Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The beginning of April in Oahu meant low eighties and packed beaches and nonstop sun.
Jasmine was upstairs in her bedroom-slash-painting studio, listening as, downstairs, Alyssa and Jade gossiped about something that had happened at school that day.
Always there had been a breakup; always something had been said that needed to be unpacked.
This was the way of high schools all over the world, Jasmine knew.
Through the window, she could see Chase and his new girlfriend Rita, sunning, books splayed on their stomachs, their sunglasses catching the rays.
This was a feeling of peace she’d never known—a feeling of family communion and safety.
Just last week, Walton had signed the divorce papers, freeing Jenny from their marriage.
He’d put the house up for sale (for a price that Jenny and Jasmine couldn’t afford) and planned to leave Hawaii within the next month or two.
It meant that Jasmine and Jenny didn’t have to be afraid of him.
They wouldn’t have to imagine him any longer, lurking around the corner, threatening them with the very idea of his presence.
Jasmine was hard at work on her fourth painting since she’d begun making art again.
It was a strange and artistic take on old-fashioned surfing photographs, featuring her grandson, Chase, balanced beautifully on a board as a wave encroached overhead.
She’d spent an entire afternoon watching him surf, sketching and trying to plan out the image before she began the painting itself.
Now, as she delved deeper into her practice, she found that her color choices were surprising her.
She was developing as an artist—even at the age of seventy-eight.
It excited her to realize that she wasn’t done yet, and she still had plenty of time.
She had no plans to waste the time she had left.
It was five thirty that evening when Jenny returned from work and crept up the stairs to surprise Jasmine at her easel.
Jasmine nearly leaped from her skin. When she turned to find her daughter leaning in the doorway, watching her work, she laughed at herself and stepped away from her painting. Jenny’s smile was secretive.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Jasmine said.
Jenny didn’t say anything for a moment. “How did you choose your new name?” she asked.
Jasmine’s heart leaped into her throat. She’d told Jenny bits and pieces about her old life: that Jenny’s father was cruel, that they’d lived in Colorado, that Jasmine had done everything to get away from him, especially when she’d learned about her pregnancy.
She’d never told Jenny about her original name, not about the name she’d abandoned, because she’d felt it was too sacred.
Maybe Jasmine shouldn’t leap to conclusions about what Jenny knew or what she didn’t. Maybe Jenny had assumed that Jasmine had once had another name. After all, Jasmine wasn’t a typical name for a woman of Jasmine’s age.
Jasmine set down her paintbrush and sat on the edge of her bed. “What’s this about?” she asked gently.
Jenny stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Silence filled the space. Sometimes it was hard for Jasmine to remember that this woman before her, this fifty-year-old woman, was the baby that had forced Jasmine to change the course of her life.
It was the love she’d had for that baby that saved her.
Jasmine wasn’t the first person who’d been saved by the existence of a baby, she knew. But her story was unique in every sense of the word, if only because it belonged wholly to her.
“I thought it was beautiful,” Jasmine said finally. “It’s the same reason I named you Jenny. I thought that was beautiful, too. Isn’t that why you named Chase and Alyssa and Jade the way you did?”
Jenny’s cheek twitched. Jasmine realized that she was holding a piece of newspaper in a cylinder in her right hand.
“What’s that?” Jasmine asked.
Jenny’s hands shook as she unrolled the newspaper and spread it out on the bed.
The headline was: LARRY CALVIN JOHANNES: FRAUD?
And under it was speculation about the real artist behind Larry’s work.
Jasmine bent down to read that many art experts speculated that Henrietta Johannes was the real artist. But had any of them actually seen Henrietta paint anything herself? No, Jasmine knew. They hadn’t.
“What’s this about?” Jasmine asked, trying to play dumb.
Jenny gave her a pointed expression. “I recognize these paintings,” she said, gesturing at the photographs of the paintings a woman named Henrietta had made so many decades ago: the little girl on the mountain and the man reading a book by a stream.
They were snapshots of Jasmine’s memories.
But they didn’t feel as though they belonged to her any longer.
“You’ve seen the paintings before?” Jasmine asked.
Jenny stuck out her lower lip. “I know they’re yours, Mom.
I’ve been watching you paint for a couple of months now.
