When Jasmine returned to the kitchen, she found Jenny nibbling at the edge of a piece of peanut butter and jelly toast. Her heart lifted. Maybe there was hope.
Outside of Jasmine’s apartment, they traced a path past the gas station and through the cracked basketball court, all the way to the beach. Once there, they removed their shoes and walked quietly for a while. The wind fluttered through their hair.
“I want to thank you for spending so much time with the kids the past few months,” Jenny said. “I imagine they’ve told you what’s been going on?”
“Not really,” Jasmine said, although of course she’d read the signs.
Jenny walked into the water so that she stood ankle-deep. “I hope they don’t remember me this way. Long after they leave my house, I hope they don’t think back and remember me as a weak woman who let her husband—their father—walk all over her. And goodness, I hope Chase doesn’t become like Walton.”
Jasmine felt it heavy on her chest. “He won’t,” she said. “Chase is a fantastic young man. He’s kind and open-hearted. He always watches out for his sisters. And he worries about you.”
Jenny winced.
Jasmine wanted to tell her daughter that this was the first step: admitting something was wrong. Next was probably moving out of Walton’s place, calling a divorce lawyer. Because everything in Jenny’s and Jasmine’s lives was here in Hawaii, it wasn’t like Jenny could pack up her things and flee in the middle of the night. It would be messier. But Jasmine would help her every step of the way.
Jenny turned to face Jasmine and raised her chin. “You said you had something to tell me. I think I might be ready to hear it.”
Jasmine’s stomach heaved with panic. But she set her chin and told herself to be brave—yet again—for her daughter. It was what she’d been put on this earth to do.
Chapter Seventeen
Nederland 1973
Henrietta Johannes was twenty-six years old in the summer of 1973. By now, she knew, her husband Larry wanted at least four strapping boys who could help him around the property and carry his last name. But despite their many years of marriage, not a single baby had come. There hadn’t even been a single chance, not a single close call. Devastation and shock marred Larry’s face day in and day out. But the worst was that he blamed Henrietta. He took it out on her in a thousand little ways. But it was 1973 when he smacked her across the face for the first time. Henrietta looked at him, her hand over her reddening cheek, and wondered how she’d gotten here. Her life felt empty till this point.
Henrietta limped back into the kitchen to make dinner as though nothing had happened.
As Henrietta chopped vegetables, she kept tabs on Larry through the window. He chopped wood for the upcoming winter, his brow glinting with sweat. She thought back to whenshe’d first met him. She’d been an eighteen-year-old high school dropout living in Boulder, Colorado, with her mother and father, both of whom had thought Larry was an incredible match. Henrietta’s father had never really liked Henrietta. He’d thought she was lazy and daydreamy and weak. He’d seen Larry as her best possible option, someone to take care of her and set up her life. She’d married Larry because getting married was what you did.
Larry’s angry outbursts were so much like Henrietta’s father’s, although Henrietta had never seen her father smack her mother across the face. Maybe he’d hit her behind closed doors. Perhaps that was what a marriage was.
That evening, Larry went to town to meet a friend for a beer. Henrietta was grateful to have the house to herself, so much so that she sat on the living room floor for a good ten minutes and listened to her heart pound. After that, she hurried to the little closet under the staircase to haul out her supplies: a canvas, little containers of paint, and several paintbrushes, all of which she’d found in a used container outside the hardware store a few months back. There had been a sign taped to them: FREE.
Henrietta had always been interested in art. As a kid, she’d loved to sketch and draw in a little notebook she’d gotten for her birthday. She’d sketched her mother, ironing her father’s shirts. She’d sketched her sister, putting on makeup before a date. She’d found joy in noticing little things and bringing them through the cracks of her mind and into the real world.
Now, she felt that painting gave her the only thing to cling to in this life. She painted the mountains. She painted people she saw walking through the forest. She found that she had an incredible photographic memory and could bring anything she’d seen to light. She could only paint if Larry was out of the house, and she always knew to have everything cleaned up and out of the way by the time he was back. Stealing a few hours here andthere a week, she’d finished three paintings so far—paintings she knew would never see the light of day. Oh, but they pleased her endlessly to see. She felt as though they were the only things she cared about in the world.
Sometimes, when she was deeply immersed in her work, she caught herself hoping that she would never get pregnant with Larry’s baby. Maybe then, Larry would want to divorce her and find someone new. Maybe she could run off and study art and become someone famous, someone great. Maybe her father would finally look at her and say “You were meant for more than I ever dreamed of. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
She laughed when she thought that. She knew the chances were zero.
Toward the end of the summer, Henrietta was still not pregnant, and Larry was more impatient than ever. He demanded that she get a job somewhere so that she could bring in money for their lives and their futures. Henrietta was excited by the prospect of working outside the home and immediately nabbed a job at a quaint ten-room inn in downtown Nederland. The inn's owner, an ancient man of ninety, told her that her bright smile would be enough to charm the guests into staying longer. Nobody had given Henrietta a compliment like that before.
As summer faded into autumn, fewer and fewer guests came into Nederland to stay at the inn, but the owner continued to insist that Henrietta come in and work. With nothing to do, Henrietta asked if she could set up her paints and her easel and work on her art. The owner told her that she could, provided that everything else at the inn was tended to beforehand. When he saw her paintings for the first time, he stood stock-still, watching her work. Tears filled his eyes.
“Does your husband know that you’re this talented?” he asked.
Henrietta laughed at him, thinking he was joking. “He’d kill me if he knew I was wasting my time with all this,” she said.
The owner was quiet for a long time before he went on. “You could be someone great, Henrietta. You could get out of Nederland and have a whole life to yourself.”
But Henrietta knew not to believe him. He was just an older man who’d taken a liking to her. He was kinder and gentler than her father and husband—but he was still a man in the world. She couldn’t trust him too much.
Around Christmas of 1973, Henrietta was still not pregnant, and Larry was at the end of his rope. When he found a few breadcrumbs on the counter (all from him, of course), he grew irate and demanded that Henrietta quit her job at the inn and return home to cook and clean for him. Henrietta caught herself begging to stay at the inn, as it was the only place in the world where she felt safe and at home. But Larry had made up his mind.
Henrietta packed up her paint supplies and hugged the innkeeper goodbye. He reminded her of what he’d told her about her artistic talent, and she promised she’d consider it.
By the time February 1974 began, the innkeeper was dead from a terrible flu, and his three children were selling the inn to a man from Boulder who destroyed it and built a gaudy hotel. Larry used this to say it was good that he’d told Henrietta to quit. “You don’t want to get involved with that mess,” he said.
