Page 52

Harrison Watts

Jude reads the letter a second and a third time, feeling stunned each time her eyes graze over her mother's name. And she has a brother? A brother who is twelve years old? A brother roughly the same age as Jo Booker's son...or Maxine's son, Ryan! She simply cannot wrap her mind around it.

In spite of the heat, Jude takes a glass of water out and sits next to the pool, still holding all the papers and photos in her hands as she sits on the hot concrete and dips her bare feet in the cool water.

She goes through the photos and the information on Catherine one more time and then slips it all back into the envelope, which she'll put away somewhere safe and only take out when she needs a reminder that she was once young, once naive; that at one point, her story was still largely unwritten. And her life could have gone so many directions! She could have stayed in Hollywood. She could have forged a life with Catherine (but could she really have? She'll never know for certain...). She might have taken any number of paths thatwouldn'thave led her to the Burgundy Room on that October evening, where she met Vance Majors and cemented the life she's currently living right now.

All of it is okay now, because Catherine exists, their shared past exists, and the futures that they're creating in their own little universes include marriages and children and horses and beaches and all kinds of things that a young Jude might never have imagined.

She won't contact Catherine; not now, and maybe not ever. And she's okay with that.

But her mother...hermother.

Keiko Nagasaki, last known address: 513 Coconut Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii. Children: Judith Nagasaki Majors, born April 12, 1934. Rodney Kobayashi, born December 26, 1953.

Jude folds the paper and holds it between her hands as she drags her bare feet and calves through the pool water. This changes everything. There is a feeling of security in knowing that her mother is out there, even if her father no longer is. Keiko is within her reach for the first time in almost twenty-five years, and knowing that brings Jude a kind of anticipation mixed with peace. That's another thing she's had to get used to now that she isn't drinking so much: she feels all thesethings. All these emotions. And they aren't all bad--some of them feel really good.

Jude looks across the fence at the house where the Tragers lived for two years, and she misses hearing Maxine open the door and call out for her children. She'd done everything she could for Maxine, had tried to understand her fears and her new outlook on life, but in the end, she'd had to accept that Maxine was doing what felt right for her. For her children. For her future. Which, if you think about it, is all anyone really can do--even Jude's own parents did what they felt was best at the time, even if hindsight makes it difficult to understand some of their choices.

Jude stands up with her empty water glass and the envelope in her hand. She stretches towards the sun, closing her eyes as it warms her skin.

The past is securely behind her, and she's learning to live with it. Her present is all around her, and she's now fully awake for it. She's living it.

And the future?Well, she thinks, opening her eyes and looking at her mother's address one more time.My future is still unwritten.