3. Jess
Jess watched after Glory until she disappeared inside.
Nikki and Marta’s cars were gone, which was a relief, but Jess still had plenty to do to get dinner ready and figure out how she was going to structure Glory’s days now that she wasn’t going to school.
But somehow, Jess couldn’t bring herself to get out of the car. Instead, she just looked up at the imposing Victorian and felt small and overwhelmed for a moment.
It was hard not to picture the first time she had come here, how impressed she had been, how in awe of the massive house and the sprawling gardens. Now it all felt like too much.
She slid her phone out of her pocket, expecting that she should want to call Silas. A couple months ago she would have actually tried, and then felt hurt and betrayed all over again when he didn’t answer or return her call, even if she told him she was worried about one of their girls.
But instead she realized, not for the first time, that who she really wanted to talk to was Mary McKinnon. She’d found herself wishing for that more and more often lately—maybe because now she was around the age Mary had been back when Jess stayed with the McKinnons.
Growing up with a single mom hadn’t been lonely for Jess, because her mom had a sense of fun and adventure and kept them busy. But when she got sick, things got hard fast. And no one was ready for her to pass so quickly.
Uncle Brian was ready and willing to take Jess, but since her mom passed without a will, and Brian was single and lived in a one-bedroom apartment, the system had him jumping through some hoops, even making him pull a permit and get city approval to wall off a separate bedroom for her. By the time the powers that be would allow her to be moved from the Florida Keys to Philadelphia to live with him, more than a year had passed.
In the interim, Jess had been placed in local foster care with the McKinnon family.
Mary and Louis McKinnon had five children of their own, but it felt more like twenty, since all the neighborhood kids gathered in Mary’s garden every day to play with the hose in the sandpile and pick flowers, or slip into the kitchen to make cookies or help with supper.
The McKinnon house in the Keys was grand and spacious, but perfectly unfussy, with scuffed floors, furniture that was lumpy from use, and dozens of height marks scrawled on the dining room doorframe. Books and toys lined the built-in shelves and it always smelled like something nice was cooking.
As an adolescent, Jess might have thought at first that she was too cool to help the littler children and their friends bake gingerbread or play with them in the hose. But all the McKinnon kids liked baking and playing with the younger ones. There was a cozy simplicity to their lives that Jess was instantly drawn to. It was a balm to her broken heart.
Though the mangroves grew thick between the big house and the ocean, Jess could still hear the waves crashing on the rocks at night from the room she had shared with Becca McKinnon. It was a comforting sound. The world was vast, but she was still at home in Driftwood Key.
After school, the kids would pour into the house, shedding backpacks on their way to put on swimsuits, and then head through the gate and down the path to the beach. But Jess would always curl up on the bench in the kitchen where Mary was inevitably puttering over the stove.
“Well, hello there, Jessica,” Mary would say warmly. “You came to keep me company. Will it be Earl Grey or chamomile today?”
It was always chamomile, but Jess liked being asked. It was a ritual that Mary must have known she craved after losing the life she had known for so long. Mary would pour out the tea from the copper kettle that always seemed to be warm, and then they would talk quietly about Jess’s day, or about a bird Mary had seen on the windowsill that morning and couldn’t decide what species it was, or about any number of other peaceful things.
For Jess, it wasn’t just the conversation that held her in its spell. It was also the breeze from the ceiling fan gently moving the kitchen curtains, the hiss of the boiling water hitting the teabag, and the low melody of Mary McKinnon’s voice in harmony with the clink of dishes being washed, or the rich scents of whatever she was fixing for supper that night. All those things made her feel like she was home.
After a while, she would wash out her cup, and Mary would encourage her to go stretch her legs, and she would be off to join the others.
Jess wasn’t the only foster child. A boy called Clint lived with the McKinnons around the same time that she did. He was a few years older, with a fairer complexion. But she would have known he wasn’t a McKinnon anyway. There was a hardness in his eyes that told her Clint had survived something she knew instinctively wouldn’t have happened under the watchful eye of Mary McKinnon.
Most times, Clint was just as laid-back as the others, and almost as patient. But once in a while, Jess saw his other side. Like when little Kyle McKinnon got made fun of for wearing his brother’s hand-me-downs and Clint found his bully after school and punched him in the face without so much as a word of warning.
Clint had been suspended for a few days, and Jess still remembered the furious look he’d worn on his way to the principal’s office. That night, she had slipped downstairs for a cup of water and heard Mary talking with Clint in the kitchen.
“You must have been awfully angry with him for hurting your little brother’s feelings,” Mary was saying softly.
“He’s not my little brother,” Clint said reflexively.
“Of course he is,” Mary said, a smile in her voice. “He worships the ground you walk on, Clint. Always has. And after this? Well, you’re definitely his hero now. Please don’t let him hear you say he’s not your brother.”
