In the dark, a familiar voice calls to me, whispers my name. I lift my head, open my eyes, squint against the light. A figure stands in the doorway. I wonder, for just a moment, if it might be him. Have I finally woken up from this long nightmare?
“You awake?” the figure says.
It’s not Sydney. Of course, it’s not Sydney. It’s Paige.
I drop my heavy head back to the pillow. “Yeah,” I answer.
“Get up. Get dressed.”
“That may take a while.”
“Please,” Paige says. “We need to talk.”
She leaves and shuts my door.
“This was his favorite spot,” Paige says.
We’re in Riverview Park, just a few blocks from the Sully house. We’re seated on a concrete foundation that used to be the floor of a gazebo. According to Paige, the gazebo’s top blew off during last year’s superstorm.
“I don’t think he thought much of the neighborhood,” Paige says, “but he loved the view from up here.”
Our legs dangle off the side of the foundation, our eyes forward. The concrete is warm under our thighs. Out ahead, a blinding sun rises up over Manhattan.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” she says.
My heart revs up, adrenaline focusing my mind. I had wondered, after some of the things Ollie said to me last night about Paige’s uncanny recall, if it was possible she knew more than she was letting on.
“I didn’t think it would do you any good. But I see now you’re never going to let it go and I don’t blame you. If what you were saying yesterday is true, then Sydney was keeping things from me too.”
I didn’t want to be right about this. I desperately wanted to be wrong.
“Did you know Sydney asked me for my eggs?” Paige says.
“No.”
“A few weeks before he visited in January, he called me up and sprang it on me. I didn’t know what to say. I told him I’d think about it and get back to him.” She pauses. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the response he was hoping for.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would he ask you? We were going to use my sister. That was the plan.”
“I know,” Paige says, staring ahead. “But that plan didn’t work out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Syd reached out to Veronica on his own.”
“What? When did this happen?”
“Around New Year’s.”
I think back to that night in December, how frustrated Syd was with me for wanting to put the brakes on parenthood.
“Veronica said she’d be happy to do it,” Paige says. “But there was a problem. She had just started dating this guy and she thought it might go somewhere. The timing wasn’t right. Syd didn’t want to count on that relationship going sour, so he began working on a backup plan. I guess that started with me.”
I still can’t get past the first part. “I was the one who was supposed to ask my sister. I was going to.”
“He knew that,” Paige says, adopting a motherly tone. “He knew you’d come around eventually. But he also knew how involved the whole process would be. He wanted to get started while you were figuring out whatever you had to figure out.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t want to rush you, that’s all. He wanted to give you the time you needed, but he also knew he couldn’t wait forever.”
Syd’s sense of urgency about the future had often felt obsessive and irrational. And yet the way Paige describes him makes him sound clairvoyant. It’s like he carried an hourglass in his pocket and knew exactly when his time would be up. In truth, it’s simply a matter of Syd’s fears being as influential for him as mine are for me. The difference being his fears propelled him forward while mine continue to hold me back.
“What does this have to do with all those trips he took to New York?” I ask.
“I’m not sure.” She stands up. I watch her pace around the concrete foundation. “What I’m about to say is just a theory, okay? It’s just a hunch. I didn’t want to tell you this from the start, because I’m not even sure it means anything.”
I stand up with her and cross my arms, bracing myself. “Go ahead.”
“When he visited in January, he never brought up what we spoke about, the possibility of using my eggs. I had been giving it a lot of thought. I was seriously considering it. But he was already on to the next thing.”
“Which was what?”
“Another woman. I didn’t know who she was, but he swore he felt a connection with her. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea. You can’t go up to a woman, basically a stranger, and just ask her for her eggs. I told him he should go home and talk it over with you. I thought you guys would be better off going back to the agency and finding a donor that way. But I don’t think he was hearing me. We were right here, looking out at the city, just like we are now, and I swear I had this feeling like whatever I was saying just wasn’t sinking in.”
“What did he do?”
“I don’t know,” Paige says, letting out a long sigh. “Maybe nothing. I have no proof that anything came of it. But knowing Syd, he might have decided to go for it anyway. If he came back two more times and it wasn’t for work, then… I don’t know. Whatever it was, after I discouraged him, I guess he didn’t feel like confiding in me anymore. I’m sorry. I never meant to keep it from you.”
Syd hated the agency process. The large majority of egg donors prefer to remain anonymous and understandably so; they don’t want their offspring coming to find them later in life. But Syd couldn’t understand how we were supposed to make such an important life decision based on a list of stats and a couple of images. He insisted on “knowing” the person.
“Who was she?”
