Safe, indeed. Even if Diana decided to do some detective work on her own – and she wouldn’t, she hadn’t the knack for looking for connections – she would never know what to look for.
Who had taken off that day eleven years ago.
More to the point, who had landed.
~•~
Meg St. Bride was an early riser. She was also a slob.
She’d already been in the kitchen, mixing herself some sort of powdered drink and leaving fine grains spilled on the counter. On the stove, the teapot furiously boiled away water. Richard Ashmore turned off the burner and reached for a cloth to wipe the counter, then changed his mind.
Over the sound of the dryer – Laura’s shirt that, twenty minutes earlier, had lain on the back of a chair in his room was now tumbling dry – he listened to the house. No telling if Laura was up, and he hoped that she wasn’t. When he had shown her to the guest room opposite his, sorrier than he could say that they weren’t heading for bed together, he had suggested that she sleep in. She had nodded a sleepy agreement, and her hand had lifted unconsciously towards his face before he hastily stepped back. Meg had been watching them both, that god-awful awareness on her face.
No, the sounds he heard weren’t Laura. He followed the noise into the front entry hall and looked through the open French doors, through the library, and into Julie’s music room.
Meg had wasted no time in setting up shop. She had shoved Julie’s harp into the corner, set up her barre, and placed her workout mat on the floor next to the piano. He watched her for a minute. He didn’t know much about ballet, but her routine looked smooth and precise. She was executing deep knee bends – there was probably some technical term – while keeping her back straight and her left arm carefully curved over her head. It struck him again, the smallness and fragility of her body, now clad in workout tights and toe shoes and submitting to what looked like a demanding workout.
Strange, in a child who, he was still convinced, was probably a hellion, strategist or not. She must work out like this every day.
She turned around and executed another set of pliés, and only her altered facial expression indicated that she saw him. She dipped again and rose slowly – good Lord, the girl must have leg muscles like iron – and then she broke her perfect body line and gestured impatiently at him to move.
“What?” He glanced behind him and realized that he was standing between her and the hallway mirror. She needed to watch herself. He moved to the side and watched for a few seconds more before he walked around the library and into the conservatory from the great room.
“Hi,” Meg said, and never took her eyes from the mirror.
“Good morning.” Richard waited for her to stop, but apparently she had no intention of stopping just because the person whose house she was commandeering was waiting to talk to her.
“Did you go for a run?” Still not looking at him, not breaking her movements. “You look all sweaty.”
“I run every day.” He waited another couple of seconds, then said pointedly, “I’m going to take a shower. When you finish here, please clean up the mess you left in the kitchen.”
She nodded and continued to watch herself in the mirror.
When he came downstairs again, ready for the day, Meg St. Bride was nowhere to be seen, but a quick glance showed a half-hearted attempt to wipe down the counter. Her used glass lay in the sink, and the half-eaten piece of toast had vanished. She’d paid attention and obeyed, then; they were making progress. Surely Laura, who kept a neat house – Peggy had trained her, after all – did not let her daughter get away with such sloppiness.
Or maybe she spent every day nagging Meg to pick up after herself.
He checked his overnight emails and was responding to a terse message from Tom about the proposed restraining order against Diana when he became aware of eyes on him. Meg St. Bride was leaning over the balcony, her arms crossed on the balustrade and an interested look on her face, with all the air of one prepared to wait as long as she needed to get his attention.
“You look mad about something.”
Not mad, precisely. Just wearily convinced that the TRO would do nothing except set Diana’s back up. He did not stop typing. “Thank you for cleaning up the kitchen.”
His formality seemed to take her aback. “Sure, no problemo. Sorry I made a mess. Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” If possible, file for the TRO today. I’ll rearrange my schedule next week if I need to be present for a hearing.
“What are those drawings behind you?”
He glanced around and turned back to his email. “A library I’m designing.”
“Oh, you design buildings? You’re a – um, what do you call it—”
“Architect.” Diana will go out of her way to ignore a TRO, but—
“So did you have to go to school to learn how to do that, or did you always know how?”
—if it keeps her from barging in here again and upsetting Julie, it will be worth the aggravation. “I went to school. I have a master’s in architecture with a specialization in structural engineering.”
“My dad got a doctorate in engineering, but he said it didn’t do him any good in the real world. He said engineers never work for themselves and you never get rich working for someone else.”
Career advice from a pint-size ballerina. “Thanks for the tip.”
“So did you draw those by hand? How come you don’t do that stuff on a computer? Wouldn’t that be better?”
—I’ll be at my office today, but Karen is off, so call my cell. “I did draw them on a computer. We do everything by computer.”
“Huh.” Meg considered this. “Hey, can I ask you another question?”
As if he could do or say anything to stop her. Richard clicked Send. “Be my guest.”
“I want to keep moving,” Meg said. “I’m all warmed up – it really felt great, because, you know, I missed yesterday, and I hate to miss a day. Do you feel that way about running?”
Richard settled back. “Yes,” he said. “I try to run every day. I get tense and tight if I don’t.”
“Exactly.” Meg nodded her agreement. “So anyway, I was wondering if I could go out for a little while. Mom’s still asleep, and it’s kind of boring sitting around having to keep quiet.”
