"Cooney, Caroline B - Janie Johnson 02 - Whatever Happened to Janie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooney Caroline B)

If only Reeve had not told his lawyer sister Lizzie.
And yet . . . the Springs were right. Morally. Weren't they? Wasn't she their child? Didn't she belong with them?
It was too terrifying to think about. Tomorrow
she would get in a car and drive across two state lines and belong to another family. Another family that included three brothers and a sister she had never met. In the midst of overwhelming media attention, she would start classes at a new high school. She could not believe she had to handle so much at once.
How would Mommy and Daddy manage without her?
Downstairs Janie's friends were gathered. It was supposed to be a party. It was a disaster. SarahCharlotte had insisted there had to be a goodbye party. It's a big event, SarahCharlotte pointed out, which was certainly true. But an event to celebrate? Not at this end, it wasn't.
Janie had no idea, absolutely none at all, how they felt at the other end. The New Jersey end.
She saw New Jersey through a tunnel of fear. She felt as if she were being poured down some evil tube, and she could land In almost anything, and there would be no way out, because she no longer had parents.
Remaining calm was the most important thing.
People kept saying to each other, Now stay calm.
For a while, the Johnsons were all so calm that
Reeve wanted to know if they were making night
trips to a mortuary and getting embalmed.
Janie's heart softened, thinking of Reeve, who was still funny. But I've lost him, too, she thought. My first boyfriend. My only boyfriend. I can't talk to him either. That's part of the deal. Not talking.
Sunshine filled Janie's bedroom. It was January, and very cold. Ice clung to streets and the branches of trees, but the room was warm and gold.
Janie extended her fingertips. Fearfully, as if choosing to be burned by a hot iron, she touched her mother's shoulder. She broke through. For a moment, touch erased truth.
Mother and daughter hugged, and rocked, and felt each other.
Love, pain, rage, hope, fear every emotion lost during these last few weeks filled both of them. We weren't calm! Janie thought. We flattened ourselves, so we could fit through this. "Mommy," she whispered, "please don't be mad."
Her mother covered Janie's face with kisses, slowly, as if her lips were memorizing Janie. "I'm not mad at you, honey," said her mother. "How can I be mad at you? I love you. You are my life. I'm mad at Hannah! She did this to us, Twice she's ruined us.
Hannah. The part of the equation nobody knew. nobody understood, nobody would ever find.
"And most of all, I'm mad at the-" Her mother broke off.
I'm mad at the Springs. That was the sentence. Neither of her parents had said it out loud; Neither had broken down and screamed, How dare they want you back? You are ours. You are Janie Johnson, not Jennie Spring.
I'm maddest, Janie realized. I am so mad at the Springs. They kept looking. They put that photograph of their missing daughter on the milk carton. I saw it. And now they're taking me back.
There had not really been any threats. Nobody
had said, Jennie comes to live with us or you go to prison! It was simply clear, once the facts were known, that this girl was not a Johnson. She was a Spring. She belonged with her birth family.
If Jennie comes back to us, said the Springs through their lawyer, it will not be necessary for us to find Hannah. We will not prosecute her.
For Hannah it must have been a single silly afternoon, probably long forgotten, in which she stole a car and then a kid. But the aftereffects of Hannah's deed rippled on through all their lives. Frank and Miranda Johnson would not survive the criminal trial of their real daughter. They were barely surviving this.
Whoever and whatever Hannah was now, it was Imperative that nobody find her.
So Janie had to leave when her parents needed her most, and go to live with strangers. Will they feel like strangers? thought Janie. Will I walk In the door and know that I am home? Will I remember them once we sit down together?
Downstairs the failed party continued.
This was not going away to college. or heading to Europe for the summer. This was not your parents getting terrific promotions and moving to worthy places like California or Texas, so everybody would want to visit you and get letters from you and
be envious because you weren't stuck in plain old smalltown New England anymore.
This was a party for the end of a person. The name Janie Johnson would vanish into the history of her life. Janie Johnson would drive away, but when she opened that car door in New Jersey. she'd
be a girl named Jennie Spring. A girl who had not existed for twelve years.
It was so ironic. In elementary and middle school Janie had detested her name-dull as a phonebook entry. The younger Janie had constantly revised it. Changed Johnson to Jonstone. Changed Janie to Jayyne. Jayyne Jonstone. A name with possibilities, as opposed to the real name, which was lumpy and forgettable.
Well, she had gotten her wish for a different name. And it had more possibilities than any fantasy anyone could have had.
For the mother she was embracing, there might as well be a gravestone with Janie Johnson on it.
And that other mother, that biological mother? What was she thinking? That father . . . those new brothers and the sister. Who were they? What was going to happen?
Janie released her mother and walked to the
window. She did not know why she had done that- ended the most precious hug of her life. There would not be another one. That intensity, that depth of agony and love-they couldn't bear It again. The next hug, the final goodbye, would be the faked calm they were all so good at now.
There was a knock on the bedroom door. It was not SarahCharlotte, because she was downstairs commanding the party. Who else would have the nerve to come upstairs and interrupt Janie and Mrs. Johnson? Janie opened the bedroom door.
Reeve, of course. Who had rescued her from so much, but who could not rescue her from this. She gave him a tight smile. He'll still have my mother,
thought Janie. I'll lose Mommy forever, but for Reeve, she'll still be the lady next door. This'll still be the house where he ate half his meals back when his own family was driving him crazy.
Janie was actually jealous. Reeve's parents were really his parents; Reeve's town would still be this town; Reeve's name would still be Reeve.
"People are leaving," said Reeve. He always did that-offering facts, not suggesting an action. Even when Janie confessed that she was the missing child on the milk carton, Reeve had not forced action upon her. He had let her talk, and talk, and talk, when what he wanted was to kiss, and kiss, and kiss.
"Janie!" shouted Sarah Charlotte up the stairs.
"Coming!" shouted Janie. She marveled at the cheery light in her voice. She took Reeve's hand. She turned her back on the woman standing in the sunny bedroom and went downstairs to rescue the party.
How, thought Janie Johnson, do I go on being happy, when It turns out I enjoyed being kidnapped? How do I face my birth family, when it turns out I cooperated in my own kidnapping? How do the parents I love go on loving me, when I'm the one who turned them In?
CHAPTER
3.