Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans (13 page)

“Hey, what are you doing?” Maris asks a few seconds later.

Eva turns to Maris, a little startled and holding a pair of amethyst stud earrings to her ears. “Pretty, aren’t they?” she asks casually.

“Pretty and not yours. Really, Eva. Put them away already, what if someone sees you?”

“Fine,” she says, turning her back to Maris and catching another glance inside the armoire. Seeing things like this, this treasure of a life all contained, intrigues her. How many Christmas mornings are held in this jewelry box? Or moments of an anniversary, or a quiet birthday celebrated over candlelight, a velvet box wrapped with a bow on the table. So many memories must unfold with each glimmering piece. She raises her hand to the armoire as though returning the earrings, but closes her fist around them before slipping them into her pocket. A long glance around the room then is more to still her heart than to observe the decorating. Finally, with a decisive breath, she walks through French doors on the other side of the room and lets out a low whistle at the balcony’s rattan chairs with overstuffed cushions, throws casually draped over the arms. She grabs her cell to snap another picture. “I found a great shop in Westcreek. It’s used furniture, all stripped and redone. Which is basically what—”

“Cottages are furnished with. Secondhand stuff.”

“Want to take a ride there? Taylor’s with Alison until dinner, and I’m showing a home in a half hour and have to fly. But if you can stop by my place at two, that’ll work.”

“Sounds good. How is Taylor doing anyway?” Maris asks. “Have you patched things up?”

“Definitely. We played Bingo on the boardwalk last night and she won a jigsaw puzzle, which we worked on till midnight. Matt, too. Hey, have dinner with us tonight. She loves talking to you and we’re all going to miss you—”

“When I leave, I know. Dinner sounds really nice. Maybe we’ll finish that puzzle too.”

Eva locks up the front door and they walk the beach roads back toward Maris’ cottage. Tall oak trees throw pools of shade on the warm street. “And I want to show you some picture frames Theresa gave me. She said they’re from my birth family. I guess they gave her a few family things during the adoption.”

“No kidding. Well that’s nice to have.” Her cell phone rings and Maris checks her caller id. “It’s Scott. I better see what’s up.”

“Go ahead, I’ve got to run. See you at two?”

Maris nods and answers the call.

“Are you wrapping things up?” Scott asks.

“I drove to my dad’s house yesterday. It’s all in order and locked up there.”

“Good. Now what about that dog?”

Maris opens her porch door and heads inside, the dog prancing with happiness at seeing her. “
That dog’s
name is Madison, Scott.”
That dog
that follows her around with hoping eyes ever since she arrived in Connecticut. Hoping she’ll keep her, hoping she’ll go for a walk, hoping she’ll throw a driftwood stick. She looks at the German Shepherd sitting on the tiled floor. The heat has her panting now.

“Madison, all right. But there’s no way we can have a pet here. It’s too much.”

“I know. Eva and Matt promised to hold her until they find her a home.”

“So you’re ready to leave Friday afternoon then?”

“Listen, I was thinking.” She’s been thinking about her new line of beach denim sketches, about Eva’s decorating, about the pretty marina and the salt marsh. Thinking about everything but Chicago. “I’d love to show you around a little. How about if we leave on Sunday? There’s a seafood place you’d like here. I’ll ask Eva and Matt to come with us.”

“It won’t work, Maris. I’ve got to be in court Tuesday.”

“Oh. I guess we won’t have time. All right, then.” She turns around and her eyes sweep the kitchen. She sees the hours spent there with Eva, talking and planning. And the times she watched the sun come up with her coffee. And the morning with Jason. Where has it all gone? Time seems like such a dream, the way it eludes her.

Maris walks through the living room past the plaid overstuffed chairs and painted end tables. On the porch, she listens to the birds and a distant boat motor, to footsteps behind a baby stroller, its tires gritty on the beach road. Two women walk side-by-side, their voices deep in conversation. She doesn’t know how she can ever sit herself in her car, fasten her seatbelt, turn the ignition and drive away.

One thing is certain. She can’t drive away this afternoon to shop with Eva. Her last hours in Connecticut have to be immersed in walking the boardwalk, taking an afternoon swim, breathing the salt air. She goes back to the kitchen, to the sun streaming in through the white shutters, to the mismatched cottage dishes stacked on the kitchen shelves. She picks up the phone and leaves a vague apology bowing out of shopping on Eva’s answering machine.

And the afternoon opens up before her. It will be a long time before she can feel so close to her mother again, can feel her presence here at the edge of the sea. It’s one of the hardest things about the thought of leaving, the thought of some sort of goodbye to even memories. Going upstairs to change into her bathing suit, she passes the painted cabinet at the bottom of the staircase and sees the dvd there. Her father had transferred all their home movies to it, and she had asked the local camera shop to add the 8mm footage found in the attic in a box of baby things. All that is left of her childhood home are scenes to watch on a screen now. She decides against going to the beach, and brings the dvd into the dining room and slides it into her laptop.

