Today Maggie’s t-shirt had said, “Support the Arts. Kiss a Musician.” Why couldn’t he get that reckless honesty, those eyes so full of thought and hurt, out of his mind?
Damn! Everything about his life was so predictable. Except for the way she made him feel.
You’re still married, he told himself. He gazed down at the now empty terrace. If only he could walk away from it all, free to love again.
He sighed as he re-focused the field glasses. The terrace of Le Refuge sprang into view.
A tall one-armed man strode across the stones with a vicious-looking Doberman and vanished through the curtained doors. It was the man in Sugar’s photo—Zachary Law.
Beckett punched his cell phone. “I’m going in.”
He was running down the hillside when a small boy burst from the house and headed directly toward him across the vineyard.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
LE REFUGE. MORNING, JULY 10
Zach and Maggie wandered slowly along the waist-high rows of purple grapes. A short distance away, the child darted like a wild thing through the vines.
“How did you find me?”
The vehemence of the question took her by surprise. She looked up at him, searching for the youthful Zach in the face of this bearded, brooding stranger.
“I need to know, Slim. Did someone send you here? What do you want from me? It’s important.”
What had Michael told her? Always tell as much of the truth as possible.
“Musicians attend music festivals,” she began. “No. The truth is…seeing you in the abbey was a terrible shock. Like seeing a ghost. I thought you were dead, Zach!”
He searched her face. “It’s what I wanted you to think.”
Pain ripped through her. Use it, she told herself. Now is the time. You’ve got to know the answers. You’ve come so far, for this moment. Just say the words.
You abandoned me. You weren’t there for our son.
She felt the tears sting her eyelids, and she turned away to blink at the rows of bright vines climbing the hillside. This is about your godson, she reminded herself.
“Thirty years,” she murmured. “I’m looking at a man I loved thirty years ago with my whole heart, and then he died. How did a dead man end up here, Zach, in a French vineyard so far from home?” With a little boy who cannot speak...
His eyes were on the child, running and leaping through the vines. “Short version. Beirut almost killed me. The rehab was long, agonizing. After I was finally released from the hospital, I just wanted to disappear. Then I remembered our dream of Vienna.” He looked down at her, smiling faintly. “You know musicians are a tight, small community. The Viennese welcomed me, no questions asked. I became friendly with a young violinist, in Vienna for a series of concerts. God, she played like an angel. Beautiful, brilliant. Her signature piece was the Paganini…”
Maggie raised a brow, knowing how impossibly demanding Paganini’s Caprice could be.
“Yeah, she was that good,” said Zach, raising his hand to wave at the boy. “It was Bee who encouraged me to go to the university, study music. And one night, just before she left to go on tour, she told me about her brother, a music lover who owned a Provençal vineyard called Le Refuge. Le Refuge…the name spoke to me.” He rubbed his left hand across his eyes. “I never saw her again. But several years ago, when I was going through a really bad time and needed a place to recover, I remembered her brother—and a place called Le Refuge.”
“And the violinist?”
Zach let out his breath. “Just after she left on her tour, there was a horrible accident. She—”
A high, sweet cry from the vines. They both turned toward the sound. A bright red bird soared and dipped across the sun. Maggie’s eyes followed the cord to the troubled little boy who flew his kite alone in the windy vineyard.
She was here because of this child. The fate of the violinist and her brother would have to wait. “Let’s go to him,” she said, walking toward the child in the vines. When he fell into step beside her, she said, “Zach. Tell me about TJ.”
Zach pulled off a ripe grape and tossed it into the sky. Traumatic Stress Disorder, the “Something bad happened to him last fall. He hasn’t spoken since. He just…retreated into a wall of silence.”
She saw the pain on his face.
“Are you his father?”
Zach stared at her, his eyes considering answers that raced like clouds across the sky. “No,” he said finally, “I won’t lie to you, Slim. TJ isn’t my son. But I wish he were.”
