Chapter Sixteen
Jack
Jack had run a loop around the upper section of Central Park this morning before most people had been rudely awakened by their alarm clocks. He’d been unable to sleep last night, partly because of the hailstorm lashing against the windows of the condo, but also following the confrontation outside the restaurant yesterday and his father’s subsequent refusal to answer any questions. He hadn’t been to the townhouse, but he’d called his father, twice, both times on the pretence it was to do with the accounts. Whether his father saw through those excuses he had no idea, but whatever was going on, it preoccupied Kent so much he’d agreed to Jack leaving early from the office today, something he usually didn’t take too kindly to.
Back at his condo after a morning at the office, Jack changed out of his suit and shirt and pulled on jeans and an ink-blue woollen sweater. He lifted the bouquet of flowers he’d bought, out of the water in the sink, shook off the drips from the stems and wrapped them in the same paper the florist had used earlier.
Down in the parking garage Jack lay the flowers carefully on the passenger seat. The garage was next to his building and he paid a fortune to rent the space each month, but as he followed the ramps down to the exit, he knew without it these trips away from the city would be few and far between. He pulled the visor down and slipped on a pair of shades and then turned out of the garage and onto the New York City streets, facing the winter sun in full force, lifting the season from the dreariness of the cold and damp.
Jack wound his way out of the city and towards his destination of New Haven and the floral scent filling the car reminded him of the important stop he had to make first. Turning off the highway, he followed the signs through a small town, past houses in streets lined with maple trees that had long since shed their red leaves but come spring would sprout striking red flowers, giving the landscape an entirely different edge. Eventually he reached the cemetery. He took a deep breath. It hadn’t been intentional, but he hadn’t been here for some time. Not because he’d forgotten his mother, but because sometimes life got in the way until it reminded him, with a jolt, of what he’d once had.
He pulled in and drove through the gates slowly, following the paths he’d come to know only too well over the years. He parked between two cedar trees he’d seen in their infancy, trees that towered above him now, yet pulled him in as though this place was an odd extension of home. The cemetery was well kept. Gardeners discreetly tended to flowerbeds, floated from one gravestone to another clearing up stray twigs or dirt blown in from the season, a tree further down was being trimmed and cut presumably to keep it manageable, its gnarly deep brown bark a sign of its age and its place in the cemetery oddly appropriate. Jack smiled at one of the gardeners who returned a compassionate nod as he made his way over to the plot where Cynthia Churchill was buried.
He bent down and picked up the pin type vase on his mother’s gravestone. It was empty and he wondered whether it was his violets, months ago, that had last been here or whether his father had visited and left his own tribute.
When the fresh violets were neatly slotted in to the vase and Jack had placed it down on the grave, he sat back on his heels and ran a hand over the curved top of the headstone that perched on a rectangular piece of concrete surrounded by grass. His fingers traced his mother’s name, the phrase ‘In Our Hearts Forever’, the date she was born, the date she died.
He adjusted the vase so the violets caught some of the winter sunlight. They were his mother’s favourite flower. One particularly hot summer’s day in New York City, as his mother had been pouring two glasses of homemade lemonade, the flower from her hair had fallen into the jug of liquid. Jack had leapt forwards to rescue it before it’d sunk further and they’d giggled and drank the entire jug anyway. His mother had gone right back outside, picked another violet from the pot she’d nurtured for months and slotted it back into the dark curls of her hair that swished about her shoulders. She’d shown no signs of ill health then, and Jack had never thought their days together would come to such an abrupt end. Even an entire lifetime would never have been enough to tell her how special she was to him, but he tried so hard, every day, to remember how lucky he was to have had the years that they’d had.
The week after they’d buried his mother, Jack had come to the cemetery, a posy of violets clutched in his hand. His father had cried alongside him, each of them wondering where their lives went from there, and as they’d climbed back into the car, Jack had seen a lady, about his mother’s age, with a teenage boy. He’d wondered whether the boy had lost his father and Jack wanted to run over, tell him how much the world sucked, how unfair this all was. But when they’d walked away, Jack had seen the tombstone they’d been standing in front of. It was for a child, a girl: a daughter and a sister, and the dates had spanned a mere five years. From that moment, Jack had never looked at another epitaph again and made a point of reminding himself of the beautiful life his mother had enjoyed up until her final day. Not everyone got to enjoy being mother and child in the way they had.
‘I miss you, Mom,’ Jack said now, his words imperceptible to anyone around. Neither the gardeners, nor the man humming softly in front of a white gravestone two rows down, could hear him. ‘I miss you every day.’ His fingers brushed the tombstone as he wished she was here now, wished he could ask her to let him in on what his father was keeping from him and why.
Jack drove sedately out of the cemetery, following the curved roads, and made his way back out of the gates. He stopped the car at the end of the drive before the main road, pinched the top of his nose in the space between his eyes to stop any tears threatening to fall. It didn’t often happen these days, but now and again something pressed on a bruise that was there for life and would never go away entirely.
‘Pull yourself together, Jack,’ he scolded himself. He pulled onto the main road that would lead him to New Haven, and within half an hour he parked in the driveway of his house ready to start his search, his search for a face he’d not been able to put out of his mind.
*
Back in Manhattan, Jack knocked at the door of Nicole’s apartment. After a fruitless search that afternoon, he’d been forced to give up and drive home, and as he’d grabbed takeout menus from the kitchen drawer while the answering machine delivered his messages, he’d heard Nicole’s voice.
Nicole pulled open the door to her apartment now. ‘Jackson, I’m so glad you could make it.’ She pulled him into a hug.
‘How did you know my home number?’ he asked, taking off his coat.
‘I may not have contacted you in some time, but I always knew where you were.’
The moment sat between them, until Nicole remembered what she was doing and took his coat to hang up.
‘You rescued me from another night of takeout,’ he confessed, following her into the kitchen and meeting the aroma that’d already snaked its way to the hallway when he’d arrived.
‘Don’t tell me you survive on takeout! Not after I spent so many years trying to educate you on the importance of eating right.’
‘I remember.’ He laughed. ‘I think I was one of the few kids who started college with basic culinary skills. Most of the guys I knew couldn’t even boil an egg.’ Nicole had had him helping in the kitchen from early on, especially with his father working such long hours. Tonight he’d intended to go to the supermarket and whip up a quick stir-fry, but he’d spent so long walking the streets of New Haven that he’d run out of time and energy. ‘What are we having tonight?’
Nicole smiled. ‘Chilli.’
His eyes lit up. ‘And garlic bread?’
‘Of course! With cheese on top.’
One of the first dishes Nicole had cooked Jack and his father was her legendary chilli. It seemed so simple, but she’d added a few extras: a pinch of sugar, some ketchup, baked beans as well as other pulses, a rich beef stock and a touch of dark chocolate. Instead of eating the dish with cornbread or tortilla chips, she’d made cheesy garlic bread as an accompaniment, and Jack swore it was one of the first times in a long while he’d seen the creases in his father’s face appear from delight rather than sadness and worry. They’d dipped the cheesy garlic bread, cut into long finger wedges, into the sumptuous meaty dish and eaten until they were fit to burst.
‘I hope you’ll cut the garlic bread into fingers,’ he told her now.
‘Jackson,’ Nicole admonished playfully. She lifted the lid from the pot on the stove and stirred the mixture. If Jack remembered right, it would have been simmering gently for almost two hours by now to allow the flavours to really come out.
‘How on earth did you manage to cook this with your wrist out of action?’ he asked.