During the next hour, the home on Birch Lane comes to life, as do the day trips to state parks and Stony Point. One long-ago Christmas Eve, her mother sits on their brocade sofa with Elsa, her sister who lives in Italy. Their eyes sparkle, their heads tip close together in the telling of some delightful secret. They are definitely sisters, with the same facial features, the same strong jawline, the same wide-set brown eyes. Watching them feels like looking in a mirror, though Maris has more of her aunt’s dark brown hair rather than her mother’s auburn.

Time unfolds on her as a toddler wearing a red velvet Christmas dress, sitting on her aunt’s lap. A beaded necklace hangs around Elsa’s neck and Maris reaches her small fingers to it, lifting the beads and letting them fall again. Behind them, a cherry clock sits on the fireplace mantle, nestled in the greens of Christmas.

She pauses the movie to study her aunt’s face on the computer screen. This woman tried to sustain a fragile tie with her after her mother died. Maris touches her gold star pendant. Too fragile, apparently, to withstand the emotional swells of a broken family. The lifeline became lost at sea.

Time stops after her mother died, with no one filming for a long time then. Which, in a way, only extends the sadness of the death, keeping it central until Halloweens and birthdays finally return several years later, leading to Maris’ graduation. And the dvd closes with the early scenes the camera shop added at the end. Though they come out of sequence now, they are still new to her, and what matters is that the two scenes bring her mother to life once more. Moments together are captured. Maris and her mother on the beach that breezy September day, followed by her Christening. Every seat around the dining room table is full. The men wear suits, their ties loosened and their jackets off. The women wear dresses and jewelry. Dinner plates have been cleared away; wine and coffee remain behind as the film silently animates laughter and conversation.

But something doesn’t make sense. She reverses the disk, backing everybody up. The dining room glitters with the crystal chandelier twinkling over the table, dessert plates and flickering white candles set in place. A large wall mirror with beautiful etched scrollwork curving around its corners hangs behind the table.

Yes. There. A woman’s reflection passes over the mirror.

Maris pauses the image on her computer. Reflected off to the side in that mirror is her Aunt Elsa. She wears a suit of rich brown, with the same color silk scarf wrapped beneath the jacket and up around her neck. A large gold pin accents her lapel and her thick hair is pulled back in a low twist.

A young girl in a navy nautical dress perches on her hip, her little arms reaching comfortably up around her aunt’s neck. A little girl with a blue ribbon tying back her wispy brown hair. The scrolls etched into the corners of the mirror frame the image in an ethereal way, making it all seem dreamlike.

“Oh my God.” Maris leans forward, squinting. “That’s me.” She backs the film up to the scene of the christened baby in her mother’s lap. The baby who is obviously someone else then. Is it a cousin? Elsa’s child?

Maris replays the entire Christening segment, then pauses it to be absolutely sure. Old photo albums hold snapshots of her wearing that same nautical dress at her second birthday party. There is no mistaking that this little girl framed by etched scrolls is her.

She stands and walks around the room, back and forth, back and forth, all the while staring at the frozen scene of her aunt holding her. Finally she hits Play and the film ends with the christened baby held lovingly in her father’s arms, the gown beautiful against his navy suit.

The baby who is
not
Maris after all. The home is hers, as are the parents. She even recognizes the gown as a family heirloom, so the baby has to be family. If it is Elsa’s child, why would her father keep the reel of film in an attic box? And her aunt is never filmed holding the baby; it is always, always her mother. The way she holds her, the way she fusses over her with such mother-daughter affection made Maris think
she
was the baby.

But she obviously is not. In the last scene, her mother leans close to her father holding the infant while she smiles intimately at someone behind the camera. Probably, Maris now realizes, at herself. Maybe holding her aunt’s hand, maybe rubbing her tired eyes.

It takes every bit of effort to stop looking at the movie, to tear herself away from the second child her mother apparently had. Maris goes up the stairs to her bedroom, ties back her hair, puts on gold hoop earrings and slips on sandals. All her life she has done this, moving around, never staying too long in one place, and now she understands that it is to keep one step ahead of some shadow, some fear. It always comes to this. She has to leave.

Snatching her car keys from the dresser, she knocks the conch shell from Jason off the edge. Her hands barely catch it, shaking the same way they do when she opens the velvet box and puts on her diamond engagement ring, a ring that holds a life far away from here. An escape. Because this is too much, it is all too much. Grabbing her purse, forgetting her cell phone on the nightstand and running down the stairs as though the house is haunted, she runs outside and without stopping, gets into her car and drives off.

