Heart of the Night

by Barbara Delinsky

  “That’s the last thing you need. You have to be able to think straight.”

  “I’m not sure that’ll help. I’m telling you, Savvy, I’m in over my head.”

  “You are not. You can handle anything you set your mind to.”

  “You’re the one who can do that. Not me.”

  “Yes, you. Come on, Suse. You have an incredible opportunity here. You love Sam, don’t you?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d have been long gone by now.”

  “So if you love him, you’ll make things work.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Savannah. I don’t know how to make things work.”

  “You’ll learn. You’ll take one day at a time. You’ll feel your way along.”

  “Yeah. Right along the ground in the dirt. And I’m apt to bring Sam and Courtney right down there with me.”

  “You can do it, Suse. I’m telling you. You can do it!”

  “I’m glad someone believes in me.”

  “Sam does. Otherwise, he’d never have brought you along. He needs your help. And don’t you see? This is your chance to show him that you can do what needs to be done. It’s your chance to show yourself that you’re perfectly capable of being what Sam wants.” She hesitated, then spoke more softly. “I’m envious of you. You can really have it all.”

  Of the many words Savannah had said that night, those were the ones that lingered longest with Susan.

  CHAPTER 21

  Megan had admired Savannah from the very first of their academy days. While Susan was the more gregarious, perhaps the more exciting of the two, Savannah had been the one with the level head on her shoulders. She was the one the others sought out when things got rough, and Megan had done her share of the seeking.

  Technically, Megan was bright, and she knew it. What she didn’t always know was how to channel that intelligence along the most productive lines. Savannah, on the other hand, was a master of the overview. She could stand back and analyze a situation, then suggest the best course of action.

  Megan had consciously studied Savannah’s approach. She firmly believed that if she could master it, she’d have the world in the palm of her hands, and for a while, it looked as though she’d done it. She graduated from the academy near the top of her class, went through college with similar ranking, and landed a plum of a job as the mathematical consultant to an electronics conglomerate headquartered in Boston. While she had no intention of working her life away, her job gave her exposure to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Northeast.

  She hadn’t made the most of that situation. Though she was a math whiz, she was far less sure of herself socially. She’d been intimidated by some of the men she’d met, turned off by others. When, totally out of the professional context, she met gentle, unimposing William Vandermeer, she readily fell in love.

  For several years, she was unabashedly happy. She didn’t work, and she didn’t miss it. Then the business began to flounder. She helped Will out where she could, but the downward spiral continued. When things got so bad that Will was taking pills to sleep and she spent half the night worrying herself sick, she took a leaf from Savannah’s book, analyzed the situation, and came up with the one solution that seemed to hold hope of returning things to where they’d been.

  It would have worked had it not been for Matty Stavanovich.

  Now Matty was in prison awaiting trial, and Megan felt a measure of satisfaction in that. She was furious whenever she thought of him, and when she wasn’t furious, she was afraid. She’d covered her tracks; she was sure of it. But she didn’t trust Stavanovich. She’d done that once. She wasn’t making the same mistake twice.

  Between fear, anger, and a guilt that never left her for long, she wasn’t good for much of anything but wandering aimlessly through the house. She didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to be seen. Everyone in town knew what had happened. She couldn’t bear the thought of their stares. So she stayed within the protective walls of her house and agonized.

  Stand back. Look at things from a distance. That was what Savannah always said, and Megan tried to do it, but she’d never had to face anything like this before.

  Take it step by step, day by day. Savannah always said that, too, and while Megan was a little more successful there, she still found it hard.

  For one thing, she couldn’t talk with Will as she used to. He treated her with kid gloves, and she let him. At times she wished he’d get angry, so that she could blurt out the truth. After all, what she’d done, she’d done for love. But he never raised his voice to her, and she couldn’t make herself tell him. He was overtaxed as it was, since the business was in worse shape than ever.

  For another thing, the rest of the world seemed to be merrily making its way through May and into June. Friends of theirs were busy opening summer homes on Nantucket or in Bar Harbor. Others were in the final stages of planning trips that Megan would have given anything to take, if only to get her out of Rhode Island and away from the mess of her life.

  Even Susan was on the move. Understandably, her time was in short supply, but since she was spending so much more of it at Sam’s place in Providence, she saw Megan often. Usually she had Courtney with her, and though she talked on the sly of being a lousy mother, Megan couldn’t see any sign of that. More often than not, Susan sent home the woman Sam had insisted she hire and took care of the child herself. She clearly loved the little girl, clearly loved Sam. Megan was sure they would marry one day.

  Savannah, too, visited often, but her visits were as much business as pleasure, since she brought the latest news on the case against Matty. Most often, that news concerned one pretrial motion or another that had been filed, argued, won, or lost. At other times, the news was more pithy.

