CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jon arrived, looking shiny clean and rested in a green activewear hoodie and expensive jeans.

"You look good," she said.

"Thank you."

She picked up her coat but dropped it on the floor. Picked it up, then dropped her keys; picked them up, but a lipstick rolled out of her bag. "Damn it!" She grabbed it before it could disappear under the couch.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "Maybe it's better to let sleeping dogs lie."

She gave him a look. "If it was you, would you let them lie?"

"Girl, I'd poke them until they woke up and started barking, for sure. But I've also never had anxiety so bad that I almost ended up in the hospital."

"Fair enough." She tucked everything in her purse and shoved her arms through her coat sleeves, pulling hair out and flinging it over her shoulders. "I have to find out what she was lying about. Why. Maybe that's the whole reason I'm screwed up in the first place, that she had some dark secret she never told me."

Solemnly, he nodded. Touched her shoulder. "Let's go, then."

When they were well underway and out of the Manhattan traffic, he said, "It is weird that she never told you about this other girl."

Tillie chewed her lip. "Maybe it was just too hard for her to talk about?"

"So she just never told you that you had a sister? That's a stretch."

"Yeah, that's a lot." She sighed. "But there was a lot that was not exactly ... ordinary about her."

He touched her hand. One of the things that made them friends was being able to make space for the weird parental baggage they each carried. His very religious single mother was 100 percent sure he would burn in hell for being gay, but she wrote him letters every week and wanted him home at holidays. Tillie's mother had been utterly devoted and supportive, but she wouldn't travel, ever, and she had what she called her "fits," periods when she didn't seem to be completely in contact with this world.

Trees along the road were glazed with green, and they passed a field with a pair of frolicking lambs. Tillie felt a whisper of recognition, a flash of déjà vu before it evaporated. The music on the stereo was very mellow jazz that unwound her nerves, and she let the tension go.

Jon said, "By the way, did you know your boy is a rock star?"

"My boy?" She echoed. "You mean Liam? He's a meditation teacher."

"Yeah," he agreed. "A rock star meditation leader. Google him."

She frowned, thinking of when she'd asked permission to paint him, and he had been unwilling or unable to give it. He'd also requested that they keep their connection separate from his work. "I don't want to. It's not like he's a serial killer or something."

"You really haven't googled him?" Jon looked askance. "Who just goes in uninformed these days? And why would you?"

She didn't want to admit that he'd asked her not to. That was what someone would say when they had something to hide, and it suddenly made her feel like the star of a bad horror movie, trusting where she should not.

And yet . . .

She thought of his gentleness when she was sick with her migraine, the way he'd come with her to her mom's farm. Tentatively, she offered, "I just feel like there's something here. With us."

He looked at her, then back to the road. "Like what?"

"I don't know." But she did. "It's like I've been waiting for him. Like all roads lead here. To him."

"I love that you're feeling that, sweetheart. I do."

"But?"

He shook his head. "You know the buts. I'm gonna respect you enough to trust you. If you trust him, I trust him."

"Thank you."

"But google him anyway. Right now."

"No! I don't want to. It might change things. It might change how I see him." She plucked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "I have been planning a painting of him, but when I asked him to sign a model waiver, he said he couldn't without asking his businesspeople."

"Yeah. Not surprising."

Her curiosity was killing her now. "How famous?"

"The app is Quiet. It has over a million reviews."

"Huh." She'd heard of it. "Does he lead the meditations? Because you have to admit, he has a great voice."

"Yes, on both counts. He also has books. Think Brené Brown famous."

Her stomach flipped. "No," she protested. "I've been with him in public. People don't recognize him walking down the street."

"Well, it's a pretty specific group of people, right?"

She covered her ears. "Don't say any more. I don't want to know."

"Okay." The word was layered with a sense of You're being ridiculous , but Tillie ignored him.

When they got to the village, he said, "Where to?"

She drew a blank. It wasn't like her mother had a ton of friends. "She used to spend a lot of time at the quilt store with Calla. Not that they were exactly friends, but she's been around as long as I can remember. Maybe she'll remember something."

"As good a place to start as any."

The quilt shop was in a quaint building with apartments over the shop and a display of fabric snippets in the window. Only snippets, Tillie knew, because sunlight would fade bolts of cloth. They walked to the door, but a sign read C LOSED . It wouldn't open for another hour. "Damn," she said mildly, then looked down the street for other ideas. The natural-foods store was around the corner. "I have an idea."

Mother Earth Foods was open and thriving, judging by the number of people going in and out. It had originally occupied a former small-town grocery store, the old-fashioned kind with wooden floors and a butcher counter in back. They'd expanded since the last time she was there, taking over a shop next door to add a bigger produce section. She stood just inside for a moment, smelling the air, but it no longer carried the pungent quotient of nutritional yeast and patchouli and freshly baked bread. The recognition made her a little sad.

