Once more, Jess dialed a phone number with her heart racing.
After telling Oliver first thing in the morning, who had let out a whoop loud enough that she was sure she could have heard it from three blocks away without the aid of modern technology, she had decided to call her sister.
Janie had been indifferent about Mick at best ever since she was ten years old and had in fact stated her opinion time and again that Mick wasn't worth searching for if he hadn't tried to stay in touch, but Jess couldn't not tell her. Maybe her sister was human after all and would be happy to hear the good tidings.
Still, she was a bit afraid of how Janie would take the news.
They had not been close since she'd started high school, and her career choice certainly hadn't improved things. Janie had made expressly clear that she thought her sister was spoiling any chance of finding a decent husband if she went about plunging her hands into people's innards or touching infectious patients. "You'll end up catching some unspeakable disease and die a horrible death. Don't say I didn't warn you."
Jess had laughed it off at the time, but she had never really forgiven her for it, or for many similar snide remarks.
The phone at Janie's rang six, seven, eight times, and Jess was already about to give up when a breathless child's voice answered.
"Helloooo? This is Brian! Who are you?"
"Brian, how many times do I have to tell you that you're not to pick up the phone!" The child protested as his mother wrestled the receiver off him and said sweetly into the mouthpiece, "Hello, good morning – who's speaking, please?"
"Janie, it's me. Jess."
"Oh, Jess. How are you." Janie sounded more than just a little frosty all of a sudden. "Is it important? You know, we were just about to leave for church …" She seemed eager to hang up and go on with her neat little Sunday family schedule.
"Wait a sec, Janie. I have to tell you something. I've found Mick."
Not a sound at the other end of the line, only the kids pottering around in the background.
"Just imagine, Janie, I've finally found him!"
"Oh, um, really. That's … that's quite … quite a surprise."
Jess wanted to throttle her for being so lackadaisical about this miracle that had just happened and even more for what she said next.
"I was beginning to think we hadn't got a brother any more. Now tell me, where has our adventurer sailed off to? What's he doing? Scraping along just so on his sailor's wages in some dreary port town? Or did he make it big somewhere after all?"
"He's in Australia", Jess said pointedly. "He's been there since he was wounded in the war and shipped off to hospital in …"
"He was in the war? He served?" Janie perked up after all. Her own husband had returned from three overseas stints a highly decorated lieutenant, a fact of which she was extremely proud. "So he does have some sense of responsibility."
Jess tried very hard not to scream. Instead, she said acidly, "Sometimes, you really make me wonder when exactly you turned into a carbon copy of Aunt Dorothy!" She inhaled sharply and went on, "Anyway, I'm planning to go to Australia as soon as I can. Do you want to come, too?"
"Dear me, hold your horses, Jess! I can't go voyaging around the world at will. I have a family to take care of! And haven't you got a job, and a fiancé who deserves your full attention? What does Oliver think of all this? Haven't you got a wedding to plan? I'll bet you haven't even decided about the location yet! If you want to have the reception at the country club, Jim says it's high time you put your name down, and …"
"Janie, as I've said a million times before, we're getting married here, not in Virginia, and surely not at Jim's stupid country club! Anyway, I didn't call to talk about the wedding. Discussing seating arrangements and choosing the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses is certainly not my top priority at the moment, so I won't keep you any longer. You dash off to church now, and I'll take that trip to Australia on my own. I just thought you might want to know about Mick." She paused, and when Janie remained silent, she added with a touch of bitterness, "Shall I say hello for you when I see him?"
Janie snorted. "If he wants to see you at all. I hope to God you won't end up wishing you had never found him. He might be living in some dirty hovel with a cheap little whore for all you know."
They said their cool goodbyes, and Jess bit her lip and clenched her fists, trying not to let her rage and disappointment get the better of her. She had so wanted to bury the hatchet, but it was impossible. They had so little in common now that it seemed almost ridiculous to her that they should be sisters.
For a split second, she wondered if Mick had become a total stranger, too, with their blood and not their mutual feelings creating a bond between them - someone she didn't like a lot, someone who didn't care much about her either.
She cursed Janie bitterly for planting the seeds of doubt in her mind, then told herself not to be stupid.
Her sister had not heard his voice over the bad telephone line, older and darker but otherwise very much the same. Loving. Beautiful. Sincere.
Let Janie shrug off the past as if it had never existed if she thought it made her happy.
Maybe she ought to learn to do the same in certain respects.
What Jess could not have known was how her sister had been fingering a small carved animal as they spoke.
A little knickknack that had been sitting on the telephone table for ages, so long that nobody took notice of it any longer, not even Janie herself.
While she had listened to Jess's astounding news, she had for the first time in years really looked at Freddie, as she had christened the plump, smiling dolphin back when she received him, coaxed from the same bit of driftwood as Jess's own seahorse by their brother's artful penknife, and her eyes had watered a little with the memory of the last Christmas with Mick, more than twenty years ago.
But by the time Brian called for her impatiently from the doorstep and Jim yelled through the open car window that they were going to be late for church, her eyes were dry and her face unperturbed, even when Brian asked innocently, "Mommy, what's a whore?"