Page 15

Chapter Fifteen

I realize I have not—due to my nerves, a jitter that arrives from out of nowhere every so often and shakes my body like an internal earthquake—consumed anything today except coffee and water.

I feel like Jess.

I suddenly remember a writing professor I had in college—a well-respected author—who always asked the following question to writers to ground them and their works in reality: “When does the main character eat?”

It was meant to remind us—no matter if we are writing fantasy, young adult, historical fiction or memoir—not that our protagonists literally needed to be shown eating a meal but that they had to be human, connected to the reader and the world in a deeply personal and very real way.

“You need to eat, Emma,” I tell myself in the silence of the cottage’s kitchen.

I am famished.

My stomach growls and a hunger headache is playing a drum solo on my temples.

I open the cabinets.

Pasta, but no sauce. Cereal. Oatmeal. Tea. Coffee. Chips. Crackers.

I open the refrigerator.

Wine. Champagne. Pellegrino.

The cheese is moldy. The asparagus rubber.

I toss it into the trash and open the freezer.

“Still a college girl,” I mutter. “You had time to go to the store.”

My mother is right.

It’s time for me to grow up. I can’t live the rest of my life expecting dinner to be ready in the commons, or GiGi to have whipped up a summer barbecue.

I open the freezer and search inside, tossing icy packages this way and that.

And yet I am just a young woman trying to find her footing and place in this cold, cold world.

I smile.

A creative, driven woman.

“App night!” I yell.

A plethora of frozen food greets me—spring rolls, mac-and-cheese bites, mini meatballs and street tacos, pot stickers and puff pastries—all leftovers from my father’s launch party. I look at the food, trying to piece together a meal that makes sense from disparate pieces. I decide on pot stickers, spring rolls and some jasmine sticky rice.

Perfect.

I turn on the oven to preheat and pull two tins from a side cabinet. I take a seat in an armchair by the hearth and pick up my latest read, yet another S. I. Quaeris novel from the stack in my bedroom.

To say I’m obsessed with these books would be an understatement. I no longer know if I’m reading them for escape or comfort, or to discover…

Something.

What that might be, I have no clue.

An eyebrow window of information…

Or am I just trying to bring a dead woman back to life?

After finding the leaf bookmark and the exact same quote in the Quaeris novel that was in Marcus’s book—a quote my grandma was fond of using—as well as the exact same Acknowledgments in each Quaeris novel and then talking with my sister, I feel as if I’m trying to finish a puzzle that only has the edges complete.

The new book I’m reading is entitled Autumn Harvest . Even though there is no fire in the hearth and the leaves have to turn, I picked it up because of that leaf and the acorn I picked up in college from Julie Andrews that still sits in a jewelry tray on my dresser.

I picked it up this morning and could hear that thespian’s voice in my head:

Let’s start at the very beginning… A very good place to start.

I feel like I need to start at the beginning again, in so many ways.

And so I do.

I pick up the novel and flip to the Author’s Note yet again.

Exactly the same.

I read the novel’s first page.

At one point in time, if your first or last name had a Z in it, if your skin were darker than the Dutch ancestors that surrounded you, then you were not welcome in this world. You were not to be loved.

That is why I chose God.

And even He seemed to reject me.

I stop.

Profound silence.

So loud that I hear buzzing.

I glance at the cover of the book again. This is not a typical romance novel. But what is typical? Why am I stereotyping, like Marcus Flare and my own family, a certain genre of books? Perhaps books—like women, like my sister, mother and me—defy categorization.

Call it a beach read, a summer sizzler, chick lit, feel-good fiction, a love story…

A damn good book is still a damn good book.

Period.

I continue reading, lost in the pages.

The preheated oven and the doorbell buzz at nearly the same time knocking me into the present.

My sister is not scheduled to arrive until tomorrow and yet she could have jumped on a plane to surprise me. I’m sure she’s accumulated enough bonus miles to fly first-class to Fiji.

“Jess?” I call. “Coming!”

As I round the corner, I see two women—one who is perhaps in her sixties and another, much older, leaning precariously on a walker—standing beyond the screened door.

“Hi,” I say. “Can I help you?”

“Does Pauline Page still live here?”

I look at them curiously.

“GiGi?” I rarely heard anyone call her by her real name. “No, I’m sorry, she doesn’t. I mean, she did.” I stumble trying to explain. “She passed away a couple of years ago.”

“Oh,” the younger of the two says. She bends down and speaks loudly into the other woman’s ear, “Pauline died, Mom! ?Muerta! ”

The older woman clamps a shaking hand to her mouth and whispers, “ Que descanse en paz ,” before crossing herself.

“Did you know her?” the daughter asks.

“I’m her granddaughter,” I say. “Emma.”

“ Lo siento mucho ,” the two women say, giving their condolences.

“Thank you.”

They stand there for a moment, the mother looking around the yard, her hand a butterfly over her heart.

“It has not changed,” she whispers.

“How did you know my grandmother?” I ask.

“My mother was a boarder here,” the daughter explains. “A lifetime ago. We now live in Detroit. She doesn’t have much time left, and she always told me stories about this place and how much she wanted to return one last time to see it…” She stops. “To see your grandmother.”

My heart begins to pitter-patter in my chest.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, but would it be possible if we had a peek inside?” she continues. “We came so far, and I know it would mean so much to her.”