Again the pain in her chest, sharp and desolate as keening violins.
“I’m TJ’s legal guardian,” said Zach. “I live here with a French physical therapist I met in the hospital here in Aix. Celeste LaMartine. Celie and I, we’re…friends of TJ’s family. We care for him as if he were our own. The people in the village think he’s my son.”
Your son. She swallowed. She believed he was being honest with her. Suddenly she felt very dirty. I’m so sorry, Zach, sorry I have to use you. “Where are his parents?”
His expression grew darker. “I really shouldn’t be talking about this. The answers to these questions could only hurt TJ.”
“What about his mother?”
“Let it be, Maggie.”
“You love him very much.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
She looked at the child who ran and leaped, small and wild and out of control, across the vineyard. “He’s found a way to express what he can’t say,” she said.
“A beautiful kid in a silent world. It’s so damned unfair.”
“What happened to him?”
Zach squinted into the distance and shook his head. “I don’t know”.
“What do his doctors say?”
“The vocal specialist, the pediatrician, or the shrink?”
Maggie winced at the bitterness in his voice.
“Sorry. I just get so fucking tired of the same mumbo jumbo. Psychosomatic Mute, Elective Mutism, Traumatized Speech Syndrome. It sounds even worse in French.” Zach turned to her. “Then there’s my personal favorite, APTSD. That’s Acute Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the same thing affecting guys who came home from Vietnam, Kosovo, the Gulf, Afghanistan. In World War I it was shell shock. You experience a horrible event, and you can’t handle it. It shocks the mind. The body shuts down.”
His eyes followed the red slash of the kite against the deep blue sky. “Something frightened TJ very badly. Physically, there’s no reason why he can’t speak, according to the docs. But emotionally, we just don’t know what’s going on inside his head, how much can be brought back. Hell, it might be better for him if it just stays locked away. But the docs say he won’t talk until he’s ready. Or until he’s not scared anymore.”
She thought of the man with the wolf’s face. “No one should be so afraid. Especially an innocent child.”
“You should have seen him when he first came to us, last September. Surly, uncooperative, filled with resentment. Fearful.”
Her godson had disappeared on the first day of September. “And traumatized,” she said. “This child saw or heard something he desperately wants to forget.”
“He ran away the first week. Jesus, what a nightmare. Found him the next morning, sleeping in those pines up there.” He gestured toward the rocky, tree-strewn hillside. “I had to start locking his room at night like a damned jailer.” He rubbed his hand across his eyes. “He was so lost, Maggie. Sometimes it seemed as if we’d never reach him.”
She thought of the urchin-like child, sitting at the grand piano, absorbed in playing Zach’s concerto. “But you are reaching him, Zach. You’ve been good for him.”
“At least I don’t have to lock him in his room anymore. Hell, Maggie, I just decided to give him everything I would have given my own son.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see the sudden flash of pain in her eyes.
“Sports, games, books,” he went on. “Hard work outdoors with the grapes. Animals like
your friend Bartok.” He flashed a brittle smile. “He needed safety and tenderness. And he needed a voice. That’s when I turned to music.”
“Music was always my inner voice, too.”
“I remember.” This time Zach’s smile was real. “You and I always understood the healing potential in rhythm and melody. The piano has been wonderful therapy for TJ.”
“And for you, too. You finished your concerto.”
“Loving TJ gave me back my music,” he said simply.
She stared at him. Love. Ultimately, was it as simple as that?
Zach paced away from her. “But love can’t give TJ what he needs. I can’t take away the fear in his eyes, Maggie.”
“Surely the key lies in what happened to him?”
Zach watched the boy race like a wild creature with the wind. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there. I’ve tried talking to him about it, but he just shuts down. So it’s all locked in his head. I don’t know what he remembers—or what he’s had to forget—God help him.”
