“TESS!” JACKSON CALLED as she strode out of the building. “Hold on! I can explain.”
“Of course you can,” she said as he caught up. “I’m sure you will. However, it’s about two days and twelve hours too late.”
“It’s not like that.”
“No?” She turned to face him. “All right. What you’re telling me is that you happen to be searching for your birth parents at the same time I am, and we happened to end up in the same place. Yet that’s a total coincidence, and therefore there was no reason to tell me.”
“I—”
“Furthermore, given that the two are unconnected, you are helping me out of simple curiosity, and you certainly never agreed to help me—and take my money—only because my search might actually provide answers for yours.”
He rubbed his mouth and looked around. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Please?”
“That’s what I was trying to do, presuming you didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of the psychology department.”
He nodded and gestured for her to follow him. She did, and they wound past a few buildings before coming to a bench between two of them.
They sat. When Jackson didn’t speak, she said, “Start at the beginning. The part where your parents aren’t your birth parents, which would be none of my business normally but obviously is, under the circumstances.”
“They’re my aunt and uncle,” he said. “Dad is my birth mother’s older brother. That’s what I think of them as: Mom and Dad. I’ve never known my birth parents. I didn’t even realize they existed until I was old enough for my parents to explain. That’s why my sisters are so much older. When my birth mother was a teen, she got into some trouble. Dad stepped in to help. She had…issues. Psychological. He got her on the right path, and then she met my birth father and wanted to drop out of school and get married. She was seventeen. When my parents tried to change her mind, she took off. She got married and had me, and they never even knew I existed until my birth father showed up on their doorstep with me, six months old, and said she was dead.”
Tess blinked, the words I’m sorry on her lips, but he continued.
“She’d had postpartum depression, like that woman you saw in the hall. She’d always had problems with depression, and having me only made it worse.”
He was leaning forward, gazing straight ahead, some piece of paper—it looked like Dr. Augustin’s card—between his hands, nails shredding the edges as he spoke.
“She…committed suicide. Pills. My birth father was a mess. My parents say he really did love her, but he was just a kid himself, and he didn’t understand her problems. He thought he could fix them by being good to her. Loving her. Looking after her.” The breeze caught a tiny scrap of the card and floated it away. “That’s not enough. It just isn’t. He brought me to my parents and asked them to take me until he got on his feet again. He’d heard of work in Newfoundland at the fisheries. He’d make some money and come back. He died on the way out there. Drove all day and then decided he could drive the rest of the way that night. He fell asleep at the wheel.”
“I’m sorry.”
He gave a half shrug. “I don’t know them as anything more than photos. It’s like a really tragic story that happened to someone else, you know? A story about two kids who weren’t much older than I am now, who only wanted to get married and be happy like everyone else, and it went really, really wrong.”
“Your mother,” Tess said. “You think that house, that experiment, has something to do with her depression…but there’s no way you could coincidentally happen to be in the same house, on the same mission, when I showed up.”
He turned toward her. “There’s this man. He contacted me when I started at McGill. It was a letter at first, to my dorm room. He wanted to talk to me about my birth mother. If I agreed, I was to wait by a pay phone the next day at a certain time.”
She raised her brows.
“Yes, I know it sounds very cloak-and-dagger,” he said.
“Mysterious man contacts you to set up mysterious meeting via pay phone? No, not at all strange.”
“It’s true, Tess. I swear it.”
“Just tell me your story.”
“I went to the pay phone. He called. He said there was more to my mother’s story than I knew. I asked him what he meant. He said he didn’t know the specifics, only that the situation was much more complicated than postpartum depression and suicide. I demanded more. He said I’d need to get answers myself. I hung up. I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like someone was just trying to cause trouble. It seemed too weird to be legitimate. That’s why I freaked out when you said you were sent to the same place. It seemed like proof I’d been set up, though I had no idea why.”
“But you did eventually talk to the guy again?”
“He continued to send messages to my dorm. I ignored him for almost six months. Then I took one of his calls. By then I hoped that if he really had anything to tell me, he’d tell me and stop playing games.”
“Did he?”
“Not really. He said he knew that my mother had been involved in something. He had no idea what it was, but he could set me on my way if I was interested in investigating. I needed more. Where did this information come from? What was the information, so I could judge it for myself? This time he hung up on me. Then last week he called my parents’ place. I was home by then, the term over. He gave me the address for the house outside Sainte-Suzanne. He said if I wanted answers, they would be there in a day or two.”
“Because I was going there? You must think I really am stupid, Jackson. There’s no way this man could have known I was heading to that house. The only person who did was—”
“Whoever gave you that address. She must have called and told him.”
Tess shook her head. “If the matron knew of someone who could help, she would have told me.”
“Maybe he didn’t know you were definitely going, only that you’d gotten the address somehow.”
“That’s awfully…” She trailed off. “When did he call?”
“Sunday afternoon.”
“I tried the Sainte-Suzanne number that day,” Tess said. “When the operator said it wasn’t in service, the matron spoke to her and explained a bit about the situation.”
