Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
By the time I left the motel, it was late.
Suni and Wayne were looking after Flo and reassured me everything was fine when I messaged I’d be even later than planned.
Be safe, Suni told me. I was in no shape to go home.
I drove to Camden city park, knowing I had to make a choice.
The snow kept sheeting, obscuring the harbor.
I sat there in my car at the side of the park, cocooned in the obliterating blankets of snow, and cried.
I wasn’t thinking of any one moment or any one heartbreak—it was all just an inchoate mass of misery.
I felt a deep ache for me, but also for Tina.
And for Flo. All the years of my childhood pressed in on me. My heart hurt.
And then I made the phone call. I was shaking so hard I misdialed the number on the first try.
That old crawling, sweating feeling was back.
The guilt, the shame, the raw terror. Last time I’d turned Tina in, it had been a side effect of writing a school paper.
Although, if I was really honest with myself, I’d known exactly what I was doing.
I knew I was opening the door on all our secrets.
And I knew exactly what my teacher would do when she read about my vacation, abandoned by my junkie mother.
This time I wasn’t even pretending that I didn’t know the consequences of my actions. This time I called the police directly.
“She’s at the motel in Rockport.” I closed my eyes as I gave them the address, wanting to block out the world.
My heart was lurching in my chest. It felt like I was having a heart attack.
Tina would never forgive me for this. With this one call I was ending our relationship for good.
Even though, in reality, our relationship had been severed a long time ago.
“We’ll send someone to the motel now,” the bluntly professional voice on the other end of the line told me. “If we find them using, we’ll take them in,” the officer said calmly. “But you’ll need to come in to make a report if you want to follow up on the violation of your Social Security privacy.”
When I’d hung up, I started sobbing in earnest. I put my forehead against the steering wheel and gave in to it. I felt like she’d died.
My phone buzzed and I tensed, sure it would be Tina and she’d be furious with me.
But it was Jake.
“Hey,” he said when I answered.
“Hey.”
“Are you crying?”
“Are you psychic?”
“No, you just sound like you’ve been crying.”
“I’m still crying,” I admitted.
“Where are you, honey?” he asked softly.
The “honey” made me cry harder.
“Hey,” he said in a husky voice. “Hey, hey, hey. Is this because my cousin called the cops?”
I made an uncontrolled little wailing noise. “He did?”
“Yeah. God, sorry. I was calling to tell you—I’m sorry you found out before I could break it to you.”
I dissolved. I hadn’t needed to turn her in? Someone had already done it?
“Where are you, Zoe?”
I told him.
“Okay, don’t go anywhere. I’m with my nieces, but as soon as I drop them home, I’ll come get you.”
“Jake,” I blurted, panicked. “Can you stay on the phone?” I wiped at my face. “Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You’re not alone, okay?”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Okay.” I sat there, crying into my phone, in the car at Camden Park, for what felt like forever. Jake made soft, soothing noises and kept calling me honey. I didn’t know if I could have gotten through that moment without him.
Then there was a knock at my window. I jumped a mile.
A gloved hand wiped the snow off the glass and an unexpected face appeared.
It was Marly.
“It’s your grandmother,” I said numbly to Jake.
“Good. I messaged her.” He sounded enormously relieved. “She lives just around the corner from the park. I didn’t want you there alone. I’m still a ways away.”
Marly was bundled up against the cold in a big woolen hat and a puffer coat. She waved at me, trotting around to the passenger side and letting herself in.
“Dear God, it’s wicked cold.” She slammed the door and stuck her gloved hands in front of the vents to heat them up.
She brought the dry scent of the winter night in with her.
“I hope you don’t mind Jake texted me,” she said, giving me a sideways glance.
“Is that him?” She took the phone off me.
“Hey, you,” she said. “I’m here now. You drive safe.
Don’t go speeding and having an accident in your rush.
She’s just fine.” She signed off and hung up.
I hastily tried to wipe my face. I felt naked and bruised and unable to speak.
“I live just around the corner,” she told me, fishing a fresh tissue out of her pocket and handing it to me. “Jake thought you might want to wait for him at my place, out of the cold.”
“Oh no,” I blurted. “I couldn’t.” The last thing I wanted to do was dump my emotional mess on Jake’s grandmother.
