by John Saul
“Mom! You don’t even like blueberries.”
But even with Alison’s words ringing in her ears, Risa could barely focus on the food in front of her. Rather, her entire consciousness had been filled with only two things since she’d awakened this morning: the fact that Michael had not only not come home for dinner last night, but still hadn’t been home when she finally fell asleep sometime after midnight; and Lexie Montrose’s words from the banquet the night before.
I could be Mrs. Happily Unmarried in a heartbeat if Conrad Dunn came on the market!
Had some ambitious young talent thought the same about Michael Shaw? The thought had begun to haunt her as soon as she got home and found not only that Michael’s side of the garage was empty, but that he hadn’t even called to say he’d be late until Alison already had dinner on the table and waiting for him. Indeed, it had still been on the table when she herself had come home, and instead of being worried that he’d been hurt in an accident or something, as she would have in the first years of their marriage, she found herself instead recalling Lexie’s sleazy comment.
Was it possible that Michael had spent the evening with another woman?
Of course it was possible—in this day and age, in fact, it was even probable.
Still, the thought was both infuriating and terrifying.
“Well, maybe I’ll just have to learn to like blueberries,” Risa said, gazing at her bowl morosely. “Maybe I’ll have to learn to like a lot of things I hate.” She poured a glass of juice for Alison and another for herself, pushing Alison’s across the breakfast bar.
“Aren’t you going to pour one for Dad?” Alison asked as Risa set the pitcher down, leaving the third glass conspicuously empty.
“If he wants it, he can pour it himself,” Risa said, and regretted her sharp tone when she saw Alison recoil. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” she went on, too quickly. “I guess I’m just a little cranky this morning. Plus I have an early appointment. I have to be at the marina in half an hour.” She gulped down her orange juice, decided to ignore the blueberries, then wondered if that could be symbolic of something, and blew on her coffee in hopes of cooling it fast enough to drink at least half a cup before she had to leave. “Are you coming home right after school today?”
“Track practice,” Alison said. “I’ll be home by six. Why?”
“Just trying to keep up with you,” Risa said, forcing a smile.
“Keep up with me?” Alison shot back. “Give me a break, Mom—I’m the one who has to keep up with you.”
The smile her daughter’s words brought to her lips faded when she heard her husband’s footsteps on the stairs, and she tried to renew it. The last thing she needed this morning was a confrontation with Michael, especially in front of Alison. Yet even as she told herself to let it go at least until she and Michael were alone, she felt the bitter anger rising in the back of her throat. Then Michael came around the corner—fresh from the shower, wearing an open-collared shirt and sport coat over chinos, and looking far younger than his forty-two years—and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold her temper in check.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He reached for the orange juice.
“Morning, Dad—” Alison began, but abruptly cut herself short when her mother reached out and clutched her father’s wrist, keeping him from the pitcher.
“What time did you roll in last night?” she demanded, a hard edge of anger in her voice.
“Late,” Michael said.
A little too smoothly? Risa wondered.
“I worked until after midnight,” he explained, “then went out for a nightcap.”
Risa stared at him until he lifted his gaze to meet hers.
He was lying—she could see it in his eyes. “Alison stayed home to make you dinner, and you didn’t even bother to call until it was already on the table.”
“Oh, cupcake, I’m sorry,” he said, and walked around the bar to kiss the top of his daughter’s head. “Sometimes the newsroom just doesn’t care that I have a real life.”
“She was home alone until I got back from the banquet about ten,” Risa said.
“Mom, I’m fifteen!” Alison protested. “It was no big deal.”
“That’s not the point!” Risa snapped.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Michael said. “What can I say? You know the news doesn’t stop for my convenience.”
“But apparently your daughter can be ignored.”
Michael sighed heavily. “Maybe we should have this conversation another time.”
“Fine,” Risa said. “How about tonight? Or won’t you be home tonight, either?”
Alison’s eyes glistened as she looked up at her parents. “Come on, you guys. Don’t fight.”
“We’re not fighting, honey,” Michael said, his eyes pleading with his wife to let it go, at least until they were alone. “I was inconsiderate, and your mom has a right to be mad.”
Risa took a deep breath, checked her watch, and decided she had neither the time, the energy, nor the stomach for whatever might happen if they kept talking right now. Without responding to Michael, she poured a fresh cup of coffee into a traveling mug, though she was certain her stomach was already far too upset for her to drink it. “I’ve got to run.” She looked directly at her husband. “You’ll be home tonight?”
Michael nodded. “As usual.”
“’Bye, Mom.”
“’Bye, honey.” Risa grabbed her briefcase and hurried through the house to the garage.
A wife always knows, her mother had told her.
And Risa knew.
Michael was having an affair.
MARGOT DUNN SAT quietly in the tiny glass chapel overlooking the Pacific where she and Conrad had been married a dozen years ago. The joy of that day—when her own beauty exceeded even that of the setting she had chosen for her wedding—was only a faint memory now, but the serenity of the Wayfarer’s Chapel imbued her spirit as much today as it always had. Through all the years since she’d married Conrad, this small church had been her refuge, the single place where everything else in her world could be shut out, and today, with the bright sun of the clear morning pouring through the great glass panels and filtering through the branches of the redwoods outside, Margot knew she was at last going to be all right.
