Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans (27 page)

“No, it was a freak accident.” She looks from the road to him. “Why are you punishing yourself? You did the best you could under a horrifying circumstance.” She pauses, not knowing if she should say what else she thinks, not knowing how he will take it. How angry he will get. But he has to know it means something, means everything, to her. She reaches for him, turning his head to face her. “And you survived,” she insists.

“That’s right. I did.” He fights the grief then, she hears it. “And my brother died right there on the blacktop. He didn’t deserve that, nobody does. He looked up to me and I didn’t come through for him. And you ask why I’m punishing myself? I don’t know. Why was I driving? Why did Neil give me the keys? What made it him instead of me that day?” He sits back and drags his hand over his eyes. “He needed me. Oh Christ, it’s just too much, Maris.”

“Listen. Listen, you’ve got to stop blaming yourself. You’ve got to let that go.”

“But if I let go, he’s gone.”

There it is. His fear is of losing Neil completely. This is how he keeps him alive. “Jason, Neil will always be a part of you. In your memories, in your heart. Come on, he’s in all your designs. And as sad as it all is, everything happens for a reason. So something came out of that accident that you’re not seeing and can put it all to rest for you.”

Jason looks out the window at the road. “I don’t think so.”

“Stop it,” she says, her voice rising. “Just stop it and don’t you give up. Listen, you’re here where Neil died, looking for answers still.”

He turns and watches her and she sees his defiance, the look that says she can’t change this. “So let’s say Neil drove the bike that day. Neil was in control.”

Jason nods almost imperceptibly.

“Okay. Okay, so see? He would drive down the Turnpike the same way you did, but there would be little differences. Maybe he’d arrive here a few seconds later than you did. And the bike would be positioned differently than when you drove it. And with that car coming out of nowhere,” she pauses for a moment, “maybe you’d
both
be dead today.”

“Would it really make a difference?”

Her eyes sting with quick tears and she turns and reaches for the door handle, struggling with it for a second before pushing the door open and nearly spilling out. Just as quickly, Jason lunges toward her and grabs her arm.

“Maris, please.”

“No, no
you please. You please!
” Tears streak her face and she turns to get out of the SUV. She’ll walk home if she has to, she is so angry. Why doesn’t he see it? She struggles, but he holds tighter, his other arm reaching around her and turning her back to him. “God Jason,” she cries. “
Would it make a difference?
Those beautiful beach cottages would never be restored. Your sister’s children would’ve lost
both
uncles. Your beach house would be sold, your father’s
barn
torn down. Your parents … ” She smiles sadly. “I would never have ridden the carousel.”

“Okay,” he says, then reaches past her and closes her door. “Okay.”

“And you wouldn’t be in my life this summer.” She waits then as a few cars pass them, the radio blaring in one. “Don’t you see how your life moves with others? We’re all connected, you know? Didn’t Neil ever explain that to you?”

“Explain what?”

“The driftline. On the beach?”

He looks at her and shakes his head.

“Sometimes you have to be on the outside looking in to see things clearly,” Maris goes on, quieter now. “I am on the outside, and the answer you’re looking for is right in front of you.” She turns in her seat, facing him, reaching her hand to the side of his face for just a moment. “Your brother loved you so much. And if he saw how you’ve come down on yourself, loading your head up with guilt and conscience and
whatever
, wasting your life, he’d be really pissed off. And he’d let you know it, too.” She leans close, grabbing his arm with a small shake. “He’s gone, but he wants you to live. Don’t you see it?”

“No, I don’t.”

She studies his still face, his eyes. “The keys, Jason. The keys. You know how sometimes you get a sense of something that is about to happen, just for a flash of a second? Maybe that the phone will ring, or the car break down. Well when he tossed you the keys, which was
not
random, he must have known in some way. He handed you your
life
.” Tears streak her face again. “He knew. You’re
alive
because
of
Neil,” she insists. “Alive. So let your brother go, and live, Jason. That’s what he would want. You know he would.”

