Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  Mom was talking with Annika, sounding remarkably coherent and involved, seeming more invested now that she was headed away from the bakery, when Chris Emory called.

  This one I did want. I had no sooner picked up when he began speaking. His voice was muffled, like he was hiding the call from Grace. “Something’s happening,” he said. “Mom’s on a tear. She just got home from work and started pulling clothes out of drawers and making piles, like we’re going somewhere, like we have to be gone in five minutes. Have you talked with her?”

  “No. She isn’t picking up. Is she there now?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Put her on.”

  “She’ll be mad I called you.”

  “Put her on, Chris,” I said, catching Edward’s eye as I said the boy’s name. He shot me a questioning look, but all I could do was shake my head.

  When Grace came on, tension was thick in her voice. “I don’t know why Chris called you. I’m just cleaning.”

  “Frantically?” I asked, because I could picture her going at it with her layered hair flying and her who-knew-what-color-today eyes as tense as her voice.

  “So I have extra energy.”

  “Nervous energy?”

  “Wouldn’t you be nervous if your son had done something so bad he was facing jail?” She spoke the last word louder, clearly using it to punish Chris for calling me.

  “That won’t happen, Grace, but if it’s making you nervous, you should have called. Talking helps.”

  “You’re with your mother,” she said with an odd accusation, like my having a mother when she didn’t suddenly put me out of reach.

  So much to say on that score, none of which I could say with the woman in question listening. I didn’t even want to tell Grace that my mother was returning with us.

  I simply said, “We’re heading back to Devon. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Can I see you later?”

  After a lengthy silence, came a quiet, “You don’t want to be involved in this, Maggie.”

  “Involved in what?” I asked, because as far as I knew, I already was involved with Chris and his mess, but the way she said those words meant there was more.

  I heard footsteps, then a coarse whisper. “Phone calls. From where I used to live.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried before resuming her whisper. “Someone must have seen People and recognized me. I’m not picking up. I’m not stupid. Nothing good, absolutely nothing good can come of it, so I can’t answer, but I can imagine, omigod, can I imagine. He’s after me.”

  “Your ex?”

  “Or someone he knows. It’s not his number, but the area code is the same.”

  I remembered the code I’d seen twice now, and, feeling a twinge, wondered if there was a connection. “Washington, DC?”

  “No.” She paused, then whispered, “505. Santa Fe.”

  “New Mexico?” I asked in surprise. I don’t know why, but I had always imagined her having come from somewhere north.

  “Oh, yeah. I don’t know what the hell to do, Maggie.”

  “Have you called Jay?”

  “What can Jay do?”

  “Tell the police you’re being harassed.”

  “Like I can ever tell them why?”

  “Even if it’s a matter of life and death?” I didn’t know all the details, but the little she had told me sounded dire.

  She sighed. “Oh, God.”

  “Call Jay,” I insisted. When she didn’t reply, I said more gently, “I’ll be staying at the Inn with my mother. I’ll call when I’m back.”

  “Yup. Bye.” She ended the call.

  I looked at Edward, who didn’t take his eyes from the road but asked, “What is life and death?”

  “Like I know?” I asked, frustrated. Grace could be dramatic, but something in my gut feared that this drama had teeth.

  “That”—came my mother’s voice from the backseat—“being the woman whose boy is accused of hacking?”

  I turned. She was sitting up, fully awake, definitely curious. The good news was that she looked better than she had when we’d arrived that morning. Whether it was from the food we had made her eat, the effort she had taken to clean up and dress, or just the fact that she had gotten out of that depressing old house, I didn’t know.

  “Grace is a friend.” I was hesitant to say much. My mother was not prone to liking my friends. But Edward was right about being honest and drawing her into the loop. So I added, “A good friend actually.”

  “Who is her ex?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” But I was worried.

  “He’s in New Mexico?”

