Sunny turned as pale as her shirt. “I know she said it was Monty, but Amy was . . . unstable. She said a lot of things that summer. She said she was related to Sarah Bernhardt and that her father knew J. D. Salinger. She said she saw ghosts in the house and that they told her she was destined to be the lady of Riven House.”
“How do you know she didn’t see ghosts?” I demanded.
“She said she saw the ghost of Zelda Fitzgerald dancing the Charleston with Janice Joplin. She wanted attention. Poor Monty was sorry he’d ever invited her to Riven House.”
“Poor Monty! She was twenty-two years old when she had me—she was his student!”
“She wasn’t actually. She’d graduated the year before.”
“She’d been his student and he was twice her age! Did he know about the baby?”
Sunny shook her head. “He’d gone on sabbatical to Nepal by the time she found out. I told her she should write to him but she said there was no need because she was going to have an abortion . . . I’m sorry, Clare. I know that must be hard to hear.”
“I don’t blame her. She was twenty-two and alone. Why did she decide not to?”
“She said she had a dream in which the ghost of Riven House came to her and told her not to. She canceled the appointment. I tried to do everything I could to help her but she became more withdrawn as the year went on. It gets lonely here in the winter—you’ll see. Then just before Christmas I found her in the bathtub—the same tub where my Anya had died—with her wrists slit. You can imagine what that was like for me. I had to get her out of Riven House. I took her to the hospital and when she told the doctors that the ghosts had told her to take her life so that she and her unborn baby would be with them forever they did a psych evaluation. Her mother came up. It was a bit of a shock to meet her because Amy had told all these stories about her mother being a fashion model who traveled the world—and then she turned out to be a bookkeeper in the Garment District. And a single mother. She had no idea what to do for Amy, so when the doctors suggested she go into the Hudson Mental Hospital she agreed. She thought it was the best place for her until the baby came and she convinced Amy to put it—you—up for adoption. I know it must seem harsh to you, but believe me, growing up with Amy Birnbach for a mother wouldn’t have been easy.”
It couldn’t have been harder than growing up with Trudy Jackson, I wanted to snap, but instead I asked, “What happened to her?”
“Amy? I’m not sure. She went back to Long Island. We kept in touch for a little while but remember, there was no internet then. I imagine you could look her up . . .”
Sunny was looking at me quizzically. I had no idea if I wanted to look up Amy Birnbach. Nothing that Sunny had told me so far made me want to meet her, but then I only had Sunny’s version to go on and Sunny, I guessed, had her own reasons for not liking Amy.
“And what about Monty? Did anyone tell Monty that he had fathered a child when he came back from his sabbatical?”
“Amy said she didn’t want him to know. She told the social worker at St. Anne’s that she’d been mistaken when she named him on the birth certificate. She said she wasn’t sure who the father was.”
“But why wouldn’t she want him to know?” I asked.
Sunny’s face reddened. “It’s not a very . . . honorable reason.”
I wondered what could be worse than everything she had told me about Amy Birnbach so far. “I want to know.”
“She wanted him to write her a recommendation for graduate school and she was afraid that if he knew about the . . . about you he wouldn’t.”
I stared at Sunny. The thought that my existence had been kept from the man who was possibly my father for the sake of a grad school recommendation had left me speechless. Finally, I asked, “And you went along with that?”
“I understand why you’re angry, Clare, but remember, Monty wasn’t interested in having children. I doubt the outcome would have been different if he had known.”
“Well, we’ll never know, will we? But at least I can find out his reaction now—”
“You’re going to tell him?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“It’s just . . .” She took a step closer to me and touched her fingers to my arm. “You might want to wait. He’s still very upset about Dale. His heart is none too strong.”
“You think that finding out I’m his daughter would give him a heart attack?”
