by Julia London
“Now sod off you wretched little nancy boy. Go and tidy up your plastic zoo.”
Mr. Valicielo opened his mouth, but quickly shut it again and stomped back to his house.
“Ridiculous,” Flynn muttered, and turned around, and was startled by the sight of Rachel standing on the porch wrapped in her lavender shawl, her arms tightly around her, looking at him. Staring emptily, rather—he instantly noticed the spark in her eyes was gone. Her gorgeous eyes had been replaced by eyes that were lifeless and dull.
“Rachel,” he said, walking toward her. “I wasn’t certain you’d speak to me.”
She said nothing, just kept staring at him with those wretched eyes. She looked drawn; there were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was wound in some sort of haphazard knot and secured with a pencil. She didn’t seem to be the same Rachel, and it pained him.
Flynn paused at the bottom step of the porch. “It’s ah . . . it’s rather hard to know where to begin.”
“Then don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I gathered as much,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. “But I rather hoped you’d at least give me a chance to explain everything.”
She gave a strange bark of laughter that sounded a little like a wounded dog. “I don’t need you to tell me what happened,” she said. “I know what happened. You used me. You suspected me of being part of some horrid insurance scam and you cozied up to me just so you could find out what Myron was doing,” she said, her tone bitter. Even worse, a tear slipped from one eye.
That, he couldn’t abide, and Flynn moved without thinking, but Rachel instantly threw up an arm. “I don’t want you near me,” she breathed. “And I don’t want you to pretend that what you did doesn’t matter, that you were on the side of good, or something asinine like that,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’ve thought about this a lot, Flynn. I hate what Myron did to me. He betrayed me in the worst way, lying and stealing and using me. But that doesn’t hurt nearly as much as your lies. And I know you will argue you had to do it, that it was your job, but you lied to me, you used me, you played me for a fool and it hurts because I loved you. Your lies cut so deep that I keep thinking I’m going to bleed to death.” A rash of tears erupted from her eyes, and Rachel gulped down a sob, pulled her shawl more tightly about her. “I really loved you, Flynn. And that makes your cut the deepest.”
Christ in heaven. He walked up the steps, reached out and touched her face, but Rachel recoiled, turning her head. “Rachel,” he said desperately. “I love you, too, Rachel. That’s just it, that’s why I came here—”
“I don’t believe you! I can’t believe anything between us was real. That night I told you I was falling in love with you, you might as well have crawled under a table. And there was always something you were going to tell me—what was it? That there was another woman? Did you lie about that, too?”
The question, flung out of the blue, startled him so badly that Flynn hesitated, if only for a fraction of a second, but in that fraction of a second, Rachel turned her back to him, walked to the door, and yanked it open. “I don’t ever want to speak to you again. I don’t ever want to see you again—I just want the whole nightmare to go away,” she said, and walked through the door, slamming it shut behind her.
Flynn stood on the lawn, his jaw aching with the clench of it.
All right. She was frightfully angry. He had no choice but to give her time to cool off. He’d be in the States a few more weeks, tracking down the last items. And as he hadn’t the least bloody idea what to do at that moment, he turned away, lost in thought, walked to his car in the drive.
But he sat behind the wheel of that car, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Rachel was hurt, and he felt himself sitting on the edge of a dreadful turmoil, bubbling up beneath the silence that had filled his heart and his mind since Hilton Head, a turmoil that was ready to break the surface and completely demoralize him.
He happened to glance up, and saw Rachel at the upstairs window, staring down at him, her expression carved from stone.
Flynn made himself drive.
At the Corporate Suites, he grabbed his coat from the car and walked from the parking lot into the lobby and waved at the desk clerk. “Ah, Mr. Flynn!” the young man called as Flynn punched the button. “I got a message for you.”
“That’s quite all right—I’ll pick it up later,” he said, and stepped into the lift, smiled thinly as the clerk tried to speak while the lift doors were shutting, and fell against the wall, waiting for the interminable ride up to the fifth floor.
On the fifth floor, he exited the lift, walked slowly down the hallway to his flat . . . and thought, strangely enough, that he could hear a telly blaring in his flat. As he haltingly neared the door, he was certain he did, and wondered if he’d left it on all day. With a shrug, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and walked in.
“Flynn, darling!” his mother cried happily, startling him out of his wits. “We thought you’d never return!” she said as she hurried to embrace him. “Surprise!” she said, and threw her arms around him, went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then stood back, smiling. “Oh dear, you look absolutely knackered.”
“Mum, what are you doing here?”
“You missed the Farmington Fall gala, you know,” she said. “Your cousins were quite distraught.”
“Where’s Dad? I can’t believe he’d let you bring him all this way without some sort of protest.”
“Oh no, your father didn’t come,” she said with a laugh.
“I came darling, who else?”
The voice sliced through him; Flynn groaned, turned toward the tiny living room and a smiling, bone-thin, Iris Willow-Throckmorton.