  “Apparently. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “How can that be, if she’s a good friend?” Margaret asked and, yes, there was a touch of censure. Funny, though, it didn’t shake me. She just didn’t know how things worked.

  “Devon collects wounded spirits,” I said, smiling at my own melodrama. “I don’t mean paranormal, just a kind place that lets people be who they want to be. It’s forgiving in ways the rest of the world is not. I have no clue where half the people were before they came to town, and I wouldn’t ever ask.”

  “So they don’t know who you are.”

  “A few do. Most don’t. I needed to be someone else when I first came.”

  “And now?” she asked—and oh, I had set myself up for that. A broken hip hadn’t addled my mother’s mind. Pain pills or not, she was astute.

  I met Edward’s eyes for a beat, before returning to her. “I still do. I’m different today from the person who drove that car.”

  “Do you like this new person?”

  I considered my job, my cabin in the woods, my pets, my friends. “Actually, I do,” I realized. I hadn’t just fallen into an accidental life, but had actively chosen something better. “The challenge—” I paused, trying to decide how best to express it, “the challenge is reconciling the good from the past with what I have now.”

  Margaret seemed stricken. “I was not the good after Lily died.”

  “You were grieving.”

  “I was even worse when your father died. That wasn’t your fault.”

  My throat tightened, then quickly eased. It wasn’t an apology, exactly. But it certainly implied forgiveness for his death.

  “No,” I whispered. “Not my fault.”

  Wanting nothing to dilute the relief I felt, nothing to spoil the moment, I looked down at the phone in my lap. Seeming on cue, the screen lit. Area code 202. Washington, DC Again. Something in my gut was saying I should know who it was, but for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a name.

  So this time I answered. “Hello?”

  “Maggie Reid?” The voice was strong and resonant, definitely familiar, although I couldn’t place it, either.

  “Who is this?”

  “Benjamin Zwick.”

  22

  I caught my breath. Of course. His voice held the same assertiveness, the same arrogance it had in the interviews he had given when the scandal first broke.

  “Why is Benjamin Zwick calling me?” I asked, repeating his name into the phone for the sake of Edward, who shot me a worried glance and mouthed speakerphone, which I quickly turned on.

  “Because”—Zwick’s voice filled the car—“I’ve been trying to reach Grace Emory, and I can’t get through. You’re her friend, right?”

  My hackles rose. I wasn’t about to say anything to a man who had gone after a fifteen-year-old boy in such a loud and vengeful way. “You’re on opposite sides of a criminal case. Isn’t it unethical for you to be calling her?”

  “This is personal.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s obvious, only something’s come up. Trust me. She’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

  “What something?” I asked and felt the same gut check I just had with Grace. These two calls were related. I waited to hear how.


  After a moment’s silence, he said, “Are you the same friend who was at her house the night all this broke and was then at the courthouse with her and her son?”

  Edward nodded. And I agreed. Zwick wouldn’t tell me anything unless I confirmed it. Besides, those pictures and tapes had already gone public. Anyone in town could confirm my identity. Michael Shanahan certainly had, which made my talking with this man risky. But how could I not, after talking with Chris and Grace? This wasn’t about legalities. It was about two people’s lives.

  That said, I didn’t trust Ben Zwick as far as I could throw him, which was a Momism of the first order, but was totally apt. In a voice making that clear, I said, “Yes. I’m her friend. What something has come up?”

  “I’m getting calls from a woman who says she has a story.”

  There. The common thread. Coincidence? No way.

  “She claims,” Zwick went on, “that she worked in Grace’s home way back and knew her when Chris was born. Do you know where Grace lived before she came to Devon?”

  “Excuse me,” I burst out, because, in that split second, my own distrust of the press trumped my worry for Grace, “what reason in hell would I have to tell you that?”

  My vehemence didn’t faze him. “Because this woman says that if I don’t buy her story, she’ll sell it to someone else, and I’m not sure you want her doing that. At least, I know Grace personally.”

  “Well, now, that was a big help two weeks ago, wasn’t it,” I remarked.

