“I’ve been thinking of writing it for years. I told you that. If anything, it was the 20/20 piece that got me going. And the going’s good, Arlan. This story flows.” Her excitement grew as she spoke. “I’ve spent most of my adult life as a writer, and I’ve done my share of struggling with words and phrases. This book is different. It’s the one I was born to write.” She barely paused. “Couldn’t you tell?”
He tossed the paper clip aside and squirmed in his seat. “I could tell.”
She frowned. “So why are you fidgeting?”
“I’m fidgeting because I’m dying.”
She tried to be sympathetic. “Still want one?”
The look in his eyes said he’d kill for a puff just then. “Your manuscript took my mind off it for a while.”
She grinned. “I knew you’d like it. I could feel it. The words came so easily. Something connected.”
Arlan nodded sagely. His fingers were steepled now, flexing like crab’s legs. “That’s because you’re intimately involved with the situation and the characters. It’s like they’re your family.” He paused. “But they’re not. You have family of your own. So why is it,” he slapped a hand to the papers, “that you come across in this manuscript as an orphan?”
“Because I’m not a major player in the story.”
“But I want to know where you fit in. You refused to give us any kind of detailed bio to use for your other books.”
“I gave you a bio. You got all the pertinent information—where I was born, where I went to school, what publications I have to my credit. That’s all that matters.”
Arlan shook his head. He reached for the sunflower seeds. “I want to know more. It’s part of this story. You grew up in Tammany Hall—”
“Timiny Cove, Timiny Cove.”
“You lived there, you knew all the people there, but you’re not like them, and you never were.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“But you lived there.”
“My family lived there.”
He popped some seeds into his mouth. “Go on.”
“Really, Arlan. This isn’t necessary.”
“You want a contract?”
She knew that he was teasing, but it was a low blow. Rising slowly from the chair, she said, “I make my own way in life. I may not be as famous as I want, but what I’ve done, I’ve done on my own. Not once have I tried to pull strings.”
“Too bad. Your dad has nice strings.”
She stared at him in silence for a minute. “You knew?”
“Sit down.”
She sat down but remained ready to bolt if the conversation took a turn she didn’t like.
Arlan seemed to know that he’d found her Achilles’ heel, because his voice immediately gentled. “Somewhere along the way, I read that Oliver Cox was living in a small town in Maine called Timiny Cove. The name stuck with me because it reminded me of—”
“—Tammany Hall.”
“Then you came along and inadvertently mentioned you were from the place. I began to wonder. Same name, same town. A phone call was all it took.”
“To my father?”
“To the postmaster—uh, mistress. What a lovely lady she was. No questions asked, she said you were Oliver Cox’s daughter.”
Hillary was too busy adding things up to be annoyed. “Then you’ve known for a while.”
He nodded. “I figured you had your reasons for wanting anonymity.”
“I certainly did!” she cried, sitting back in the chair with her faith in Arlan restored. “My father was a brilliant poet who’d won nearly every award in his field. My older sister graduated from high school when she was fourteen, went off to M.I.T., and to this day is doing advanced work in nuclear physics for the government. They were both odd, but my mother was the real eccentric of the bunch—which she’d have to be, to be able to live with the other two.
“Then I came along.” She sucked in a breath. “Let me tell you, I was a disappointment. I wasn’t a poet and I didn’t multiply four-digit numbers in my head when I was six. When I was three, I did all the normal things that three-year-olds do. When I was four, I did all the normal things that four-year-olds do. Not that the townspeople believed that. They figured I had to be weird, too, so they didn’t accept me any more than they did my parents and sister.”
“Your father was known to be a recluse.”
“He was. Not a social being at all. His mind was so complex that there was an odd simplicity about him. He could be lovable when he tried, but as the years went on, he tried less and less.”
“Why Timiny Cove?”
She had never known the answer to that. “It was out of the mainstream, I suppose. Any rural town would have suited his purpose. He wanted the quiet to work.”
“So the neighbors left you alone.”
“Totally. They never claimed us as their own. They just stood back and stared. Well, I didn’t like being stared at because I was his daughter or her sister, and I didn’t like being a disappointment because I couldn’t keep up with them. So I made up my mind that as soon as I was old enough, I’d leave and make a name for myself.”
“Oliver Cox hasn’t produced anything for a while.”
“No. He’s aged.” But the earlier days were never far from Hillary’s mind. “Do you know what it’s like growing up with brilliant people? I mean, really brilliant people?”
Arlan scratched his head. “Can’t say I do.”
She ignored his comical expression. “It’s awful. They don’t communicate. My father used to sit staring off into space. I could say something, and he wouldn’t hear. Then he’d pick up a pencil and scrawl something on the back of an envelope or a bookmark or a matchbook, and it would be incredibly beautiful, only when I tried to tell him that, he was already off in some other mind-place.”
“His work is highly acclaimed.”
“As rightly it should be.”
“Then you’re not ashamed of him.”
“I was never ashamed. I was just tired of being rated on a scale that was way off the boards to begin with. I didn’t want to be thought brilliant when I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be thought eccentric when I wasn’t.”