“It’s not like that, Clare. He’s very fond of you. He told me last night how much he’s enjoying working on the apple blossom girl book with you. He couldn’t feel closer to you if you were his biological daughter. In fact, knowing you’re Amy’s daughter will only complicate his feelings for you. And coming from you now, while you’re so emotional, will only upset him. At least wait until after the parade tomorrow. He’s planning to ride in the float with me. Let him enjoy that. You can tell him afterward—when you’re calmer.”
I guessed that Sunny wanted Monty focused on her for the parade, but I also recognized that it might be a good idea to wait, if only to process the information better myself. “All right,” I said, “but I’m telling him after the parade.”
Relief swept over her face and she held her arms out to embrace me. “Maybe this is what the ghost wanted you to know.”
I evaded her embrace and stepped back, sure that even if the ghost of Riven House wanted me to know who my father was, Sunny hadn’t.
I LEFT MY car at the fork and walked the rest of the way to the house, trying to sort the warring images in my head—Amy Birnbach lying in a bathtub full of blood, just as Minnie had before her and poor little Anya . . . only there hadn’t been blood with Anya, just a tiny life snuffed out, as if the house had drained the life out of her . . .
. . . the ghosts had told her to take her life so she and her unborn baby would be with them forever . . .
I stumbled to a stop and looked up at the house, standing like a sentinel on the hill, its windows flashing back light. I remembered what Monty had said about the octagonal structure mirroring the human brain, but what if it were a diseased brain? What if the consciousness that had gotten inside Riven House was insane?
As I kicked off my boots in the mudroom I heard the click clack of typewriter keys coming from Monty’s apartment. I thought of going down to see if he was okay, but then realized I’d never gone downstairs into Monty’s apartment. He’d never said not to and it had never been necessary because he was usually in the library in the morning. But since Sunny had spent the night there, it felt as though the basement apartment was off-limits. Besides, that steady clack of typewriter keys clearly indicated that he was writing and the unspoken rule of Riven House was that we did not disturb each other when we were writing.
I slipped into a pair of Monty’s monogrammed slippers and scuffed through the hallway to the library, thinking I’d pick up the last pages I’d given Monty. He wouldn’t have had a chance to read them yet and I’d thought of a change I wanted to make before he did.
I was surprised to find the doors closed. Monty only closed them when he was working to let us know not to disturb him, but he was downstairs in his apartment. I paused outside the double pocket doors, my hand resting on the faded pattern of apple blossoms, and listened for any noise coming from inside. After a minute I heard a faint rustling, like wind blowing through autumn leaves—or pages being turned. I pictured the pages of my book lying on Monty’s desk and someone riffling through them.
The ghost of Mary Foley reading what I’d written about her? Or the ghost of Minnie Montague ripping the pages to shreds? Or the two of them together. A wave of nausea coursed through me. Amy Birnbach had said the ghosts wanted her and her unborn baby. Ghosts, plural. As if the two of them—Minnie and Mary—had made some unholy pact to prey on the mothers and children of Riven House.
I slid the doors open, my heart thudding, and saw Jess sitting at the octagonal desk, one leg propped up on a pillowed hassock. He looked up, pen in hand, and stared at me a
s though he’d never seen me before.
“Oh!” I said. “I didn’t know who was in here. Are you—”
“Working,” he said. “Monty told me to work in here since I can’t manage the stairs.”
I was amazed that Monty had ceded his desk to Jess but I only said, “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” and started to close the doors.
“Don’t go,” he called out, trying to get to his feet but grimacing when he put weight on his ankle.
“You’ll hurt yourself.” I hurried across the room to keep him from getting up and he slumped back in Monty’s chair. I picked up the pillow that had fallen, put it back on the hassock, and knelt to help him get his foot back on it. When I looked up I saw he was watching me, his eyes soft.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you before,” he said. “You were right. I was jealous that you’ve been working with Monty. Your story . . . it’s good. Better than the drivel I’m working on.” He gestured toward the pile of typescript pages scattered over the top of Monty’s desk. They were covered with red inked corrections—Jess always used red pens to make his corrections. Lest I forget, he always said, it’s my own blood I’m spilling when I cross out a word. It looked like he’d spilled a couple of pints across these pages.