For the first time since the accident, her soul was truly at peace.
Uttering a final silent prayer, Margot rose from the pew and left the chapel, threading her way though the crowd around the front door, paying no attention to the glances and whispers of the people who recognized her.
She found her Lexus parked in the lot, drove it down the hill to the Pacific Coast Highway and turned right. After less than a mile she turned off the highway and made her way through a maze of small cul-de-sacs until she pulled up in front of a tiny park she’d discovered a few years ago when she came to look at one of the houses across the street.
She hadn’t particularly liked the house, but had fallen instantly in love with the park. She’d come back the very next day, bringing Ruffles with her, and the dog had liked it as much as she did. The best thing about it—aside from the view and the thunder from the surf that constantly crashed at the base of the cliff—was that it was almost always deserted. Now, already anticipating an hour of running loose on the lawn, the little white terrier was peering eagerly out the passenger window of the Lexus, as if struggling to get his tiny nose through the glass itself to suck in the tangy salt air beyond the confines of the car.
Margot braked to a stop, turned off the engine, and let her hands drop to her lap as her head fell back onto the headrest.
Peace.
She took a deep breath and then gazed out over the cliffs to the glistening ocean spread out in front of her. A haze lay over the sea this morning, hiding the distant form of Catalina. The horizon had all but vanished, the sea and sky blending so perfectly that there was barely a hint of where they met.
Noth
ing but blue for as far as she could see.
Ruffles whined to be let out of the car, but Margot only reached across to give his flank an affectionate rub. “Hush,” she whispered.
Sensing something, the little dog instantly quieted.
Again Margot gazed out at the sea, quieting her mind, concentrating on her breathing, using the yoga she had learned years before.
Then she pulled down the visor, flipped open the lighted mirror, and faced her reflected image.
The scars, uncovered by makeup today, were far worse than she had made herself believe. With neither the magic of Danielle DeLorian’s line of cosmetics nor the subdued lighting with which she had surrounded herself for the last year, the scars looked even worse to her now than on the day the bandages were removed. Clearly reflected in the mirror, fully exposed by the glare of morning light, Margot Dunn gazed silently at what other people saw whenever they looked at her: the hideous purple gouges that had ruined her face forever.
The peace she had found in the chapel and the serenity of the vast sea were abruptly shattered by the voices she’d overheard at last night’s banquet.
How could she live, looking like that?
Why hasn’t her husband fixed those dreadful scars?
If he could, he would have, wouldn’t he?
I’d never show my face in public if I looked like that.
Margot turned her eyes from the hideous vision in the mirror and gazed at the beautiful ocean before her, sparkling in the sun.
Beautiful. Beautiful and eternal: the sea would be forever enchanting.
How could she live, looking like that?
How, indeed?
She reached into the backseat and took one of the fashion magazines from the stack she’d put in the car just before she left the house. She gazed at the cover: the magazine was Elle, and that issue had been one of her best covers ever. She’d worn leather and fur for the shoot, and the camera had caught the seductive little wink she offered as she showed off not only her perfect face, but her flawless legs as well.
Perfect no more, she thought as she looked again to the mirror in the visor.
She snapped it closed, and flipped the magazine over so she could no longer see the image on its cover. But in the backseat there were at least a dozen others, each bearing testament to what she had been. She hadn’t brought them to look at—they were there as nothing more than evidence, so people would understand.
So Conrad would understand.
The ocean stretched before her, shimmering in the sun.
I’d never show my face in public if I looked like that.
The remark resounded in her memory so clearly that Margot actually jumped, startled, as if the woman who had uttered it last night were right here in the car with her.
Consciously settling her rattled nerves, she fished in her purse for her cell phone. Just as her fingers closed around it, it began to ring.
Conrad’s name and phone number glowed on the small screen.
After a moment’s hesitation, she answered. “Conrad?”
“Margot, where are you?”
“Palos Verdes.”
“P-V? What are you doing way out there?”
“Just…taking a day,” she said.
The pause before Conrad spoke again was a little too long, and when he finally did speak, she could hear the worry in his voice.
“Are you okay?”
Margot considered the question, and found the one answer that would not only ease his worry but was absolutely true as well: “I’m fine.”
Another hesitation, but not nearly as long. “Should I worry about you?”
Margot felt her lips curl into a wry smile. There was nothing for anybody to worry about. Not anymore. Not ever again. “Not at all, darling.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be home at the usual time.”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” he said.
“Love you, too,” she said, then clicked off the phone before the emotion in her chest made it to her voice. “I love you so very, very much,” she whispered, holding the phone to her cheek, pressing it against the scars.
What had that woman in the restroom said? Something about snapping Conrad up if he ever came back on the market?
She dabbed a tissue at the moisture leaking from her damaged right eye, then opened her phone again and pressed the MEMO button.
