Celeste still had her hand pressed to her mouth. She was feeling ill, succeeding more in stemming tears than settling the tipping of her stomach.
“Didn’t you?” Jackson prodded.
“No. I didn’t. She’s been waiting, just waiting to have me gone. She never calls me at school.”
“You told me not to!” Celeste cried.
“Only because I knew you wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to be sitting around expecting it, but you could have, if you missed me.”
“I was following your instructions.”
“Which suited you just fine. You were pleasing yourself, like you always do. You couldn’t wait for me to leave, so that you could start living it up. I was a burden, all those years. I held you down.”
Celeste was stricken. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. I felt it. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Not the way you think.”
“Then what way?”
Celeste swallowed. “I was trying to set a good example.”
“Well, that must have been a strain, because what came across was you wanting your freedom.”
“Not freedom from you. Freedom from the responsibility. It frightened me.”
“Frightened?” Dawn mocked.
“Yes, frightened. The older you got, the less frightening it was in some respects, because you could do things for yourself. But then there were the other problems, parties and drinking and dating, and that’s terrifying for a parent. So I argued with you about things, maybe yelled and nagged, because I was afraid that you’d make major mistakes and it would be all my fault.”
“Isn’t it?” Dawn had the gall to ask.
“No,” Jackson answered. “Your mother didn’t tell you to run off with her boyfriend. You did that all on your own.”
Celeste was struck by the enormity of it. “How could you? My own daughter! How could you sleep with him?”
“He protected me. He wore a condom.”
“That’s not the point, but since you’ve raised it, who was he protecting you from? Me? All the other women who came before? Don’t kid yourself. He wasn’t protecting you. He was protecting himself.”
“He loves me,” Dawn insisted.
“He loves women—you, me, someone else next month.”
“You sure liked him enough.”
“Yes, I did, stupid me. I thought he was the answer to my prayers, and you knew I thought that, still you came here with him.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Dawn, didn’t I teach you any values? How could you do this?”
“You were the one who took me for birth control.”
“That’s not the point!” she cried, and when tears started again, she let them flow. “Okay. You didn’t do this alone. Carter is ten times more wrong than you are, because he knew what he was doing, but you—you—you’re my daughter, flesh of my flesh. How could you hurt me this way? You knew I was crazy about him. Whether it was stupid of me or not, I was.” She sobbed out a sigh. “Damn it, I really was good while you were growing up. Did I subject you to a string of ‘uncles’? Did I force any male friends on you? No. I always put you first. So how could you do this to me now? Was I that awful to you that I deserve this kind of betrayal?”
To her credit, Dawn didn’t answer.
Celeste fished a Kleenex from her pocket and pressed it to one eye, then the other. She was feeling battered, suddenly tired, without energy, still nauseous. To Jackson, in a faint voice, she said, “I’m going to the car. I don’t feel very well.”
Without another look at Dawn, crouched there with the bedclothes crushed to her throat and Carter’s scent permeating the room, Celeste left. She walked across the motel porch, went down the steps, keeping her back to Brian and the filth he was with, and leaned against the trunk of Jackson’s car.
Emily joined her there. “Is she all right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Contrite?”
“Fat chance.”
“She’s probably feeling ashamed, but she’s been pushed in a corner, so she’ll stand by what she did for a little longer.”
“And then what?” Celeste asked, looking blindly off. For the life of her, she didn’t know what to do. “She thinks he loves her.”
“He may tell her differently once Brian’s done.”
“What can Brian say? Dawn was a willing accomplice.”
“To whom? Who is Carter? He sure isn’t who he told you. Think of all the things that didn’t add up. When people hide their identities that way, they’re usually hiding something more. If Carter is, Brian will find it.”
That was small solace to Celeste. Pressing the balled Kleenex to her nose, she started crying again. “Oh, Emily, I’m so embarrassed. I believed everything he said. He fed me a line of bull, and I ate it right up, because I wanted to believe, so badly.”
Emily slipped an arm around her. “I know.”
“I may have acted like it didn’t matter all those years, like I was doing just fine, like I didn’t want to have to bother with any man, but the act was as much for me as it was for everyone else. It’s not like I need a man—”
“Celeste,” Emily interrupted, “anyone who knows you knows that. Whether or not it was an act, you did it. You raised Dawn on your own. You made a life for yourself, on your own.”
“But I missed having more. I missed the fun. I missed the company. There were times when I was so lonely I nearly died of it.”
“You could have called me,” Jackson said.
Celeste put the Kleenex to her eye. She took a minute to compose herself before drawing away from Emily. “We’re divorced, Jackson. We didn’t get along. I couldn’t call you.”
“We could have been friends. Hell, I could have fixed you up.”
She laughed in spite of herself. When she looked at him, she saw an endearingly self-conscious smile. She draped her wrist over his shoulder. “Now, would I have been able to communicate with your friends, any more than I could with you?”
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “Some of them aren’t too bad.”
“So why aren’t they married?”
“Probably for the same reason I’m not. Because we’re not social beings. It takes a saint to stay married to the likes of us.”
