The only problem was, they weren’t a match. They both knew it. Yet they respected each other. When she demanded to know what was eating him, he wasn’t going to pull any punches.
“I’ve been all pissed off lately,” he said.
“Oh.” She gave a sage nod. “PJSD.”
“What’s that?”
“Post-Jenny Stress Disorder.”
Very funny, he thought. “She drove me nuts when she was staying with me. I figured I’d be glad to see the back of her.”
Nina laughed. “McKnight, you are one hell of a piece of work.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve carried a torch for that girl ever since we were kids.”
“I, um, kind of told her so before she left.”
“And she still left?” Nina looked amazed.
“Yes.”
“Then you must not have told her.”
“I just said I did.”
“All right, how did you tell her?”
He thought for a moment. “I told her the reason I date so many girls is that none of them is her.”
It took Nina several minutes to stop laughing and pull herself together. Then she flipped a pencil at him, hitting him in the chest. “Good job, genius.”
“What?”
“If I have to explain why that was so completely inappropriate, then you’ll never get it.”
“Listen, can we move on? It’s pretty clear she’s better off heading to the city—”
“God, McKnight, you always do this,” Nina said.
“Do what?”
“You always try to find all the reasons you shouldn’t be with Jenny, or with anyone decent. Why is that?”
“I don’t need you to analyze my personal life, Nina,” he said.
“Right. You’re doing so well on your own.” She showed him a banker’s box overflowing with photographs and papers. “This might cheer her up.”
“What is it?”
“The call I put out in the paper? Things have been flooding in.”
Shortly after the fire, Nina had written an open letter to the citizens of Avalon, explaining Jenny’s loss and asking for copies of any photos or memorabilia people might have of the Majesky family or bakery. To no one’s surprise, items came flooding in—old photos, Sky River Bakery calendars dating back to the ’60s, cards with heartfelt memories handwritten on them, a startling number of pictures of Mariska Majesky. The school district had donated copies of the high-school yearbook from each year Jenny had been a student there. He shuffled through a few items and was struck anew by the feelings she roused in him. She was so damn beautiful in picture after picture, smiling out at the camera. He tried to imagine what it was like to lose everything. At one point in his life, he had walked away from everything with only the clothes on his back, but that wasn’t quite the same. He had been glad to leave his old life and all its trappings behind.
He came across a clipping from the paper, dated August 30, 1995. There was a photo of Jenny and Joey, their faces filled with happiness. “Mrs. Helen Majesky announces the engagement of her granddaughter, Jennifer Anne Majesky, to Corporal Joseph Santini…a summer wedding is planned.”
Memories burned inside him, still painful even now. He replaced the lid on the box. “Does she know about this stuff?” he asked Nina.
“No, things are still coming in. I thought maybe you could be in charge of it.”
“Nope. No way.” One thing was clear to Rourke. He was still haunted by the emotions that had engulfed him during the fire. There was a moment when he thought he’d lost her, and the one searing thought that wouldn’t leave him alone was that he’d never told Jenny how he felt about her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jenny felt like an impostor as she emerged from the subway station at Rockefeller Center. She tried to join the flow of hurrying, sharply dressed professionals heading off for appointments, but she felt like a phony. She was a stranger here. Sure, she’d visited the city before, but she’d been a tourist. Her grandparents had brought her to visit museums or to see a ballet, and on two blessed, cherished occasions, they had taken her to see a Broadway play. Beauty and the Beast had made Gram weep with joy while Grandpa had struggled to stay awake. Another time, they’d seen a drama called Da about an Irish family, which was terribly sad but beautiful to watch.
Other times, they had gone to the Frick, the Met, Wall Street. By far the most memorable visit had been to Ellis Island. There was something haunting about the place where so many millions had taken their first breath of air in America. Gram and Grandpa had said little as they regarded the pictures of crowded waiting rooms and dormitories, a rooftop where children used to play. They had spent a long time studying the display cases of random objects—a cracked leather satchel, a child’s stray shoe, a printed ticket, a stamped certificate of immigration. With a feeling of hushed awe, they had found their names among the engraved brass lists that marked the perimeter of the park. They’d traced the letters of their names with their fingertips, and Jenny would never forget the way they embraced each other, standing before the plaque with the wind blowing their hair and the Statue of Liberty in the background. It was such a mingling of sadness, regret and gratitude that she could finally see, in that moment, a glimpse of what it had been like for them, teenagers and newlyweds, fleeing to a new land, knowing full well that they would never see their families again.
Jenny had been thirteen years old. She was full of love for her grandparents and, she discovered, full of anger at her mother. That year, they’d also gone to the Cloisters, a medieval museum clear at the other end of Manhattan. To get there, they’d ridden a bus, and when it went through the Upper East Side, she’d known she was in Rourke McKnight’s neighborhood because he and Joey had once explained where it was. She’d looked out in wonder at the beautiful Gilded Age buildings and parks, nannies in their crisp
