“You never know,” said Emily.
She had a new idea to pursue, and she held fast to it. She would not let go. Richard sat with Emily in the living room as she searched for fares to London.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Richard said.
“You knew your grandparents, and you knew your mother,” Emily said calmly. “If you hadn’t known them and suddenly you got a chance—wouldn’t you go?” She seemed strangely happy, and also feverish, downloading Family Tree software and finding it wanting. “The interfaces are terrible,” she told her father.
In her first weeks of bereavement, Emily had been quiet and small, almost childlike, retreating into herself. She had tried to contain what she felt, to keep calm, and whenever possible, comfort her own comforters. Now she asserted herself, brooking no dissent, dismissing her father’s concerns about “those people” as he called them.
“Look, they’re controlling,” Richard told her. “They’re manipulative.”
Emily raised an eyebrow and tilted her head ever so slightly, as if to say, You weren’t controlling? You didn’t manipulate my sister and me?
“You have a lot of money,” Richard reminded Emily.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Emily asked, irritated.
“You’re rich,” he said. “They’re poor. They have to provide for dozens of children, and you need to keep your eyes open.”
“How dare you tell me to keep my eyes open,” Emily said. “When all these years you kept me in the dark.”
Jess had never heard her sister and her father fight before. Jess and Richard had been fire and water, and of course he always won. Emily and Richard were like an ice storm, sparkling, deadly.
“You’re in a vulnerable position,” Richard said.
“A position you created.”
Suddenly something broke in Richard. Emily froze. Jess looked up, horrified to see her father crying. She had never seen her father cry before, and now his eyes were red and he was sobbing. He couldn’t stop himself. “I’m afraid for you, Emily!”
Heidi rushed into the room, and she seemed almost as surprised as Emily and Jess. She wrapped her arms around Richard, and he buried his head in her sweater and cried and cried.
“Dad, I’m sorry you’re upset …,” Emily began. “I’m sorry!” But now that he was crying, Richard could not stop.
Jess couldn’t watch. She slipped out the back door and tried to catch her breath. Hugging herself, she sat on Lily’s big-girl swing. It was getting cold, but she didn’t want to return for her jacket. She stayed out, swinging gently, trying to calm herself, listening to the squeaking chains.
At last she took out her new cell phone and called George.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Jess. How are you?”
“Where are you?” she asked at the same time.
“In my kitchen,” he told her. “Missing you. Where are you?”
“On the swing set in the yard.”
“Missing me?”
“What do you think?”
Her voice was muffled, weary, terribly sad. “What’s wrong now?” George asked. “What happened?”
“I have to go to London.”
“No! No, you don’t. If your sister wants to go and see all those relatives, then you go ahead and let her. She’s a grown woman.”
“I have to go,” Jess said. “She’s in a bad way. I can’t let her go alone.”
“Why not? Why can’t you? You’ve been with her almost a month. Come home.”
“I can’t,” said Jess. “I can’t.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I’m helping her. She needs me.”
“I know,” George said. “But what about you?”
Jess demanded, “Can’t you look at this from Emily’s point of view?”
Then George was honest, much too honest. He knew even as he said the words that they would anger Jess, but he missed her so much that he could not help himself. “I’m not interested in her point of view.”
Silence.
“Jess? Are you there?”
“You’re very good at that,” Jess said.
“Good at what?”
“Triaging. You’re first, and I’m second, and everybody else is a distant third.”
“You’re overwrought,” George said. “This situation is poisonous for you.”
“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
