Chapter 13
March 12
I decided to call Annabelle before Bee and
I left for Evelyn’s funeral. So much had happened here that I’d
forgotten about all I’d left behind in New York, including
Annabelle.
“Annabelle?”
“Hi, Em!”
“I miss you,” I said. “I’m sorry I haven’t called.
So much has been going on here.”
“Is everything OK?”
“Sort of,” I said. “But first, how are you?”
“Good,” she said without much fanfare, and then she
dropped a bomb. “It’s official. I’m finally going to face my
narcissist romantic nature and admit it: I am falling for Evan
again.”
“Annabelle, really?”
“Yes,” she said. “We had dinner and talked, and I
think we’re getting back to where we were.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” I told her. Annabelle
deserved to find love more than anyone I knew, maybe even more than
I.
“And what about the whole jazz thing?”
She laughed. “I’m working on him.”
I filled her in on Greg and Jack, and Evelyn.
She seemed particularly saddened by the news of
Evelyn, but then, Annabelle cries during Kleenex commercials.
Bee motioned to the clock. It was time to go. She
was a pallbearer and didn’t want to be late, which meant arriving
an hour early just in case of traffic, even though there was never
traffic on Bainbridge Island.
“Sorry, Annie, I’ve got to go,” I said. “We’re
leaving for the funeral now.”
“No worries,” she said. “Just call me when you
can.”
The funeral was to be held at Saint Mary’s Church,
which made me remember Esther’s ill-fated confession. Saint Mary’s
is more of a cathedral than a church, with its ornate detailing,
gold-plated finishes, and cherub-painted ceiling. There is a lot of
money on the island, and it shows.
Bee told me to go ahead and take a seat, that she’d
join me later, once she’d helped carry Evelyn’s casket to the front
of the church. I could see tears in her eyes as she looked around
the sanctuary, but her gaze stopped at the sight of Jack escorting
an older man into the church.
I waved, but Bee looked away quickly and joined her
fellow pallbearers.
Evelyn had chosen to be buried in a small cemetery
on a quiet corner of the island, and when we arrived, I could see
why. The place didn’t feel like a cemetery. It was more akin to a
park, one you’d want to return to, maybe with a picnic blanket and
a good book, or a date and a bottle of wine. A sliver of the
Seattle skyline, including the Space Needle, completed the
view.
At least two hundred people attended the funeral,
but just a handful of close friends and family came to the burial,
roses and tissues in their hands. Henry was there too, as was
Evelyn’s late husband’s family, and some of her nieces and
nephews.
The priest said a few words, and then the cemetery
staff slowly eased the casket into the ground. Everyone gathered
around to throw in a rose or two and say their farewells, which is
when I noticed Jack in the distance. He wasn’t gathered around
Evelyn’s grave like the rest of us. Instead, he stood near a
headstone a few hundred yards away with the older man he’d been
with at the church. His grandfather? I couldn’t make out his face
to check for a family resemblance. I watched as the older man
handed Jack something. I squinted, trying to make out the shape in
Jack’s hands, and could see that it was a black box, small enough
to tuck into his jacket pocket, which he did. Jack looked in my
direction, and I quickly turned my gaze back to Evelyn’s grave,
which is when I realized that Bee wasn’t standing by my side, where
she had been moments ago. Worried, I tiptoed away from the mourners
and found her in the car, slumped over in the passenger seat.
“Bee?” I said, knocking on the window.
She rolled down the window. There were fresh tears
on her face. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I just can’t. I
can’t.”
“I know,” I said. “You don’t have to be brave.
Evelyn would have wanted you to just be you.”
I reached in my coat pocket and pulled out the
envelope Evelyn had asked me to give to Bee. “Here,” I said. “This
is from Evelyn.”
Bee’s glossy eyes brightened for a moment and she
clutched the letter to her chest. I knew she would wait to be alone
before she opened it.
“Hand me your keys,” I said. “I’ll drive us
home.”
Bee leaned back in her seat as I drove the car to
the four-way stop, turning right onto the main thoroughfare that
connected the north and south sides of the island. Few cars were
out today, and the solitude matched the loneliness of the day, but
then, behind us, I heard a police siren, and then another. I slowed
the car and pulled over as, one by one, along with an ambulance,
they filed into the entrance to Fay Park.