Maggie’s eyes, too, were on the little boy, but her thoughts were on Simon Sugarman’s terrible story of the island. Mother murdered, child disappeared, killer never found. Once more she thought of the guard at the locked gate of Le Refuge, the high walls, the watchful Dobermans. “Zach,” she said slowly, “TJ is still in danger, isn’t he?”
In the distance, a bell rang somewhere in the farmhouse. They both turned to see TJ running toward them through the vines.
“Time for lunch,” said Zach. He held out his left arm, and TJ ran full tilt into his body. Zach grunted, staggered, and hugged the child tightly. Maggie stood to one side, watching the tall man bend to the silent child, with the sunlight dazzling behind them. And she knew.
I’ve found your son, Fee. I’ve found my godson.
Oh God, what am I going to tell Simon? How do we take this child away from you, Zach? How do we cause this boy any more pain?
With a heavy heart she followed them across the vineyard back to the house.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
LE REFUGE. JULY 10
“Try a bit more con brio here,” said Maggie, marking the sheet music with a pencil. “Do you know what that is?” She stamped her foot, hard. “With fire?
TJ stamped his foot. Hard. Then, nodding with satisfaction, he settled back on the bench, and the notes of Bach’s Prelude tumbled from his fingers as he attacked the penciled passage with far more energy.
“Absolutely! Well done. Gideon has taught you well, TJ. You must be very proud.” She gestured at the Doberman, who sat, black ears alert and listening, on guard beside the piano. “See, even Bartok approved.”
Was that the barest of smiles on the waif-like face? She wanted to smooth the dark curls back from his forehead, but she caught herself just in time. “It’s warm in here, isn’t it?” she asked, as she pulled the green ribbon from her upswept hair and tucked it in her pocket. She shook her head from side to side so that her hair fell about her face.
The little boy’s eyes widened with shock as he stared at her.
“What is it, TJ?”
Very slowly, as if mesmerized, the child reached out to touch the dark halo of hair.
“TJ?” whispered Maggie. The grief she saw flooding the boy’s eyes broke her heart. “Can you tell me, sweetheart?”
Only silence, louder than words in the quiet room, and eyes shining with desolation. As if from a great distance, Maggie heard Simon Sugarman’s voice. “Sofia had that beautiful black hair framing her face. You have the look of her.”
I remind TJ of his mother.
The child’s eyes met hers with a silent cry of despair. Unable to speak, the small fists began to pound the piano keys in frustration.
The lost expression on the boy’s face was unbearable. You focus on your own grief until something bigger happens, she thought. This child’s suffering was far greater than her own.
Desperate to stop the hurt in his eyes, Maggie pulled back her hair and secured it close to her head. “Do you know,” she said, “that when my son was your age he used to memorize music by whistling the melody.” Maggie began to whistle the first bars of Bach’s Prelude.
Still the dark eyes followed her, searching for one more glimpse of his mother. But the spell was broken, and one small hand rubbed the tears away. With a sigh the boy inched toward her on the piano bench, close to, but not touching, her knee.
I’ve been forgiven, thought Maggie gratefully. Very deliberately, she stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase.
Intrigued, TJ pursed his lips and began to whistle the next phrases of the music. The sight and flutelike sounds of the child, eyes closed, lips communicating in his own special way, caught at her.
Maggie sat in the sunlit music room watching the whistling boy and felt it begin, infinitesimal but distinct. The healing of her heart.
When he ended the prelude with a difficult trill, Maggie broke into pleased applause. “You whistle better than I do! My son Brian would be very impressed.”
The child moved closer and lifted his chin, waiting.
“Would you like to know about Brian?”
A definite nod.
She laughed. “It’s amazing how clearly you make your wishes known. Does anyone ever deny you anything?”
The eyes locked on her face, waiting. Everyone anticipates his needs, she realized, everyone speaks for him. Including me. There’s no need for him to speak.
She sighed. “When Brian was about your age he was always bringing home stray animals. Dogs, turtles, injured birds, and later, a one-eyed cat named Gracie, who still lives with me in Boston and sings along when Brian plays the piano.” She smiled down at the child. “Do you think we could teach Bartok to accompany you when you play for Gideon?”
