by Joy Fielding
Robin relayed the conversation she’d overheard at Starbucks, watching him copy it into his notepad. “Who is he?” she asked again.
“He’s a war vet, did a couple of tours in Afghanistan, moved here about three years ago from Tacoma, Washington, and bought a small ranch on the outskirts of town. Kind of a loner. Owns a couple of horses. Drives a Harley. Never been arrested, as far as I know. You think he and Tara had something going on?”
“I don’t know what to think. According to Cassidy, Tara and my father were madly in love.”
“Which is what any child would choose to believe about her parents, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that Tara was seeing someone on the side. She had quite a history, as I’m sure you’re aware. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a young wife has stepped out on her much older husband.”
The name Tom was on the tip of Robin’s tongue. What was stopping her from saying it out loud?
Prescott stood, grabbing his hat before it could fall to the floor. “Guess I should try to locate Dylan Campbell, maybe have a little talk with Donny Warren. Can I drop you somewhere?”
Robin was in no hurry to return home. “I have my sister’s car, thank you. And I think I’ll stick around the hospital for a little while, be here when Cassidy wakes up.”
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.” Sheriff Prescott placed his hat on his head, then tipped it toward her. “Oh,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know what kind of car your brother drives, would you?”
“My brother?” Why was he asking about Alec?
“Do you know what kind of car he drives?” the sheriff asked again.
Robin hesitated. “He used to have a Chevy Malibu. But that was a few years ago. He’s probably traded it in by now. Why?”
“You happen to remember what color it was?”
“It was red. Why are you asking about Alec’s car?”
“Just curious.” He tipped his hat a second time. “Talk later.”
Robin watched the sheriff amble down the hall. Only after he was no longer visible did she take her new phone out of her purse and call her brother in San Francisco.
He answered on the first ring. “What’s up?” he said instead of hello.
“Why would the sheriff be asking about your car?” Robin said.
A second of silence.
“The sheriff is asking about my car?”
“The question was ‘why?’ ”
“I have no idea.”
“When was the last time you saw Tara?”
“What?!”
“Who’s Tom?”
A pause that was just a fraction too long.
“Tom…? What the hell are you talking about?”
“What’s going on, Alec?”
“By the sound of it, my sister is having some kind of breakdown.”
“Talk to me, Alec. I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing going on. I don’t need your protection.”
“Alec…”
“I have to go.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me,” Robin warned.
But it was too late. He was already gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Robin could recall the exact moment when she’d first suspected that something was happening between Tara and her father.
It was Thanksgiving, and Robin had come home from Berkeley to spend the holiday with her ailing mother. The family was seated around the dining room table, her father at one end, Alec at the other. Tara, who’d been engaged to Alec for the better part of a year, was on their father’s left, with little Cassidy beside her. Landon sat on the other side of the narrow oak table, wedged between Melanie and Robin, rarely lifting his eyes from his plate. Sarah Davis, her body riddled with cancer, had been too weak to leave her bed. In two weeks she would be transferred to St. Elizabeth Community Hospital. She would die four months after that.
It was a subdued celebration, nobody feeling particularly thankful. The turkey Melanie had prepared was dry, the mashed potatoes tasteless, the green beans overcooked, and the mold of red Jell-O uninspiring. There was little conversation, the dinner’s dominant sounds coming from the periodic clanking of cutlery against the plain white dishes and the occasional grunt from Landon.
“So, tell us about your classes,” Tara had ventured at one point.
“They’re fascinating,” Robin said, grateful that someone at the table had expressed an interest. “I mean, they’re really hard. I’m being run off my feet with work, but I’m learning so much.”
“I think it’s so exciting,” Tara said proudly. “We’re going to have a psychologist in the family.”
“What’s a psychologist?” Cassidy asked.
“Somebody who asks a lot of useless questions, then waits for you to answer them,” Melanie answered. She held out her glass. “Could someone who isn’t being run off their feet with work please pour me another glass of wine?”
“Allow me,” their father said, removing the bottle of white wine from its ice bucket and refilling Melanie’s glass. “Tara, how about you? A little more wine?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I should.”
“You definitely should,” Greg Davis said with a wink. “How about I just top you up a bit?”
Tara’s smile was surprisingly shy as she held out her glass.
A wave of anxiety washed through Robin as she watched her father fill Tara’s glass to the halfway mark. The wave turned into a surge, like an electrical charge, when Robin saw his hand brush her best friend’s fingers as he returned the bottle to the ice bucket.
Robin shook off the unpleasant sensation, ignoring her instincts and telling herself that her sudden anxiety was the result of Melanie’s attempts to belittle her. A classic case of transference, as one of her professors at Berkeley would no doubt explain.