So her whole life has been a lie. She wipes her tears and drives at the same time. Secrets, surprises, they never come to any good. Never. Still, her mind tries to deny the truth she just saw. It has been more than a missing mother who haunted her life, who woke her up at night with vague dreams, who moved her to always run away and leave a certain sadness behind.

She understands now that she is actually more than she ever knew herself to be.

She is a sister to someone. Or was a sister. There had been another child, and that sibling, until now only a suggestion in memories and fleeting voices in the wind and visions in starlit, wish-filled skies, has finally, finally caught up with her.

.

Chapter Eleven

A
s far as Wednesdays go, Jason Barlow’s has been typical.

Up at the crack of dawn, he submitted and reviewed blueprints with two clients before taking on a new job renovating an old bungalow the next town over. Later he caught up on his voicemails and finally, at the end of the day, checked on the Gallagher remodel.

Matt had just woken up, having to work the graveyard shift that night.

“How do you do it?” Jason asked him, imagining working around-the-clock shifts.

Matt sipped his black coffee as they walked around the outside of the house, inspecting the new wood siding.

“You acclimate, I guess. I like the change.”

Acclimate, Jason thinks now. Some might call him an expert at it. Following the accident, he couldn’t live in his family’s beach home. He tried, but every day back there was a souvenir of the past, every room a mirror, every scent a memory.

So he acclimated by buying the condo and keeping Stony Point within reach.

After the accident, he knew he was crippled. Half of his left leg was gone. But he acclimated with the help of time and doctors and physical therapists, learning to walk again using an artificial limb. Now he’d be damned if he let that leg slow him down.

But the most difficult acclimation came from working solo. The two brothers had meshed like the fine gears on welloiled machinery. Neil was the carpenter and the historian. Far into summer nights, he sat on the front porch getting ideas from old yellowed plans, reviving cedar shingles and lattice windows and bungalow styles. Those ideas shaped Jason’s blueprints restoring the architectural details of another era. Then Neil and his crew completed the seaside porches, gingerbread trim and windows looking out at the sea.

So Jason had acclimated again. He kept Barlow Architecture small and manageable, doing what he had loved since sitting in that barn, listening to his father’s mason tales of what two hands had built. They built his life, those hands. Now they build Jason’s life. And Neil’s historical influence shapes Jason’s blueprints to this day. The business keeps Neil’s spirit alive; Jason owes him that much.

To cure pain, one has to feel it first. That’s what acclimating is for him, dealing with some sort of pain. And that’s what eats at him now. Either pain has to be felt, or escaped from. He pulls out of Stony Point and drives to his condo knowing that the pain of one flashback drives him away. Some invisible threshold challenges him to stay, or go. To face Neil’s memory, or leave it behind. And he’ll be damned if that one day of the accident will win again. It is early enough to pick up the designs at his condo and return to the cottage for a couple hours of work.

“Where do you think she is?” Taylor asks.

Eva looks up from the eReader she holds in her lap. “I don’t know. I hope she’s all right.”

“Huh.” Taylor continues flipping through her magazine. “Are you sure she said she’d come for dinner?”

“Yes, I listened to the answering machine two times. She cancelled shopping, but not dinner.”

Taylor turns a page. “Maybe you should check again. And could you get me a pen? I want to take this quiz.”

Eva walks into the living room. Though the carpenters haven’t finished the front porch, she and Taylor like to sit out there in the evenings, reading and talking at dusk. She checks the answering machine, then dials Maris’ cell phone and leaves another message for her to call, no matter what, no matter when. Then she grabs a pen and a bottle of gold nail polish, keeping an eye on the road for Maris’ car as she paints her fingernails beneath the glow of the porch lamp. The evening air coming in through the screens begins to cool.

“What’s the quiz you’re taking?”

“How Romantic Are You?”

“And how’d you do?”

“Wait, let me add up my score.”

Eva sets the nail polish aside and looks out at the street for any sign of Maris.

“I’m True Blue, which means romance lies deep in my heart and my boyfriend will have to know all the nice things to do for me.”

“Like what?”

“Like holding hands on the beach, and having old-fashioned manners like holding open a door. And he’ll do little things, like maybe not bringing a bouquet of flowers, but just one. Or sharing an ice cream with two spoons.”

“Sounds nice,” Eva says. She wishes Taylor, in her heart, all that sweetness.

Taylor closes the magazine and pulls her chair opposite Eva’s. She takes the nail polish bottle, lifts her mother’s bare foot and starts painting her toes. “Was Dad ever like that?”

“Like what? Romantic?”

“Yeah,” she says, carefully filling in the gold color.

Eva thinks of their night on the beach after the barbecue. “What do you mean,
was
? Can’t he still be romantic?”

“Dad?”

Eva smiles. “He’s romantic. Sometimes it can even be the way someone looks at you, or the words they say, that are sweet.”

“I guess,” Taylor answers. “The guys at school aren’t like that. It’s like it’s all backwards. They want the girls to ask
them
out.”