  “Long story there, Ms. Reid, but this is different. I’m not the victim in this one. Grace is.”

  “Victim, how?”

  “The caller wouldn’t give details, just mentioned things like yelling and hitting, none of which would be anything new if she hadn’t also mentioned kidnapping.”

  My mind went blank for an instant, before bursting into full color with threads of past conversations. Evil, Grace had called her ex. She had talked about fearing for her life and, just yesterday, about changing her name. And then, about Chris, we left when he was two, so he doesn’t remember how bad the guy is. Given that Devon was a past-free zone, that Grace changed her look nearly as often as most people changed their sheets, and that she lived in a house that was hidden in an out-of-the-way place and had multiple locks on its door, kidnapping wasn’t beyond the pale.

  Victim? Perpetrator? What? If I was the betting type, I knew where I would put my money, though the thought of it was terrifying.

  To his credit, Zwick didn’t waste time gloating over my silence. “Look,” he said, “I like Grace. Seriously. I did not know that her son was the one behind the hacking until it was too late to pull it back, but this one isn’t about Chris. It’s about her. I don’t know where she came from or what she did, but if someone has a story that’s worth the kind of money I was quoted, it may be something Grace wants to control.”

  “You mean, sell it to you first?” I asked, cynical to the core just then.

  “I mean,” he came back, sounding irritated, “contain it. Keep it from coming out at all.”

  “Why would you do that? Whatever you pay a source is peanuts compared to what you’d get for writing it.”

  “I won’t write the story.”

  “Why not?”

  For the first time, he seemed hesitant. “Because, whether you want to believe it or not, I do like Grace. Given a choice, she and I would have been more than just … well, more. She was the one who backed off. And sure, she hates me now—”

  “Do you blame her? You went all out against her son.”

  “It’s what I do,” he ground out, like he’d already said it a hundred times, then eased up. “What he did really screwed me up, and I needed to hit back. So I made headlines, but like I said, had I known at the start that it was Grace’s son, I wouldn’t have done what I did. I’m trying to apologize now. I’m trying to make things better. If I buy that woman’s story, it’ll be to bury it, but that doesn’t mean someone else from Grace’s past won’t go to another journalist. I don’t know what that past is. She refused to talk about it. But if kidnapping was involved, that’s serious stuff. Kidnapping is a felony.”

  The word shot to my gut. Michael Shanahan had used it too often for comfort. A quick glance, and I knew Edward was thinking it, too. Was Ben? Suddenly, I wondered what he knew about me. I sure as hell wasn’t asking. With a crack journalist, and Zwick was that, one question was a tip-off.

  I had barely four months of probation left. To be anywhere near the word felony was crazy. But this was Grace. Until I knew for sure that she had done something wrong, I couldn’t abandon her.

  “I think we should meet,” I told Ben.

  “With Grace. It has to be with Grace.”

  His vehemence made me edgy. “Why does that sound like a trap?”

  “Maybe because you and most of the rest of the world think the media’s scum. But in this case, I’m not, Maggie.” He sounded earnest. Either he was a great actor, or he truly meant it. “Pick a place you want to meet. Your choice. Somewhere safe. I’ll be alone. I won’t have a recorder. I won’t write anything down. I just want to talk. With Grace.”

  I wanted to buy into honesty here, because helping Grace was important. But it was only when Edward gave his approval by mouthing, My office, that I went ahead.

  “The issue,” I said, “may be getting Grace to agree, but the chances of that will be better if we meet at the Inn.”

  “When?”

  I had to think quickly. The Inn was hosting a political conference that would keep Grace busy for much of the weekend. “Sunday afternoon at four.”

  “Sooner. I can’t guarantee this woman will wait.”

  “Sure you can,” I said, snarky maybe, but there it was. “She wants you. You’re the best buyer she’ll find. Promise her something. Lie.”

  He snorted. “Thanks.”