Jackson nodded. “Then it was the local operator. I bet she’d been told to call this man if anyone used that number. He knew you’d get that number when you turned eighteen, and if I wouldn’t investigate, maybe you would. Then you called it early, and he used that excuse to send me up there. At least one of us would take the bait. While I don’t like doing the bidding of some mysterious guy too lazy to get off his ass and do it himself, there are answers here, answers we both need. I think we made some real progress today.” He pulled out his notepad. “Let’s compile what we’ve found and—”
“No.”
He went still, notebook half open, other hand reaching for his pen.
“Do you really think it’s that easy, Jackson?”
His jaw twitched, as if to say, No, but I’d kinda hoped it might be.
“Look, Tess, I know you’re upset with me. Maybe I didn’t handle this well—”
“Maybe? There’s no maybe about it. You were a jerk.”
He flinched hard at that. “I don’t think—”
“No? You hauled me out of that basement, blamed me for inconveniencing you and kicked me out to sleep in the woods. The next morning, I offered to hire you, and you took my money—to do exactly what you’d come there to do anyway.”
“I hadn’t figured out what was going on, if you were on the level or if that man had sent you up there, so I decided to pretend—”
“You lied to me,” she said. “How many times did you tell me that if you were going to help, I had to be honest. How many times did you make me feel bad for not being completely honest?”
“I—”
“You were a jerk, Jackson.”
“Okay, I’ve been thoughtless. Inconsiderate. I know I can act like a jerk, but I think I let you see beyond that.”
He rubbed his mouth again, his gaze focused forward, distant. Then he turned to her. “The story I told was a lie, but what you’ve seen—”
“What you’ve let me see, as you worded it yourself. That small, safe window you allowed me to peek in, mostly as a way to make me feel like I knew you, so we could work together. Don’t try to make me feel special because you let me in. I’m not special. I’m just the sucker who fell for your lies.”
“That’s not—”
“I paid you. I gave you five dollars to help me. I bought all the food you needed. I even got your bus ticket. And you let me, despite the fact—”
“It was temporary. Part of me playing a role.” He fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a twenty. “There. That’ll more than cover it, and you can keep the extra.”
“Can I? Thank you.”
He missed the sarcasm and nodded. “I can give you more if you need it. I have more than enough.”
“From Daddy and Mommy?”
His gaze dropped slightly, and he mumbled, “I do stuff for them. Research and that. I earn it. Okay, I get more than I earn, but I’m in school, and they want me to concentrate on my studies.” He sneaked a look at her. “The point is that I have money. I can pay for everything from now on, and I can give you some extra if you need—”
“I don’t need it.”
“I know you must, so let me pay, as a way of saying I’m sorry.”
“I’d rather you just said you were sorry.”
“I am.”
“Not really. You admit you may have made a mistake or two, but you still think I’m overreacting and money will fix it. When I say I don’t need your money, Jackson, I mean it. I have plenty. Some came from the matron, but most I made myself, from years of doing whatever work I could find so that when I was ready to set out on my own, I could do it without relying on jerks who think they’re better than me because Daddy and Mommy give them an allowance.”
He exhaled. “You’re right. I handled that poorly. I’ve handled a lot of things poorly, but I don’t think—”
“You don’t think you’re a jerk. Maybe you aren’t, but you’re doing a fine imitation of one.” She got to her feet. “I’m going to my dorm for a while.”
When she started walking away, he leaped up behind her. “Tess! Don’t go. I know I’m not saying the right things, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“If you did know and you said that, then it would be more lies, wouldn’t it? Telling me what I want to hear so I shut up. Do you know what I want to hear? Honesty.”
“All right. I’m…I’m sorry?” His voice rose, turning it into a question. A sharp shake of his head. “I am sorry. You’re right. I deceived you and then gave you crap for being less than honest about things that had nothing to do with me. What I lied about did affect you. So it’s worse.” A hopeful look. “Is that good?”
Tess sighed. “I’m not trying to force you to say the right things, Jackson. I just need a break—”
“No, you’re taking off.”
“Do you really think I’d abandon the investigation and reject your help because you hurt my feelings? I’m angry, Jackson. Justifiably angry, but this is what happens when you deal with strangers. They can deceive you. Lesson learned. I’m not going to run away, because I’m not stupid. I need a break to regroup, and then I want to get back into the investigation. You’re useful to me; I’m useful to you. It’s a business arrangement. That’s all.”
He stood there staring at her, looking confused and maybe a little bit hurt, as if he’d rather she stomped off because then he could just chase after her and apologize and…Tess didn’t know what he expected then. That she’d fall into his arms and tell him it was all right, that he was a great guy after all? The idea almost made her snort a laugh, but there was something in his expression that said that’s exactly what he hoped for. That he could get out of this because she wasn’t really angry—he’d just hurt her feelings.
“May I go now?” she asked.
He nodded mutely.
“Meet me back here in two hours,” she said as she walked away. “Bring your notes.”
He let her get to the edge of the walkway, then called after her, “Tess!”
“It’s Thérèse,” she said and kept going.