It is getting late with still no word from Maris. “Well, some day when you least expect it, you’ll find a romantic boyfriend. You have plenty of time.”

“Maybe I’ll read some of those romance books. Can we download one?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Eva says as she takes the polish from Taylor and begins painting her daughter’s toenails. “What time is it, Taylor?”

“Almost eight.”

“I wish she’d call. Maybe I should walk to her place and check things out.”

“After our nails dry. I’ll come with you,” Taylor answers. “Don’t worry, Mom. You’re the first person she’d call if something was wrong. So she must be okay.”

Outside, the shadows grow longer. One lone bird holds on to its song still. “You’re probably right. But we’ll take a walk over anyway. Just to be sure.”

The black sedan with Illinois plates catches Jason’s attention as he nears The Sand Bar. It is parked right in front. And that’s when his Wednesday stops being typical. He signals, slows and pulls in beside the car.

Inside the tavern, the drone of the television falls across the dim room. Maris sits alone at the bar, wearing faded jeans and a black tank top, her hair pulled back.

“People get in trouble when they drink at this bar, you know.” Jason settles on the stool beside her. “This is where Kyle got all wound up.”

“Hey, Jason. Don’t worry, I just got here.” The bartender sets a glass of wine in front of her. She reaches for her wallet, but Jason stops her.

“It’s on me.” He turns to the bartender. “Coke. On the rocks.”

They wait for his drink, Maris folding her hands on the bar, her fingers toying with the wine glass.

“Eva’s looking for you.”

“Eva. Darn it. I was supposed to stop by.”

“I was over there a while ago checking on the job. She was worried about you.”

“I went to Addison and got tied up at the house there.”

“You should probably call her. She’s keeping your dinner plate warm.” He sips his soda. “Closing up your father’s place?”

Maris nods. “Pretty much.”

“Is everything okay? You’re a little quiet.”

“Just something on my mind.”

“Seems like a pretty big something. Can I help?” he asks. When he does, he remembers his sister’s words. She said them a few years ago, when his temper was short and the accident still close.
Someday
, she had said,
maybe you’ll care about someone other than yourself again.
She had been fed up with his whole lack of enthusiasm for life after the crash, with the time he spent in bars, with his third corporate job in two years. He had told her to go to hell.

Maris shakes her head. “Thanks, but it’s complicated. I’ve got to work this one out on my own.”

He can’t help noticing the diamond on her finger and wonders if that is her complication.

“Well, I’ll just sit with you here, then.” He lifts his soda glass to her wine glass and tips it gently.

Maris isn’t used to being in a small town where people know her. Where they know exactly what to say. She glances at Jason. He looks tired at the end of a long day. The humidity has brought out a wave in his dark hair and he needs a shave.

“I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?” she asks.

“Just dinner.” He checks his watch. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Come on then. Let’s blow this joint.” He stands and holds out his hand to help her off the stool. “We’ll drown your sorrows in seafood.”

Maris finally smiles. “You know something? That actually sounds really good.”

“Okay then. Let’s take a ride and find somewhere nice.” He pulls his wallet from his pocket and turns to the bartender. “Thanks, guy,” he says and leaves the bills on the bar.

“Have a good night, kids,” the bartender tells them.

Jason holds the door for Maris and they head outside into the warm evening. The midsummer sunset casts a pink hue to the sky. “Why don’t you leave your car here?” he asks. “We’ll come back for it later.”

Maris slows a step. “I don’t mind following if it’s too much trouble.”

Jason stops and turns to face her. “You? Trouble? You’re a piece of cake,” he says, opening the passenger door for her.

She watches him settle in the driver’s seat, buckle his seatbelt, check his mirrors. Her car, his SUV. He has no idea that she can’t make a decision, can’t answer a question, can’t get her mind off a baby her family had seemingly hidden from her.

Jason backs out of the parking space and opens his window, letting the seaside air fill the truck. Eventually they cross the Baldwin Bridge spanning the Connecticut River. The sun sits low in the western sky in front of them, a red fireball on the horizon.

“Another scorcher tomorrow.” He motions to the sun. “Red sky at night.”

“Sailor’s delight,” Maris finishes.

The first exit after the bridge leaves them in the center of a small shoreline town. Maris thinks it’s one of those places where time stands still, one decade indistinguishable from the next. Main Street is a mix of historic homes, small boutiques and an old fashioned general store. Beyond are roads lined with old estates, their sloping manicured lawns overlooking a river cove. At this dusky hour, the scenery has a pastel feel to it, soft and smudged around the edges. Sailboats look like pages from an artist’s easel, docked in the cove in front of a violet sky. They follow a road that takes them to the mouth of the river where its waters empty into Long Island Sound. There, alongside a large marina, Jason pulls into the parking lot of a restaurant with a miniature golf course beside it.