Looking for Jane
Heather Marshall
For R
A most wanted child to a most willing mother.
2010
It was a perfectly ordinary day when a truly extraordinary letter was delivered to the wrong mailbox.
The boxes were identical, positioned side by side and made of the same thin, cheap metal, now slightly rusted near the hinges. They were drilled into the brown brick wall beside the door to the antiques shop; the door whose bells jingled delightfully—or irritatingly, depending on whom you asked—every time a patron entered or exited.
The mailbox for Thompson’s Antiques & Used Books was on the left and displayed the number one in a peeling gold sticker. The mailbox for the apartment above the shop was on the right with a matching label that bore the number two. There was hardly any difference, really, and yet it made a great deal of difference to Nancy Mitchell, who lived in the apartment upstairs and didn’t know about the letter she hadn’t received.
The address line didn’t specify which unit number the letter was destined for at the old building on College Street, and so the envelope was dropped unceremoniously into the box for the antiques shop while the mail carrier continued on his hurried route without a second thought.
The letter held its breath for three hours—squashed between a postcard from the store manager’s son, who was currently travelling in France, and that Friday’s junk mail—until the proprietor brought it inside on the way in from a cigarette break. She tossed the entire pile of mail into the in-tray, where it would later be sorted—and so critically misplaced—by a careless employee.
Its contents wouldn’t be discovered for another seven years. And that letter would change three women’s lives forever.
CHAPTER 1 Angela
TORONTO | JANUARY 2017
Angela Creighton is late for work.
She was up late the night before, and this morning she wakes with a poorly timed migraine. Careful not to disturb her wife’s Sunday morning lie-in, she tiptoes to the kitchen, where she washes down a painkiller with a glass of pulpy orange juice, toasts a bagel, and slathers it with too much garlic cream cheese. Clamping her breakfast between her teeth like a retriever, she tugs on a hat and cinches the waist tie on her plaid coat, then quietly closes the apartment door and hurries down the stairs of the walk-up.
Out on the sidewalk, Angela rushes to the bus stop as she munches the bagel while fishing her sunglasses out of her purse. Normally she would enjoy it, since sunny days in the winter are few and far between. But the light is making her wince and her head is throbbing like a bullet wound behind her eyes.
She was over at her friend Jenn’s last night for their monthly book club, which had, as so many book clubs are wont to do, descended into a wine club over the past six months. Now they drink too much cheap pinot grigio, inhale charcuterie and cheese with a desperation that suggests it might be their last meal on death row, and sometimes talk about books they’ve read.
Angela hadn’t taken part in any wine-drinking pursuits for the past several months, but she let herself go last night. It was the sole, pathetic shred of silver lining from the miscarriage, and she capitalized on it in spectacular form. She and Tina will be setting out on another round of fertility treatments once her body heals enough to try again, so she figured she may as well enjoy the booze in the meantime. It’s her second miscarriage in a year, and the stakes are starting to feel higher every time an insemination treatment or a pregnancy fails. A steady flow of alcohol helps the hurdles appear a little lower, if only for a short while.
The bus trundles up to the curb and Angela boards, drops a token into the metal slot, and finds an empty seat near the rear door. The shop she manages—Thompson’s Antiques & Used Books—is less than ten blocks west, and she stumbles off the bus onto the slushy curb a few stops later.
The entrance to the shop is just inches from the edge of the sidewalk on bustling College Street, and Angela presses herself against the door to stay out of the way of the passing pedestrians as she fumbles with her keys. Throwing her hip a little against the old warped wood, she bursts her way inside and shuts the door behind her.
Angela likes it in here. It’s a peculiar hybrid of a shop, home to plenty of used books that cycle through its doors on a regular basis, and a motley collection of antiques that never seem to sell. It smells like furniture polish, coffee, and that dusty scent of old books that’s both rotten and enormously appealing. It isn’t a big space, only the size of a modest apartment. There’s a small storeroom behind the cash desk that houses several dusty, neglected boxes and a cheap drip coffee maker Angela brought in during her first week on the job.
She feels her mood lift a fraction at the now-familiar smell of the place. She’s always been a book lover, and she and Tina share an eclectic taste in decor, so the whimsy of the antiques shop suits her just fine. There’s always a bit of buried treasure to be discovered in here.
Angela flicks the light switches, walks to the old writing desk they use as a sales counter, and slides her purse underneath with her foot. She turns on the computer till—by far the most advanced piece of technology in the shop—then retreats to the storeroom to put on a pot of mercilessly potent dark roast. When she was pregnant, all she drank was decaf, determined that the placebo effect of coffee could still be achieved by brewing it at double strength. But today, with a sharp jab of bitterness to her heart, she puts on a large pot of regular brew.
Chipped mug of coffee in hand, Angela mentally shakes herself and sets about the usual tasks of sorting new inventory and following up on order holds. For the life of her, she can’t imagine why the store has stayed in business this long, especially with real estate prices being what they are in this city. The small apartment over the shop has been rented out as additional unnecessary income since the property was first purchased by Angela’s aunt Jo （who married Old Money and really has no need for employment）。 Although she could easily sell the place for a fortune in a matter of days, Angela suspects her aunt has kept the shop running simply for something to talk to her immaculately groomed friends about during their weekly manicures.
Prior to starting at Thompson’s, Angela had hopped around in retail, most recently working for an uptight manager at an overpriced shoe store. Although she couldn’t prove it, Angela suspects she was “laid off for the season due to a decrease in sales” when her boss found out about the pregnancy several weeks too early. He was a fifty-something conservative and borderline homophobe, almost certainly of the school who believed maternity leave was nothing but a corporate inconvenience. Angela had confided the news of her pregnancy to a coworker after she ran out of excuses for her frequent trips to the staff washroom to throw up, and she’s sure the coworker blabbed.
So when she found herself out of work, smack in the middle of her thirties after undergoing budget-draining fertility treatments, she plumbed all her networks looking for a new job—any job—that would allow her and Tina to pay their rent and still build a nest egg for their new addition. At their last family Thanksgiving, Aunt Jo, with a wave of her magnificently bejeweled hand, offered Angela a managerial role at the shop so that she herself could “finally start phasing into retirement.” Though her experience with antiques was negligible at best, Angela was in no position to decline, and she knew Aunt Jo wouldn’t ever fire her own niece for becoming pregnant. Jo handed her the keys three days later.