“I wonder what’s going on?” I said, turning to Bee.
I couldn’t recall ever seeing an ambulance, or a police car, on the
island.
Bee looked out the window in silence.
I pulled back onto the road, but a police officer
motioned for us to stop, and I rolled down the window.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We’re redirecting
traffic. The detour route is along Day Road. Just pull a U-turn and
take your next right. There’s an investigation in progress.”
I nodded. “What happened?”
“A suicide,” he said. “A young one. Probably no
older than twenty. She jumped right off that cliff in the
park.”
I gasped. “How very sad,” I said before turning the
car around.
We drove for a few miles in silence. I wondered
about the woman who had ended her life just moments before. What
was she running from, and whom did she leave behind? When we
finally turned onto Hidden Cove Road, Bee stirred in her seat.
“Always the young women,” she said distantly, her gaze cemented out
the side window.
That afternoon we walked on the beach, we listened
to music, we looked at old photos of Evelyn. We sulked. It was a
day for remembering, and for me, reading. And by the next morning,
we would both be ready to face the world again, each in our
separate ways. I wondered if Esther would be too.
“You need a reprieve,” Bobby told me one day. “The
way you’ve cared for me these past weeks, you’ve been a martyr. Why
don’t you call up Frances and Rose and plan a lunch out or a
shopping trip to Seattle? I can have my mother help with the
baby.
It was a generous offer, and one I was eager to
accept. I called Rose.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing later
today?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Want me to come over on the
next ferry?”
“I’d love that,” I said. “Bobby said I could have a
girls’ day, a day off. I was thinking we could have lunch. And
there’s the street fair on Main.”
“We can’t miss the fair,” Rose said. “I’ll call
Frances and invite her to join us.”
“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “It’s been a
while since we’ve talked.”
“Well,” she said, “there’s no time like the
present. I’m calling her. You two will put this all behind
you.”
I hoped she was right.
I was glad that Rose showed up at the restaurant
first. I didn’t think I could bear to be alone with Frances.
I hadn’t told Rose about the pregnancy yet—or
anyone, for that matter. But my condition would be obvious before
too long.
Frances walked in and sat down at the table. “Hi,”
she said blankly to both of us.
Then she turned to me. “Sorry about Bobby.”
“Thanks,” I said. It was all I could say.
“Look,” Rose said, breaking the silence at the
table. She pointed out the window at a pair of schoolgirls with
painted faces, sharing a brown paper bag of roasted peanuts. Their
arms were linked together as they skipped down the sidewalk outside
the restaurant. “The fair! Let’s go have some fun. Just like old
times.”
The traveling fair made its way into town every
year, usually in April, when the winter chill was a distant memory,
but this year it had come early, catching us all by surprise. Every
year since we were young, the three of us had reenacted our own
traditions, eating cotton candy, riding the Ferris wheel, and
having our fortunes read. This year we skipped the Ferris wheel and
the cotton candy, and headed straight for the fortune-teller’s
booth.
But something, or rather someone, stopped us
first.
“Esther,” a man’s voice called out from the crowd
behind us. I turned around. It was Billy.
“Oh, hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, smiling, staring into my eyes a
little too long. “Your purse,” he said, handing it to me. “You left
it at the restaurant a while back. I’ve been hoping I’d run into
you so I could return it to you.”
He looked hurt, but I wasn’t sure exactly
why.
“Thank you, Billy,” I said, with a tone of apology
in my voice. It had been years since we’d dated, but every time I
saw him, I was reminded of something Frances had said, about the
sight of me breaking his heart all over again.
“Are you coming, Esther?” Rose called out. She and
Frances were standing in front of the fortune-teller’s tent. I
nodded and said good-bye to Billy.
Inside the tent, which was draped in exotic
tapestries, a fiftyish woman with dark hair and olive skin
approached us. I didn’t recognize her from previous years. “How can
I help you?” she said, in a foreign accent.
“We’d like to have our fortunes read,” I
said.
She nodded and then led us through an entryway
lined with strings of beads. “Fifty cents each, please,” she said.