I can feel you behind these paintings. They can only be yours.
The thing that gets me is how you stopped painting for so long!
I mean, you’re so…” Jenny couldn’t bring herself to say anything more.
Jasmine sat back, stumped at how sure of this her daughter sounded. How could Jenny “feel” Jasmine behind each painting? She wanted to call her bluff.
But at the same time, how could she keep lying to her daughter? Especially when she’d already told her so much?
Too miffed to say anything, Jasmine remained quiet and turned her head to look at her new painting of Chase, her beloved grandson. She felt her daughter smiling beside her.
“I called the woman who discovered you,” Jenny said.
Now, Jasmine twisted her head around to glare at her daughter. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oriana Coleman,” Jenny explained. “She’s an art dealer who ‘discovered’ Larry’s paintings in New York City and brought him to fame.
As soon as she realized he wasn’t the painter behind the pieces, she dropped him like a hot potato and told the world what he’d done.
She assumed it was you who painted the paintings—paintings that have sold for millions upon millions of dollars, Mom. But she didn’t know how to find you.”
The back of Jasmine’s neck was hot and sticky. Rage bubbled up from the depths of herself. “You called her?” she whispered in disbelief.
“I saw them talking about it on the news the other night,” Jenny said.
“I looked up Oriana’s contact details and had her on the phone a few hours after that.
She’s a wonderful woman, Mom. She wants to help you.
She wants your name to be everywhere. I mean, she wouldn’t have ruined Larry if she didn’t believe in your work more than anything. ”
Jasmine was on her feet, pacing back and forth in front of her canvas. “I never wanted my name to be anywhere,” Jasmine whispered, too angry to speak loudly.
“Mom, listen,” Jenny said, mystified. “Nobody’s coming after you any longer. You can be out in the open. You can announce yourself for who you are, whether that’s Henrietta Johannes or Jasmine or whoever you want to be next. And Larry—my father—is old! He’s too old to do anything to you.”
Jasmine gaped at her daughter. She realized that she hadn’t told Jenny enough about her struggles and her heartaches.
It meant that Jenny couldn’t fathom how difficult it had been to build a brand-new life around a brand-new name.
Jasmine had had nobody. She’d met Cynthia and been “adopted” into island life—but it had been a lonely existence, one of fear.
She couldn’t turn her back on everything she’d built. It was all she stood for.
Jenny got up and followed Jasmine across the room, where she scooped Jasmine into a hug that Jasmine didn’t want but didn’t know how to refuse. Jasmine shook in her daughter’s arms. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s been too long. I’m someone else now.”
Jenny pulled away from Jasmine and looked in her eyes.
“I don’t want him to take credit for all the incredible work you’ve done,” she said.
“I hate that he took this from you. I hate that he forced you to run away and live your life alone. You married him because you loved him and wanted to build a life with him.”
“I married him because I was too young to know I shouldn’t,” Jasmine said. It was the same reason plenty of women had married plenty of men throughout the twentieth century (and before, going back countless centuries).
“Your story will inspire millions of women to be brave,” Jenny declared. “Remember how you helped me leave Walton? You could do that for so many others.”
But Jasmine shook her head ever so slightly, willing Jenny to recognize how personal this felt.
Jenny let her shoulders slump, then rolled up her newspaper and went to the door.
Right before she opened it, there was a wild thumping of feet on the stairs.
Alyssa and Jade were coming up to find them because they said, “We have an idea!”
An hour later, Jasmine, Jenny, Chase, Alyssa, and Jade were on the beach with ice cream cones, watching as the orange sun dripped into the ocean.
Jasmine still felt vaguely irate about Jenny calling Oriana Coleman, but she was putting on a decent show in front of her grandchildren, as she didn’t want them to see any more strife in their family.
They sat on a long, blue blanket with their feet in the warm sand and chatted about everything from Chase’s girlfriend to Jasmine’s paintings to Jade’s belief that she was going to fail Algebra II.
“You’re not going to fail,” Alyssa shot back, her tongue vaguely pink from her ice cream. “You’re always so dramatic.”
Jasmine stifled a giggle. It was ripe to hear one teenage girl tell another how dramatic she was. How could they gauge who was more dramatic than the other?