“Apparently John St. George didn’t think those things.”
At the mention of John’s name, she took a deep breath. She remembered those early days with John as though they had just been. A sense of visceral excitement rushed back. “No, John didn’t think those things. I met him at a time when I was feeling pretty low. I didn’t fit with my family, and I didn’t fit with the locals. I was biding my time, waiting to escape to college. John was the link that I needed. He was from the outside world. He was as much of a misfit in Timiny Cove as I was.” She smiled. “And you know something? He didn’t care. He didn’t care what the miners or their families thought of him, because he had this other life. And what a life.” She sighed. “I used to ask him about it. I wanted to know everything. I could have listened to him for hours on end.” More quietly, she said, “I idolized John. When we became lovers, I was on cloud nine. He was a cut above anyone I’d ever known.”
“But he was playing with you.”
“Maybe.”
“You knew that he had other women. Didn’t it bother you?”
“I didn’t know it back then. I was seventeen and naïve.”
“You didn’t even see him that often. If what you wrote was the truth, he used to come and go from Timiny Cove at will. Did he call you when he was away?”
“No.”
“Write?”
“No.” She rushed on, “But I understood. Really. I adored him, but my dreams weren’t centered around him.” At his skeptical look, she insisted, “They weren’t. I knew by then that I wanted to be a writer. I used to dream of that.”
“When you were done dreaming of John. What was it you saw in him, Hillie? Was it the polish? The glamour? Given all you know now, it sounds like the guy’s an ogre. What did you see in him?”
She th
ought about that for a while. What did she see in him? She saw the fire. He had it. He was his father’s son in that sense. Fine, custom-tailored clothes were only a veneer. When the clothes came off, he could be earthy as sin. He tried to temper the passion, but the more he did, the more it built and the more powerful it was when released. Those were the times she liked best, the times when he was an absolute wonder in bed.
She wasn’t about to tell Arlan that, though, so she simply said, “He was alone and different, just like me. That was what probably brought us together in the beginning. Then, when I got to know him, I was taken by his charm. Yes, charm,” she insisted when he looked doubtful. “John was a charmer when he wanted to be. And he was bright in a normal way. I enjoyed being with him.”
That was simplifying the issue, she knew, but using the past tense was getting to her. Glancing at her watch, she said, “I have to run,” and stood.
“Hillie, about this book—”
“I’m going to keep writing.”
“Have you talked with him lately?”
“No. I’ve had a couple of messages on the machine from him, but I didn’t see much point in returning the calls.” In fact, John hadn’t asked her to return them, which was typical. He called the shots. If he phoned her and she was out, he figured that was her loss.
“What’s happening with the engagement?” Arlan asked. “Have they set a date?”
Heading for the door, she tossed back a nonchalant, “No date yet, but the engagement’s still on as far as anyone knows.”
“Think you’ll be invited to the wedding?”
“God, I hope not.” Just thinking of it was painful. She would have to arrange a conflicting engagement. Perhaps she’d be out of town on business. She would be out looking for evidence that John had tampered with his father’s will. She liked the idea of that.
“Stick it to him, Hillie!” Arlan called as she passed into the hall.
She didn’t acknowledge the comment, but a small smile played on her lips during the elevator ride to the lobby. Once outside, though, her smile faded. She could do it, she realized. If she found evidence of a bequest to Cutter, she could really stick it to John. After all he’d done to her, that would be satisfying.
Chapter 10
Boston, 1969
WHEN JOHN FIRST TOLD PAM that her father was dead, she refused to believe him. She had been waiting, frightened, for hours and now stood in the front hall regarding him mutinously. “You’re lying. He can’t be dead.”
“The medical examiner certified it.”
“He wouldn’t die.”
“He didn’t have any say in it. None of us do when it comes to that.”
“But he wouldn’t have driven through a light. He was a good driver.”
“We don’t know whether he drove through or lost control, but he was at that intersection at the wrong time.”
Pam struggled to make sense of what John was doing. “You’re saying that because you hate him.”
“I’m saying it because that’s what the witnesses said. The truck had the green.”
“It couldn’t have!” she cried, but the most convincing argument was right before her. John was acting strangely, more subdued than usual. He was looking strange, too, tired and pale. And he was putting up with her protests without yelling at her, without telling her what a spoiled little pest she was. That was the strangest thing of all. For once in her life, she wished he were behaving like a rat.
Now he pushed his hand through hair that looked like it had been ruffled a lot. “Pam, he’s dead. He’s gone. There was nothing they could do to save him.”
She shook her head and began to back away. “Where’s my mother? She was with him. I know she was.”
“She’s at the hospital. She’s been badly hurt, but she’ll live.”
“I want to see her.”
“Tomorrow. They just brought her out of surgery. She won’t be back in her room till morning.”
Pam didn’t ask what was wrong with her. She didn’t want to think anything was, didn’t want to know. “Can I see her then?”