Pleasure sparked in the dark eyes.
“One time Brian found a family of rabbits at his Boy Scout camp and he…wait a minute.” Maggie grabbed her purse. “I know it’s here somewhere,” she murmured. “Ah! Here it is. I gave this to Brian when he became a Scout. Every little boy loves these.”
In triumph she held out her hand. Brian’s Swiss army knife was folded in her palm. The boy peered closely at the mysterious red object.
“If you promise to be very careful, and if Gideon approves, of course, I’ll leave this with you for your own adventures. See? It opens this way.” Her fingers slid over the handle. The small blade sprang forward, flashing silver in the slanting sunlight.
The little boy flinched as if he’d been struck. A high, keening sound erupted from his throat. He jumped to his feet in terror, wordlessly backing away from her. Instantly the Doberman was in front of the child, growling a warning at Maggie through knife-sharp teeth.
“TJ! Honey, what—”
With another tortured sound the wild-eyed child spun around and ran from the room with the dog at his heels.
“Wait. TJ!” She ran to the doorway.
Boy and dog ran through the vines toward the high red rocks. Maggie stared helplessly down at the knife in her palm, then raised her eyes.
In that moment, watching the frightened little boy and the dog named Bartok running away from her through the fading light, Maggie knew that she would do anything to keep the child safe from harm.
“What the hell is going on here?”
The woman from Simon Sugarman’s photograph stood in the doorway.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
LE REFUGE. SUNSET, JULY 10
“Spend the night here.”
It was a soft evening, with a sky like the inside of a shell. Zach sat across from Maggie on the terrace of Le Refuge. Mozart played from a hidden speaker as they watched the feathery sky turn to gold. Down the stone steps, a now calmer TJ splashed in the pool while Bartok paced back and forth along the edge of the water, silent and watchful.
Maggie watched the boy with concern. The woman with the very short hair—Celeste LaMartine, as she was later introduced by Zach—had found TJ in the vineyard and brought
him home. Together, finally, they had managed to quiet the distraught child. The small red knife—the cause of TJ’s fear, Maggie was certain—was once again safely hidden in the depths of Maggie’s shoulder bag.
Now Celeste, clad in a bright orange bikini, sat in a chaise lounge by the pool. Every few moments, her eyes would leave the boy and rest, with a speculative expression, on Maggie.
Maggie turned her back on the watchful eyes and looked at Zach. “You’re sure TJ’s a good swimmer?”
Zach shook his head, cocking a crooked black brow. “Still afraid of the water, Slim?”
“Even more so now.”
When she added no explanation, he shrugged and said, “I was asking you to spend the night.”
She gazed at this man she no longer knew, his face far more compelling than that of the boy she remembered. But it was the boy’s face she had loved.
“I can’t stay, Zach. I need to get back.”
“Why? We have more than thirty years to share, Maggie.” He leaned toward her. “I want to drink wine with you, talk music until dawn.” He watched her face. “I think TJ would like it if you stayed.”
Maggie looked over at the child in the pool. “Your little charmer’s quite a swimmer. I’d like to spend more time with him, too. But I have no clothes, no—”
“You never wore nightgowns.”
After all these years, he still had the power to make her knees weak. It was her first glimpse of the youthful Zachary in the man he had become, this dark, grown-up stranger.
She looked at the father of her son, dressed in jeans, an old sweater and an army jacket, so tall and brown and intense in the glowing pink light. And she thought, yes, we need time. I need to understand why this man let me believe he was dead. I need time to tell him about his son.
“Say yes,” his familiar voice urged.
“Yes.”
“Ah, but which woman has agreed to stay? The youthful lover or the intriguing stranger?”
She looked away, no longer sure herself.
“I saw you play, you know. In Austria, seven, maybe eight years ago.”
She swung around, shocked.
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