Henry had called once, the night after she’d run crying from his houseboat, and left a message. Letting her know he understood if she didn’t want to come in to work for a while, or ever, just to take her time and know her job would be open when and if she wanted to come back. She hadn’t called him back or gone in.
She owed him an apology for how she’d acted. For not coming in to work the entire week. For taking his generosity for granted. She’d say all that. There was more she wanted to say, she could feel it welling up inside her, but she had no idea what it was, exactly. She just knew that a pressure was building underneath her heart, that it involved Henry somehow.
She took her cell phone from her back pocket and was about to call Henry, to say something, but the phone rang: 207-555-2501.
John’s parents.
June stared at it, her mouth falling open. For a moment she couldn’t move, then realized she’d better answer it before it went to voice mail.
“June? This is Eleanor Smith. John’s mother.”
June felt her legs go rubbery and was glad she was sitting down.
“We’re stunned,” Eleanor said. “John’s father and I. We’ve been away for most of the summer and just came back yesterday. Your telephone message and your letter were waiting for us, but it took us a day to let your letter, news of a child, a grandchild, settle. I hope it’s okay that we took some time.”
June could barely speak around the lump in her throat. Eleanor Smith sounded warm and lovely. “Of course.”
“The moment we saw the photograph you enclosed of your boy, we knew it was definitely John’s son. They look so much alike—” Eleanor broke on a sob just then.
“I know,” June said. “The same beautiful green eyes and dark hair.”
“And something in the expression.”
Yes, June thought. Something in the expression.
“You know,” Eleanor said, “you’ve helped us solve a bit of mystery on our end. One of the nurses told us that John had slipped in and out of consciousness a few times before he passed and had said just one thing: ‘June.’ We couldn’t figure out what he meant, since it was November then.”
June gasped. She started to cry.
Eleanor Smith gave her a moment. “I’m so glad you wrote to us. We’re so happy you finally found your way to us.”
“Me too,” June whispered.
They’d both agreed that there was much to discuss—and see, such as Charlie—in person, so they made arrangements for the next day. At least it would give June little time to be nervous.
As she drove up I-95 to Bangor on Friday morning, June glanced in the rearview mirror at Charlie. Once again, he was admiring his family-tree poster, which was carefully placed on his lap. Yesterday, after the long talk she and Charlie had had in the backyard of the inn, about his father, what she’d learned of his death, and that his grandparents had invited them over, Charlie had jumped up and said he had to update his family tree and gone racing into the inn. He’d come running out a minute later with the poster and his lucky green pencil, then carefully added the word heaven inside a circle next to his father’s name and then two new names: Grandparents: Eleanor and Steven Smith.
Now they were on their way to meet those grandparents. After all the searching June had done over the past seven years, particularly when she’d first discovered she was pregnant and again these past few weeks, it seemed almost wrong to so easily pull into the driveway of John Smith’s parents’ home. Their white clapboard New Englander, with its neat rows of flowers and blooming window boxes, looked friendly and welcoming and helped calm her nerves.
As June and Charlie got out of the car, the front door opened and a couple came out onto the porch and waved. When she and Charlie stepped up to the porch, both Smiths reacted the same way—they burst into tears, covering their mouths with their hands and then falling into each other’s arms.
“You don’t like us?” Charlie asked.
Eleanor Smith knelt down in front of Charlie. “Oh, we like you. We like you very much, Charlie.” She stared at him, every bit of him, drinking in the sight of her grandchild, this walking, breathing connection, continuation, of her child. “You look so much like your daddy, Charlie. I can’t wait to show you photos of him when he was seven. Wait till you see.” She stood, and Steven Smith, tears in his eyes, wrapped Charlie in a hug, shaking his head with “He’s the spitting image. The spitting image.”
She could see John in their features too. In Eleanor’s green eyes and fair skin and Steven Smith’s strong jawline and dark hair. She saw so many emotions in their faces as they watched Charlie kneel down on the lawn to pet their orange cat, who rubbed against his leg. Wonder. Joy.
“Charlie, would you like some fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and milk?” Eleanor asked.