Maris is surprised at how her chest fills, how her lungs drag in breaths. The bike might as well lay twisted on the road in front of her. Sirens might as well be screaming, blood might as well be staining the pavement. She is with Jason completely, comforting him at the crash. “Just live,” she pleads.

Jason looks long at Maris before slipping out of his suit jacket with agitation, pushing open the door and stepping outside, standing motionless, not sure what to do, where to go. The air shimmers with heat; dry grass snaps beneath his shoes in the slow steps to the edge of the road. Standing at the hot, black pavement, he crouches down, his arms resting on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him. He becomes unusually aware of his prosthesis in this position and though he wears a special sock where it attaches to his leg, the skin there is soaked with perspiration.

Warm minutes tick by on the roadside and every emotion pumps through his heart. Anger. Loneliness. Grief. He came to his brother’s deathbed looking for answers, for some way to let go, and it is happening because there is something else now. Someone else.

Still crouching, Jason bows his head and closes his eyes with this goodbye. In time, how much he doesn’t know, her hand rests on his shoulder. He reaches his own hand up and presses it over hers. She gives him a small smile when he rises to his feet, his shirt wet with perspiration, his face wet with emotion.

“Come here.” When he reaches for Maris, she steps close and he holds her face with his hands and presses his lips to her forehead. She is the here and now and he will not let go, not of today, not of tomorrow.

She pulls back and looks at him, her fingers touching his face, lighting on his scar. “You okay?” she asks.

Jason nods and slips his arm around her, walking her through the dry grass back to the SUV. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. I’m tired, and have to sit down somewhere quiet.”

He closes the door for her as she settles back into her seat, then walks around to the driver’s side, wiping his face and giving a salute to the road before opening his door. Maris reaches for his hand as he pulls into traffic and drives away.

.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I
n Hartford’s Little Italy, they walk a few blocks past brick-front bakeries, pizzerias and clothing boutiques with racks of boho clothes set up outdoors. Tables spill from cafés under the shade of sloping canopies. Local markets sell fresh produce, peppers and spinach pies. Three-story tenements, their small lawns manicured, shrubs trimmed just so, line the side streets. Finally they turn into Bella’s, into its dim interior, its aroma of lasagna and fresh baked bread, its quiet.

“Hungry?” Jason asks. A crystal vase holds a small bouquet of silk flowers and a candle’s flame flickers low inside a red glass globe between them.

“Starved.”

He asks for a carafe of wine and after their meals are ordered, fills each of their goblets.

“Welcome back,” Maris says as she cups her glass in front of her. He had put on his suit jacket before coming into the restaurant, attempted to straighten back his disheveled hair and his face shows a shadow of whiskers. What she sees now, behind the evidence of the difficult day, are glimpses of the old Jason.

“Welcome back?”

“To life, Jason.” She reaches for his hand and holds tight.

He touches his glass to hers in a silent toast. “Every now and then it all comes to me in a flashback. Like that night on the boardwalk with Kyle. I needed you to know, Maris, in case it happens again. Hysterical amnesia is funny that way.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“Paige is the only one who knows I was driving the bike.”

“You never told your parents?”

He shakes his head. “The first week in the hospital, I was in rough shape. The whole business with my leg, and well, it was bad. The doctors didn’t know how I survived the crash. So by the time I was coherent, the police reports had been filed. Somehow they got it that Neil was driving. Whether they misunderstood me in their questioning when I was pretty much out of it, or if a witness said something, I don’t know. But I didn’t have the strength to even move, never mind go through it all again. So I let it be.”

“Except with your sister.”

“With Paige,” he says, nodding. “The details of that day came back slowly. Little things, like Neil pointing to the side mirror, I didn’t remember for years. But I knew that I was driving as soon as I woke up. So one night, Paige stayed late at the hospital watching some television show in my room. Never mind that I lay there with no leg and partial memory, she knew something
else
was eating me up. And it seriously was. So I told her.” He pauses and sips his wine.

Maris knows that even in his pause, in this small silence, a part of his story is being told to her. There’s an aloneness to it, and that’s the place he’d been in until he told his sister.

“She never blamed me. You know my sister. Once I told her, she did everything she could to help me get my shit together. The phone calls and letters and home cooked meals never stopped. Never. Through the physical therapy, head therapy, medical therapy, she didn’t give up on me.”

