Chapter 5
ALEX STEPPED into the hallway, and Rick, moving in next to her, closed Uncle Henry’s bedroom door behind them.
“That was a surprise,” he said.
Alex scooped Ivy into her arms. How long would it be before she could return home and put this life—Rick—behind her? “I’m surprised you showed up at all. Don’t you have a treasure to find?”
“I’m hurt.” He pressed his hand over his chest in mock sorrow, but his smile wavered. He was teasing her, yet something about the downward creases around his eyes and the hollowness in his expression told her he meant exactly what he’d said. She had hurt him. She hadn’t thought it was possible.
“It’s not like I can’t get away if I need to,” he added. “My partners can continue the research while I’m gone.”
“You didn’t find it so easy to get away in the past.” Alex stepped in the middle of the long beige carpet than ran the length of the hallway. As a girl, its green mosaics of domes entwined with circles had represented the home she’d found at Watson manor even though it was so different from the farming world she’d grown up in. Today the green meant nausea. And shock. And a coil of emotions she didn’t know how to unravel. “Just say it, Rick. What you mean is your treasure is somewhere close.”
“No, luv.” He grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“Don’t call me that.”
His expression drooped, and he released her. “The treasure’s in New York. I’m here because I want to be here. Can you not see that?”
Familiar warmth flowed through her arm from where he touched her and across the length and breadth of her body. Rick’s touch. His comfort. She had missed it. But she hadn’t missed the sudden, distant look in his eyes. She knew that expression well. She slid from his grasp and pulled Ivy closer. Her purr thrummed against Alex’s chest like a hypnotic pulse. Would Ivy’s calming touch someday replace Rick’s?
Rick shifted taller. He straightened his lapel, cleared his throat, and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “How are you, Alex? You’re doing well, I hope?”
Polite conversation. It might be a poor substitute for the life she and Rick had shared together, but what more could there be? Nothing! She pressed her lips together and started toward the children’s room at the end of the hall. “Quite well. I have a tenant. A fellow preternaturalist, actually. We work together.”
“Vera,” he muttered.
Alex froze. She slowly turned, glared at him. “What did you say?”
He paled. “Nothing.”
“How do you know her name?”
“I don’t. I mean, I didn’t say anything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Of course not.” He strode ahead of her. “Come on. We don’t want to keep Louis past dinnertime. When I was a kid, dinner was the best part of the day, and—” He took a deep breath. “—I smell roast beef.”
Alex grabbed his forearm, pulled him around so he faced her, and stared at him. “What do you know about Vera?”
Rick’s irises wavered. “We may not be living together, Alex, but you’re still my wife. I want you to be all right.”
Coldness poured like ice through Alex’s chest. Rick’s parents were from England’s upper class and had raised him with America’s elite. He knew whom to contact, and he could charm a mouse out of a snake’s mouth. It would be nothing for him to have found Alex such a perfect companion. Why hadn’t she recognized that Vera showing up on her doorstep was too good to be true?
She bit her lip. Because she’d been desperate and had needed a miracle. “You sent Vera to live with me, didn’t you?” She spoke loudly so her voice wouldn’t shake.
“Define sent.”
“How could you, Rick?” She glared at him, lifted her hand, palm forward, in front of her, and stormed down the hall. Of all the condescending . . . She’d thought she’d finally taken a step toward financial independence, but all along she’d been a pawn in another one of his schemes.
Rick rushed after her. He grabbed her arm. “All right. I did hire her. But it’s not what you think.”
“Oh no? I think you paid Vera a lot of money so she could pay me and I would think I was supporting myself.”
“All right. It is what you think. But what else could I do? You were struggling to make ends meet, and you wouldn’t accept the money I sent you. Vera was the perfect alternative. Not just for me. For you too. She’d been recently widowed, and she has the same interests.”
Alex’s throat constricted, and though she glared at him, all she saw was the bread she’d rationed, the hot water she’d drunk instead of tea, the blankets she’d piled on her bed because she had too little wood for her stove. “I’d have made it somehow.”
Rick moved so close she could hear his breath swelling in and out in rhythm with his chest. Energy pulsed between them. “I know you would have,” he said softly. “You’re strong and smart. But why suffer when you don’t have to?”