On Marly. A woman who meant so much to me, even though I’d barely met her.
I lived in her house. I’d read the postcards and letters addressed to her.
I’d imagined her life so many times. Since meeting her at the school play I’d revised my imaginings from sad, lonely lady to glamorous woman, but she was still vivid to me.
She seemed like the kind of woman who’d had a big life, with grand loves and heartbreaks.
I still didn’t know what had happened to Freddie de Marche, but judging by the last letters I’d read, it hadn’t ended happily with him.
I wondered what had happened next in her life and who she’d married.
I wondered if I could learn the secret of how to love, and how to get over love when it broke your heart.
“Of course you can come to my house. I insist. What else are you going to do? Sit out here in a snowstorm and cry?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Marly frowned. “Come on, I’ll give you directions.”
Too wrung out to argue, I let her direct me away from the bay. Her house really was just around the corner. I turned in to a shoveled driveway in front of a small stone house with a shingled roof nestled in thick banks of new snow. Golden light fell through the windows and onto the drifts.
“Come on, we’ll get you out of the cold and Jake will be along soon.”
Marly seemed a lot warmer than the last time we’d met.
Before I’d been intimidated by her, but now she was gentle with me, kind.
When she opened the door to the house, a billow of heated air enveloped us.
Her hazel gaze took in my mute misery, and she gently placed an arm around my shoulders to guide me inside.
She took me through to the back room, which was an open-plan extension.
It had plate glass windows facing a snowy garden lit by floodlights.
Right in the middle of the garden was a little fir tree, decked out in cobwebs of Christmas lights.
There was a bookshelf across the entire back wall of the room; it held as many photographs as there were books.
“Let’s get you a cup of something hot,” Marly said.
She pushed me down into a buttery leather couch.
The copy of Forever Amber I’d found in the house sat on the table like a great fat brick, the postcards and letters wedged between the pages.
I’d given it to Jake to pass on to her. I wondered if maybe that was the source of her new warmth to me as I picked up the book.
The Paris postcard was poking out, the tip of the Eiffel Tower visible above the pages of the book.
“Where on earth did you find those old things?” she asked me as she made me a cup of hot chocolate. “I haven’t seen them for years.”
I told her. I felt awkward perched on her couch, and the whole evening felt surreal.
Marly snorted. “My daughter told me she couldn’t find those boxes anywhere. I bet she didn’t even look.”
“To be fair, it was hard to look, given the state of the place,” I said weakly.
Marly reached for the book and fished out the postcards and letters. “Did you read them?” she asked me.
I nodded, shamefaced. “Sorry.”
She waved my apology away. “I would have read them too.” Her eyes twinkled. “Do you want to see a picture of him?”
“Who? Freddie?”
“Who else?” She rose and glided over to the bookshelf and fetched a silver framed photograph. “Sylvie always said he looked like Montgomery Clift.” Marly shot me a sly look. “I bet you don’t even know who Montgomery Clift is.”
“He was in From Here to Eternity,” I said, still sounding stuffy from all my crying. The memory of watching the old movie in the cold walk-up apartment while I waited for Tina to come home almost set me off again.
Marly held out the picture frame. He did look like Montgomery Clift. The strong eyebrows, the piercing eyes, the slightly sulky mouth. Freddie de Marche was in a military uniform, looking very serious, but there was a twinkle in his gaze that reminded me of Jake.
Oh. The significance of what I was holding hit me. She wouldn’t have a framed photo of him, unless…
I’ll wait. That had been his last message to her that I’d read.
“Did he wait?” I asked Marly breathlessly.
“Of course he did. Stubborn man.” Marly forced the hot drink on me. “Drink up and I’ll get the albums, to give you some visuals to go with the letters.” She came back with a cloth-covered photo album and flipped it open to the first page. “See the size of me?”
She was young and very pregnant in the photo; she had round cheeks and a cascade of dark hair.
She was standing in front of the house on Tinker Street: my house.
It looked so different. The yard was mostly lawn at the front, with a couple of sapling lilacs planted just in front of the whitewashed palings of the front porch.
Marly had her hands splayed on either side of her huge belly.
Standing next to her, his arm around her, beaming from ear to ear, was Freddie de Marche.