  There was the day when Savannah told Megan that a witness had been found who saw a Mercedes leave Matty’s shop at midnight on the night of the kidnapping. And the day when she told Megan that of four Mercedeses in Matty’s shop at the time, one of the owners, who’d left her car for the week while she’d been in Palm Beach, claimed that the odometer read ten miles less when she picked it up than when she’d left it, which suggested tampering. Then, of course, there was the day when Savannah triumphantly announced that Matty’s alibi had been broken. Susan’s hunch had been right; the Mexican guide who’d spent the better part of a day shuttling a Matty Stavanovich from one ruin to another was vehement that the man he’d driven around was not the same as the one in the picture shown him by the police.

  Still, Megan’s testimony was the key to the case. That meant Savannah’s reviewing it with her again and again and again. Once would have been too much for Megan; the repetition nearly drove her wild. But it served its purpose. With each run through of the questions that either Savannah or the defense attorney might ask, Megan grew more sure of her script. Indeed, there were times when she began to imagine that her testimony was the whole truth and nothing but.

  It was the other times that got to her, though, the times when fear took over. Those were the times when, in the dark of night, she picked up the phone and called Jared.

  He was wonderful. He no longer asked her name, but he recognized her voice and was incredibly gentle. Yes, he coaxed her to tell him what was wrong. She’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t. He wanted to help, but unless she told him the truth, he couldn’t do that.

  She couldn’t tell him, of course. She couldn’t incriminate herself that way. She supposed she gave little hints from time to time, but she couldn’t imagine that he’d put two and two together, and even if he did, he wouldn’t betray her. Their late-night talks were private and special. If he didn’t feel that, she reasoned, he wouldn’t answer the phone.

  She was infinitely grateful that he did. She doubted he understood how much comfort he brought her, though on more than one occasion she’d tried to tell him. He was always calm and together. If the sound of his voice on the radio was soothing, the sound of his voice on the phone was even more so. She called more o
ften as the trial approached, needing more frequent assurance that things would work out.

  * * *

  Savannah, too, grew more keyed up as the trial approached. She showed no signs of nervousness at the office, where she juggled her full load of cases with the same competence as always, but she was having trouble eating, and sleep came only in two- to three-hour shifts.

  That was why, at four in the morning, she was in the office within sight of Jared when one of the calls from Megan came through. She’d been sitting at a desk, making notes on a yellow legal pad when the telephone rang. She looked up in time to see Jared lift the receiver.

  For a minute, looking at him, she forgot about the call. He was a beautiful man; she’d thought it the first time she’d seen him, and she thought it even more now. Though she knew his body nearly as well as she did her own, there were times like this when, in a flash of fresh awareness, she had to stop and catch her breath. Wearing denim cutoffs, he seemed all tawny, hair-spattered legs. His T-shirt hugged his chest and shoulders; his arms were every bit as well formed and masculine as his legs. And his hair, the hair she loved to touch, fell as casually as ever over his brow.

  Swiveling around in his chair to use the control table as a backrest, he cradled the phone to his ear, bringing her thoughts back to the call he’d received. He didn’t look at all surprised by it. From time to time he frowned, but there was a gentleness to his expression that aroused Savannah’s curiosity.

  “Who is it?” she mouthed.

  He held up a finger to say he’d answer her shortly, which she took to mean that it wasn’t a simple matter of mouthing a name. He didn’t talk for long, no more than five or six minutes, but as soon as he’d hung up the phone, he put on the headphones and went on the air to announce the time, the weather, and the songs he was playing. When he’d finished doing that, he set the headphones on the console and went to the door of the booth. Opening it wide, he leaned against the doorjamb.

  Savannah’s eyes asked the question she’d mouthed earlier, and for a minute Jared stood there looking puzzled. Then he shrugged.

  “I don’t know who it was,” he said. “I’ve been getting the calls on and off for a while now.”

  “You talked. You looked like you knew.”

  “In one sense I do. It’s the same caller each time.”

  Savannah shot a glance at the clock on the wall. “At four in the morning?”

  “Sometimes earlier, sometimes later. She varies the day and the time.”

  “She?”

  Pushing off from the doorjamb, Jared strolled over to where Savannah sat. “Not to worry.” He slipped his fingers into her hair and exerted just enough pressure to tip her head back. “You’re my only girl.” He planted a firm kiss on her lips.

  “But she calls you in the middle of the night while I’m asleep,” Savannah teased in the last breath of the kiss. Less teasingly, she asked, “What does she say?”

  “Not much.” He sat on the edge of the desk, took her hand, and wove his fingers through hers. “She says that talking with me calms her. She never stays on long, and she apologizes for taking my time. But she’s upset about something, something that’s very wrong in her life. She won’t tell me what it is.”

  “How often does she call?”

  “Once a week, maybe a little less.” He thought about that, then corrected himself. “It’s been more lately. That was the second call in a week.”

  Savannah found the idea of a nameless woman’s fixation a little frightening. “I thought you didn’t take calls like that.”

  “I don’t. But she calls on my private line. I remember when she did it the first time, I let the conversation go on because I wanted to find out how she got that number.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. And I still don’t know. The only people who have that number are people who have good cause to have it. I can’t believe one of them is passing it around. And it’s not like she dialed it by accident. She said my name right off the bat.”