A young woman behind the florist counter smiled. "Hi. Can I help you find something?"

It seemed foolish to ask now that she realized it was no longer a funky little hole in the wall, but what did she have to lose? "Yeah," Tillie said. "I'm hoping to talk to the original owner, May Paulson?"

"Oh, sure. I just saw her." She straightened from her task and peered down an aisle. "Yep, there she is. By the canned goods, end of aisle seven."

"Thanks."

They headed in her direction. She looked up as they approached, her gray hair woven into a braid that fell down her back. Her sinewy arms showed beneath a Life Is Good T-shirt featuring a tent and a dog. "Good morning," the woman said as they approached. "Tillie, isn't it?"

"Wow, good memory."

"How are you, dear? I was sorry to hear about your mama's passing."

"Thank you. I'm okay. I actually wondered if you had a minute to talk to me about her, about when she came to town."

She glanced at her watch. "A little time."

"Do you remember when she first came here?"

"I do. She lived right across the street with you for the first year. She was looking for a farm, but it needed to be just right."

"I didn't know that we ever lived in town."

"You were the cutest little girl, all hair and eyes." She tugged off her gloves.

"Thanks. Where did she come from? Do you remember?"

Her gaze sharpened. "Do you not have any family?"

"Not that I know of."

"I'm sorry. That must be hard." She straightened a can of pears so the label faced outward. "I always thought she was from New England somewhere. I can't remember why I thought that. Maybe an accent or something? It's been a long time."

"It has. Not California?"

She frowned. "No, I'd remember California. It was one of my dream places."

"Did she work around here anywhere?"

"No, she seemed to come from some money. Or she had enough that she didn't work."

Tillie smiled. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

"Sure, honey. Anytime."

Jon lifted a hand, and they fell in step, heading out to the street. The sun was out in a brilliant blue sky, and it was hard to feel dejected in the face of such relentless spring cheer. "New England," she said. "First I've heard of that, too."

"The mystery deepens. Did you run a Google search on her name?"

Tillie looked at him. Blinked. "No. It never occurred to me."

"Let's get some coffee and do that."

But a woman was at the door of the quilt shop. "First, Calla."

They hurried down the street. Tillie called her name before she went inside.

She turned. Unlike the owner of Mother Earth Foods, Calla had not aged well. She was stooped, with a mild dowager's hump and entirely white hair. "Tillie!" she cried. "How are you, honey?"

Sweetheart, honey, dear. "I'm good. How are you?"

"Been better." She cursed softly. "This damned lock. Will you get it for me, young man?"

"Of course. These old locks can be sticky, can't they?" He opened it and stepped back. "If you have some WD-40, I can spray it for you."

"Well, that's really sweet. I do have some somewhere. Come on in."

Tillie touched his arm in thanks for his kindness.

The store smelled like fresh laundry. Calla pointed to a door in the back. "Look in the cupboard over the toilet for the WD-40, son."

He winked at Tillie.

Huffing a little, Calla swung her enormous fabric bag on to the counter. "What brings you to town, Tillie? I heard you're selling your mom's farm."

"Yeah. I just don't want that life, I'm sorry to say, and it seems a waste to hang on to it and let it go to seed."

"Good choice. It's a hard life."

"I found some papers my mother had," she said without preamble. Calla was a straightforward person and expected the same of others. "They made me wonder about where she came from. Do you remember her talking about her life before?"

"It was never reliable." She shook her head. "That was always the thing, wasn't it? She sometimes said she was from Maine, sometimes California, sometimes New Hampshire. It was like she couldn't remember herself, which ..." She raised her brows and let Tillie fill in the blanks.

"She might not have."

"Right. I'm glad to see you're okay. Doing really well for yourself."

Tillie was surprised anew, but of course, it was a small town, and people talked about each other. "Thank you." She paused. "Did she ever talk about a daughter that died?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "No. Did she have one?"

"I think she did," Tillie said. "I'd like to find out more if I can. Was she close to anyone else in town that you can remember, maybe when she first got here?"

Calla looked toward the window, peering back in time. "She had a boyfriend for a while. Eddie Johnson."

"Is he still here?"

"I haven't heard about him dying. You can find him on the old mill road, on the other side of the lake. He's got about thirty acres or so."

It was quite a distance to the other side of the lake, but she made note of his name. Maybe she could track down his phone number. "Thanks, Calla."

"You take care of yourself, sweetie."

She nodded.

Outside, Jon said, "I think you need to eat."

"Yeah. Let's get some burgers and look up my mom's name."

When they'd settled at a small table in a local café, Tillie said, "I've been in so many restaurants the past few days! I just can't seem to remember to get groceries."