He nodded, and he was true to his word. Not that it did much good. At the hospital the next morning, Patricia couldn’t talk with her. She couldn’t say that everything was going to be all right. She couldn’t tell her that John was wrong, that Eugene was up in Maine and would be back in a few days. She was too doped up with painkillers and sedatives. So Pam returned home with little reassurance to cling to.
Then the phone calls started coming, and the visitors, and the evidence seemed to mount in John’s favor. Various people from the office dropped by, as did some of those in Patricia’s circle. There were calls from Timiny Cove, even calls from the mothers of Pam’s friends. John handled the calls and the visits with a somberness that Pam found hateful. But he wasn’t the only somber one in the house. Late that afternoon, when she went into the kitchen and found Marcy in tears, she knew that Eugene truly was gone.
The funeral was held on a Monday, an affair that John kept deliberately small, as he explained to Pam, because of Patricia’s precarious condition. Pam suspected that he was only using that as an excuse. She suspected that he didn’t want a crowd because it would be too much of a tribute to the man he hated.
He couldn’t control the crowds at the burial in Timiny Cove, though. The entire town plus carloads of people from surrounding areas and as far as the state capital came to pay tribute to Eugene. These were the people who might have been a comfort to Pam, but John hustled her off in a black limousine immediately after the graveside service and had her back in Boston that night.
She was too unsettled to cry or to protest. Her mind told her that Eugene was dead, but her heart kept waiting for him to call or walk in the door or laugh his wonderfully robust laugh. Second to that, she waited for Patricia to call her from the hospital and say that she was feeling better and would be home soon.
But Eugene didn’t laugh, and Patricia didn’t call. She remained in a somnolent state that wasn’t quite a coma but what the doctors called a severe depression. Pam visited every day, but not once did Patricia acknowledge her presence.
So she asked endless questions of John, but with the funeral over, he was deeply involved in the business. “Picking up the pieces” was the expression he used, and Pam took it for the insult it was. She also knew it wasn’t true. The business was solid. John was just going ahead with all the things Eugene had resisted. He had little time for Pam.
The doctors were the ones who answered her questions. From them she learned that her mother had suffered a spinal injury and had no feeling from the waist down. “She’s paralyzed?”
“That’s right.” It was a female doctor who told her, sitting with her in the easy chairs at the end of the corridor.
“For how long?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“But you will soon?” Pam asked, not caring that she sounded frightened. Of all the doctors, she liked this one the best. She was young and softspoken, more approachable than some of the men, and she was very gentle with Patricia.
“Once the swelling goes down and the injury itself heals, we’ll be better able to evaluate your mother’s condition.”
“Will she be able to walk when all that happens?”
“We don’t know.”
“She will. She has to. When she feels better, will she start talking, too?”
“Probably.” The doctor paused, tilted her head, and asked, “Has she said anything to you yet?”
“No. She isn’t sleeping. She just stares at the wall.”
“She’s upset.”
“At me?”
“No. At herself, maybe.”
“But why? She didn’t cause the accident.”
“Sometimes when people suffer traumas like your mother has, they don’t think as clearly as you or I.”
“Will that change, too?”
“We hope so.”
“When?”
The doctor shrugged, smiled sad
ly, shook her head. “We just don’t know, Pam.”
Pam hated answers like that. So had Eugene. “There has to be something we can do to help her.”
“There is. You can visit her like you have been and talk to her. Tell her about what you’ve been doing in school. Tell her that you miss her and want her home. Ask if you can bring her anything. She’ll hear you, even if she doesn’t answer.”
Trusting that to be the case, Pam did talk. She told Patricia what she’d done that day and what she was planning to do the following one. She told her that she missed her and wanted her to come home. She told her about all the things they could do together when Patricia was feeling better.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell her the things she really wanted to, for fear they’d only upset her more. She couldn’t tell her about the funeral and how many people had come out in Timiny Cove. She couldn’t tell her how much she missed Eugene. She couldn’t tell her that she was afraid that her whole life was changing, that she’d never get to Maine again, that she’d never have the fun she used to have. She couldn’t tell her how awful the house was, how quiet and grim, or how John seemed to go out of his way to annoy her during the rare times he was at home. He didn’t talk with her, he talked to her. He wasn’t interested in what she was thinking or doing. He had no patience with her fears.
But day after day Pam went to the hospital, a comfortable walk from the house, and day after day she talked until she ran out of things to say. Then she sat in a chair by her mother’s bed, doing homework sometimes, or watching television, wishing sometimes that she could curl up next to Patricia on that hard white bed and cry the way she ached to do. Most often, she simply watched Patricia, waiting for a sign that she knew she was there.
It came after a month. Patricia looked at her, gave her a small, sad smile, and Pam felt happier than she had in days and days. But the news that came at about the same time wasn’t good. The spinal damage was permanent. Patricia would never walk again.
Whether because of that news or because of the depression she’d been in since the accident, Patricia didn’t show any significant improvement after that. Pam was sure she’d given up, and nothing she said by way of encouragement had any effect. From time to time Patricia looked at her, offered a fleeting smile, but otherwise she remained in the silent shell into which she’d withdrawn following the accident.
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