“You know that’s not true. It’s only what you think when you’re rewriting. I could never be the writer you are. My story . . .” I stopped, the words echoing in my head. My story. The pieces of what I’d learned today clicked into place. I stared at Jess, remembering that I’d promised Sunny that I’d wait to tell Monty I was his daughter, but I hadn’t said I wouldn’t tell Jess. And Jess was the one I had to tell first. I was the daughter of the man who, as far as Jess was concerned, had ruined his career. It might be the one thing he wouldn’t be able to live with. It might mean the end between us. But he deserved to know first.
“I found out something today,” I said, my mouth dry. “I went to look for my adoption papers at St. Anne’s . . .” I paused, waiting to see if he’d ask me why. I hated to admit that it was because Sunny had asked so she could do my chart, but now that I was committed to telling the truth I wouldn’t have lied.
But instead he said, “Good. I always thought you should.”
It was true. The first time I told him that I was adopted he had said I should find out who my birth parents were. It was at dawn. We had stayed up all night talking after a student reading, wandering around the campus, telling each other about the novels we wanted to write, trading the names of our favorite authors like baseball cards.
Tolstoy, he’d say.
Dickens, I’d counter.
Charlotte Brontë, I’d offer.
Emily Brontë, he’d amend.
Conrad, we both said together, although later we argued over which was his best work: Heart of Darkness or Nostromo.
It had felt like I’d found my other half. At dawn we’d sat on the roof of the library watching the sun come up and I told him my biggest secret, the one I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dunstan. I told him all the things I’d seen and heard over the years—Great-Granny Jackson thump-dragging her leg across the attic, her shadow on my wall telling me I didn’t belong. I told him that my birth mother had been in a mental hospital when I was born and that my biggest fear was that I was crazy.
“You’re not crazy,” he said, his face bathed in the glow of the rising sun. “You’re a writer.”
Now Jess’s face was glowing in the light of the setting sun coming in through the glass doors. It kindled a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen for a long time and I remembered what it had felt like to be seen by Jess. To have my true self seen by him. I hadn’t seen that look for so long because I hadn’t let him see my true self for so long. I took a deep breath and spoke in a rush, spilling out the whole story, how I’d found out that I was Monty’s daughter.
When I was finished he didn’t say anything. He was facing me with the sun at his back so I couldn’t see his expression. The silence seemed to swell around us. “That’s not all,” I said. “I think Monty was really Mary Foley’s child, which means—”
Jess leaned forward and I saw that the light in his eyes had expanded to a warm glow that enveloped me. When he touched my hand all my anger at the things he’d said melted and longing for him flared in its place. “It means,” he said, “that you’re Mary’s granddaughter. And so her story is your story.”
Then he kissed me. His lips were dry and feverish. I pulled away from him and laid my hand flat on his chest. “I’m still mad at you. You said awful things to me.”
“It was the Vicodin.” His expression was so innocent I burst out laughing.
He grinned and struggled to his feet. “Come on, help me upstairs and I’ll make it up to you.”
I fully meant to keep my distance until we’d talked through everything, but he needed me to help him up the stairs and having him close like that made it hard to stay angry at him. He’d always been good at disarming my anger. It wasn’t so much that he made it go away as he turned it into something else. When I got him to our room, he fell heavily into bed and pulled me with him. I was still angry with him, but the anger felt like an extra charge that made my blood fizz when he kissed me. I kissed him back, hard, and felt him flinch when I bit his lip. He didn’t pull away, though, just kissed me harder, his lips tasting like blood, our skin sparking where we touched, as though we were igniting a fire that would burn through all that had gone wrong between us—if it didn’t burn down Riven House first.