“So, how are things going with you and Tara?” she’d asked Alec several days later. She was heading back to Berkeley, and Alec had volunteered to drive her to the bus station. “Everything good? You two getting along okay?” She threw the questions casually over her shoulder, like a lightweight sweater, as Alec was dropping her overnight bag into the trunk of his car. He’d bought the immaculately maintained red Chevy with the money he’d saved from working summers for their father, and it was his pride and joy.
“ ’Course we’re getting along. Why do you ask?”
“Just checking.”
She had checked again at Christmas, when she and Tara were leaving the hospital after a brief visit with Robin’s dying mother.
“I feel so helpless,” Robin confided. “I just wish there was something I could do.”
“You’re doing everything you can.”
“Not according to my sister.”
“Your sister’s a cunt.”
“Tara!” Robin looked around to make sure no one had overheard. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth.”
“The truth won’t protect you from Melanie.”
“Yeah? Well, let her do her worst. I’m not afraid of her.”
“Maybe you should be.” Robin squeezed her friend’s arm. She felt so lucky to have a friend like Tara, so grateful that the two would soon be family. She was sure that the unease she’d been experiencing was all in her head, a by-product of the guilt she was feeling about leaving her mother. “So what’s happening with you and Alec? Any closer to setting a date for the wedding?” She felt an almost imperceptible stiffening of Tara’s arm beneath her fingers.
“How can we?” Tara asked. “I mean, with things the way they are…”
The sentence trailed off into silence.
“But everything’s good between the two of you?” Robin persisted. “You’re still madly in love and everything?”
“Everything’s good,” Tara said, turning away.
Four months later, Sarah Davis was dead, and two months after that Tara ended he
r engagement to Robin’s brother.
“She said she can’t marry me,” Alec had confided over the phone, sounding as numb as he undoubtedly felt.
“Did she say why?”
“Just that her feelings had changed and she couldn’t go through with it.”
“Does Dad know?”
“I told him this morning on the way to work.” Alec had been working for their father full-time since graduating from high school, and they usually drove to the office together. According to Alec, Greg generally used that time to berate him for what Alec jokingly referred to as his “shortcoming of the day.”
That arrangement came to an abrupt halt three months later when their father returned from a supposed business trip to Las Vegas with his new and astonishingly familiar bride in tow. Alec immediately quit work and left Red Bluff. He spent the next year driving his prized red Chevy from one end of the country to the other and then back, eventually settling in San Francisco and working a succession of minimum-wage jobs.
Robin had returned to Red Bluff only to pack up what few possessions of hers remained in the house, vowing never to speak to her father or Tara again.
“If you’d just let me explain,” Tara had pleaded.
“Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”
“I never expected this to happen. It wasn’t something we planned.”
“And yet, here we are,” Robin countered. “I just don’t understand how you’re able to stomach sleeping with a man old enough to be our father. Oh, wait—he is my father. You can’t seriously be trying to tell me that you’re in love with him.”
“He’s been so good to me. And to Cassidy. She adores him.”
“She’s a child. You’re a grown-up. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“You didn’t ask one.”
“Do you love him?”
“He’ll take good care of us.”
“Not an answer.”
“I respect him. I admire him.”
“How can you respect and admire him when you know what a bastard he is?”
“He’s changed.”
“He hasn’t.”
“He’s not the same man he was when you were growing up.”
“Really? I remind you that he just eloped with his son’s fiancée!” Robin shook her head at Tara’s willful naïveté.
“It would never have worked with Alec. He’s sweet and everything, but he’s never going to amount to much. He’s a boy, Robin. Cassidy and I…we need a man.”
“Amazing,” Robin said. “How’d you do that?”
“How’d I do what?”
“I just saw your lips moving, but I heard my father’s voice.”
Tara blushed bright crimson.
“Do you honestly believe that marrying my father isn’t going to end in absolute disaster?” Robin asked.
Oh, God, she thought to herself now, recalling those words, the last words she’d spoken to the person who had once been her dearest friend. She pulled Melanie’s car into the driveway of her house, watching as Landon’s shadow disappeared from the upstairs window. She turned off the car’s engine and lowered her forehead to the steering wheel, her fingers grasping the amethyst ring dangling from the chain around her neck. She remained in that position for several minutes, feeling the hot air wrap itself around her and trying to slow the rapid beating of her heart.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?” came Melanie’s voice from outside the car window.
Robin bit down on her lower lip as her hand dropped to her side. She hadn’t heard her sister approach. She removed the key from the ignition and stepped out of the car. “No, I’m not sick.”
“You weren’t praying, were you?” Melanie sounded horrified by the thought.
“No. I wasn’t praying.”
“Well, thank God for that.” Melanie chuckled at her own joke. “So—what’s with the glum face? I haven’t heard anything from the hospital, so I’m assuming our father is still with us.”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“And Cassidy?”