“Yes!” Charlie said. “Oh, wait, we brought a box of cookies that my cousin Kat made. She’s a baker.” He ran to the car and took the box Kat had made up and carried it over to Eleanor, who burst into tears. Charlie opened the box and held it up. “Kat always says you can’t cry and eat cookies at the same time, so you might as well have a cookie.”
That made Eleanor laugh and she knelt down and pulled Charlie into a hug. “I’m not sad, Charlie. I’m just so incredibly happy to know you. It means the world to me that you’re here.”
“So can you tell me about my dad?” Charlie asked, holding out a cookie for the cat, who sniffed it and walked away.
Steven Smith put his arm around Charlie. “Let’s go in and talk and see those pictures. You won’t believe how much you look like your dad.”
The moment June stepped inside the Smiths’ house, she saw the painting, hanging over an upright wooden piano—of John, just as she remembered him. He was sitting on the porch of this house, his feet covered in fall leaves of vivid yellows and burnished oranges and bright reds. She’d stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Charlie followed her gaze.
“Is that him? Is that my dad?”
June held Charlie’s hand. “That’s him.”
“I look just like him!” Charlie said.
“You sure do,” June whispered, unable to say anything else. She still couldn’t quite believe she was here.
They sat on the sofa, the Smiths flanking her and Charlie, a photo album open on June’s lap. Eleanor and Steven went through the pictures, of John as a baby, a toddler, on a two-wheeler bike and skateboard, at school dances, in all kinds of boats. She’d known him just two days out of the life depicted in these albums. Two days.
She thought of Albert Brooks’s lawyer in Defending Your Life, telling him to take the opportunities given him on earth. June had taken the opportunity presented in John Smith. And she’d been given her memories and a beautiful child.
While Charlie played with the cat, whose name was Miles, Eleanor told June that John had been diagnosed with leukemia when he was nineteen, a year and a half before he died. He’d wanted to travel the country and see amazing things, such as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit and platform shoes in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and J. D. Salinger’s hideaway house in New Hampshire. He’d been in New York to walk in Strawberry Fields in Central Park and see Greenwich Village and buy a book, any book, in the Strand bookstore. He’d made a deal to call his parents every day around dinnertime, to check in, no matter what. And every night, he called, for the three weeks he’d been traveling. Sometimes he’d leave a message. Sometimes he’d tell them a funny story about something he saw.
“When he didn’t call by dinnertime on November tenth, I knew,” Eleanor said, her fingers touching a photograph of John in a 5K-rac
e T-shirt. “I remember taking out the roast from the oven around five fifteen, and realizing very suddenly that he hadn’t called, and he usually called between four and five, since we always eat at five thirty. I remember staring at the clock, and when it ticked past six, I knew. I called the hostel where he was staying, and the manager told me that the maid had found him unconscious on the floor at just before one o’clock, right by the door, as though he’d either been about to leave or had just come in.”
One o’clock. Exactly when she and John were supposed to meet in Central Park.
“There was a mix-up in notifying us,” Steven said. “The hostel manager had been told by the EMTs that the hospital would notify the parents, and the hospital was under the impression that the manager had alerted us and that we were on our way. If we hadn’t called the hostel at six, I’m not sure when we would have been called. But he passed away within an hour of being found in his room.”
“He was just fine the day before. Just fine,” Eleanor said, her voice cracking. “He’d been in New Jersey for a few days, wanting to see that famous little club where Bruce Springsteen played before he got famous. He was just fine. And his first two days in New York, he sounded so happy, his voice strong. But that’s how cancer can be. One minute you’re standing and the next, an infection you didn’t even know you had is slowly atta—” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, her husband rubbing her back.
June had had no idea he’d been sick. No idea. And he’d been terminally ill. Dying. It scared her even more for Lolly. She closed her eyes for a second, unable to process any of this.
“And now we know what ‘June’ meant,” Eleanor added. “He was thinking of you with his last breath. You must have been very special to him.”
June took Eleanor’s hand, and his mother smiled at her. And for the next hour, while Charlie and his grandfather played badminton outside, June told Eleanor all about her son’s last two days, how she’d fallen in love at first glance, what they’d talked about for hours. By the time Steven and Charlie returned, both women were crying, and June assured Charlie that once again they were happy tears.