The Last Romantics(96)
“Oh, thank goodness,” Will said. “What is it, then?”
“I . . . I found someone,” I said.
“Who?”
This of course was the question. I had told Will only the barest information about Luna Hernandez. My brother’s girlfriend, the woman who’d been with him when he fell. A terrible accident. Judgment clouded by alcohol. I had never told him about the ring or our search for Luna, about Mimi Prince, that private investigator, Caroline’s fall into despondency. It had seemed a silly, shameful chain of events.
But now. On the screen. I pointed to the website. Will leaned over, pulled reading glasses from his front pocket, and squinted at the page. “Ivy and Vine. Farm-to-table restaurant and grocery,” he read. “And?” He removed the glasses and looked at me.
“That woman,” I said. “I recognize her. I think I know her. I may look her up when I’m in Seattle.”
“An old friend? College or something?”
I nodded. “Yes, college. I haven’t seen her in years. Laura Shipka,” I read the name off the website. “Must be her married name.”
“Sounds Russian.”
I tilted my head. “Maybe.”
“Huh,” Will grunted. “Okay, then. I’m going up to finish packing. You sure you’re okay?” He looked at me with his soft gray eyes, his red hair gone white at the crown, the sweet concern of Will, my husband of fourteen years.
“Yes.” I nodded and smiled. “Totally fine. Just tired.”
Will left the room. I heard the creak of his feet ascending the stairs to our bedroom. I leaned in closer to the computer, then enlarged the photo until the woman’s face filled the screen. Short black hair, high cheekbones, a mole the size of a dime high on her right cheek. I had only seen that one Polaroid photo of Luna, although I had imagined her countless times. Was this the woman Joe had loved? The picture fractured into colored atoms, pixels fine as dust.
I picked up my phone and dialed the number on the screen. Luna answered on the first ring. “Ivy and Vine,” she said. “How may I help you?”
*
I stood at the front door of Luna’s house, but I did not knock. I listened to the sounds within. A child’s request: “Again, please, Mommy. More.” The bark of a good-natured dog. A woman’s laughter. The house stood alone at the end of a very long dirt road, up on a low hill that looked to the basin of Puget Sound. Tall pines rose to the east of the house, and mature gardens surrounded it, settled now into late-winter dormancy.
I had not told Caroline or Renee about my discovery. Renee was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, progressing exactly as she should, but still—it was a high-risk pregnancy, and she insisted on maintaining her surgery schedule for as long as possible. Caroline was acting as doula, helpmate, labor coach, and anything else Renee needed. My business trip would be short, only two days. “I am a hundred percent reachable,” I told Renee before I boarded the plane. “I’ll have my phone on at all times.”
Caroline had moved temporarily out of the Hamden house, leaving Raffi with careful instructions as to garden maintenance and care of the chickens, and into Renee’s apartment. In the past weeks, Jonathan had made overtures toward a reconciliation, but Renee had rebuffed him.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “Honestly, I had no idea how easy it would be to do this without you.”
Luna lived on one of those green, misty islands I’d seen on my computer screen. The ferry ride took only thirty minutes from downtown Seattle, but I disembarked into what felt like a different time: a small, tidy town, a slow-moving police car, a woman and her pointer, all of it charming, quiet, and contained. The month was February, and a chill, damp wind blew off the water. No place, I decided, could be farther from the heat and hustle of Miami.
The moments at Luna’s door dragged on, but still I didn’t knock. Inside my purse was the ring in its velvet box. I also carried a manuscript, a bound advance copy of The Love Poem, to give Luna. The book would be published later that year. It would change my life, although of course I didn’t know this at the time. I knew only that for fifteen years I had imagined Luna as Joe’s last love and his truest. I had written a book of poems about her, about the two of them together. All this time I’d held an idea of Luna in my head, and now it would collide or collapse with the real person who stood on the other side of this door.
The sun was setting. The light was almost gone. I felt the encroaching darkness around me. I rapped the iron knocker. The sound of feet, a pause, and the door opened.
“Fiona, hello,” Luna said. “You found us.” A toddler hovered at Luna’s knee, looking up at me with wide, dark eyes. Luna looked older, of course she did, than in that faded Polaroid, but she still retained the clear skin, arching eyebrows, that mole. I would have picked her out in any crowd.
“Yes, your directions were perfect,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m late. I missed the first ferry.”
I sensed a hesitation. Perhaps Luna would not invite me in. Perhaps, after all this time, the visit would consist only of a cautious stare-down on the doorstep.
The toddler began to fuss. He reached for his mother. Luna bent to pick him up and then stepped back. “Please come in, Fiona,” she said.
As I entered, a yellow Labrador rushed to greet me, jumping up and pushing its nose against my crotch. I backed away, self-conscious, already off balance. “Doggy, no,” the child said.