Keeping quiet was probably torture to this kid. He ran mentally through his to-do list. “I’m going to check on the gardens for storm damage. Want to come? It’s a ways up the road.”
“Yes!” Meg didn’t wait to hear anything else. She went running down the upper hallway, without regard for anyone who might be trying to sleep, and disappeared into the room she and her mother had occupied the night before. He started to call after her and bit his words off.
~•~
It took Meg less than a minute to come tearing down the stairs in fancy high-top shoes that he had refused to buy Julie for camp because he couldn’t justify spending $200 on one pair of shoes. She skidded to a stop a few feet away, disappeared into the kitchen, and reappeared with two water bottles. “We have to keep hydrated,” she instructed him, “it’s very important, you know. Water keeps your whole body working right. That’s a mistake a lot of amateurs make, they don’t drink enough fluids—”
“Yes, I know,” Richard interrupted, and opened the front door. She must never entertain a thought that didn’t immediately exit her mouth. “Let’s go.”
She did fall into silence as he keyed in the security code, but only because she was watching him intently. “What’s 1002?”
“My birthday.” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke.
She stared at him, and then she burst into laughter. “Your birthday? How lame is that? Don’t you know any better? That’s the worst kind of password to have! My dad said—”
More pearls of wisdom from the late Cameron St. Bride. Richard said sharply, “That’s enough.”
“Well, it is.” Meg bopped along beside him as he set off. “He always said n
ot to use your birthday because too many other people know it. He always used a made-up word. He told me what it was, though, so I could play his computer games. He had tons of games.”
He said repressively, “It’s good to take your father’s advice.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. His height gave him an unfair advantage; she was sprinting to keep up with him. The upside was that she had to run too hard to run her mouth.
After a couple of minutes, he heard her breathing hard, and he relented. He was being too tough on her. She wasn’t his to discipline, after all. He had to let some things slide.
He extended an olive branch. “Your workout looked difficult.”
“Nah.” Meg apparently thought better of that. “No, sir. It really isn’t, not compared to what the pros do. I usually do toe work, but I need a hard floor for that.”
He might be able to rig something up – he caught himself. She wasn’t moving in; she and Laura would be heading back to Edwards Lake. “It looked difficult to me. Your movements were very precise.”
Meg nodded. “I usually work out longer,” she said, “but I really need a mirror and a better floor, like I said. So, hey, do you run in marathons?”
Richard shook his head. “It takes time to train for a marathon. I ran track in high school, but I don’t have the time for anything but casual running now.”
Meg cast an appraising look at him. “You can tell you run,” she said candidly. “You move like it. Have you ever noticed how most people move, like they don’t really own their bodies? But you move like a real jock.”
He caught her frank assessment. Strange, to feel a curious pride at her compliment, and even more surprising to feel a sudden camaraderie with her. Julie had never shown any interest in sports; she’d dropped out of girls’ basketball after one 0-8 season, begging him not to be disappointed in her. It hadn’t surprised him. Diana was the least athletic person he had ever met.
He had never thought, on a dawning July day, to recognize a kindred spirit in a loud-mouthed pixie. “You take your ballet seriously, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Meg scuffed her foot along the road. “Did you always want to be an architect?”
Richard laughed. “Yes, except when I wanted to be a pilot or astronaut. I was only four when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I wanted to fly to the moon in the worst way.”
Meg looked at him blankly. Space flight was not a big deal for her generation; she probably classified it with Columbus crossing the ocean. “How come you didn’t become a pilot or an astronaut?”
He was amused; she sounded like an interviewer. Why do you want this job, Mr. Ashmore? “Because I wanted to be an architect more.”
“Yes, but don’t you wish sometimes you’d become a pilot instead?”
“No. I have an airplane. I fly a lot for business.”
“My dad had a plane too,” said Meg immediately. “He flew choppers in the Marines, and he had his own jet. It’s really cool. It’s a Gulfstream. He used to take me flying all the time. He was going to teach me to fly when I got old enough.”
Probably not in a Gulfstream. It intrigued him, these glimpses into her life as St. Bride’s daughter. If she wanted to learn to fly, he could— “When did you decide to be a ballerina?”
“I was four too.” Meg unconsciously mimicked him and put her hands in her jeans pockets. “Mom took me to see Giselle, and that was it for me. I knew I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. I got Mom to enroll me in dance the very next day.” She sighed. “Though I’ll never be a prima ballerina.”
“Why not?”
“Too short,” she said. “I’m a shrimp, or haven’t you noticed?”
She came from tall stock. Going back generations, all but a handful of Ashmores had topped six feet. “You’re young. You’re not done growing yet.”
“Not gonna happen,” said Meg. “Trust me, I’m not happy about it. Mom took me to the doctor because I wasn’t growing anymore, and she said girls usually stop growing two years after they,” she lowered her voice dramatically, “start. And I started two years ago, so this is probably it for me.”
The inappropriate intimacy of her confidences seemed to escape her. He had no answer; that part of Julie’s upbringing he had left in relief to Lucy and his mother. “That’s too bad.”