“I’m so sorry, Conrad,” she said, her voice soft. “I can’t go on this way and I can’t subject you to my misery for the rest of your life. Please give Ruffles to Danielle—she’s never had anyone to love her. And you take good care of yourself. Never forget that I love you.”
Checking off items on a well-rehearsed mental list, Margot phoned the police to report an abandoned, locked Lexus parked at Vanderlip Park with a dog inside. She rolled down the window far enough so Ruffles would have plenty of cool ocean air but not enough so he could wriggle out. She set her cell phone on the dashboard, then got out of the car, pressed the button on the key that would lock the doors, and dropped the keys back into the car, through the slightly opened window, to the floor behind the driver’s seat.
The ocean breeze lifted strands of her hair as she looked out to sea, walked to the bench overlooking the sea, and sat down on it.
A hundred or so feet below, the surf pounded at the base of the cliff, spray shooting high into the air as the waves exploded against the rocks of the shoreline.
A few hundred yards offshore, a sailboat was cruising southward, its foredeck crowded with people.
Beautiful people.
The world belonged to the beautiful people, and nobody understood that better than she did.
She rose to her feet and stepped to the edge of the precipice. She gazed down upon the rocks thrusting up from the ocean floor.
The rocks that would be her salvation.
If Conrad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fix her face, the rocks would.
She stood a little straighter, closed her eyes, and raised her arms in embrace of her final act.
Then she took a deep breath and dove, headfirst—face-first—into oblivion.
MICHAEL SHAW SCANNED the news release about a group of disabled veterans opening a new restaurant for no more than three seconds before scrawling BR on the top with a red felt pen. The story would be perfect for Barry Rivers’s first week on the job—if he was the kind of reporter who wrote off human-interest stuff as fluff beneath their reportorial standards, better to find out about it right now. Dropping the release into his out-box, he picked up the next one from the stack that just seemed to keep on growing, no matter how often he attacked it.
“Michael!”
Tina Wong’s voice startled him as much as her sharp rap on the door. How was it possible that a woman who could produce perfectly modulated tones on the air always sounded like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard in real life? And why could she never—not once in the five years she’d worked for him—wait for even an acknowledgment of her presence before wading into his office, let alone an actual invitation? But here she was, already changing the video input on one of his monitors and stuffing a DVD into the player on his credenza.
“The Starbucks manager who was murdered in Encino?” she began. “The kid who opened the store and found the body shot some footage with his cell phone before the cops got there.” The screen that normally monitored CNN went blank, and a moment later, shaky, poorly lit images came on the screen: a bathroom mirror, a sink, some stall doors.
Then a woman’s body.
She lay sprawled on the floor, her clothes torn away, her torso ripped open from the groin almost to her throat.
The organs that should have been inside her body were now strewn across the floor around her, black blood pooling on the tiles of the floor and seeping into the grouted cracks between them.
Flies had already found the corpse, and seemed to be creeping everywhere.
The carnage was so complete that there was no way of telling what color the woma
n’s clothes might have been. The camera slowly panned the grisly scene. Whoever took the footage had even knelt down and shot under the wall of one of the stalls. For a moment Michael didn’t understand the point of the shot, but a second later saw it. There was an almost shapeless mass of bloody tissue lying near the base of the toilet, which he realized had once been the woman’s heart. Then the camera moved in on the young woman’s face. Impossibly, it was utterly unblemished, and unmarked by even a single spatter of blood.
“Jesus,” Michael Shaw whispered.
“The kid wants ten grand for the footage,” Tina Wong said, her voice betraying no emotion in response to the carnage on the television screen.
“Tina, I can’t authorize—”
“Of course you can,” she cut in. “And you not only can, you have to. If we don’t buy this, he’ll only sell it down the street. And we have”—she glanced her watch—“exactly seven minutes left to make up our minds.”
Michael stretched his neck, buying a few seconds.
Did he want Risa to see this?
Worse, did he want Alison to see this?
No way.
“If it bleeds, it leads,” Tina said, reading Michael’s hesitation and punching the remote control to show the twenty-second clip again. “Who taught me that, Michael?”
He sighed heavily, knowing the decision was already made, but still wishing he could turn his back on the carnage that riveted his eyes to the screen. “I know, I know.” He’d taught that phrase himself, not only to Tina, but to every young reporter who came to work for Channel 3.
“Well, this bleeds,” Tina said, setting the remote down on his desk. “This bleeds more than anything since Nicole Simpson, and I want it to lead the noon news. In fact, I want to break into regular programming with it in”—she checked her watch again—“ten minutes.”
“We’re not interrupting programming for a murder in Encino,” he said.
“Noon news, then?” Tina countered, and Michael understood too late that her asking him to break into the schedule had been no more than a bargaining ploy.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. Tina Wong had already come to the attention of every other station in Los Angeles, as well as the network headquarters in New York, and he’d been told more than once, and in no uncertain terms, to keep her happy. But in the long run he knew there was no way of keeping her happy. She would eventually make a career move, and everyone wanted it to be up the line to national, and not to a competing network.