“Either a saint or nerd.” Her smile waned. “What’s Dawn doing?”
“I don’t know. There wasn’t much more I could say.”
“Is Brian still with that scum?”
“He’s talking with him.”
“I feel like an imbecile.”
Jackson settled beside her against the trunk. “Tell me one thing,” he said in an indulgent tone. “Was it fun, at least, while it lasted?”
Celeste sighed. “Yes. It was fun.”
“Then it was worth it.”
“Was it? It destroyed my relationship with my daughter.”
“Destroyed?”
“Well, maybe not destroyed. Eroded, certainly.”
“For good?”
Celeste wasn’t sure she could see beyond the hurt and fury she felt. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you have to look at her differently from now on.”
She wasn’t sure she liked Jackson giving her advice, not after he had opted out for so long. But there was the matter of sharing the responsibility, and, besides, she was curious. “Like how?”
“Like an adult. Tell her what it was like raising her. Tell her about the fears. She should know.”
Celeste pictured Dawn, back in that bed, with the covers to her chin. “When? Do you think she’ll come home after this?”
“Where else would she go? You’re her mother. You made a mistake. So did she. You can learn from it. Maybe together.”
Celeste felt a flash of the old fear and insecurity that she had lived with during those years of raising Dawn. “God,” she murmured, “I’m not good at this.”
“You’re better than me,” Jackson said. “And you’re better than lots of other mothers. Look at it this
way. You didn’t have to bail her out of jail. You didn’t have to pick her up off the sidewalk. You didn’t have to sleep with the president of the college to get her accepted there.”
“For God’s sake, Jackson.”
“See? You’re not all bad.”
Celeste grunted again, but the truth was that her stomach had begun to relax for the first time in a very long twenty-four hours. That Jackson was instrumental in it was remarkable. Then again, not so. As Dawn’s father, he was the only one who could have helped quite that way.
She sighed. “You’re as good for me now as you were in my wild child days. What happened to us, Jack?”
“We’re good in a crisis. That’s about it.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah.”
“So. What do we do about Dawn?”
His voice thinned. “Let the cop drive her wherever she’s going—home, school, she’ll decide. Or she can take a cab. She has money. If she hasn’t, it’s because she spent it on the motel room, because Cassanova there forgot his wallet. It won’t hurt her to sweat it a little.”
“I have to talk with her, don’t I?” Celeste asked, but she wasn’t eager for it just then. She was too angry. Besides, she refused to go running after Dawn. Dawn was, by her own declaration, an adult. She could come to Celeste.
“You’ll talk with her at some point,” Jackson assured her.
“So what happens now?”
He checked his watch. It was the oversized kind that offered all sorts of information above and beyond hour, minute, and second. “It’s past lunchtime. We’ll stop for something. Maybe the answers will come while we eat.”
twenty-five
THANK HEAVENS SHE’S ALL RIGHT,” EMILY TOLD Brian after they had dropped Dawn at her dorm and set out for China Pond Road. She shifted under her seat belt to face him. “I wish she would have let us drop her home. Do you think Carter will go back for her?”
“Not if he has any brains. He knows we’re on to him. I’ll write up a formal report to have on file in case he shows up again, but he isn’t the type to take risks. He’ll just go find another woman to latch on to.”
“Think he’s married?”
“I plan to check.”
“Think he’s an architect?”
“Possibly. But if so, he isn’t as successful as he lets on. He doesn’t have any fancy office in Cambridge, or, I’d wager, half the clients he told Celeste about, and if he travels around, like he said when he answered her ad, it’s to skip out when women catch on to his game. He carries a Minnesota driver’s license. The BMW belongs to a friend.”
Much as Emily had been against Celeste’s ad, much as she wanted to say, “I told you so,” she couldn’t. “Poor Celeste. Her heart’s in the right place. I often wonder what she would have done with her life if she hadn’t gotten pregnant so soon. Maybe had a career. Maybe divorced Jackson and married someone she was more compatible with and had a child by him, who knows.”
“Who knows about life, period. What ifs can drive you crazy.”
If they had to do with the past, they could. How well Emily knew that. On the other hand, if they had to do with the future, they would offer up interesting possibilities.
What if she were to write her book and it was published? What if she were to establish a name for herself as an author? What if she were to become self-supporting?
But what if Daniel kept haunting her?
No. What if Brian kept wanting her? What if she moved in with Julia and him, or they moved in with her? What if she became a wife and mother for a second time? What if Brian wanted more kids?
Would she write, too? Would she have the time and energy for it, after giving of herself to a husband and child? Did she want to be a full-time wife and mother again?
She had been looking at nothing in particular. Then the Jeep went far enough down China Pond Road for the house to come into view, and she straightened. “Oh, dear.” Myra was standing all bundled up at the white picket fence, waving an eager hand as they approached. She was crowding in on Brian even before he opened his door.
“Getting later,” Emily heard, “and you said we would do it around midday, so I decided to wait right here until you got back. Now? Can we now?”
Brian had climbed from the Jeep. Holding her shoulders to keep her still, he said, gently, “We found her, Myra. Dawn is safely back home.”