Meg shrugged. “So I can’t do Plan A. I’ll have to go to Plan B.”
He really had to stop being surprised at everything she said. “What is Plan B?”
Meg shrugged again. “I don’t know. But I’m going to have a lot of money someday. I should do something cool with it, you know? Help people out, do some good for the world. Maybe I can figure out a way to do that with dance. I don’t know yet. My dad said I shouldn’t just be a worthless TFB.”
He sifted through several possibilities. “What’s a TFB?”
“Trust Fund Baby. Dad said women like that were worthless. He said people should do something constructive with their lives.”
He was getting tired of hearing what Dad had said to his adoring daughter. “You have plenty of time to come up with a plan.”
Meg flashed him a grin. “My dad always said to have several plans in mind. He also said not to have a favorite one, so you don’t get disappointed.”
The observation of a deeply disappointed man? Or the modus operandi of a chess player, arranging pieces on the board, maneuvering his wife into returning to him. Plan A: Hand her the keys to the Jaguar. Plan B: Seduce her with Rod Stewart. Didn’t work? Plan C: Get her pregnant.
“He said if you have money, you have to use it to help other people. Hey,” she turned to him, “you know how my mother ran away when she was a teenager? Oh, yeah, I know all about that. Well, my dad started a foundation to help runaway teens. Wasn’t that cool?”
So St. Bride had not forgotten the desperate lengths to which a runaway teen might go, no matter what he’d let his wife think.
“And last year,” Meg said. Her voice faltered, and Richard’s instincts went on alert. “Mom and Mark and Emma set up a relief fund for the people in the north tower. Did you know a lot of the people in the restaurant didn’t have insurance? Lots of them didn’t make much money. So I asked if I could be a donor too, and Mom and Mark took some money out of my trust fund. Mom said Dad would have been proud of me.”
Richard said gently, “I’m sure he would have.”
Meg looked off into the distance. She sounded wistful. “My father was a great man.”
It had been all too easy to despise St. Bride, particularly after hearing about Laura’s thirtieth birthday. He had not forgotten the hostility that St. Bride had turned on him in London, and even overlooking St. Bride’s natural reaction to Meg’s biological father, he still felt that it had been unforgivable to snub Julie. It had been even more unforgivable to hurt Laura. But, to one person, Cameron St. Bride had been a hero.
And that would never change. Frozen in time, St. Bride would never grow older; he would always be the adored lost father, the hero bravely facing death on a September morning. He would never let his daughter down. He would always be Dad.
Richard felt an unwelcome dismay running through his veins.
“You know what happened to my dad, right?”
Forget his feelings. She was a bereaved child, and she deserved attention from the man seeking to take her father’s place. He said swiftly, “Yes, I do. I’m so sorry, Meg. How are you doing about it?”
But Meg St. Bride was nothing if not full of surprises. She looked at him directly, without guile. “Better than Mom,” she said. “She won’t talk about it, you know, that’s why she gets these headaches. I talk about it all the time. Mom took me to a counselor last fall, and he said not to bottle up my feelings.”
Bottling up feelings, Richard suspected, was something she never did, counselor or no counselor. But her obvious concern for Laura touched him. “Don’t worry about your mother.” He made his voice reassuring. “She’s going to a doctor this morning.”
Counseling. Laura had gotten help for her daughter. Had she found any for herself? Or had she spent so much time taking care of Meg that she had neglected her own healing?
He hadn’t asked. She had seemed not to want to talk about that day. After her first evening home, she had never brought it up again, and he hadn’t pressed her. Another mistake, and one more reason not to rush things. The wounds of September 11 remained deep and hidden.
“How old are you?”
Her abrupt change of subject startled him. “I was born the year the Beatles came to America.”
“When was that?”
“Six years before the Beatles broke up.” He smiled at her confusion. “The year your mother was born. Do the math. How old are you?”
“Thirteen,” Meg said without hesitation. Laura had not asked her to lie. “You like the Beatles?”
“Yes.” They resumed strolling. “I was a Lennon fan.”
“Why?”
That stumped him. He’d never given it much thought. “He had a detached way of looking of life.” Perhaps he and Diana would have succeeded if he’d been less of the ironic Lennon and more of her bad boy hero Jagger. “Do you know who Lennon was?”
“Of course,” Meg said derisively. “Like I could grow up in that house and not know. You should have heard Dad when Mom met George. It was after one of her concerts a couple of years ago, and I got to go ’cause it was summer. And he came to the reception afterwards, and he was talking to her about – oh, all kinds of stuff, like ‘Persephone’ and how it was really all about looking for God.” She rolled her eyes. “And I was, like, why? Is He missing? And after the reception, Mom called Dad and said she’d met a real live Beatle. He was so jealous.”
He stifled a laugh at her cynicism. This must have been what his parents had heard in his teenage years – ultra-Lennon, unimpressed by anything including a musical legend.
No. She isn’t yours. She won’t ever be. Stop seeing yourself in her.
Stop wanting to see yourself.
“Hey, can I ask you a question? How come there are three houses here? Did this used to be a plantation? Did your family have slaves?”
All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) Page 34