Clint’s arms had gone around Mary’s shoulders, and he clung to her like she was a life raft. The sight of the big teenager hugging Mary tight brought tears to Jess’s eyes. She had tiptoed back to bed right away, not wanting to interrupt the moment.
From then on, Jess had seen Clint differently, admiring his fierce loyalty and even nurturing maybe the tiniest little crush.
And so her life at the McKinnon house went on, days melting into weeks and then months. Summer days meant building sandcastles and seashell collecting with the little ones, making homemade ice cream, and riding their bikes to town to see the tourists who had chosen to visit sleepy Driftwood Key instead of Key West exclaim over the key lime pie shop and the statues in the park at the town center. In the evenings, they would make popcorn and spin elaborate plans for whoever’s birthday was next, or go outside and play ghost-in-the-graveyard until one of the littler kids got too scared and they had to come inside for the night.
Mary McKinnon wasn’t a fan of television, even though in the 80s every other family in town seemed to have a set or even two. But Jess found she didn’t really miss it. And the radio was always on in the kitchen, the gentle voices on NPR sharing the news and interviews with every interesting person imaginable, from authors to activists, at half volume to keep Mary company while they were all at school or off adventuring.
When the night finally came that Jess’s uncle called to share the good news that he was finally approved to bring her home to Philadelphia with him, she managed to stay cheerful until they got off the phone. But she melted into tears as soon as they hung up.
“It must be a relief to know you can be with your family,” Mary said, wrapping an arm around her comfortingly. “Though we will miss you terribly here. I’ll be thinking of you every day after school.”
Jess just cried into Mary’s neck, trying to memorize the scent of saltwater and cinnamon that seemed to cling to her.
“They’re lovely people,” Uncle Brian said more than once after he came to pick her up.
The McKinnons had invited him to spend the evening with them and stay the night before heading back to Philadelphia. Mary had made sure he felt welcome, and Jess had seen her pull him aside for a moment right before they left. She’d never been sure what Mary had said to him, but after she hugged him, he had tears in his eyes.
“You’re going to miss them, aren’t you?” he’d asked the next day, glancing over at her as he drove the ancient Ford up I-95 toward home.
But Jess didn’t trust herself to speak without crying, so she just nodded once and he nodded back, serious as a soldier—one of the only times she remembered him ever being quiet like that.
Of course, the life waiting for her in Philadelphia turned out to be wonderful, too. She’d had plenty to keep her busy and her spirits high. But she thought of the McKinnons often, and wished she could be back there, if only for a moment.
She thought of Mary most of all, especially whenever something went wrong. But you couldn’t ask to call your ex-foster mom every time something went sideways in your life. After all, she’d only been there for a little over a year. She couldn’t just run off to the beach to make herself feel better.
I’ll call when I grow up, she would tell herself. When I’m rich and famous, I’ll get in touch and share all my good news with them.
As she got older, it began to occur to Jess that the McKinnons had probably taken in foster children because they had to, not because they wanted to. Plenty of families did, and there was no shame in it.
But it made her all the more determined not to trouble the poor woman.
She would be in her seventies, maybe her eighties, Jess thought to herself now, wondering what Mary’s life looked like with all her children grown.
The McKinnon household wouldn’t be the same anymore—that much was for sure. But the ocean would be.
For a moment, Jess wondered again what it would be like to run off to the beach.
Her uncle had left Driftwood Key to go to Philadelphia as soon as he was eighteen, but he had been the only one left to inherit his parents’ big house on Driftwood Key when they passed. He had passed it on to Jess, and she and her family had gone there for a couple of weeks soon after his estate was settled.
Liberty and Chase had always wanted to get married on the beach, and the house was the perfect setting for it. It was a big, sprawling place with a beach just beyond the backyard that reminded Jess a lot of the McKinnons’ house, except there was no mangrove forest cutting off the view.
The wedding had been absolutely magical. One of the girls’ cousins and her boyfriend had pulled a stunt that sullied the day just a little for Liberty, but other than that, things had gone off without a hitch, which Jess thought was practically a miracle when it came to outdoor weddings.
And for whatever reason, they hadn’t been back since. A neighbor was supposed to be looking out for the place.
I could just take Glory and run down there right now.
It was obviously a crazy thought. There were a million reasons she couldn’t do that. But she couldn’t think of any of them right now. They were all overpowered by the memory of blue skies and crashing waves in her mind.
The pull of Driftwood Key was stronger than it had ever been, and she felt like a tide was lifting her off her feet, trying to carry her home.
She looked down at the phone in her hand and realized the missed call earlier was from Liberty, her oldest daughter.
I’ll just call Liberty,she told herself. She’ll talk me out of this nonsense.
Liberty was most like Jess, sensible and laid-back. She would definitely talk some sense into her mother.