  “The office of the owner of the Inn is on the second floor. He and I will both be there.”

  “And Grace?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  * * *

  Panic. That was what I felt. I didn’t know what Grace faced; she didn’t know what I faced. But strange callers from the past who mentioned felonious crimes were dangerous for us both.

  Not that I could do anything about it now, other than to take a long, deep breath and realize that if ever I was good at compartmentalizing, I had to do it now. So I closed off my fear of what Grace was involved with and any related role I might have, and used my mother’s impending arrival in Devon as a distraction from the sense that I had made a deal with the devil.

  I pointed out to her a quaint shopping area on the outskirts of town, then a covered bridge that was painted red and glistened in the mist. I pointed out the police station and the Town Hall, both wearing bleached linen stone. A bit farther on, I pointed out the road to the pottery studio, and then, in the center of town, the shops where the three roads met. A quarter of a mile north, we turned at the broad stone pillars, passed the slab of Vermont granite, beautifully lit in twilight, that announced THE DEVON INN AND SPA in gold, and proceeded under the covered bridge that crossed the river. For an instant, when the Inn materialized through the trees, I was swept back to my first evening sighting. The place was every bit as imposing when lit by tungsten as by the sun.

  Edward drove past the stone pillars to the front door, stopping under the porte cochére so that my mother would have less far to walk. The drive hadn’t been as easy for her as she wanted us to believe. By the end, she was shifting often, clearly uncomfortable. Besides, the front entrance of the Inn, with its large doors framed in wood, was impressive in a classic Vermont way, and we did want to wow her.

  Liam was waiting for us in the lobby. We had barely walked across the carpet logo when he came toward us, looking very Devon, in jeans, boots, and a tee under an open flannel shirt. His freckles were distinct, his hair combed. My mother stopped short when she saw him, and something about the startled look on her face suggested she was seei
ng my father in him, just as I had at first. The resemblance was uncanny tonight.

  Once she passed the shock, though, he was a hit, and why not? He gave her a big hug, told her she looked great, asked about the drive. He was appropriately concerned about her hip without ever apologizing for his absence. In what I thought was a brilliant move, he had baked a batch of her fabled pecan sandies. This was not typically Liam. As a chef, he had always preferred entrees to desserts. I could never remember his baking, much less following one of Mom’s own recipes. The fact that he had today was an homage to her, as was his warning that his weren’t as good as hers.

  My mother looked him in the eye. “You hate pecan sandies.”

  “Not always,” Liam replied with just the right amount of deference. “You like them, which is all that matters.”

  She was flattered, which as far as I was concerned, was all that mattered.

  * * *

  The owner’s suite was perfect. Rich in Devon charm with its custom wool carpets, blend of natural and painted wood, and rich leather accessories, it was done up in soothing shades of blue and tan, all of it warmly lit by lamps. Sofas and chairs were wool and chenille, a fine mix of plaids, solids, and stripes. The bathroom was marble, with a tub that was likely too deep for my mother to navigate, but there was also a stunningly oversized, glass-enclosed shower with a bench, hold bars, and a floor of embedded stones. And there were flowers—bud vases in the bathrooms, and in the living room and dining area, full arrangements of tulips to match the décor. Everywhere here, the smell was pine, much as Edward’s office had been—pine lotion, pine potpourri, pine candles, pine fragrance sticks.

  She walked around at first, both for her hip’s sake and curiosity, and I let her tell me where to put her clothes, books, and medicine. After settling her on the sofa and ordering dinner from room service, I left her with Liam. Now that the ice was broken, he seemed delighted to talk about what he’d been doing since leaving Connecticut.

  Since I had no car here, Edward drove me home. I needed to pack enough for a few overnights, but, even more, I needed my pets. Bringing them here would have been upsetting for them, and besides, they were only part of the picture. I needed my hilly road, my house, my old life, because this one seemed to be growing more complex by the minute. Once we left the Inn, everything I had denied earlier rushed back.