“You’re close.”

“Very.”

“You weren’t involved with anyone who could help you? No girlfriend?”

He sits back and sets his hands flat on the table. “Maureen. One look at my missing leg, physical therapy schedule and mostly at my loss of income and she split.”

Maris considers a
life
rich, his in architecture, walks on the beach, family, the past. “And no one since, in all these years?”

“No one steady. Not until today.”

She tips her glass to his. “And what about the car that hit you, was it a kid? Joyriding?”

He hesitates, as though still not believing it. “It was an older man. Late sixties. He had a heart attack at the wheel with his foot on the gas. I doubt he even knew what hit him. Or what he hit, either.”

“Did he survive?”

“He did. He pulled through.” He lifts his glass, sips the wine. “So what was it all for? That was God’s plan? To just pluck Neil off the earth that day?”

“I don’t know,” Maris says under her breath, picturing the day’s sad carnage. “How did
you
survive, afterward?”

The waitress places a basket of warm bread and a plate of foil-wrapped butter tabs on their table.

“It’s been a long trip, let me tell you,” he answers. “Fueled by a dose of liquor and medication along the way.”

“Your way of losing yourself?”

“To put it mildly.”

“Sometimes I think that’s why I eventually moved to Chicago,” she says. “To lose myself. You had your medications of choice. Mine was the big city. Chicago felt like a really good tranquilizer.”

“How so?” He leans forward, taking both her hands in his.

Maris thinks back on her whirlwind city life. “It’s simple, actually. Between my hectic career, Scott and the crazy social calendar we kept, I had no time to look over my shoulder. Chicago kept me very busy, and
that
was the drug, leaving no time for questions. An aunt in Europe? A missing sister? Family secrets? I was cushioned from it there.”

“You’re not going back?” Jason asks, his eyes never leaving hers. “I saw the email on your porch today.”

“Scott wants me to fly back next weekend. To talk about things. He doesn’t think it’s over between us.”

“Is it?”

Maris watches the man seated with her, his dark brown eyes glancing at her in a way Scott’s never would. “Maybe it was never over between
us
,” she says, “whatever we started all those years ago out on Foley’s deck that night. Remember?”

“Remember?” For the first time all summer, she sees a spark in his eyes. “You’ll have to refresh my memory.” A slow grin spreads across his face.

“Huh. You wish,” she says, grinning right back.

Jason unfolds the red and white checked cloth from the breadbasket and butters a slice of warm Italian bread. He speaks so softly, she almost misses his words. “I never forgot that kiss. Through it all, I never forgot you, sweetheart.” He hands her a buttered slice of bread.

Maris doesn’t realize just how hungry she is until she feels the warm, doughy bread in her mouth. “Mmh. Heaven.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

She follows his gaze around the restaurant, seeing the golden light of late day slant into the dim room, seeing the tables and flowers and red candles. Paintings of piazzas and olive orchards hang on the walls. The aroma of fresh tomato sauce fills the air and the taste of wine lingers in her mouth. Her eyes stop when they meet his.

“Because I’m in heaven,” he says. “Sitting right here with you.”

For the first time in years, pregnancy tests sit on her bathroom counter. Eva bought two, knowing that whatever the outcome, she won’t trust its results and will try again. She looks at her reflection and sweeps a stray eyelash from her cheek, expecting a change in her appearance other than the layered haircut. Expecting that sense of familiarity to come to her, that spark of recognition now that her hair is shorter and off her face. She looks into her reflected eyes, searching for someone else, for her mother to talk her through this. To smile for her and be happy, whether it is yes or no. She picks up the package and reads the bold print for the second time.
White – Not Pregnant. Pink – Pregnant
. After a few minutes, she checks again and sees that she is not in the pink.

What surprises her is the feeling. She’d thought she’d be relieved. She’d thought her life and family had passed the baby stage. And yet, it is hard setting down the test and turning away, glancing in the mirror and not seeing a smile. The white result shifts everything. It shifts her focus. It shifts her mood. White means instead.