"You've had a lot going on." He tapped her menu. "Eat something hearty. I need you to take care of yourself."

The simple phrase almost shattered her. She closed her eyes, willing the sharp, sudden emotion away, but tears welled up beneath her eyelids and seeped out. She covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, baby." Jon scooted from his side of the table over to hers and looped his arms around her.

"I'm sorry." Tillie breathed. "This is all ... I just hate that I have to think about her in a new way now, when she doesn't have a chance to defend herself. I love her. I don't know how to be in the world without her, and I don't want to be upset with her."

He rubbed her arm, leaned his head into hers.

In the safety of his presence, Tillie let the bubble of grief rise. She saw Arlette last summer, picking tomatoes, her hair grown thin the past few years, but still long and woven into a skinny braid. She'd offered Tillie a perfect, deeply red tomato. It's like a jewel, isn't it?

After a minute, the bubble dispersed. She took a breath, leaned into Jon's shoulder. "Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You're strong. You'd be okay." He kissed her head and moved his chair back into place. "Let's get some food in you."

Once they'd eaten, which brought her flying emotions back into her body, she said, "Okay, let's google my mother."

"Sure?"

She nodded. Together, they bent over her phone as she typed Arlette Morrissey .

There wasn't much. The first three results were her obituary, which she'd written herself before she died.

Arlette Morrisey passed away peacefully in her home in Fox Crossing, New York, after a long illness. She is survived by her daughter, artist Tillie Morrisey.

Tillie always wondered why she'd left it so bare, but she would never have dared change it. Arlette would have risen from her grave to haunt her.

The next result was a hair salon. A lawyer in New Hampshire. An obituary for a woman in South Carolina in 2009.

Nothing else.

Jon said, "Google her name, the year of her birth, and the town she was born in."

Nothing.

On impulse, Tillie googled Valencia firestorm and her mother's name. The same story she'd read in print came up, but so did three others. Two led to a story obviously written in the first days after the fire, where she was listed as one of the victims, the mother of a toddler killed when the fire swept through her home. The family also lost two dogs.

Tillie repeated this aloud. "‘The family also lost two dogs.'" She shook her head. "But no mention of another child." Something crept up her spine, dark and unidentifiable. "Where was I?"

"Are you sure you want to keep going down this road?"

"No." She read the short story again. "But I can't leave it now, can I? I have to find the truth."

"Do you?"

"You know I do." She clicked on the final result, which was a story about a list of plaintiffs who'd brought a lawsuit against a construction company that was liable for the initial fire. "Listen to this." She read it to Jon. "The money was substantial."

He googled the construction company and the lawsuit. "And it was settled for millions."

Tillie divided the number of plaintiffs into the settlement. "My mother ended up with just under two million dollars."

"A lot more then than it is now."

"There's the money she used to buy the farm," she said. "But where was I? How do I find out?"

"Maybe you have to go to LA, talk to people there."

"Ugh." She pressed her face into her hands. "I have a show to finish. I can't afford this right now!"

"You're in good shape. You could take a few days, fly out there, see what you can find out ..."

"Or maybe I can do it online. Find numbers of people and just call them or something."

"Yeah, that could work."

Tillie was suddenly depleted to her very bones, as if the center of her body had been scooped out and left on the counter, like a squash without seeds. "I think I need to go home and rest right this minute. I'm not sleeping very well."

"Good idea."

On the way out of town, she asked Jon to stop at her mom's farm, just to see if there might be something she'd missed, but a cleaning crew had scoured the place. There wasn't so much as a button left anywhere inside. Her feet made hollow echoes as she crossed the kitchen floor. It made her feel lonely. In memory, she saw her mother in jeans and a tank top, her feet bare and strong, stirring something on the stove. The stereo played her favorites: Crosby, Stills Joni Mitchell; Led Zeppelin. Tillie thought of her, young and pretty, living in California, with a daughter.

Who had died.

The woman at the stove became a paper prop, hiding a truth she desperately needed to unravel. Where was Tillie?

Where was she?

Everything she'd ever known about her sole parent had shifted completely, and she had no idea what to put in its place.

"Why did you lie to me, Mom?" The rooms were silent.

Outside, she paused. She probably wouldn't be back here again, and she pressed the visuals into her mind carefully—the fenced garden and the barn and the woods. How many hours did she spend in those woods, with a cat or a dog or herself, making things up, drawing the trees and acorns, and imagining little fairy homes beneath the brambles?

Could these woods be the source of her dream?

No. These were deciduous trees. The ones in her dream were pines. She let the image of them rise—tall, thin pines, with undergrowth below. And—she noticed it for the first time—a creek.

For the first time, she felt the deep truth she'd been avoiding. The dreams were memories.

She just had to find a way to unlock them.