Page 40

Jo laughs disbelievingly. “Well, I’m not.” She turns to the kitchen counter and goes back to what she’d been doing. “I have my moments, you know. I feel uncertainty and I have insecurities. Everyone does.”

For some reason, this is groundbreaking to Jude. Even Jo Booker has moments where she feels insecure and uncertain. It feels to Jude like the kind of revelation that deserves reciprocation. She weighs the cost of sharing something extremely personal with Jo, and then decides that, in the past year and a half that she’s known Jo, she’s come to really like and trust her. Out of all the wives, Jo is the one Jude feels is the most down-to-earth and relatable.

“Vance had this idea,” Jude says carefully, watching Jo’s narrow shoulders as she works at the counter. “He thought I should try to find the woman who was my roommate when he and I met. I haven’t seen her since I married Vance, but she was someone important to me. Someone I cared about very much.”

“She sounds important,” Jo says. She walks over to her sink, turns on the water, and runs her hands beneath the stream as she watches the husbands and children outside for a moment. With a dishtowel in hand again, Jo turns back to Jude. “We should always hang onto the people who mean something to us, don’t you think?”

Jude is back to leaning against the counter, arms folded. She’s already said so much; she’s already allowed herself to cry, to be embraced by Jo Booker on a Friday evening like it’s something commonplace that she does—just hugging her friends.

Jude nods. “I agree. And there’s one other person I really want to find,” she adds. “It’s extremely important to me to find her.”

“Who is that?” Jo asks mildly as she plates the hamburger patties that she’s been shaping on the butcher block cutting board.

“My mother,” Jude whispers. “I haven’t seen my mother since 1941.”

Jo spins around. She doesn’t just turn, shespins. “Oh, Jude,” she says, her voice full of emotion. “You haven’t?”

Jude shakes her head. “She put me on the boat in Japan after Pearl Harbor because she thought I should be here with my father. America had declared war on Japan, and she thought I’d be safer here, with my father and his family. All I had to do was perfect my English and learn to blend in.”

“You don’t really look…” Jo trails off as she inspects Jude’s face.

“I know,” Jude says. “I don’t really look Japanese, which was a good thing when I arrived here. I look more like my mother now,” she adds with a wistful smile. “I have photos of her, and sometimes I look at them and think how much I’ve grown to resemble her.”

“She must have been a beautiful woman,” Jo says with sincerity. “I mean, I’m sure she still is.”

“If she’s alive. I don’t even know that.”

“Could you ask your father if he knows anything?”

Jude gives a shake of her head. “He passed away several years ago.”

“Oh, Jude.” Jo tilts her head to one side sympathetically. “You have been through so much. You’re such a strong woman.”

Jude can’t help it: a wry smile spreads over her face. “But you can see now why I drank so much?”

At first Jo looks appalled, but then she laughs. “Okay, I can see the temptation.”

The women laugh together guiltily, like two people who have just admitted something that they shouldn’t have.

“But,” Jo says, sobering quickly. “I am glad that you’re addressing these things. I think that’s brave and important, and your girls are going to notice how hard you’re working on yourself. Even if they don’t see it now, they’ll realize it when they’re older.”

Jude waves a hand. “Oh, I don’t know about that. And if they don’t, that’s fine. I just know I need to get my house in order, so to speak.”

“Well,” Jo says, lifting her chin at Bill as he raps at the glass door with his knuckles. He slides it open and she passes him the platter of hamburger patties. The door closes again. “I think it’s great that you’re searching for your friend, and I hope you find your mother, too.”

Jude inhales and shakes her hands, trying to pull herself together. “Thank you,” she says with a watery smile. “Thank you for listening, Jo. And for being so frank.”

Jo walks past her with a bowl of baked beans that she sets on the kitchen table for the time being. She wipes her hands down the front of her apron and smiles at Jude. “Of course,” she says. “That’s what friends are for.”

* * *

Jude wakes up that night in the middle of a nightmarish no-man’s land. She’s been tossing and turning in her sleep, and because of this, her sheets are tangled around her arms and legs. Vance is passed out next to her, sleeping like a corpse.

Jude wanders out to the front room in just her nightgown and slippers. She’s sweated through the silky fabric and she’s parched. She noticed that Jo hadn’t offered her a beer or a cocktail all evening, and Jude respects that. In fact, by the time they got home from the Bookers’ house and put the girls to bed, she’d decided to forgo a drink altogether that evening.

But now, at nearly two in the morning, Jude is pacing around the kitchen and looking at the clock. Anxiety is coursing through her. Even though talking to Jo had felt like a relief and a true release, something about the whole exchange reminded her of when she’d met Alice in high school, and the night she’d finally told her everything—with disastrous consequences.

Of course this won’t be the same thing at all. That’s impossible. Jo Booker is a grown woman with a lifetime of experience, not a wild teenage girl with no clue about the world, and there’s no way she’ll suddenly turn on Jude and hold things against her that are out of Jude’s control. But thefeelingthat she’s said too much is there. The feeling that she’s overshared has kept her in a fitful half-sleep all night so far.