She stepped back, not as far away as he’d moved toward her, but enough she could breathe without feeling that at any moment he might take her into his arms and force away her loneliness. Which she absolutely didn’t want.
“I’m sorry about Mary. About everything,” he continued. “If I could take back that day, I would. You must know that, must know how much I, like you, loved—love—our Mary.”
He took her hand again, and this time when the comforting warmth spread through her, she didn’t have the strength to pull away. Her body craved peace.
“Please, Alex,” he said. “There must be some way we can get past what’s happened to us. Please forgive me.”
Alex closed her eyes. She pictured how Rick and she used to be: their easy familiarity with each other, their laughter, their joint preternatural and treasure-hunting escapades. Her ribs clenched around her lungs. You were supposed to be watching Mary, not studying a stupid treasure map!
“Please forgive me,” he said again.
Hateful words she’d repeated so many times they felt like a broken part of her leapt to the tip of her tongue, but when she opened her mouth to say them, they died on her lips. Rick was not only Mary’s father but he had also been Alex’s best friend. She knew his expressions as well as she knew the freckle on the back of her hand, and right then his eyes looked as empty as her heart felt. Was it right for her to continue to punish him? What if she had been the one that had looked away—at a preternatural plant, perhaps—when Mary had been taken? How long could she have borne the guilt?
But then, she wouldn’t have looked away.
“I’m sorry too, Rick.”
“Thank you.” He pulled her toward him, but she backed away, shook her head.
“I can’t,” she said. “You know as well as I do that our marriage was based more on trust than anything else, and now we don’t have even that.”
His eyes glazed. “That’s not true for me, Alex.”
“It is for me.” She set Ivy on the floor, waited while the cat licked her paw, and again headed down the hall. Their footsteps—hers, Rick’s, Ivy’s—plodded softly over the carpet.
Rick moved beside Alex. His arm muscles momentarily tensed against hers before he stepped away. The veins on his hands protruded as he clenched and unclenched his hands. “When I last spoke with Vera, she said you were looking for a plant you hoped might help you learn more about Mary’s killer. Have you found it?”
“Not yet.”
They reached the children’s room. Alex took hold of the gold doorknob, and Rick’s warm, comforting hand clasped hers. “Let’s figure these deaths out for your uncle, but after that, I want to help you find the one who murdered our Mary.”
Alex turned to him. Again, his face was so close to hers that if she bowed her head, even just an inch, her forehead would bump his lips. “You want to help me?”
“Always.”
Alex took a deep breath and turned away from him. She stared so hard at the frame and pane
l door that for a moment the mahogany knots and grains represented worlds and stars joined by crooked roads. What did Rick mean by always? Leaving her to bear the burdens of all that had happened in the wake of Mary’s death was not the same as helping her always—even if she had told him to leave.
She stood taller. Whatever it meant, wherever it led, she understood him enough to know he believed what he said, at least for now. She must tread carefully. “When we question Louis, I think we should concentrate on finding more details about his father or the night he died. Maybe there’s something more that connects him and Aunt Pauline.”
“All right, yes, but I also want to know why he believes the Night Hag killed his father.”
She rolled her eyes. “This is serious, Rick.”
He grinned and released her hand, but he didn’t step back from her. “I am serious. We need to compare it to the testimonies of those who thought the same thing about your aunt. I won’t let you down, luv.”
She closed her eyes, braced her emotions, and turned the doorknob. “I told you not to call me that.”
He exhaled, but said nothing until they’d stepped into the children’s room. He closed the door before Ivy could follow them inside. “You’re coddling that cat too much.”
“This from the man who hired Vera.”
“That’s different. I’m not holding onto you, just helping.”
She pursed her lips and pressed her tongue over her top teeth. “You don’t know what Ivy’s been through.”
“What has she—” Rick’s stance stiffened. He stared at Alex. “Maybe what I should ask is, what have you been through?”
Ivy scratched the other side of the door. Alex opened it and picked her up. “I said I’m fine.”
***
To Sleep No More (A Dalton & Dalton Mystery) Page 5