“That was the idea, but it’s not working. People are finding out anyway.”
“Is he telling?” Paige couldn’t imagine it. Her impression was that Noah felt a definite loyalty toward Sara. He hadn’t told Paige that Sara had lied about having a younger brother, when he might easily have done so.
“Kids find out. They ask questions. They want to know where you come from and who you live with and what you’re doing on Thanksgiving vacation.”
“Ahhh. So you told them.”
“Just a few,” Sara said defensively. “My closest friends. I had to.” Her expression soured. “The rest will find out soon enough. Fall weekend’s coming up. Most everyone’s leaving, but I’m not. They’ll want to know why.”
“You could always tell them California is too far to go for a weekend,” Paige suggested. “Then again, you might want them to know the truth. They know you now. Their opinion of you will have already been formed. And maybe their opinion of your father is softening.”
Sara looked noncommittal.
“Is it? Is there as much grumbling as there was at first?”
Sara shrugged.
“Didn’t the mountain climb help?”
“A little, I guess.”
“Well, that’s something, then.” She took two bottles from the refrigerator. “I have to warn you, I’m not the most imaginative cook in the world. I always do my chicken on the grill out back, but I can do it either with honey-mustard sauce or teriyaki sauce. Which would you like?”
“Honey-mustard,” Sara said, then, “Did you mean what you said the other night about not being in love with him?”
Paige took the cap off the honey-mustard sauce. “I don’t know him very well. How could I be in love with him?” She coated the chicken with sauce.
“Do you think he’s handsome?”
“Very.”
“Do you think he’s smart?”
“Very. But those things are low on my list of priorities. When I fall in love with someone, it’ll be because of the person inside.” She grabbed a match. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right in.” She went out back, lit the grill, and returned to find that Sara had held the thought all right, only it was a slightly different thought from Paige’s.
“Would you like to be in love with him?” she asked.
“Actually,” Paige said, taking salad makings and a loaf of French bread from the fridge, “I’m not sure I’d like to be in love with anyone right now. My life is a mite busy.”
Sara nodded. She shifted Sami in her arms.
“Too heavy?” Paige asked.
“No.”
Jill returned, looking excited but unsure. In response to Paige’s questioning look, she said, “My friend Kathy has tickets to the Henderson Wheel concert. She says I can have one if you don’t need me that night. It’s a week from Saturday at the movie house.”
Paige didn’t like the thought of anything at the movie house, but she knew that the concert would go on with or without her approval. She also knew that Jill needed a pickup.
“I don’t need you. It’s perfect, actually. I work in the morning, but then I was thinking of staying over at my grandmother’s. She adores Sami.”
“So I can go?” Jill said with an enthusiasm Paige didn’t see often enough on her face.
“Call Kathy and say yes before she gives the ticket to someone else.” Jill ran off.
It struck Paige that the concert was on the same fall weekend that Sara would be one of the few at Mount Court. “Are you a Henderson Wheel fan?”
Sara made a dubious sound.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a so-so.”
“I could try to get a few tickets if you like”—Forgive me, Mara, but it’s for a good cause—“for whoever is left at Mount Court with you.”
Sara shook her head. “It’ll be a local crowd. They don’t like us much.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone knows. They think we’re spoiled little rich kids. They like our money, but that’s all.”
Paige wished she could have denied it, but years of misbehavior on the streets of Tucker had formed a definite image in the minds of the locals. “Maybe that will change under your dad. So far this year, there haven’t been any embarrassing incidents. His rules must be paying off.”
She left the kitchen long enough to put the chicken on the grill, then was back to make a salad. By the time she was done, Jill had returned. Paige reached for Sami.
“This little one needs to be changed. Jill, you know where things are, why don’t you set the table. Sara, the chicken should be done. You can bring it in.”
Paige played with Sami all the way up the stairs and through a diaper change. She was seeing the beginnings of smiles and laughed every time she did. What she loved, though, was the way Sami’s arms naturally went around her when she picked her up.
“That’s my girl,” Paige said, hugging her all the way down the stairs. She set her in the high chair in the kitchen, gave her mashed chicken from a baby food jar and a sliced banana, and sat down to eat with Sara and Jill. She had taken no more than two bites of chicken when the phone rang. She looked at Sara. “I warned you. I’m on call.”
But it wasn’t her answering service. It was Noah. “I’m a little frantic here, Paige. I need your help. We’ve searched the entire campus, but we can’t find Sara. She hasn’t been seen since practice.”
“She’s with me,” Paige said quickly.
“With you? Really?”
“She left campus with me. We’re just having dinner.”
“Thank God,” he breathed. “I’ve been imagining horrible things.”
“You shouldn’t have. She signed out.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Paige caught the guilty look on Sara’s face. “Aaach. I guess she didn’t.” To Sara, chidingly, she said, “He was in a panic. They’ve been looking all over for you.”