“What is it?” she laughingly cried as she pranced toward him, her arms outstretched. “You don’t seem very happy to see me!” She rose up, air-kissed his cheek. “We’ve come all this way to see you, and you aren’t the least bit happy. You haven’t gone and found yourself a new fiancée, have you?” she asked sweetly.
For the first time in his life, Flynn felt the urge to deck a woman. “Hallo, Iris,” he said, and loosening his tie, stepped around her, walked into his bedroom, and shut the door.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [FWD: I’m Okay, Really]
From:
To:
[email protected] wrote:
. . . thanks, but there’s not that much to say and I really just want to be left alone.
Ah kid, you’ve been through a lot, but isolating yourself is not healthy. Mom is right, you should come home to the ranch and decompress. Get out of Rhode Island and away from those lunatics and come back to Texas where we’ll treat you right—Rebecca knows a great spa in Austin, it’s like a two-day thing, and they feed you and pamper you and when you come out, I swear you’re ten pounds lighter just from all the wraps. Write me back. Why is your phone disconnected, anyway? We luv u, Rachel. Robbie
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Doing Fine
From: Rebecca Parrish
To: Rachel Lear
[email protected] wrote:
. . . appreciate the advice, but this isn’t really the same as when you and Bud split up. I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, Bec. I’m sick of talking about it. But thanks for trying. Rachel.
But see? It is the same because I felt the same way after Bud left me. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone and let me wallow in my misery for a while. But Rach, don’t do what I did and wallow too long because it really screwed me up. I started to believe I was worthless and deserved everything he did to me. It wasn’t until you and Robbie sent me on the transformation retreat that I began to snap out of it and realize that what happened didn’t happen TO me, it happened AROUND me (transformation seminar, track 3). There is a subtle distinction, you know—if something is done to you, it’s malevolent. If
something is done around you, it’s a case of your being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the trick is to recognize you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and get out before anyone notices. Do you know what I mean? Gee, I really wish I could talk to you, Rachel. Do you need some money to get your phone reconnected? Please write me back. I am worried about you. Mom’s thinking of coming to Providence, but she said she wouldn’t do that without talking to you first. Love you, Rebecca
Subject: Your Boyfriend’s Crime
From: Lillian Stanton
To: Rachel Ellen Lear [email protected]
Rachel honey Bonnie told me all what happened and I just want you to know that your grandpa and I think it’s just awful what he done he deserves to go to jail and hell. Yes I said hell. Bonnie says your real depressed and I don’t blame you honey because that is an awful thing to have to go through just ask your sister Robin because she was arrested once. I think you ought to come home. If you don’t want to go to the ranch you just come on to Houston and I will make you some brownies you know the ones with fudge and nuts you like so well. Just let us know when your plane gets in and Grandpa will come pick you up at the airport only be sure to come to Bush Intercontinental and not Hobby because that is too far for him to drive on account of that blood clot he had last year I swear if it’s not one thing its another with that old man.
Hey Rachel . . . Old Man here . . . Got me a new hunting rifle. Want me to come up there and plug that sorry sonofabee? Lil says that’s not funny but I didn’t mean it to be funny, I’m serious as a heart attack. I love you pretty face and if you want me to kill him I will. Hell, I’m eighty years old. They aren’t going to put me in jail. Let me know. Love, Grandma and Grandpa
Subject: Hello Baby Girl
From: Aaron Lear
To: Rachel
From everything I’ve read and heard I guess it’s safe to assume that you went to Hilton Head and did what you had to do. And I don’t suppose you need any more advice than you’ve been getting from the rest of the crew. Your mom says you’ve turned off your phone, and I can sure understand why, but I want you to know that I am proud of you, Rachel, damn proud. I know it hasn’t been easy. No one ever likes to find out they’ve been the ass of someone’s sick joke, especially when it’s splashed across the news for all the world to see. But I have every confidence you will come through this stronger and better than before. Call me when you’re ready, baby girl. Dad
There was, to Rachel’s way of thinking, nothing to be proud of. She had waltzed herself right into the middle of a nightmare and had not been able to muddle her way out. When she wasn’t reliving every single thing Flynn had said or done, she was reviewing, with her perfect hindsight, all the clues that should have told her she was being followed, surveilled, and generally spied upon.
For example, the blue car she had seen on more than one occasion driving past her house was Detective Joe Keating’s—she had seen it in enough newscasts now to recognize it.
How about the many times she just happened to run into Flynn? Please! At the coffee shop, the gym, the market, her class, a supermarket clear across town, hello! And his living arrangement, and his knowing the Feizels, and the fact that he couldn’t help her with a computer problem even though he was a computer guy. Why hadn’t something registered? She had known right off that a guy like him would not, out of the clear blue, want to hook up with her, so why hadn’t it clicked that something was going on?
Dagne’s stupid witchcraft, that was why. She had bought into that ridiculous notion, had believed she had cast spells that would bring love and romance to her, because she believed in the metaphysical world. Which, if one laid out all the clues and facts in a nice neat little row, made her even more outrageously pathetic than she originally thought. She was a stupid girl, a real Miss Fortune.
