The wonderful weeks of freshman year flew by.
Eve began talking about Thanksgiving. Eve’s family had several hundred traditions, including who mashed the potatoes and who chopped the celery for the turkey stuffing. “I have the most wonderful new family here,” Eve said, “especially you, Jane, but I can hardly wait to get home to my real family.”
Even Eve, with whom Janie shared every inch of space and many hours a day and night, did not know that Janie Johnson had both a real family and another family. Like everybody else in the dorm, Eve vaguely assumed there had been a divorce and remarriage.
In contrast, Mikayla and Rachel acted as if they barely remembered home, family, and Thanksgiving. Janie could now see why parents might dread the departure for college: that beloved child could put away the last eighteen years like a sock in a drawer.
For Janie, the last eighteen years was more like clothing she had never been able to take off, never mind forget.
Janie telephoned her real mother. “Mom?” she said to Donna. It had taken her three years to use that word with Donna and just as much time to think of the Springs’ house as home. “May I come home for Thanksgiving?”
“Yes!” cried her real mother. “Everybody’s going to be here. Stephen’s coming from Colorado and Jodie’s coming from Boston! Brian promised not to study on Thanksgiving Day and Brendan promised not to have a ball game.”
The twins were still in high school. Brian was still academic and Brendan was still athletic. Brian was always part of the Sunday brunch when Janie came out to New Jersey, but Brendan never was. If he didn’t have a game, he went to somebody else’s.
Next Janie planned the difficult call to her other mother.
A few years ago, her other father had had a serious stroke. Miranda was not strong enough to move and lift Frank. Over the summer, while Janie was preparing to move herself to a college dorm, she had also moved her parents into an assisted living institution, where Frank was much better off. For poor Miranda, it was prison. Miranda should have found herself her own apartment close to all her girlfriends and volunteer work and ladies’ lunches and golf. But she could not bear to live alone or to abandon Frank to loneliness.
Miranda would be counting on Janie’s presence for Thanksgiving.
Miranda did not know how to text and rarely emailed. She loved to hear Janie’s voice, so in this call, as in others, Janie started with gossip about Eve, Rachel, and Mikayla. Finally she came to the hard part. “For Thanksgiving, Mom?” Her throat tightened and her chest hurt. She hadn’t even said it yet and she was swamped by guilt. “I’m going to take the train to New Jersey on Wednesday and spend Thanksgiving Day and Friday with them.”
“New Jersey” was code for Janie’s birth family; “them” meant the Springs.
“Saturday morning I’ll get myself to Connecticut and stay until Sunday afternoon with you,” she added brightly. “Then you’ll drive me to the train station Sunday night so I can get back to the city.”
Miranda’s voice trembled. “What a good idea, darling. If you came here, we’d have to eat in the dining room with a hundred other families and the cranberry sauce would come out of a can.”
Normally, Janie caved when her mother’s voice trembled. But Jodie’s visit had been profound. The name change, and the soul change, could not be from Janie to Jane. It had to be from Janie to Jennie. All the vestiges of the kidnap, even the ones she cherished, needed to end. She wasn’t ready yet. But in her mental calendar of life, becoming Jennie Spring was not too many months away.
“I know it won’t be the perfect Thanksgiving for you, Mom,” Janie said, which was a ridiculous remark. It would be awful for Miranda. “But I’ll see you on Saturday, and that will be great. I love you.”
“Oh, honey. I love you too.”
Vacation by vacation, Janie slid out of the Johnson family and into the Spring family. The Springs rejoiced; the Johnsons suffered.
When freshman year ended, Janie divided her summer. She lived Monday through Friday with her birth family. She got a job at a fish fry restaurant. She came home with her hair smelling of onions and grease. Fridays she worked through lunch, went home, shampooed the stink out of her hair, and caught the train from New Jersey into New York. From there, she took a subway to Grand Central, and another train out to Connecticut, where her mother picked her up at the station. Her father always knew her. Frank could smile with the half of his mouth that still turned up, and sometimes make a contribution to the conversation. But mostly, he just sat in his wheelchair.
A few years ago, when Frank suffered the first stroke, Miranda stayed at the hospital while Janie handled the household. Janie was struggling with bills when she stumbled on a file in Frank’s office. To her horror, she found that Frank had always known where his daughter Hannah was and had sent her money every month. Of course, for twelve of those years, neither he nor anybody else dreamed that Hannah had kidnapped Janie. But when the face on the milk carton was produced and the truth came out, when the FBI and the police and the media and the court got involved, Frank Johnson knew exactly where the criminal was, and he never breathed a word. He had been writing a check to Janie’s kidnapper on the very day the FBI was interrogating him.
It had been such a shock to learn that she was a kidnap victim. But Janie almost buckled when she understood that her father was aiding and abetting the kidnapper. Only to Reeve did Janie spill the secret. One of the comforts of Reeve was that he knew everything. It was always a relief to be with the one person who knew it all.
And then came another surprise: at college, she found out that it was more peaceful to be among people who knew nothing.
During freshman year, Janie saw Reeve only at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The summer after freshman year, Janie saw him only once, at the fabulous college graduation party his parents gave him. It was so much fun. Reeve had more friends than anybody, and they all came, and it was a high school reunion for his class. He and Janie were hardly alone for a minute. During that minute, he curled one of her red locks around a finger, begging her to come back to him.
She didn’t trust herself to speak. She shook her head and kissed his cheek.
He didn’t know why she couldn’t forgive him. She didn’t know either.
The following day, Reeve left for good. He had landed a dream job in the South and had to say good-bye to her in front of people. His departure was stilted and formal. She said things like “Good luck” and he said things like “Take care of yourself.” And then it was over: the boy next door had become a man with a career.
Her heart broke. But she wanted a man she could trust, and she only half trusted Reeve. It was so painful to imagine him lost to her, living a thousand miles away and leading a life about which she knew nothing. She kept herself as busy as she could. One good thing about her parents’ move to the Harbor was that they no longer lived next door to Reeve’s family: she no longer used the driveway on which she and Reeve learned to back up; no longer saw the yard on which they raked leaves; no longer ran into Reeve’s mother and got the updates she both yearned for and was hurt by, because she wasn’t part of them.
By July that summer, Janie was not visiting her Connecticut parents until Saturday mornings. By August, she was borrowing her real mother’s car, driving up for lunch on Saturdays, and driving home to New Jersey the same night. As her visits dwindled, so did her Connecticut mother. Miranda became frail and gray.
Is it my fault? thought Janie. Or is it just life? Am I responsible for keeping my other mother happy? Or is Miranda responsible for starting up new friendships and figuring out how to be happy again? I’m eighteen. Do I get to have my own life on my own terms? Or do I compromise because my mother is struggling?
The only person with whom she could share this confusion was Reeve. But she had decided not to share with him.
About the Author
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of many books for young people, including The Lost Songs; Three Black Swans; They N
ever Came Back; If the Witness Lied; Diamonds in the Shadow; A Friend at Midnight; Hit the Road; Code Orange; The Girl Who Invented Romance; Family Reunion; Goddess of Yesterday (an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book); The Ransom of Mercy Carter; Tune In Anytime; Burning Up; The Face on the Milk Carton (an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Book) and its companions, Whatever Happened to Janie? and The Voice on the Radio (each of them an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults), as well as What Janie Found; What Child Is This? (an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults); Driver’s Ed (an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and a Booklist Editors’ Choice); Among Friends; Twenty Pageants Later; and the Time Travel Quartet: Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time, and For All Time, which are also available as The Time Travelers, Volumes I and II.
Caroline B. Cooney lives in South Carolina.
Caroline B. Cooney, What Janie Saw
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