What Janie Found (3 page)

Stephen pretended to laugh.

“I finally heard from my parents, by the way,’” said Kathleen. “They’re coming next weekend. I can’t wait for them to meet you.’” She tipped up the bill of his cap and kissed his eyelids. “They’ll love you, Stephen. We’re going to have dinner at the Boulderado. I want you to wear your khaki pants, I’m going to iron them, and your yellow shirt, I’ll iron that, too.’”

But Stephen dreaded the thought of another family. He had refused to become friends with Janie’s Connecticut family and he did not feel up to impressing Kathleen’s California family. One family in this world was plenty.

CHAPTER
THREE

“What folder?’” said Janie to her little brother. She tried to keep her voice breezy, but instead it broke.

She turned into her driveway. Small green bushes divided hers from Reeve’s. She suppressed the urge to drive over them and flatten them, just to be stronger than something. She parked by the side door. The Johnsons didn’t use their garage. It was full of stuff. Cars hadn’t fit for years.

She took the keys out of the ignition and put her hands up to protect her face. The instant she no longer had the task of driving, tears attacked.

The boys sat waiting for her to get control back. They weren’t going to open their car doors till she did and she didn’t want to leave the safe tidy enclosure of a vehicle.

“You give everything away, Janie,’” explained her brother. “Your face shows everything you’re thinking.’”

At that moment, Janie could have given them all away: every person related to her, and every person who pretended to be.

Pretending was fine when you were little and pretended with dolls or blocks or wooden trains. But to pretend forever? To find, once more, that her life was a fantasy spun by the people who supposedly loved her?

She stared at her home, a big old shingled house modernized with great slabs and chunks of window. So many lies hidden behind such clear glass. Her unshed tears were so hot she thought they might burn her eyes and leave her blind.

I stayed here! she thought. I gave up my birth family to come back here.

The irony of it burned as badly as tears.

“The label on the file folder,’” said Reeve very softly, “was H. J.’”

Janie flattened her hands on her cheeks and pressed inward toward her nose, squashing everything against its freckled tip. “H. J.,’” she said, voice squeezed between her lips like toothpaste, “stands for Hunting Jaguars.’”

They all knew what H. J. stood for. But Reeve let it go. “Hex on Jellybeans,’” he agreed.

I could hex a few people right now, she thought. I’m not ready for this! I’ve never been ready. I wasn’t ready to find out my parents aren’t my parents. I wasn’t ready to find out I was kidnapped. I wasn’t ready to have Reeve sell me on his radio show. I wasn’t ready to have my Connecticut father suffer a heart attack and a stroke. And I’m not ready to find out that he—

“Perfect timing!’” called a sharp high voice, and sharp high heels stabbed steps and pavement.

Of Reeve’s two older sisters and one older brother, Lizzie was the scary one. Thinner than anybody, not tall, not beautiful, she didn’t walk, she stalked. Her frown started upward from her chin instead of downward from her forehead, and you fell into her frown, ready to confess to anything.

As a courtroom lawyer she must be terrifying. Janie could imagine juries cowering in their corner; witnesses desperate to please. How relieved everybody in Connecticut had been when Lizzie decided to practice law in California.

And now Lizzie was in love.

This was amazing, but more amazing was that some man had fallen in love with Lizzie. Who would want to spend a lifetime in the same apartment as Lizzie Shields? Everybody was eager to meet William.

“Come inside, Janie,’” said Lizzie sternly. “We’ll measure you.’”

Can’t make it, Lizzie, thought Janie. I have a temper tantrum waiting. A file folder to study. Police reports. I probably need to assassinate somebody.

But this was a chance to dump Reeve and Brian. When Janie went back into that folder, it must be without people who could read her thoughts.

She opened her door before Lizzie could get closer. I’m never letting anybody get closer again, she thought. Distance is the thing. I can keep Lizzie at a distance. Wedding talk will do it. “What did you decide, Lizzie?’” she asked, in a voice as fluffy as a summer gown. “Long? Short? Flowered? Satin?’”

“Huh?’” said Brian.

“This is about dresses,’” Reeve explained. “Lizzie’s getting married. She’s home to make wedding plans. I’m an usher, Janie’s a bridesmaid. Come on, Brian, we’ll file folder later.’”

Janie shot him a look. He made a time-out signal with his hands and said quickly, “We’ll ask Janie if she’ll let us file folder later when she file folders.’”

Before, when Reeve signaled capital
T,
it meant: Time to be alone together. Now it meant: Don’t yell at me. I’m stupid, but I’m nice.

Janie followed Lizzie into the Shields house. Reeve and Brian trailed. “When is the wedding?’” asked Brian.

“July twentieth,’” said Lizzie, as if nothing else could ever happen on that date. It was hers. She owned it.

Mrs. Shields flung open the door. Reeve’s mother might be fifty-five and chubby, but she was hopping up and down like a little girl with a jump rope. She was a happy woman. She had never expected Lizzie to have a traditional wedding. Or any wedding.

“Hello, everybody!’” caroled Mrs. Shields. “How’s your mother holding up, Janie?’” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You will love the fabric Lizzie chose! It’ll look so nice against your red hair.’”

Janie could not picture Lizzie choosing fabric. Choosing candidates for sheriff, maybe, but cloth?

Out came measuring tape and a little notebook covered in white satin and lace.

“Tell me you didn’t buy that yourself,’” Janie said. Lizzie’s accessories generally had sharp edges.

Lizzie turned a little pink. “I had to write the details down in something, didn’t I?’”

“Wow,’” said Janie.

“Throws you off, doesn’t it?’” agreed Reeve. He shot Janie the twinkle-eyed grin she used to adore. I still adore the grin, she thought, I’m just not sure of the person behind it.