Myra looked stricken.
Emily tried to soothe her. “She’s with Celeste, and she’s fine. It was something of a false alarm.”
“No false alarm,” Myra cried. “I saw.”
“Dawn thought she was in love,” Emily explained. “Eighteen-year-olds do that. After Celeste dropped her at the dorm last Sunday, she turned around and left again.”
Myra wasn’t listening to her. She was clutching Brian’s hand, trying to draw him down the driveway. “You have to look under the willow. You promised.”
Emily felt a rush of sorrow. Poor Myra.
“But we found her,” Brian repeated. “The case is solved.”
“It isn’t solved, no, it isn’t!” Myra’s voice rose. “You have to look in my yard!”
Emily moved to free Brian by unclamping Myra’s hand and found startling strength in her hold. “It’s all right,” she said softly, steering Myra home. “It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t, and I can’t wait much longer, I can’t, and no one listens. You have to look under the tree. Under the tree!”
Emily shot a worried look at Brian. She had never understood Myra’s obsession with the willow. It might have been understandable if Frank had adored the tree. But he hadn’t. He had cursed it like he cursed everything else, cursed it for the mess it made in the yard and the work it caused.
Brian was looking puzzled. “Myra, what, exactly, is under the tree?”
Myra shook her head. “I never said anything was under it.”
“But you want us to take a look.”
“You think I’m crazy,” she cried. “I know. My children think it, too, but I’m not. They want to stash me away like old clothes, but there’s nothing wrong with me, I swear, there is not.”
Emily wanted to believe that. She couldn’t see Myra in a nursing home, not when she so desperately wanted to stay here at the house—not that Emily understood why she did. The place was bigger than she needed, and more work to keep up, and she was alone here, with nothing for company but Frank’s ghost.
Then again, Emily wasn’t one to talk. She couldn’t leave China Pond Road, either. But Daniel was unfinished business. Frank was not.
She had one odd thought, then several more in quick succession. All involved Daniel and Frank. Frank and Daniel. In the post office parking lot at the very same time. Under the willow.
She choked on a stray breath, coughed, put a shaky hand to her chest. She didn’t like what she was thinking at all.
“Uh, I think I need to go inside for a minute,” she said when the thoughts kept coming. Dropping her hold of Myra, she turned and half-walked, half-ran back across the cul-de-sac, but not to her house. She didn’t want to see the backyard, didn’t want to see where it bordered on Myra’s, didn’t want to see anything of the stringy winter willow. She ran to the far side of the garage, past the door to Brian’s place, and slid down the clapboards to the ground.
Brian was there in seconds, squatting before her. “What, Em?”
She locked her arms around her knees. Her voice came out high and wavery. “Weird thoughts. Weird thoughts.”
“About Frank Balch.”
She nodded. Frank Balch and Daniel. It couldn’t be. Not right next door. Not all these years. “He was questioned. His story checked out. But Myra. Myra.”
“Stick to Frank. What do you know about him?”
“He was the kind of man one avoided at all costs.”
“Mean.”
“What do you know about him?” she shot back.
“Only that people keep mentioning his name when we ask them about Dani
el. I’ve been trying to get more, but I can’t.”
She put her chin to her knees. Her stomach had started to roll. She rocked to counter that movement, welcoming the bang of her back on the wood.
“Myra’s obsession with the willow,” Brian asked, “how long has it been going on?”
“As long as I can remember. It got worse after Frank died. That was when she started picking the lint up by hand and planting flowers nearby. That was when she put the bench there. Oh God. I always just assumed that she was a little nuts when it came to the yard, but the persistence of it, the way she said, so clearly just now, that she wasn’t crazy—” her voice was rising, rising on a wave of hysteria, “I believe her, so I ask myself why she keeps trying to drag us over to see what’s under that tree.”
Emily rocked harder against the wood. She wanted to think she was the crazy one entertaining mad thoughts, only they didn’t sound mad but like the answer to the puzzle, making horrible sense in the same way as Doug’s other life had.
Brian took her face in his hands. He wasn’t talking to her, as much as speaking his thoughts aloud. “A method to madness. People do things that seem crazy, only they aren’t. Like Richie, needing to get away from his father. Like Leila, needing help in caring for her kids. Even like Dawn, needing to let Celeste know that she wants love or attention or recognition or whatever. Cries for help.”
Emily’s chest felt ready to explode. She straightened her back against the clapboards and took several deep breaths, but they didn’t help.
Brian’s hands were a link of warmth when all else was cold. They balanced the urgency in his voice. “Frank and Myra were interviewed at the time. Frank said he didn’t see a thing. John grilled the guy. He had his story down pat. So did Myra.”
“What if…” She couldn’t put the thought into words. It was too hideous.
“Frank was finishing up in the post office when you arrived. He went to his car and drove home. Witnesses corroborated that.”
“What if…”
“They heard his car leave the parking lot. Big car, lousy muffler, lots of noise. But no one actually saw him get into the car. The noise was the thing that made them look, and he was driving off by then.”
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