7
Jack knew it was her the moment she stepped through the door.
He'd been sitting in the Chelsea's intimate, marble-tiled lobby on an intricately carved sofa situated between the equally intricately carved fireplace and a metallic sculpture of some sort of jackal sitting atop an undersized elephant. He'd spent the waiting time admiring the vast and eclectic array of art festooning the walls.
The Chelsea had been a fabled haunt of artists and entertainers for decades, and nowadays most of them seemed to own clothes of only one color: black. So when this woman in beige linen slacks and a rose sweater set stepped through the door she stood out among the leather and lingerie habitues as much as he did. Her head was down so he didn't see her face at first, but the style of her curly honey blond hair and mature figure jibed with the voice on the phone.
Then she looked up and their eyes met and Jack's heart stuttered and missed a beat or two.
Kate! God, it was Kate!
Her voice, that little laugh—now he knew why they'd sounded familiar. They belonged to his sister.
Kate looked as stunned as Jack knew he must, but then her shock turned to something like fear and dismay.
"Kate!" he called as she started to turn away. "My God, Kate, it's me! Jack!"
She turned toward him again and now her face was more composed but hardly full of the joy one might expect at seeing her younger brother for the first time in a decade and a half.
Jack hurried up and stopped within a foot of her, staring.
"Jackie," she said. "I don't believe this."
Jackie… Christ, when had he last heard someone call him that? The word sundered an inner dam, loosing a flood of long-pent-up memories that engulfed him. He'd been the last of three kids: first Tom, Kate two years later, and Jack eight years after her. Kate, the natural nurturer, had half-raised him. They'd bonded, they'd been pals, she'd been the coolest person he knew and he'd fairly worshipped her. And then she'd gone off to college, leaving a hole in his ten-year-old life. Med school and pediatric residency after that. He remembered her wedding day…
Most of all Jack remembered this face, these pale blue eyes, the faint splash of freckles across the cheeks and nose, the strong jawline. Her hair was shorter and faintly streaked with gray; her skin had aged a little with a hint of crows feet at the corners of her eyes; and her face was a bit fuller, her hips a tad wider than he remembered, but her figure wasn't that much different from the one that had kept the boys calling all through high school. All in all his big sister Kate hadn't changed much.
"I don't believe this either," he said. "I mean, the odds are…"
"Astronomical."
He felt they should kiss, embrace, do something other than stand here facing each other, but they'd never been a huggy clan, and Jack had dropped out of his family and never looked back. Hadn't spoken a word to Kate in fifteen years. Until tonight.
"You look great," he said. And it was true. Even with very little make-up she did not look like a forty-four-year-old mother of two. She'd always been fair haired, but now she was a darker shade of blonde than he remembered. What a mane she used to have. "I see you've stopped straightening your hair. I still remember watching you use Mom's iron to flatten out your waves."
"Eventually you get to the point where you have to stop fighting your nature and just go with it." She glanced away. "Look. This was a mistake. If I'd had the slightest inkling you were the Jack I was calling, I never would have…" She let it trail off.
"Why not? If you've got a problem you should call family."
"Family?" Kate's eyes blazed to life as she turned back to him. "What would you know about family, Jackie? You vanished from our lives without even saying good-bye! Just a note saying you were leaving and not to worry! As if that was possible. For a while we didn't know if you were dead or alive. Do you have any idea what that was like for Dad? First he loses Mom, then you drop out of college and disappear. He almost lost it!"
"I'd already lost it, Kate."
Her eyes softened, but only a little. "I know how Mom's death—"
"Murder."
"Yes, you always insisted on calling it that, didn't you. It hit us all hard, and you the hardest perhaps, but Dad—"
"I've been back to see him."
"Only rarely, and only after he tracked you down. And I sent you all those letters, invited you to christenings and graduations and anniversaries, but you never responded. Not even to say no. Not once."
Jack's turn to look away, focus on a painting of a Manhattan street scene, but viewed at a crazy angle. Kate was right. She'd made a major effort to keep in touch, tried hard to bring him back into the family, and he'd snubbed her.
"Jackie, you've got a niece and a nephew you've never even met. They used to look at the wedding pictures and point to this young stranger who was one of the ushers and ask who he was."
"Kevin and Elizabeth," he said. "How are they?"
He knew them only from their photos. Kate was one of those people who sent out an annual here's-what-we've-been-doing-all-year letters with her Christmas card, usually accompanied by a family photo. At least she used to. Nothing at all from her for the last few years. Since the divorce.
"They're wonderful. Kevin's eighteen, Liz is sixteen, as if you give a damn."
Jack closed his eyes. Okay. Deserved that. He'd seen her kids grow up long distance, on Kodak paper.
But after he'd cut himself off and reinvented himself here in New York, how could he go back? He could never explain who he'd become. Tom, Kate, Dad especially—they'd never get it. Be horrified, in fact. Took enough to live his own life; didn't want to have to invent another life just for their approval.
"Look, Kate," he said. "I know I hurt people, and I'm sorry. I was just starting my twenties and coming apart at the seams. I can't change the past but maybe I can make up just a tiny bit of it to you now. Your friend and this cult you mentioned… maybe I can help."
"I don't think this is in your field."
"And what field would that be?"
"Appliance repairs, right?"
He laughed. "Who told you that?"
"Dad."
"Figures."
His father had called one of Jack's numbers years ago and heard an outgoing message that went: This is Repairman Jack. Describe the problem and leave a number and Ml get back to you. Naturally he'd assumed his son was some sort of appliance fixer.
"He's wrong?"
"I make my living fixing other things."
"I don't understand."
"No reason you should. Let's go someplace where we can sit and talk."
"No, Jackie. This won't work."
"Please, Kate?"
He reached out and gently gripped her wrist. He felt at the mercy of the vortex of emotions swirling around him. This was Kate, his big sister Kate, one of the best people he'd ever known, who'd been so good to him and who was still smarting from the awful way he'd treated her. She thought badly of him. He had to fix that.
She shook her head, seemed almost… afraid.
Afraid of him? That couldn't be. What then?
"Look. This is my city. If I can't help out your friend, I'll bet I know someone who can. And if that doesn't work out, at least we can talk. Come on, Kate. For old times' sake?"
Maybe his touch did it, but he felt a change in her muscle tone as some of the resistance seeped out of her.
"All right. Just for a little while."
"Great. What are you up for—coffee or a drink?"
"Normally I'd say coffee, but right now I think I could do with a drink."
"I hear you. Let's hunt up a place without music."
He took his sister by the elbow and guided her out to the street, then up along Seventh Avenue, wondering how much he dared tell her about himself, his life. He'd play it by ear. The important thing was he had her with him now, and he wasn't letting her go until he'd done something to make up for the hurt he'd caused.