  “Scary,” Savannah said. “She could be a little nuts.”

  “We’re all a little nuts. She doesn’t sound unusually so, just troubled.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t take the calls.”

  “You’re not jealous?” he chided.

  “No,” she said, and she wasn’t. “But the more you talk, the more involved you get. If she has problems, she should see a professional. She may seem only a little nuts now, but what if she gets worse?”

  Jared hadn’t thought about that. “I feel sorry for her. She’s a sad character. And the calls are harmless. Not once has she said anything threatening or suggestive. Sexual innuendo is the farthest thing from her mind.”

  Savannah tried to imagine the conversations they might have had. “Have you been able to learn anything about her?”

  Taking a deep breath, he pressed her hand flat on his bare thigh. He never tired of the feel of Savannah’s skin on his. “She evades personal questions, but little things have come out.”

  “Like?”

  “Like she’s married.”

  “That’s good,” Savannah said in quick relief. “Then again, maybe not. What kind of married woman calls another man in the middle of the night? What’s her husband doing through all this?”

  “Sleeping, I guess. I’ve never heard any voices in the background. I picture her being alone in whatever room she’s in.”

  “Do you have any idea of her age?”

  “Sounds like she could be anywhere between twenty-five and forty. If I had to pin it down, I’d say in her early thirties.”

  “And you don’t know what her problem is?”

  “She talks about thinking things out and then messing up. She compares being rich to being poor. I get the impression that she started out poor and has had a taste of rich, but is about to lose it.”

  “Then money is the core of her troubles.”

  “In some ways. In other ways, she’s more upset about deception. She talks about that a lot. She seems to feel that she’s lied to the people she loves, and she’s having trouble dealing with it.”

  “Do you have any idea where she lives?”

  “She won’t say. If the calls become troublesome, I’d have the phone company put a tap on the line.”

  “Maybe you ought to do that anyway.”

  But Jared didn’t want to just yet. He felt an odd sense of loyalty to the woman. She asked so little, just an ear and a few words of encouragement. Turning her in seemed like a betrayal.

  Savannah sensed his reluctance. “If she’s calling more often, it could be because things are getting worse for her. Maybe she really needs help.”

  “I keep pushing that. I have names to give her—psychiatrist, social worker, bank loan officer, priest—but she isn’t buying.”

  “Maybe you ought to call the psychiatrist anyway.”

  “And do what? He can’t sit here waiting for her call. She can’t be forced into treatment.”

  “Does she sound high on drugs or anything?”

  “No. Just scared.”

  “You should call the psychiatrist.”

  But Jared couldn’t do that. “I’ll wait. Just for a little while.”

  “Doesn’t she make you nervous?”

  “No. I told you. She’s harmless.” He squeezed her hand. “Really, babe.”

  Savannah eyed him dryly. “If she’s so harmless, how come you didn’t tell me about her?”

  There was no mystery to it. “Because you’ve always been sleeping when she’s called before, and by the time I get upstairs I have other things on my mind.” They both knew what those other things were. “Besides, you’ve been busy lately. This is nothing, Savannah. Really.” Tightening his fingers around hers, he drew her up and held her between his thighs. In a softer, more sandy voice, he said, “How do you feel?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “You should be tired.”

  She shrugged, but there was a look in her eye that said she knew what he
was thinking.

  “Are you?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “When were you due?”

  “Last week.”

  “You’re not usually late.”

  “I know,” she said, then slipped her arms around his neck and hugged him. “I’m afraid to hope.”

  He ran tender hands over her back. She was wearing a soft, white nightgown that flowed to her ankles and gave her a delicate look and feel. “You said it wouldn’t happen till after the trial.”

  “I was close. The trial starts in two weeks.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “Too early.”

  “Then do a test at home.”

  “I’d rather wait. My body will let me know if it’s true, and there’s nothing I can do differently in the meanwhile.”

  He held her back. “You can take it easy.”

  “No. I have to prepare for this trial.”

  “What if you push yourself too much and something happens?”

  “Then it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “But you want the baby?”

  She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “And me? Do you want me?”

  “Wanting you was never the issue.”

  “I don’t mean sex.”

  “Neither do I. The issue wasn’t whether I wanted you, but whether you wanted me.”

  Locking his hands at the back of her waist, Jared was quick to protest. “I never had the slightest doubt—”

  “Maybe I said that wrong,” she interrupted. “The issue was my believing that you want me.”

  “How can you question it?”

  “You know how. We’ve been through it before.”

  “But time has passed. Do I seem unhappy living with you?”

  She thought about it for a minute, then shook her head.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ve lived just fine with your schedule. And with you. You give me everything I want and need.”

  “But I’m a walking—”

  “—law brief. You’ve said that before. But I seem to remember three times in the last six weeks when you played hostess to, all told, nearly two dozen of my business associates.”