43
T
he small aircraft touched down at Gainesville Airport and I blew out a breath of air.
“Glad to be almost home?” Saxton asked.
“Yes. Very much so, but also very glad that I had you with me in Maine.”
I was quiet on the drive to Cedar Key, but that was one of the things I cherished about my relationship with Saxton. He allowed me to have my quiet time and it felt comfortable.
Since my meeting with Rose, my mind had been swirling with the information I had learned. I had called both Jill and my aunt Stella to fill them in before I left Maine, and they had been as shocked as I was.
An hour later we approached the Number Four bridge just as the sun was beginning to set in the western sky. Now, more than ever, I could understand why my mother had chosen to come to this particular place. The beauty and solace surrounded me, and I felt my mother's presence closer than I had in a long time.
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After dropping our luggage at my apartment, Saxton made a quick call to Doyle telling him we'd be over to get Brit and Lola.
After hanging up, he came to pull me into an embrace. “We don't have to concern ourselves with supper tonight. Doyle said he's throwing some burgers on the grill and he made a potato salad.”
“Great,” I said. “Let's go. I can't wait to see Brit and Lola.”
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Walking into Doyle's house was pure pandemonium while the dogs greeted us. Brit jumped into my arms, wetting my face with kisses. When I put her down she ran over to Saxton, and Lola had run to me. Barking and tail wagging continued.
I put my hands up in the air, laughing. “Okay, okay, girls. Not that you missed us or anything.”
Doyle joined my laughter. “I think it's pretty safe to assume that they did. But they were both very good, and Uncle Doyle here enjoyed the doggie sitting.”
Once the dogs calmed down, he popped open a bottle of cabernet and filled three glasses.
“Here's to secrets being revealed,” he said.
I lifted my glass. “I'll drink to that.”
“Okay, let's go out on the patio while I fire up the grill and you can tell me everything.”
After I brought Doyle up to date, he remained silent. From the look on his face, I was certain everything that I'd told him he was hearing for the second time.
“My mother told you all of it, didn't she?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but it's not any easier hearing it the second time.”
“Can you start at the beginning, Doyle? She came here to escape my father, didn't she? But I don't really understand that part. He had already been killed.”
Doyle took a deep gulp of his wine and sat down to join us. “Right. When Jenna arrived here, she was pretty fragile. Actually, she was going through a nervous breakdown. After I heard her story, I couldn't blame her. It was your grandmother's idea for her to get away. She knew that some of the Maine fishermen used to come to this island and she thought it might be the perfect place for Jenna to recover and heal.”
“Okay, I get that. But . . . why didn't she take me with her?”
“She couldn't. That first week she arrived here, she could barely take care of herself, never mind a five-year-old daughter. Quite frankly, she couldn't function. I remember my mother was a bit hesitant about hiring her but decided to give her a chance. She was actually a good waitress. She was able to stay focused, and it was probably good for her to have something else to think about. She was dealing with a lot of baggage.”
“The way my father was killed?”
“Right. At first, she blamed herself. Felt it was her fault. Over time, I was able to convince her that every single thing that had happened had been due to Alden Sharpe. Not her. She also felt guilty that you had lost your fatherâeven though he had never once tried to see you or pay support for you.”
“Rose Langley explained to me the way it was back then for women when it came to abuse. She said women didn't have the options that they do today.”
Doyle nodded. “That's the absolute truth. Hell, I remember here on the islandâwe had a few men who would get drunk, go home, beat up their wives, and nothing was ever done to the husbands. Where was a woman going to go? She had her kids, no education, no training to support herself and those kids. It was pretty much a dead end and very wrong. At least today, there's shelters and laws to protect abused women. Unfortunately, Jenna made a bad choice and fell in love with the wrong guy.”
“Do you think she really loved him?” This thought had been going through my mind the past couple of days.
Doyle took another sip of wine. “I think she thought she loved him in the beginning. I do remember something she said to me, though; that the love a woman finds when she's younger is not the same type of love she wants when she's older.”
I looked over at Saxton and knew this to be true. When I thought back to some of the losers that I'd dated in my younger years and compared them to Saxton, there was no comparison.
“She could have reported him though. I'm not sure she even pressed charges for the incident when she was at college and had to go to the ER.”
“Berkley, she was ashamed. Plain and simple. I think many women were. It just wasn't something that was openly talked about back then. A friend of mine is a doctor. Do you know he told me that in the mid-1970s when he went to medical school the term âdomestic violence' was nowhere to be found in medical textbooks, published literature, or curriculum. It was a secret pandemic that wasn't addressed in the classroom or at the bedside, and as a consequence it remained largely unrecognized and invisible to the medical community.”
I recalled that Rose had told me pretty much the same thing.
