“Hello, who’s this?” said Daniel Miller, laughing as she grabbed at his trouser leg, pulling herself up to stand.
Polly gathered her daughter in her arms. “This is Jessica.”
“Hello, Jessica,” said Daniel Miller. “What a sweet little baby.” His eyes met Polly’s again. They were dark brown—kind and insightful. She liked him, she realized. She could see why he was good at his job. She could imagine him being the sort of person in whom people would happily confide. “You both live here with Nora?” he asked.
Not that it was any of his business. Polly nodded.
“That’s nice. Three generations together. Must be good to have your mom on hand to help.” His brow furrowed slightly, as if he were deciding whether to continue, and then: “I knew her when you were small. She doted on you.”
“Yeah, she’s great,” Polly agreed, but the comment was lost as Nora reemerged from the house and Daniel Miller turned to answer her call with a wave.
He smiled at Polly. “Well,” he said, “it was good to meet you”; and to Jess, “You too, little one.” And then he bid them both farewell and started back up the hill to where Nora was waiting. He cast a final glance over his shoulder as he neared the crest, and Polly, who’d been watching him retreat, lifted a hand to wave. Jess mimicked her before remembering she was hungry and starting to grizzle, and Polly experienced the same surge of panic she always did when Jess began to cry. This was the point at which Nora usually swept in and Polly realized that whatever it was she’d thought to do in response had been wrong. But Nora wasn’t there to fix things, so Polly started to sing “The Grand Old Duke of York”—Jess’s favorite—and they headed back to the house.
She took the path through Nora’s special garden because Jess always calmed down when she had the chance to grab at the star jasmine tendrils in the arbor, and that’s how she arrived near the spot where Daniel Miller’s car was parked. He hadn’t left yet, but was standing by the driver’s-side door, talking with Nora. Polly paused as Jess reached in wonder for a leafy vine.
Something was wrong. Nora had her face in her hands, her shoulders hunched. She was speaking, shaking her head, and then, suddenly, she clutched at Daniel Miller’s arm, looking up to meet his eyes. They stayed like that for what seemed an eternity but was probably no more than five seconds, until finally he shifted forward to enclose her in an embrace...
Polly slid the book back into place on the shelf. Even now, the memory of that moment made her uncomfortable. In part, it was thedissonance of what she’d seen. The gesture had been close, almost tender, but from where she’d stood, it had seemed to Polly that Daniel Miller’s expression had been stony.
She had hoped that her mother would tell her about his visit that evening, but Nora had been more withdrawn than usual: pale and preoccupied. Thinking about Isabel and the children, Polly supposed, and her brother, Thomas, all of the loss.
Late that night, Polly had found Nora watching over Jess’s cot. Even in the half-light, Polly had been able to see that the look on her face as she gazed down at the sleeping baby was of fervent love and concern. She heard Polly and looked up.
“Who was that man who came to see you today?” Polly asked.
“I told you—someone I used to know a long time ago.”
“Visiting from America?”
“Yes.”
“Nice that he could come to say hello.”
Nora nodded but said no more, and Polly joined her beside the cot. Together they stood, looking down at Jess’s sleep-pinked cheeks, her baby lips pursed ripely, until at last Nora spoke. “She can never know.” Her voice was very quiet. “Promise me you’ll never tell her what happened in South Australia, to my brother’s family. A thing like that—it taints a person, a family. Promise me you’ll never tell our girl.”
Polly went back to the kitchen and found her cup of tea sitting where she’d left it an hour ago. She took a sip, but it was cold. She started making another, but when she went to get the milk, her eyes alit upon the bottle of Corona standing on the top shelf. It was a new habit, and one she’d been enjoying very much over the summer. On hot afternoons, she took a cold beer from the fridge, put a wedge of lime in the top, and drank it outside in the garden, straight from the bottle.
She glanced at the clock. Nowhere near midday, but on the day one’s mother died, she supposed it was close enough.
Beer in hand, she wandered the narrow paths within the dense garden. She had planted it herself. There’d been nothing but long grass and a rusted car body when she moved into the house thirty-odd years ago. It surprised Polly sometimes how willing things were to grow. The roses in the old claw-footed bathtub were doing very well this year. They shouldn’t be doing well, not in this climate, but Polly had always had luck with roses. It seemed she was better at raising plants than people.
Nora had promised her she’d improve as a mother, but Polly had been nervous, worried that she’d do things the wrong way, and perhaps Jess picked up on it, because she was a fractious baby, until Nora came along and put her in a special hold and rocked her back to sleep. It was only when they moved into the flat that Polly had started to find her feet. Things had got better then, as Jess grew out of being a baby and into being a little person. She had been a delightful child: bright and challenging, full of questions and opinions and eminently sensible ideas. Sometimes Polly thought those had been her happiest years: just the two of them in the Art Deco apartment at the top of the promontory near the playground.
Jess. Standing in her sunny garden, a cold bottle of Corona in hand, Polly experienced an all-over shiver. Nora had died and the nurse who’d telephoned had said they were calling Polly because they hadn’t been able to get on to Mrs. Turner-Bridges’s next of kin. They’d tried Darling House to no avail, and there’d been something then about an international number, but Polly had been in too much shock to make sense of it at the time.
Realization made the fabric of the world seem suddenly tenuous: they had telephoned Polly because they couldn’t reach Jess.
Nora had died, and Jess didn’t know.
Polly took another swig of her beer and then set it down. She wiped her hands on her overalls, drying them, and picked up her mobile.
21
Sydney
December 12, 2018
Jess had finally finished reading all thirty-three pages of the notebooks and her head was filled with Nora. Nancy was right when she said that Daniel Miller had a gift for understanding other people. Jess recognized Nora from the notes, at the same time as the Nora in these pages was new to her. This Nora was at least a decade younger than Jess was now, and Miller’s notes showed a side of her that Jess had never known: vulnerable, less certain of herself, grief-stricken, but also a new mother, passionately in love with the baby who’d arrived in the midst of a family tragedy.
