Chapter Forty-Two Tessa #2
I told Maya about our run-in at Café Collage the day before Regina drowned. About the police, who didn’t believe me. About meeting Barb, whom the police didn’t believe either. How our investigation led me to the earrings.
Jasper knew Regina. No one believed me, but I felt they were connected.
It was as close as I could come to confirming her version of events, and maybe it was the same.
My instincts told me my son knew Regina.
If I’d probed, perhaps I would have seen their bond for what it was.
Even now, it’s impossible for me to believe I had any inkling about Jasper’s DNA.
That’s how I’ve come to see their connection.
It isn’t about biology or motherhood. They’re linked through their genes, nothing more.
When Opal started to cry, Maya and I tilted our heads toward the sound. Her cries had developed into more nuanced forms of communication. For the moment, she cried in protest of waking up. Soon, it would grow louder and deeper with hunger.
Maya stood, smoothed her pants, placed the mug on the coffee table. I followed her to the front door, where we paused, unsure what to say to each other.
Good luck to you, she said before she stepped outside and disappeared from my life.
Good luck to you, I called back, even though we didn’t need luck. We made our own luck. In that moment, I knew what my new line of jewelry would be—my signature art deco styles inlaid with opals and jasper.
Jasper’s still clinging to me as I manage to maneuver the three of us inside Barb’s house. In the foyer, he peers at Barb, curious.
“I heard there might be someone here who likes dinosaurs?” Barb reaches behind her back and holds out a stuffed T. rex. He considers it, then me, and I nod. He runs over, giving it a big hug.
“Tino-res,” he says. Jasper can’t tell me that he misses his father.
He can’t say brother or California. Yet he can name more dinosaurs than I know, his vocabulary devoted to his obsession.
It started with a book Judy bought him, one of those Poke-a-Dot books, a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet.
I’d exhausted so much time thinking about all the ways the world treated me as a pregnant woman, seeing me as irrational, reactive, weak, that I didn’t stop to acknowledge how I was a perpetrator, too, reaffirming myths about lonely women.
Judy, who had grandchildren. Judy, who thought of our island as her family to protect.
Judy, whom we’d all judged. Judy was the one to call the police when she saw the knife in Paul Marker’s hand before the blinds closed.
“There may be a few more dinosaurs inside. Do you want to come see?” Jasper nods eagerly, and Barb reaches for his hand. She winks at me as she leads him into the living room.
Barb’s house is a turn-of-the-century Tudor home.
It’s been well maintained, if a little dated in the decor department, spacious without being massive.
Although there are enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own, the children will stay with me.
I haven’t transitioned Opal yet, and Jasper’s started having night terrors again, bloodcurdling and confused.
The terrors occur less frequently when he’s next to me, his sleep more restful.
Besides, I want my children where I can smell and touch them, where I know they’re safe.
I’m sure the advice books list countless reasons why my approach is enabling or counterproductive, but it’s not like those parenting gurus have experience raising children as a single parent after your husband has violated you and countless other women—our bodies and our trust. Maybe I’ll write my own parenting book: How to Trust Your Instincts When the World Tells You Not To.
I lift Opal out of her carrier.
“Opal, do you want to see your new home?” I cringe at my word choice. This isn’t our home, no matter how much Barb wants it to be.
I carry my daughter upstairs. She takes in the grand oak steps, the hall that leads to our bedroom, the crib.
Opal’s an observer, soaking everything in with a stoic expression and sporadic babble that’s impossible to decipher.
I step inside the bedroom and walk to the window that overlooks a neat backyard with a modest patio and brown, patchy grass.
Bare trees line the fence, half obscuring Barb’s property from the neighbors.
In the spring, when the leaves grow in, her house will be fully hidden, cloaked in privacy.
We won’t be here then. We can’t be. Staring out at the yard now, it feels like something you could take for granted in a house like this—no one is watching.
Opal puts her hand on the window and makes a string of “ba-ba” sounds.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” I say to her, knowing she can’t answer me.
There are so many things she won’t be able to convey.
So many things Jasper still can’t share.
I know so much without them having to explain it.
I know how to fight for them. I know to trust my instincts.
I know that as hard as this is, it’s the right move for us.
Me, Jasper, and Opal. Barb too. This is the right thing for my family.