Instead the house is still. And quiet.

Instead of calling Matt at work with good news, her voice is sad. She wonders if he hears it through the relief she forces over her words. “At least now we can move ahead. Taylor will be in high school before we know it.”

Instead of looking for Taylor’s old baby things in the attic, Eva climbs the ladder to empty the contents of the old trunk so Matt and Kyle can move it downstairs and repaint it a sand color. She’ll stencil starfish on it and use it in her office for extra storage.

She pauses at a carton of Christmas decorations and lifts the cover to see glass ornaments and window candles and velvet bows. For the past week, her thoughts have moved along the timeline of a pregnancy. When Taylor begins eighth grade in September, she’d be two months along. When her latest sale closes, she’d be three months. The baby’s movements would start to be detected. Looking at the Christmas ornaments now, everything has changed. She will
not
be five months pregnant in December. Baby items will
not
be collecting in the extra bedroom.

Knowing there will never be another baby in their home makes her think back fondly to when Taylor was a baby. Opening the trunk, there are candlesticks inside, and Taylor’s Communion Dress wrapped in tissue, a shoebox of loose photographs, tablecloths and doilies. Memories, memories, all of them, to be taped up in a cardboard box now as she empties the trunk. In a way, she’s missing, too, the new baby memories that’ll never come to be.

When the trunk is empty, Eva presses the lid closed until the old latch clicks inside. Crouching in front of it, her hand runs across the surface. The finish feels dry and cracked and it will need to be carefully stripped. She wants to see the back surface, and pulls one end of the trunk away from the wall. Sunshine comes through the attic window and catches on a sliver of gold thread snagged on the back hinge. The space around her swims with dust particles floating in the afternoon sunlight, like some sort of dream. The thread is twisted and so she carefully unwinds it and lifts a dusty, faded blue velvet pouch. It looks like it has hung there for years, long forgotten.

Eva sits on the closed trunk and leans into the sunlight shining in through the attic window. She gently slips her fingers through the golden threads and opens the velvet fabric. In a moment filled with wonder, she tips the bag sideways, catching in her other hand its glimmering contents.

A beautiful etched star hangs on a braided gold chain, which doesn’t make any sense. It looks like the exact same necklace that Maris wears, the only one of its kind, designed purely for her. Eva’s finger lightly traces the gold star, a thought playing games with her heart. The circumstances of her adoption, according to Theresa, though very sad, are filled with love.

Maris also lived very sad young years. She suffered a terrible loss when her mother died. Could they have possibly suffered the same tragedy? Is that why Maris is a part of her life, under the guise of being a summer friend? A thought comes, but no. No. It can’t be. No way. Someone would have told them. Could their two lives have started in the same home, with the same mother? She closes her fingers tight around the necklace, unwilling to look on the back of the star yet. Various thoughts float like stardust, coming together brilliantly.

If there are two identical star necklaces, custom-made and tailored with significance to a lost mother, then there must be two daughters. Two nieces with an aunt in Italy. Two separated nieces with inscribed stars.

She moves her touch around to the back of the pendant and feels it on her fingertip, the engraving in the gold.

Everything in her life suddenly comes together in that one, clear instant. She knows.

Sitting alone beneath the rafters, she knows. She knows as she looks down at the star, as she closes her eyes, as she folds her hand around the pendant, the chain hanging loose. She knows when she holds it to her heart.

Sitting in that attic with dust and joy and regrets and happiness all around her in the memories, she turns the pendant over and reads the delicate script inscribed there.

Evangeline
.

Time suddenly moves differently, faster than just an hour ago when life stretched long before her with emptiness. She rushes downstairs to her dresser, rummaging over the top of it, through her jewelry box, searching for the telephone number where Theresa and Ned are vacationing this week. She yanks open drawers. Her hand skims for the slip of paper with the Martha’s Vineyard number on it, because no surprise, the little cottage they’re staying at has no cell service. For the life of her, she cannot remember where she put it. Not in the kitchen, on the top of the refrigerator, beneath fridge magnets, in the cabinet, in the junk drawer, in her handbag on the counter.