Her mother’s hands are clamped tightly.

“Of course,” I say. “Please, come in.”

We help the older woman into the house, and she stops in the entryway, looking up the staircase she can no longer navigate. She shuts her eyes and begins to talk, quickly, in Spanish. When she is done, she opens her eyes. They are filled with tears.

“My mother wants you to know that she moved to Michigan with her parents from Mexico when she was a baby. My grandfather worked the local blueberry farms. It was hard work, a hard life, but better than what they had. No one treated them particularly well, and my mother felt like an outcast at school. She had a tough time learning English, and no one would play with her. She had visions as a girl, and kids thought she was strange. My grandparents believed it was God speaking to her.”

Her mother lowers her head as if in prayer.

“When she was eighteen, she decided to become a nun,” her daughter continues. “But, after a few years, she knew that wasn’t her calling, and she left the church. My grandparents were staunch Catholics, and believed she had turned her back on God and shamed the family. They refused to take her back. She had nothing. Someone told her about your grandmother, and she came here with a single bag. Your grandmother helped her with her English by reading books with her. She eventually helped her get a job at a local pie pantry, and my grandmother made fruit pies by hand.”

Her mother mimes she’s crimping a crust.

“She met a man there who came in every Sunday after church to have coffee and blueberry pie with his family, who he visited every weekend. He worked for Ford. They eventually married, my mother moved with him, and they had a family. She has always credited your grandmother’s strength and kindness for saving her life.”

“ ?Ella era un ángel! ” her mother says.

“Yes,” her daughter says, “Pauline was an angel.”

“ ?La biblioteca! ” the mother says, pointing.

We help her into the library. She shuts her eyes and inhales.

“She has always loved the smell of books,” the daughter explains. “I read to her every day. She had a stroke a few years back, and she now mostly speaks in Spanish again, as she did as a girl, but, as you can tell, I know she understands what’s going on.” She looks at me and mouths, She has congestive heart failure .

The mother points a shaky hand around the library.

“No,” she says. “ ?Todo ha cambiado! Sin color .”

“She says ‘everything in here has changed. No color.’”

“You’re right. My parents took down all of GiGi’s—I mean, Pauline’s—books and replaced them with their own. They’re publishers.”

The woman nods.

“ ?Ceja? ” she asks me. “ ?Ceja? ”

I look at her daughter, not understanding the word.

“She’s saying ‘eyebrow.’”

I smile. “Yes, she called this Eyebrow Cottage.”

The mother points up. “ ?Su oficina? ?Ceja? ”

“Her office?” the daughter translates. “Eyebrow?”

I nod. “Yes, her office is still there. I was never allowed inside. No one was.”

The daughter translates, and the mother points at herself emphatically.

“I was!” she says very slowly. “I gave her stories!”

“I don’t understand,” I say. “ No entiendo .”

“?Tu abuela fue una gran autora!”

“She says, ‘your grandmother was a great author.’”

“No, no, she wasn’t an author,” I explain. “She was a great reader, though.”

“Sometimes, she mixes words up and gets confused,” her daughter says. “I’m so sorry.”

“I understand.”

“May she see the kitchen before we leave?” her daughter asks. “She helped your grandmother cook meals for boarders and has such wonderful memories. She said making pies with her changed her life. My mother used to be such a wonderful baker. I try, but…”

“It’s not the same,” I finish. “I get it.”

I lead them into the kitchen, and the old woman looks around, pleased that—unlike the library—nothing much has changed in here, save for the countertops and appliances. She leans against the counter and stares at the lake, shaking her head.

“Mom?” the daughter calls. “Are you ready? I think we’ve taken enough of this young lady’s time.”

She turns and nods. She begins to move toward the entryway again when she blurts, “ ?Mi libro! ?Mi libro! ” She veers unsteadily toward the hearth and points at Autumn Harvest .

“ ?Mi libro! ” she continues. “ ?Mi historia! ”

“That’s not your book, Mom. That’s Emma’s.” The woman looks at me. “I’m sorry. I told you she gets very confused, and it’s already been a long day of travel for her.”

“It’s okay, really,” I say.

We head to the front door, the older woman still muttering, “ Mi libro .”

Her daughter escorts her out the door, turns and says, “Thank you for this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me and especially my mother.”

“It was my pleasure,” I say.

As they turn to leave, I ask, “I didn’t get your names. I want to tell my father, Pauline’s son. He might remember stories his mother told him about your mother.”

“My name is Maria,” the daughter says, “and my mother’s name is Zarela, Zarela Cruz.”

“How beautiful,” I say.

“It is, isn’t it?” the daughter says. “It means ‘fruit of the earth.’”

They navigate carefully down the gravel path and turn to wave when they reach the gate. The mother blows me a kiss. I pretend to catch it on the wind. She stops, bows her head, mumbles as if she’s saying a prayer and then crosses herself again.

I wait until I hear their car drive away.

I head back to the kitchen and line an assortment of frozen apps on the cookie sheets. I slide them into the oven, set the timer and then return to the hearth and pick up my book.

I reread the opening lines of the book.

My heart stops.

Z.

Zarela Cruz?

My book! My story!

“She was a great author!”

I close the novel and stare at the cover featuring an orchard.

A puzzle with only the edges complete.

I drop the book. It hits the floor with a loud thud, which echoes throughout the kitchen.