“Doctors and nurses today are trained to recognize the signs, to screen patients and focus on prevention and help. It certainly wasn't like that when your mother was going through it. It had been swept under the carpet for centuries.”
“Do you know why she went to his motel that morning?”
Doyle nodded. “Alden called her when he got into town. She refused to see him. At your grandmother's insistence, she was in the process of getting a restraining order, but I have to say, I don't think they're worth the paper they're printed on. That morning, your grandmother had taken you and gone into Bath to do some shopping. Alden called again, but this time he threatened you and your grandmother.”
I leaned closer in my chair as I heard myself gasp. “What do you mean?”
“He told her he had a gun and if she refused to come to the motel and meet with him, he'd use the gun on her daughter and her mother.”
“Oh, my God! He would have killed us?”
“Who knows. He was pretty deranged. I have no doubt that in addition to being a drinker he did a fair amount of drugs as well. Jenna said she didn't have a choice. She had to go and at least try to talk him down.”
“And all of these years . . . all of these years I never thought of my mother as being strong,” I said, and felt shame creeping over me.
“Jenna Walsh was one of the strongest and most resilient women I've ever met. She went to the motel and another fight ensued. He began hitting her, pushing her into furniture, and she knew he'd probably kill her and then go after you and your grandmother. I remember when I was with her at the Cape last year, she said even though she knew she was dying, she had never felt closer to death than in those moments with Alden in that motel room.”
I could feel the tears sliding down my cheeks.
“I don't know how she managed it, but she did manage to get the door open and run to the office. She said that every step of the way she was waiting for that shot to hit her back. The owner took one look at Jenna, locked the door, and called the copsâand you know the rest of the story.”
I nodded as Saxton passed me a tissue. Letting out a deep breath, I took a sip of wine and dabbed at my eyes.
“I was right. I never did know my motherânot the woman that she really was. I always thought she was weak, filled with fear, unable to take any risks or chances. When in fact she took the biggest risk of allâputting her own life on the line . . . to save mine.”
“But thank God it didn't come to that,” Doyle said. “I have no way of knowing, but I'd say that's what a mother's love truly is. Protecting her child. No matter what. And that's what Jenna did.”
I shook my head slowly. “I had no idea. And you think the reason that she never shared any of this with me was because she was ashamed? But she shouldn't have been.”
Doyle shrugged. “People feel what they feel, Berkley. And yes, she told me she just couldn't ever tell you what really happened. I don't know this for sure, but I got the feeling that she thought you'd stop loving her when you heard the story.”
Tears started sliding down my face again. “My God!” I said as I felt my heart swelling with love. “If anything, I love her even more after hearing all of this. She did it for
me.
All of it. Leaving college, raising me on her own, basically giving up her entire lifeâall for me.”
Doyle reached over and patted my hand. “Don't feel bad. This is how she wanted it. Believe me. She came here to heal, to get over what had happened and start fresh when she went back. That was also why you moved so quickly with your grandmother to Salem as soon as Jenna came here. Neither of them wanted you growing up with that stigma surrounding you. It would have been difficult in school, hearing stories around town. They both wanted to protect you from that.”
I nodded, finally fully able to comprehend not only why she wasn't able to take me with her that summer but also why we had to leave Maine.
“But,” I said. “Fate intervenedâand she met you when she came here. And you fell in love with each other. Why did she give you up? Why didn't she just bring me here and she could have been with you?”
Doyle took the final sip of his wine. “Believe me, I asked myself that a million times after she left. She wasn't even in touch with me again for about six months. And then she sent me a letter, trying to explain. Until that letter, I had hopes that maybe she would come back with you. But she told me she couldn't uproot you. Take you away from your grandmother. Subject you to another new environment. She said that she hoped I'd understand, and she wanted me to know that despite everything I would always be that one great love of her life. But she was gone to me. This was what she told me, and while I knew it was all the truth, I also knew there was another reason why she wouldn't return here with you.”
I looked up and now saw tears glistening in Doyle's eyes as I waited for him to go on.
“I had no doubt whatsoever that she loved me as deeply as I loved her, but she was unable to trust me. Fully trust me. She had been too severely damaged, both physically and emotionally. The fear held her back. Fear of getting hurt again, fear of losing both your love and my love. You were everything to her, Berkley, and she couldn't risk trusting me enough to bring you here. What if it didn't work out?”
“So againâshe did that for me. She gave up that love . . . because of me.”
He let out a deep sigh. “She did it because . . . for her . . . it was the
right
thing to do. And I accept that.”
I shook my head at the sadness of it all. The sadness for what she endured with my father. Sadness for secrets that women had to keep. But most of all, sadness for a love my mother was never able to fully experience.
Now it was my turn to pat Doyle's hand. “I'm sorry,” I told him. “I'm so sorry for your loss.”