If Sara was touched, she didn’t let on. Paige wanted to shake her.
On the other end of the line, Noah sounded dismayed. “The girls kept talking about the Devil Brothers, saying that it was only a matter of time before they abducted one of the female students. Who in the hell are the Devil Brothers?”
“Not Devil. DeVille. They’re two sweet, simple-minded lugs of guys who are Tucker’s perennial scapegoats. They’re harmless.”
“Ahhhhh. The girls were working themselves into a frenzy, taking me right along with them. I’m afraid our secret’s out, Sara’s and mine. So she’s there. Thank God.” In the next breath he said, “God help her, the little minx. If she thinks I can give her dispensation from disciplinary action, she’s wrong. Particularly now that people know we’re related, I’ll have to go out of my way to be impartial. She went AWOL. That’s worth a detention times ten.”
“What’s he saying?” Sara whispered.
“You don’t want to know,” Paige whispered back, then said into the phone, “Can she finish dinner, at least?”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Make it an hour.”
“Half.” He took a shaky breath. “Thank God. I was thinking that I’d taken her away from her mother only to subject her to unspeakable horrors.” He took another breath, a steadier one this time. “So, anyway, what are you eating?”
“Chicken, but there’s none left for you. Come in an hour and you can have some brownies.” She hung up the phone before he could argue.
“Brownies?” Jill said. “We don’t have any brownies.”
Paige looked from one girl to the other. “Then we’d better get a mix down from the shelf and whip up a batch real quick, don’t you think?”
Noah loved the brownies. He didn’t love the awkwardness that accompanied Sara and him in the car back to Mount Court. Talking with teenagers was his forte, which was one of the reasons why the difficulty he had talking with Sara upset him. The other was that she needed a father as much as he needed a daughter.
Bu
t talking about feelings, perhaps criticizing and being criticized, was risky business for two people who didn’t know each other very well. After several minutes of silence, all he could think to say was, “I was worried.”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, though she didn’t sound it at all.
“Why didn’t you sign out?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
It’s one of the most basic of the dorm rules, he wanted to say. When you leave campus, you sign out. If everyone came and went as the mood took them, we’d never know where they were. Parents entrust the care of their children to the school. We are responsible for our students.
“You know,” he mused, “when I envisioned having my own daughter at the school where I taught, I thought I knew the drawbacks. After all, I was in a similar position as you once. So I was thinking how difficult it might be for you, but there’s another side to it that I hadn’t thought of. Me. Normally parents are miles away and don’t know about the little problems at school until those problems are resolved. They don’t go through the hell of the worry I did.”
She was quiet for so long that he wondered if she’d heard. When he looked at her, she said, “You can always send me home. Then you won’t have to know about the problems.”
“I don’t want to send you home. I want to have you here.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be here.”
“Don’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sara?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled.
“Are you missing California that much?”
“Maybe.”
“Looking forward to going back for Thanksgiving?” When she didn’t answer, he shot her a glance. “You talk with your mom every week, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is she doing okay?”
“Sure.”
The fact was that Noah had received an irate call from the woman several days before saying that she could never get through on the dormitory phone and asking why Sara hadn’t called her. According to Liv, the two hadn’t talked in three weeks.
Given Sara’s history, Noah tended to believe Liv. But he couldn’t say that to Sara. He was doing his best to trust her, in the hope that she would earn that trust in time.
Unfortunately it was taking longer than he had thought, and his patience was growing thin.
For that reason he set great store in the upcoming fall break. It was only five days, Thursday through Monday, but it would be the first time that Sara had stayed at the house with him. It would also be the longest period of time they had ever spent together alone. The annual week with his parents didn’t count. This was major parenting.
The prospect of it might have unnerved him if he hadn’t been so excited. He wanted her to come to like him and to that end planned a dinner out and a shopping trip to Boston. He would take her to a movie, if she would go. He would play Boggle with her. He was hoping to involve her in redecorating the house, if only to make her feel that it was hers.
He was also hoping to take her canoeing on the river north of Tucker. Canoeing was relaxing and peaceful. It was a tandem activity involving coordination and cooperation and created the kind of atmosphere in which the beginnings of a relationship might be forged, or so he hoped. He knew he would meet resistance along the way, but he was determined to persist. If the weekend proved a bust, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying on his part.
fifteen
ANGIE, TOO, WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL break. Well in advance, she told Paige and Peter that they wouldn’t see her in the office on those days. She wanted lazy time with Dougie—sleeping late, having a leisurely breakfast, knocking around the house, lighting a fire. She wanted him to feel the pleasure of being home.
Had she been the only one involved, she might have pulled it off without a hitch. But there was Ben to consider. For two days, a normal weekend, they could pretend that things were fine, but five days would be harder.