Reeve poked Lizzie. “Just when you think you know your tough old sister, she turns out to be this sentimental, waltzing—’”

“Reeve, don’t start anything,’” said his mother.

“Lizzie started it,’” said Reeve.

“William, actually,’” said Lizzie, looking soft and pretty.

Janie had a sudden wave of nausea and had to cross the room, pretending interest in stacks of brides’ magazines with Post-its marking their pages.
Don’t start anything.
If I go back to that folder, I’m sure starting something. Or finishing it.

But if I don’t go back to that folder, the facts are still in it.

If only I hadn’t agreed to handle the bills while Daddy’s sick.

If only.

My whole life comes down to that: If only.

“Lizzie darling, while you have your notebook open,’” said Mrs. Shields, “let’s schedule the bridesmaids’ luncheon.’”

“Cut,’” said Lizzie. “I’d be bored.’”

That was the Lizzie they knew and occasionally liked—as long as she didn’t stay too long.

“Well, at least choose the restaurant for the after-rehearsal dinner,’” said her mother.

“No rehearsal. We’re grown-ups. We know how to walk down an aisle.’”

Even Janie had to laugh. Lizzie was edging up toward romance, but she couldn’t quite touch it. How astonishing that Lizzie could be more romantic than Janie. “At least we’ll have great dresses, right?’” she said to Lizzie. “Let me see the picture of my dress. What am I wearing?’”

Lizzie opened her notebook to the page where she’d taped magazine cutouts of the gowns she had chosen. Reeve and Brian crowded in to see too. Reeve put his hand on Janie’s shoulder.

“It’s beautiful!’” cried Janie. Partly to extricate herself from Reeve’s touch, she forced Lizzie into a swoon, and the two of them fell backward onto the sofa. “That,’” said Janie, “is the most romantic, the laciest and the most backless dress in the whole world. Now show me your gown, it must be even more beautiful.’”

Lizzie turned the page.

Janie sat up straight. “Oh, Lizzie,’” she breathed. “William is going to pass out at the sight of you. You are going to be the loveliest bride on earth.’”

Brian felt as he so often did around girls. They were another species. He should be taking notes. Field observations.

How disappointing that the file folder was just about H. J.

Brian had hoped for something really bad and exciting. It wasn’t. Naturally Mr. Johnson would keep a file on his long-lost daughter. Paid Bills had seemed like the wrong drawer, but as they drove from beach to hospital to here, Brian had figured out that Mr. Johnson would have paid for a private detective and attorneys and stuff, back when he was trying to get Hannah out of the cult. His daughter was a Paid Bill, just like everybody else’s daughter, except that everybody else was writing out checks for braces or college.

Brian wondered vaguely why Lizzie would have asked Janie to be in her wedding. Weren’t bridesmaids your girlfriends from slumber parties, like his sister Jodie’s endless overnight crowd? But Janie was just a girl next door—and at least ten years younger. In fact, Lizzie had baby-sat for Janie. How come Lizzie didn’t have just law school friends in her wedding?

Across the room, as clear as handwriting, a look passed between Reeve and Lizzie.

Reeve
asked
Lizzie to ask Janie! thought Brian. I bet he wants to be in all kinds of romantic gooey situations with my sister, and what’s romanticker and gooier than a wedding?

Reeve had let them all down, and Janie was doing the right thing to keep him at a distance. But on July twentieth, Reeve would be handsome and perfect in one of those black wedding outfits with the starched collar and the ascot, and Janie would look like a British princess in that poofy dress, and she and Reeve would probably even walk down the aisle together. Dance at the reception together.

And get back together.

And that would be wrong.

Brian could not help liking Reeve.

But Reeve had hurt them all. He didn’t deserve Janie back.

Janie was touched to be a bridesmaid. That Lizzie should even need bridesmaids was touching. Everybody had expected Lizzie to find a justice of the peace and wrap up her marriage ceremony in three minutes or less.

It was Lizzie to whom Janie had turned when she recognized her face on the milk carton. Without Lizzie, Janie might have been frozen in place for years. It was an honor to be her bridesmaid.

Honor.

A wedding word. A Ten Commandments word.

I’m sick of honoring my father and mother, thought Janie. They didn’t honor me.

Unbidden, her other father and mother sprang to her mind.

Had she honored her New Jersey parents?

But that was a failure to shove away, and Janie turned physically from the thought, keeping her back to New Jersey, and instead she considered the police report on Hannah Javensen.

Last seen flying west.

What an evocative word
west
was. Laden with distance and departure.

Did every son and daughter have a moment in which the only possible reaction was: I’m going?

I’m
never
coming back. You’ll
never
see me again. I’m out of here, I’m heading west.

But you got over it in an hour. Or a year.

Whoever really just left? Never dialed a phone, never came home for Thanksgiving? That was the thing Janie had always gotten stuck on. The neverness of it. It was like a bad argument in a bad textbook. Between a parent and a child, was there ever really a never?

And how right she had been to suspect that theory.

Of course
Hannah had been in touch.

When the phone shrilled, Janie jumped guiltily, as if she were doing something forbidden.

But I am, she thought. I have touched the past.

Mrs. Shields answered the phone and she turned pale and shocked. She looked sadly at Janie. “Oh, Miranda,’” she said into the phone. “I’m so sorry. Yes, Janie is right here.’”

He’s dead, thought Janie. My father is dead. All the technology and all the doctors failed.

But instead of grief, she just felt more anger.

How dare he die now? How dare he leave her with that folder? Now it was too late for explanations. With him dead, she could not confront, and scream, and tell him how much she hated him.

Or how much she loved him.

She felt like a tiny child strapped into a huge swing; no way to put her feet on the ground, scuff herself to a halt and jump off.

She took the phone. What do I say to my mother? What comfort do I offer?