Chapter Eighteen
Afterward, we lay in bed and I told Jess everything that I’d learned in Elizabeth Foley’s diary. Jess was a good listener when he liked a story and he liked this one. He was quiet through the part about Mary giving the baby to her sister and then the part where Elizabeth gave the baby to Bayard, but when I mentioned that Bayard’s shirt cuffs were damp and pink he shouted out, “The smoking gun! Obviously the babies were switched.”
It was the same conclusion I’d come to but I challenged it now. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“No,” he admitted, “but it’s not really that important. What’s important is that you’ve found out who your parents are. Why did you finally decide to go looking for your adoption papers?”
I told him that finding out what had happened to Mary’s baby had made me want to find out who my parents were. As I said it, leaving out the conversations I’d had with Sunny and Katrine, it felt true.
“Of course,” Jess said, pulling me closer to him, “why should Monty learn who his mother was and not you?”
“Yes,” I said, grateful that he got what I hadn’t even understood at the time. “I was lucky that clerk at St. Anne’s was willing to show me the file.”
“Ah, the threshold helper. Was she old and wrinkled like Yoda?”
“No,” I laughed, “but she did have silvery hair and was dressed all in purple.”
“In your book give her cat earrings,” he suggested.
“She did have cat earrings,” I cried, leaning up on my elbow. “How did you know?”
“Because I know how stories work,” he said, smiling. “Go on . . .”
So I told him about finding Monty’s name on the certificate and driving home and confronting Sunny. I realized when I got to this part that having left out my earlier conversation with Sunny it might not make sense that I went to Sunny with the information, but once again Jess came to my rescue and filled in the plot hole.
“Of course! Sunny was living here in 1978; she’d have known your mother.”
When I told Jess about Amy I was afraid he’d make fun of her pretentions and fantasies, but instead he said, “Poor kid, just the kind of impressionable young student to fall under Monty’s spell.”
“Yes!” I agreed, glad Jess got it. No one who hadn’t sat through Monty’s classes at Bailey would understand the spell he cast. What’s so special about the guy? Dunstan had asked once when I was going on about Monty. “She must have been crushed when Monty left. No wo
nder she started . . .” I was going to say seeing ghosts, but amended it to “coming unhinged.”
“That’s why she gave you up,” Jess said gently, stroking my hair. “If Monty had been here . . .”
“Sunny says that he wouldn’t have wanted me anyway,” I said, biting my lip to keep from crying.
“I’m sure that’s what Sunny wanted to believe. After all, Monty had refused to have children with her and she lost her daughter through her own negligence. She was jealous of Amy—just like she’s jealous of you now. That’s why she doesn’t want you to tell Monty.”
“She says she’s afraid for his heart.”
Jess snorted. “It will be good for his heart. He’s going to be thrilled to find out you’re his daughter. He already acts like you are.”
I looked at Jess warily for signs of his previous jealousy over Monty’s attention to me, but they seemed to have vanished. Maybe it was easier for Jess to think that Monty valued me as a daughter rather than as a writer—and after all, he would now be Monty’s son-in-law.
“I hope he’ll be pleased, but still it’ll be a shock. We should think about the best way to tell him.”
“I say we slap the birth certificate down by his breakfast Muesli and say ‘Good morning, Pops!’ first thing tomorrow morning.”
I laughed but said, “No, Sunny’s right. We should wait until after the parade.”
“Sunny just wants a few more hours as the chosen one,” Jess said, but at the sight of me frowning he tightened his grip around my shoulder. “But if that’s what you want, Lady Montague, that’s what we’ll do. You are the lady of the house. Your wish is my command . . . Hey, I just thought of something!”
“What?” I asked wriggling down into the crook below his shoulder.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t marry Dusty. Doesn’t this, like, mean you two are cousins?”
I AWOKE IN the middle of the night to the sound of my childhood nightmares. Thump-drag, thump-drag, thump-drag. Great-Granny Jackson had found me and was coming to wrap her bony hands around my neck. Intruder! Bastard spawn! You don’t belong here.