The Violets of March (37 page)

I looked up from the letter, my heart beating faster with every second.
Lana
. I remembered her name instantly. She was the woman, of course, Jack had mentioned. The client.
That
explained her interest in Jack and his art.
She must have been contacting Jack to find Elliot.
The puzzle was fitting together now, all of it. I continued reading:

She asked about her daughter, your mother, of course, and because I stayed in touch with your grandfather, at least before he left the island with his new wife, Jane, I was able to give her updates, and this brought her great comfort, I know.

She didn’t want anyone to know she was alive, but toward the end, she asked me to relay her love and well wishes to Bee and Evelyn, and to Elliot, to tell them she loved them and had thought about them often over the years. I’m ashamed to say I never relayed those messages. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t think they could handle the truth, after all these years, and I worried what they would think of me, keeping a secret like this from them. They had already buried her in their hearts. But if you want an honest answer, I will tell you that Esther’s letters were my only connection to her, and I didn’t want to share that. Not with Bee or Evelyn, and certainly not with Elliot. I didn’t want to share her.

The letters stopped coming several years ago, and I’ve missed them, deeply. I wonder about where she is, if she’s all right, if she’s still living. Toward the end, she stopped including her return address on the envelopes, and my attempts to find her have all failed. I’m afraid to say, dear, I believe she has passed on.

Now I turn the letters over to you. I hope you’ll enjoy them as I have for so many years, and I hope they will help you know Esther and love her, as I have always loved her. They are full of life and hope and expectation, but deep between the lines you can see the regret and sorrow, too. As you will see, she was quite something, as are you.

Sincerely,
Henry

I leaned back in my chair and sighed, clutching the letter to my chest.
So she didn’t die that night. She staged it all, and Henry helped her.
I couldn’t wait to tell Elliot, but then I wondered if he’d really want to know that she wrote Henry for all those years and not him.
Would he understand? Could he forgive her?

I took a final look inside the envelope and saw that I’d missed something wrapped in stiff cardboard. When I pulled it out, I could see there was a photograph inside, the one that had been on Henry’s mantel, with a sticky note attached:

I thought you’d like this picture of your grandmother. It’s exactly how I remember her in my heart.

I set the photo down on the table, and reached for the stack of letters. I wanted to read every single one.

March 25

“You’ve been away for a while,” my therapist, Bonnie, said in our session a few days later. She insisted I call her Bonnie, not Dr. Archer, and I did so, reluctantly.

“I have,” I said, digging my knuckles into the blue twill armchair, feeling as I always do when I’m with Bonnie: guilty. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep our meetings. I left pretty suddenly.” I proceeded to tell her about everything: Bainbridge Island, Bee, Evelyn, the book, Greg, Jack, Henry, meeting Elliot, and Joel, too. And how I’d spent the last few days thinking it all through.

“You realize,” she said after I’d gotten it all out, “that you don’t need me anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have your answers,” she said.

“I do?”

“You do.”

“But I still can’t write,” I said. “I’m not cured.”

“Yes, you are,” she said. “Go home. You’ll see.”

She was right. When I got home later that morning, I pulled out my laptop and began writing. I wrote through lunch, through the noise of rush hour traffic, through dinner, and late into the night. I didn’t stop until I had transcribed every word of Esther’s story
.

Before I closed my laptop that night, I stared at the last sentence. It was the end of the diary, yet it wasn’t the end of the story. I knew that in my heart. I took a deep breath and spaced my cursor down to a fresh page. I may not have known how the story would end just yet, but when I did, I was determined to write it. For Esther. For Elliot. For Bee, Evelyn, Henry, Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, and for me.

March 30

Since I’d returned to New York, I’d tried not to think about Jack, but everywhere I turned, there he was. It was his presence I couldn’t shake, and I wondered if this was what Elliot and my grandmother had meant when they talked about enduring love.

And yet Esther’s story hadn’t ended the way she’d planned. Maybe that was my lesson: I could accept the failure of this love and move on from it, keeping it tucked away in my heart for a lifetime.

I called Annabelle at noon to coax her away from her office for lunch. “We haven’t properly celebrated your engagement,” I said.

We planned to meet at one, at a restaurant near my apartment. The hostess seated me, and I waited at the table until Annabelle arrived, ten minutes late. “Sorry,” she said. “Evan’s mom called. She’s chatty.”

I grinned. “It’s so good to see you, Annie.”

She smiled. “Was it a good visit? I mean, I know so much happened there, but are you glad you went?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“So what are you going to do?”

I grinned. “I know exactly what I need to do,” I said.

“What?”

“The book,” I answered. “I’m going to finish it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to finish Esther’s story for her. I’m going to write the final chapter.”

Annabelle grinned.

“This story has been bottled up so long,” I said. “I somehow feel responsible for giving it closure.”

She reached across the table for my hand. “And with it, you’re finding your own closure.”

I nodded. “I owe this to you.”

“Nah,” she said. “I just got you on the plane. You did the rest.”

“Annie, I was on the verge of becoming a cat lady. Can’t you just picture me there, in my apartment, surrounded by nineteen cats?”

