“Maybe it is,” said Jess. “But I’m the only one she has.”
“What about your father?”
“You don’t understand. He’s half the problem.” Jess glanced back at the house. “I’m the one who has to go.”
All that night and the next day, Emily worked busily. She drew up charts and lists and plans. She asked Laura to FedEx her passport. Then she took Jess for pictures and ordered her a passport as well. Emily was more than pleased. This new discovery satisfied her investigative soul, turning her heart toward social connections which were intricate but calculable, concrete, and fixed. Even as Jess watched, Emily returned to life, e-mailing, organizing, buying guidebooks and new clothes.
She and Jess drove to the Canaan mall and Emily bought Jess a puffy down jacket, and chenille sweaters, and good warm socks, and waterproof boots, and a pair of Indian gold earrings for good measure.
“Does it help?” Jess asked.
“Does what help?”
“Shopping.”
“Let’s get Dad something at Home Depot.” Emily strode across the parking lot to the great brick edifice dedicated to home improvement. “Look at these snowblowers. They’ve already got snowblowers out and it’s not even Halloween.”
“Emily?” said Jess.
“What do you think the difference is between Turbo Power Plus and the Turbo Power Max?” Emily murmured.
“Will London make you happy?”
Emily touched her sister’s shoulder. “We have a family there. It’s just such a gift.”
What was wrong with Jess, then? Presented with this gift, she felt utterly alone and empty. George was frustrated with her for staying with Emily for so long, and Emily expected Jess to accompany her. She not only expected Jess to go; she assumed Jess shared her excitement.
Suddenly among the shiny red snowblowers Jess understood how Sandra McClintock must have felt, hearing that her mother was the object of her uncle’s affections. She realized how disconcerted Sandra must have been. Information wasn’t always such a gift; it was also a loss, the end of possibility. To tell the truth, when it came to her mother, Jess preferred mystery. She preferred to make up her own stories. It was painful to think that Gillian was someone real. Maybe Emily took a macabre satisfaction in diving into the wreck to reclaim this relic and that. Wasn’t she missing the point? The storm at sea? The end of all their mother’s hopes, ideas, and memories?
“Is that your phone?” Emily asked.
Jess glanced quickly at the number and didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk to George.
While Emily hunted down a salesman, Jess slipped away through aisles of locks, power drills, carpet rolls, kitchen sinks, doors with fanlights, bathtubs, vanities. Piled high with storm windows, a beeping forklift backed toward her, even as she scrolled through her telephone’s address book and dialed.
“Sandra?” she said.
“Who is this?”
“This is Jessamine Bach. May I speak to Sandra?”
“Oh, Jess!” Sandra exclaimed. “How are you?”
The cheerful voice sounded nothing like the Sandra Jess knew.
“I called to apologize,” said Jess as she walked down an aisle of white wire closet organizers.
“What do you mean?” Sandra asked.
“I ambushed you with information about your mother and your uncle. I saw their connection in the McLintock cookbook and I got a little carried away.” Pausing, Jess glanced at the shelves. “I was so proud of myself. I never really considered the effect it might have had on you.”
“Oh,” said Sandra. “Well.”
“I’m sorry,” Jess whispered. “I didn’t understand. I wanted to say that I do understand now. I’m very, very sorry.”
“Stop! That’s ridiculous,” said Sandra. “I’m fine, and everybody’s fine. I haven’t thought about any of that in weeks. Your discovery was worth a lot to me, as I’m sure you know.”
Jess stood before an array of paint chips. “No, I don’t know. I’ve been away. I’m out of town.”
“That’s right, you aren’t working for him anymore. I thought he might have told you. George reassessed the cookbooks after you found the McLintock, and he doubled his payment.”
“George?” Jess was shocked. “He paid you double?”
“He did,” said Sandra. “My daughter got a new lawyer because of that, and she’s settling with her ex for joint custody. We’re getting summers and every-other-weekend visitation.”
Jess plucked out paint samples in shades of blue: Chartered Voyage, Summer Dragonfly, Rushing Stream. “He never told me that.”
“Well,” Sandra said, “he felt that he’d undervalued the collection. He wanted to give me even more, but I was afraid my uncle would not have liked it. We agreed on donating to the Redwood League instead, toward the purchase of the Dillonwood Grove. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes.”
“The league is buying that tract to add to Sequoia National Park, and we’re making the donation in honor of Tom McClintock’s work on lungwort in the canopy. He was a very important lichenologist, you know.”
“I don’t think … I’m sure George never did anything like that before.”
Sandra answered with some pride, “He said he had never seen cookbooks like mine.”
Emily found Jess outside, crying among the terra-cotta flowerpots. “They’re actually plastic,” Jess said. She lifted a giant faux-stone urn. “Look how light they are.”
“Jess? What’s wrong?” Emily rushed over. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What happened?”
“I didn’t know,” Jess said.
“How could you have known? Dad wouldn’t tell us who she really was. He tried to prevent us from finding out.”
Jess shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m angry at him too,” said Emily. “I’m disappointed, but the point is to think about her.”
“I can’t think about her.”
Emily wrapped her arms around her sister. “It’s a shock, but it’s really better to know. We have to know—even if it’s painful. I know you miss her….”
“No. I mean, yes, but it’s not that. I miss George,” Jess confessed.
“George!” Emily dropped her arms, and suddenly her hands were on her hips. “Oh, Jess, don’t tell me that—”
“Please don’t say, ‘Oh, Jess.’ Please don’t be that way.”
“You said it was over. You said that you’re just friends,” Emily scolded. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie.”
“Well, what would you call it then?”
Jess quailed a little before her sister. “Understatement?”
Emily shook her head. “You’re amazing. You go from one totally inappropriate guy to the next. Just one after another.”
“It’s not what you think,” said Jess. “It’s not some motherless daughter thing.”
“Of course it is. How old is he? He’s twenty years older than you, isn’t he?”
“Sixteen years older,” said Jess. “It doesn’t matter.”
“So he’s a very young middle-aged guy? Is that supposed to be endearing? You have no common sense, Jessamine.”
Jess turned on her sister. “Aren’t you the one flying to London to look up long-lost Hasidic relatives?”
“That’s real. That’s our family. What you are talking about is yet another of your infatuations.”
“No,” said Jess. “You’re the one infatuated with Gillian’s memory. Not me. You’re the one chasing a dream. Not me.”
For a moment Emily could not speak.
“You don’t know him, but George is actually wonderful, and funny. He’s musical. He’s … secretly philanthropic.”
“That’s the problem,” said Emily. “You’re part of his philanthropy.”
“No, Emily. No. Not really. He understands me. He reads me. I’m in love with him,” Jess whispered.
Emily sighed at her legible sister.
“I’m sorry I’ve cried wolf so many times. This time I mean it.”
Emily spun around and took her receipt to Security where the Turbo Max snowblower was waiting for pickup.