They had canceled the New York trip. Ben hadn’t wanted to go in the first place and was happy enough to let his agent do the honors. Once upon a time, Angie would have insisted that they be there, but her days of insisting were done. She didn’t feel qualified to insist on much where Ben was concerned. Where once she had spoken for him, she was silent now. She didn’t know what he was thinking, didn’t know what he was feeling. He wasn’t saying much to her but came and went, leaving her imagination to account for his time. She had taken to stopping at the house during the day, but he was rarely home. He did his work, then was gone.
She didn’t know where he went and didn’t have the courage to ask, mainly because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She did know that the thought of his being with another woman continued to cut to the quick.
Telling herself that something had to be resolved before Dougie came home for a long and potentially awkward weekend, she drove to the house the afternoon before he was due home, saw Ben’s car gone, and kept on driving. She went to the post office in the center of Tucker, but the blue Honda wasn’t there, so she continued on down Main Street, past the row of cars parked diagonally in front of the grocery store, the hardware store, the bookstore. She turned the corner and tried the parking lot of the Tavern, then the parking lot of the Tucker Inn. She returned along Main Street, past Reels and the ice-cream shop, thinking she might have missed the Honda the first time around.
Then she went to the library. It was a small gray building with crisp white trim, a relic of Colonial days that was nearly as revered by Tuckerites as the church. When Dougie had been little, Angie had taken him to story hours there; when he had entered school, she had helped him research reports there. When judged by the number of volumes it held, the Tucker Free Library fell short. When judged by the charm of the place and the warmth inside, nothing could beat it.
The blue Honda was parked under a tree. Angie pulled in beside it and sat with her head bowed. From time to time she looked up, but the view was discouraging. Leaves that were a brilliant crimson and gold the week before were starting to fade. With their edges curled, they looked smaller, sadder, more self-contained. Every few minutes, given a fatal nudge by the breeze, one fell from its branch to the ground.
Therein lay the good news. Ben’s car didn’t have enough leaves on it to suggest that it had been parked for long. The bad news was that it was there at all.
As she had so often in the past weeks, Angie recalled the first time she had set eyes on Ben. She had been drawn first by the air of quiet certainty about him, second by the dryness of his wit, third by the way his smile curled her stomach. He could coax her into taking time off from studying to go to a midnight movie, spend an evening laughing with friends, or climb into the car and drive for hours with the radio blaring their favorite songs.
His light heartedness had complemented her seriousness. They brought out the best in each other.
She wasn’t sure when that had changed. The years between that first day and the present seemed crowded together, twenty-one years of doing everything that had been productive and profitable. Somewhere along the line whimsy had been lost. Their lives had become programmed.
To suit her. He was right. Okay, so she was at fault there, but that didn’t justify his taking up with Nora Eaton.
She heard a light tap on the window and looked up as Ben settled against her car mere inches from where she sat. He was wearing the leather jacket she had given him several years before, open to a plaid shirt. His hands were tucked in the pockets of his jeans. He looked healthy, even roguish with the smattering of gray in his hair, but there was neither quiet certainty about him nor a smile. He looked at the Honda, then at the ground, and in that instant, if she had been able to, she would have started the car, backed around, and sped off down the street. But Ben would have been injured, for starters. And then there was the matter of her tears. They came from nowhere and started pouring down her face. It took both hands to hide herself from him.
The passenger door
opened and shut. He reached for her and held her with surprising ease over the gearshift. “Come on, Angie. It’s not that bad.”
“It’s terrible!” she cried. The closeness of him, the familiarity of his touch, and the rightness of his scent drove home her dilemma. “My life is coming apart at the seams!”
“It’s just us having some troubles.”
“But that is my life. Us is the key to the rest. It’s what holds everything together.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and she herself was wondering where it had come from. She hadn’t planned to say it. But the words had popped out, and she couldn’t take them back. They were more right than, career woman that she was, she wanted to believe.
It was a minute before she regained a semblance of control, and then she drew back, groped in her jacket pocket for a tissue, and blew her nose.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break down. It was a buildup of things, I guess.” When he didn’t say anything, she took a deep breath. It shuddered on its way out. “I never thought life could be so fine one day and so terrible the next. Since Mara died—” Her throat grew tight again.
“What’s happening to us has nothing to do with Mara.”
“I know.” She wanted to say that Mara’s death had set off a string of events, because that was truly the way it seemed, but he was right. The problems with their marriage had nothing to do with Mara.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked.
She looked anywhere but at him. “I, uh, take time off in the middle of the day sometimes thinking that maybe we can have lunch together, but when I go home, you’re never there. Usually I don’t want to know where you are. Today was different.”
“How so?”
She would have mentioned Dougie’s fall break, had she not realized that it was as irrelevant as Mara’s death. So was Dougie if they were talking about the future. For the first time, she could accept that.
Holding the tissue tightly in her hand, she said in a broken voice, “I can’t keep on this way. I’m not focusing in on much of anything I do, because my mind keeps wandering back to us. I need to resolve things.” She felt an overwhelming defeat. “I had to know if you were with her.”
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