“I can,” she said, grinning. “Somebody had to save you from the felines.”

We laughed, and then Annabelle looked down at her lap. “When are you leaving?”

“Leaving?”

“For Bainbridge Island.”

I knew in my heart that I was going, and Annabelle did too. But when, and under what circumstances, was still to be worked out. “I don’t know,” I said.

But the time and date had already been decided. I just didn’t know it yet.

It was after three when I got home. The message light on my phone was blinking, so I pressed the Play button.

“
Emily, it’s Jack.
”

My hair stood on end.

“
It took me a while to track down this number, and to realize that you’d left the island. I was so confused about why you’d leave without saying good-bye, and then I spoke to my grandfather. He told me about your visit, and I realized what had happened. His memory has been fading recently, so if he said anything funny about me, don’t take it to the bank.
”

The message cut off, and another started. “
Sorry. Me again. I also wanted to say, about the other night. It was you who called, right? I hope that didn’t give you the wrong impression. I was working on a painting for a client. I had yellow acrylic on my hands when she picked up. Please believe me. There is nothing romantic happening there. Emily, she’s in her sixties. Does this put your mind at ease?
” He paused for a moment. “
But there is something I’ve been keeping from you. Something we need to talk about.
” He paused again. “
Emily, I miss you. I need you. I . . . love you. There, I said it. Please call me.
”

I looked up his number on the caller ID and dialed him back, as quickly as my fingers could punch in the numbers.
He loves me.
But the phone just rang and rang. So I hung up and did the next best thing: I called the airline and booked a flight to Seattle, departing the next day.

“Will you be needing a return ticket?” the agent asked.

“One way,” I said, without pausing to think.

I packed quickly, but after I’d zipped up my suitcase, I was overcome with the feeling that I’d forgotten something. After a walk through the apartment, checking off items on my mental list, I realized what it was:
Years of Grace
. I’d been thinking about the book ever since returning to New York, and I was desperate to read it again in light of Esther’s own story.

The book waited patiently on the shelf in the living room. I pulled it out, sank into the couch, and read a few pages. I studied the title page with fresh eyes, which is when I noticed something I hadn’t seen all the times I’d read the book: someone’s handwriting, in black ink, very light and worn, but still there. I held the page closer to my eyes, and there, plain as day, were the words “This book belongs to Esther Johnson.”

Chapter 20

March 31

I
remember hearing a story in high school about a girl who had gone to Seattle with her friends but missed the ferry that would get her to the island in time for her ten p.m. curfew. Knowing that the next ferry wouldn’t come for another hour, and that her father was strict and would ground her, or worse, she panicked, and when she saw the ferry pulling out of the Seattle terminal, she threw her bag down and leaped across the gangway. But instead of landing on the ferry’s balcony, she landed in the water. She’d been taken to the emergency room and sent home with a broken wrist and a bruised chin. Krystalina. That was her name—it came to me just then, just as the ferry’s horn sounded, just as I reached the terminal and saw the boat backing away from the dock, just as my heart sank.

I had been either camped out in airports or flying for the better part of thirteen hours (the price you pay for last-minute travel), and when I reached the ferry terminal, I contemplated making a run for it and jumping à la Krystalina when I saw that I’d missed the seven p.m. boat by a mere hair. I looked down at the churning waters below, and I decided that the island could wait a little longer. Jack could wait. Or could he?

The boat docked at 8:25 P.M. No one was waiting for me but one lonely taxi.

“Can you take me to Hidden Cove Road?” I asked the driver.

He nodded and reached for my bag. “You’re traveling light,” he said. “Just staying for a short visit?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said.

He nodded again, as if he knew exactly what I meant.

I directed him to Jack’s house, and when we arrived, it looked dark, too dark.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” the driver said, stating the obvious. I was annoyed when he suggested that we leave.

“Wait,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

This was the point in movies when the woman and the man reunite—when they run into each other’s arms and lock lips.

I knocked once, and waited a minute or so. Then I knocked again.

“Anybody home?” the driver called out from the car.

I ignored him and knocked yet again, listening to the sound of my heart beating in my chest.
C’mon, Jack, answer
.

After a minute, I knew he wasn’t coming. Or he wasn’t home. But suddenly it was all too much for me. I sat down on the porch and buried my head in my knees.

What am I doing here? How did I come to love this man?
I pondered a passage from
Years of Grace
that I had always admired: “Love was not a hothouse flower, forced to reluctant bud. Love was a weed that flashed unexpectedly into bloom on the roadside.”

Yes, this love, it was not of my doing. It was natural. It was unstoppable. The realization gave me great comfort on Jack’s cold and lonely doorstep.

“Miss,” said the driver, “are you OK? If you need somewhere to go, I’ll call my wife. She can make a bed up for you. It’s not much, but you have somewhere to stay for the night.” It hit me then: Everyone on Bainbridge Island has a streak of goodness in them.

I looked up and collected myself. “Thank you; that’s very kind. But my aunt lives just up the beach. I’ll go there tonight.”