“Some kind of artist. That’s what he was showing me on the computer that morning. He wanted to know what I thought of her work.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Yes,” Paige says, knowing full well what I’ll do with the information but unable to stop it now. “Marigold Hallowell.”
We return to the house and I assure Paige that I’m not angry. I understand. With Syd, if you refused to get on board, sometimes you got left behind.
She goes upstairs to the apartment and I head in through the studio, where—surprise, surprise—Joan is waiting for me on the couch.
I ask, “Have you ever heard the name Marigold Hallowell?”
“No,” Joan says. “So you’re babysitting me tomorrow morning, right?”
“I am?” I say, heading off to my bedroom.
Joan follows behind. “My mom says you guys talked about it last week.”
“Right. What about it?”
“I just wanted to double-check that you remembered. Are you sure you still want to go solo?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joan.”
“I’d rather be a duo, but it seems like you’d rather go solo. I really have to know because I have a very important gig coming up.”
We’ve reached my door. My brain is worthless. I can barely keep up with my own thoughts, let alone hers. “I don’t know what you mean, Joan. What gig?”
“I can’t say. It’s a secret.”
I don’t have time for any more riddles, not now. I excuse myself as gently as I can and close my bedroom door. I’m about to do a search for the name Marigold Hallowell, but I never reach my phone.
I spot something on my dresser. It’s Sydney’s forest painting, the postcard version that I bought at the arts fair. It’s been here the whole time, right in front of me. I destroyed the original, but the painting somehow found a way back into my life. I didn’t know why at the time, but I see it now. How could I forget? The gift Sydney mentioned in his text message, the one he was supposedly bringing home from New York. I remember now. He didn’t actually have anything with him when he landed at LAX. It came in the mail about a week later. It was the forest painting. I had never heard of the artist. He called it an investment.
I flip the postcard over. The artist’s name is Marigold Hallowell. Mara.
All her contact info is listed. Brooklyn, New York, is crossed out. Above it she’s handwritten a new address in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Mara’s website shows all her work, including the forest painting. The piece is actually called Woods. She has other paintings. Among them: Wolf Den, Breakfast Time, D&D.
At first I plan to hop on a train, but I opt for a rental car instead. I plug the address into my phone and let the GPS guide me.
I haven’t driven a car since I arrived in New Jersey. It’s a relief to be behind the wheel again, moving at whatever pace my heart dictates. In this case, it has me racing down the left-most lane of the turnpike. My arms are stretched out ahead, the bracelet swinging from my wrist, the eagle staring at me.
My instincts were correct. He was lying to me. Just not for the reason I suspected. He was looking for an egg donor.
I don’t know if all of this ends with Marigold Hallowell or if it involves others. All I know is that Mara was the one Syd was meeting in Brooklyn in January. He acquired a painting from her and had it shipped home, where it hung proudly on our wall until it was thrown into a fire. The rest is a mystery, including what else he was doing in New York in February besides checking out properties and what he was doing there on an April trip that I’ve yet to learn anything about.
I’m startled when the GPS orders me to take the next exit. I’ve been on the road for ninety minutes, but it feels more like twenty.
I’ve left behind the skyscrapers, industry, and congestion. I take a ramshackle bridge over a sleepy river and pass through a modest downtown. I’m winding along a country road, arching trees casting shadows onto the pavement.
I turn onto a side road. The house, according to the GPS, is still up ahead, but I stop here and exit the car. Birds and bugs make animal music around me. I peer up, hoping to put a face to a chirping sound. A blackbird is perched high above. My spirit animal, according to Joan. Finding it here, in the middle of a journey like this, feels like a good omen. But upon closer look, I see it’s no bird at all, just a shadow. I search the trees for other melody makers, but all the musicians are invisible.
I reach the mailbox by the curb and confirm the address. I start up the driveway, which is occupied by a single car, a hatchback. Somebody is home.
As I approach, I hear a low roar, constant and steady, something man-made. It’s coming from the detached garage situated some thirty feet from the side of the house. The overhead door is lifted. Inside are canvases propped against a wall.
I walk closer. In the garage, someone squats over a can, stirring with a stick, back turned to me. A large industrial fan blows against a white T-shirt; long hair is tucked under a cap. My shoes crunch as I leave the driveway and start down the gravel path to the garage. She turns her head and rises.
She’s not entirely surprised. There’s a sense of reckoning in her creased forehead.
She drops the stick into the can and wipes her hands on her stained jeans. After adjusting her hat over her pile of hair, she opens her arms to everything around her, the makeshift studio, the woods, the whole world, and says, “Welcome.”