So, all right. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d been a complete idiot, and in the greater scheme of things, she probably could have handled the whole Myron thing, particularly after the Providence Journal ran a Sunday feature entitled, A Professor, a Student, and a Tangled Web of Deceit. In that article, she came off (no surprise here) as a tubby (Rachel Lear; a tall, big-boned young woman), air-headed (did not, according to authorities, think anything unusual with the number or type of “gifts” she was receiving from Professor Tidwell on a fairly routine basis), pathetic loser (a search of university records reveals that Miss Lear has been enrolled in a doctorate program for four years). Par for the course.
Her friends tried to come to her rescue. The reporter spoke at length with Dagne, who, Rachel was discovering, really liked the media attention. Dagne Delaney, a close friend of Lear’s, had sold a few of the items on eBay and collected around three hundred dollars for priceless artifacts. Dagne had vigorously defended Rachel. “I know it might seem really stupid, but you just have to know Rachel,” she told them. “She’s the nicest person you would ever meet, and very well mannered, and she just really thought Professor Tidwell was her friend. No, really, she did.”
Chantal said, “I don’t know nothing about that slimy professor, but he ain’t the one she had the hots for. Now Rachel Lear, she be the salt of the earth, you know what I’m saying? She’d take the shirt off her back and give it right to you if you needed it.”
Mr. Gregory was, as one would suspect, less sympathetic: “Yes, I would agree that Miss Lear is very kind, yet I can’t help but wonder at her atrocious lack of judgment.”
Jason was defiant: “I can’t stand what everyone is saying about Rachel. She’s the best! You don’t know her! You’re saying things that aren’t [expletive deleted] true!”
And not to be left out, Sandy: “She’s real good with people. She always carried aspirin for me, because I am prone to flare-ups of phlebitis when I sit too long in class. She didn’t have to do that. It was real thoughtful.”
And what would a Sunday exposé be without a little something from Mr. Valicielo? “Lots of strange people come and go over there, all times of the day and night,” he said. “And she cut that tree down, that one there, to let it ruin my fence. I seen her with an axe.” The reporter did note, thankfully, that there was no evidence the tree had been purposely cut down, but appeared to have fallen due to root rot.
Most of the feature was devoted to Myron, and how a professor who once had a promising future could mastermind such a scheme, pocketing almost fifty thousand dollars for his troubles. That part infuriated her the most. He had stolen upwards of fifty thousand dollars, had two jobs, and still he couldn’t pay her back?
The article went on to explain Myron’s fall from grace at the university, which she read with great interest as she devoured a sheet of chocolate chip cookies. In the end, she decided that you could never really know another person completely, and she didn’t feel quite as stupid in the end. Myron was, by that account, a master manipulator. She could at least say she had been betrayed by the best.
Which left the one thing that she could not get over: Flynn.
Flynn, Flynn, Flynn.
How many sleepless nights did she lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering how much he’d manufactured to get Myron? Had there been any truth between them at all? He said he loved her on the lawn. Why would he say that now? Unless it was still part of his stupid undercover operation? Or was he just doing the British thing and being very polite? “Yes, of course I loved you, but you do understand that it was all in the course of my work, there’s a love.”
It was a question that ate at her, and several times she thought to pick up the phone and call him. But she didn’t. Her phone had been disconnected for starters. And she didn’t feel quite the confident, sexy young thing she had when she was casting ridiculous, meaningless spells left and right. Nope, she felt like a poor wallflower who was desperately clinging to a fantasy and a lot of stupid knight-in-shining-armor dreams. How lame! He was just another cop with a job to do, and she had been
the convenient way to do the job. That was it!
Maybe the worst thing about all of it was that Rachel had to admit Dad was right about her all along. She had been living in a dream world. For thirty-one years, she’d been living in her own little world with blinders on that kept her from seeing the truth about everything and everyone. The whole thing had left her mightily depressed and completely rudderless. She holed up in her home, going out only when absolutely necessary. Even Mike, who might have been a port in the storm, lost patience and quit calling. His last message was very cold: “Look, I’ve tried to get in touch. You wanna see me again? You call me.”
She put Dagne off with the excuse that she was cleaning her house. At least that part was truthful, for she had begun to view her house as a symbol of her life—a lot of junk with no place or purpose, just scattered around to obscure the truth about who she was.
As the days trudged by, Rachel had no choice but to face the truth about who she was and what she had become. She had languished too long, hiding away in Providence, and it was time she got on with her life. For the first time, she wanted to. She really wanted to. She just couldn’t seem to find the motivation to get off her couch, which was beginning to show permanent impressions of her butt. A noticeably flabbier butt, as she had stopped going to the gym, too.
Dagne grew more and more impatient with her, but Rachel didn’t care. She didn’t need friends; she had Ben and Jerry to keep her company. She didn’t even need a phone. It was great not to have to actually talk to anyone about what had happened. It was fabulous not to have to hear or say Myron’s name. And it was wonderful that she didn’t have to wonder each time the phone rang if it might be Flynn on the other end, then the ensuing panic over what to do.