It always seemed like a lot of money, but we paid it year after
year in hopes of leaving with a single grain of truth.
The three of us sat down on the cushions that were
scattered over the floor. The woman spread out three cards before
us. “Who wants to go first?”
Rose raised her hand.
“Good,” she said, “Choose a card, please.”
Rose chose a blue card depicting an elephant. The
woman gestured for her to extend her hand, which she studied
intently for at least a minute. Then she looked up and smiled, and
simply said, “Yes.”
She added the card Rose had chosen to a stack to
her right, and then dealt out three more. “Aha,” she said. “Just as
I expected. A happy life, prosperity, and joy. I see no rain clouds
in your future—in fact, not even a drop of rain.”
Rose smiled knowingly. “Thank you,” she said.
“Next?”
Frances nodded. “I’ll go. Better to get this over
and done with.” She had always been uncomfortable with the idea of
fortune-teller readings, yet she went with us year after
year.
“Pick a card, please, dear,” the woman said.
Frances reached for a purple card with a bird on
the front. “This one,” she said cautiously.
“Yes,” the woman said, examining Frances’s hand.
She ran her finger along the length of her palm.
“What is it?” Frances asked impatiently, retracting
her hand. “What do you see?”
“My vision is not clear,” she said. “I need to
consult the cards to be sure.”
She added them to the deck as she had done with
Rose’s card and then dealt three more in front of Frances.
After she flipped them over, the woman’s expression
clouded. “You will live a long and full life,” she said. “But your
love line, there are problems there. I’ve never seen anything like
this.”
“What do you mean?” Frances said.
“It seems there will be two great loves in your
life.”
Frances’s cheeks flushed. Rose and I giggled.
“But wait,” she continued, “there is deep grief,
too. And someone at the center of that grief.”
“Stop,” Frances said. “That’s enough. That’s all I
want to hear.”
“Are you OK, dear?” Rose asked.
“Yes,” she replied stiffly, rubbing her palm as if
to rub off the fortune she’d just been read.
“I guess that leaves me,” I said, turning to the
woman.
Before she even offered me a card, she looked into
my eyes and then frowned.
“I’ll pick that one,” I said, pointing to the pink
card with the dragon on the front.
The woman looked worried, as though I’d just
committed a cardinal sin of fortune-telling, but she reached for my
hand anyway.
My examination took the longest of all. I waited
patiently as she ran over the lines of my hand again and again, as
if trying to piece something together. After several minutes, she
let go of my hand suddenly, as if something had startled her. Then
she consulted the cards, laying three out before us.
She stared at them for a long time, and then she
finally opened her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I will give you a
refund.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you
tell me what you see?”
She hesitated and then said, “I can’t.”
I leaned in and grabbed her hand. “I need to know,”
I said with such intensity that I think it startled Rose and
Frances. “I have to know.”
“All right,” she said, “but maybe you will not like
what I say.”
I said nothing and just waited, waited for her to
tell me this thing, this terrible thing that was my fortune.
“There is little time,” she said. “You must follow
your heart.” She paused to think of the right word. “Before it is
too late.”
“What do you mean, before it’s too late?”
“There is trouble here for you. Trouble for your
life line.”
We all knew exactly what she meant. But Frances was
the only one to react.
“Enough,” she said. “We’re getting out of
here.”
“Wait,” I said. “I want to hear the rest.”
The woman looked at Frances, and then back at me.
“You must write.”
“Write what?”
“Your story.”
Frances threw up her hands and walked out of the
booth, leaving Rose and me there to make sense of this woman’s
cryptic message.
“What story?”
“The story of your life,” she said.
I shook my head. “Why?”
She nodded. “It must be done. You must write it.
Your words, dear, will have great importance for . . . the
future.”
I sat up in bed and read that last line over
again.
Could this be the sort of eerie hint that Evelyn
gave me—that these pages are meant to be in my hands? But how could
any of this have anything to do with reality, with here and now?
Why would a story from the 1940s, from someone I know nothing
about, have any relevance to my life? How could it? None of it
made sense, yet somewhere in my heart, I was beginning to feel that
maybe it did.