“Seems to be okay.”
“So what’s the problem? You look like you could use a drink.”
“Why don’t we just take a little walk?”
“You want to walk? In this heat?” Melanie sounded even more horrified than she had before. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Around the block, maybe?”
“Around the block,” Melanie repeated. “Really?”
“It was just a suggestion. You don’t have to come.”
“No, I’ll go for a walk. I like to walk.” She motioned for Robin to lead the way. “After you.”
Robin headed down the driveway, stealing a glance at their father’s house next door. The police cars were no longer parked in the driveway, although the yellow tape remained. “I guess they finished going through everything.”
“Do we have to talk, too?” Melanie deadpanned.
There was no sidewalk, so the sisters walked along the shoulder of the road. The nearest house was almost half a mile away.
“I’ll probably regret this,” Melanie said after several long minutes, “but something is clearly bothering you. Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Did Tara ever mention running into someone we went to high school with when she was in San Francisco?”
Melanie shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
“Do you know anyone from Red Bluff who moved there?”
“Just our brother. Why? What are you getting at?”
It was Robin’s turn to shake her head. She had no desire to further arouse Melanie’s suspicions. To change the subject, she told her sister about her run-in with Dylan Campbell in the hospital parking lot.
“That piece of shit,” Melanie muttered. “Although I guess it’s not all that surprising for him to show up.” She kicked at a small pebble. “Bet all sorts of lowlifes come crawling out of the woodwork now, anticipating a big payday.”
“Speaking of lowlifes,” Robin said, “what do you know about Donny Warren?”
Melanie came to an abrupt halt. “Who?”
“Donny Warren. According to some gossip I overheard in town, he and Tara might have been having an affair.”
“That’s a load of crap,” Melanie said. “And I’d hardly call him a lowlife.” She resumed walking, quickly picking up her pace, so that Robin had to run to catch up.
“So, you know him?”
“I’ve met him a couple of times. Seemed like a pretty stand-up guy to me.”
“Do you think he and Tara…?”
“Absolutely not.” Melanie shook her head. “He wasn’t Tara’s type.”
“What was her type?”
Melanie kicked at another stone, the scuffing sound mimicking the one coming from her throat. “Not poor.”
A car drove by in the opposite direction, its occupants craning their necks in their direction. Both women instinctively turned aside.
“I’m going back,” Melanie announced as they drew within a few yards of her neighbor’s house. “It’s too hot. You can keep walking if you want.”
“No.” Robin wiped the perspiration from her neck and forehead as they crossed the street. “That’s enough torture for one day.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Robin went to bed that night at nine, though she lay awake listening to Landon’s rhythmic rocking until almost midnight, when the rocking suddenly stopped. It was replaced seconds later by the sounds of his heavy footsteps as he paced back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the room to the other. After ten minutes, the pacing ceased, and Robin waited anxiously for the rocking to resume, cursing herself for having thrown away the last of her Ativan. She needed to sleep. Unconsciousness was her only respite from a reality that was becoming ever more bizarre. While her dreams might be troubling and incoherent, her waking hours were even worse. Dreams generally vanished within minutes. Reality wasn’t so easy to dismiss. And her reality was that nothing about her life mad
e sense anymore.
Had it ever?
Yes, she decided, thinking of Blake. When she was with Blake, her life had made sense. At least in the beginning.
She’d been working as an assistant to a social worker at a vocational school in the Silver Lake district of L.A., her first job since graduating from Berkeley, when her boss had invited her to a party a neighbor of hers was throwing that night. She’d spotted Blake the minute she’d walked through the door. Tall and movie-star handsome, he was surrounded by a coterie of adoring females. Stay away from that one, Robin told herself, making a beeline for the other side of the room and engaging in small talk with whoever was nearby, trying not to look in his direction.
Until suddenly he was standing right beside her. “Hello,” he said, depositing a glass of white wine in her hand. “I’m Blake Upton.”
Run, she thought.
“And you are…?”
Her answer came from out of nowhere. “I’m the one who got away,” she said, handing the glass back.
And then she ran.
Out the door and into the night.
She kept running until she found a cab, until she was safely in her own apartment, in her own bed, far away from Blake Upton’s warm brown eyes and sensuous mouth, out of reach of the mischievous dimple in his chin, his thick brown hair, the soft command of his voice, all of which spelled trouble.
More than trouble.
Danger.
She spent the balance of the night alternating between congratulating herself for her resolve and berating herself for her stupidity. “The last thing you need is a man like that,” she lectured herself out loud. A man who can have any woman he wants. A man who will never be faithful.
A man like your father.
“So what? At least you could have gotten laid,” she told herself with her next breath. Then, as the sun was coming up on what had been a frustrating and sleepless night, “Oh, well. Too late. What’s done is done.”
Except it wasn’t done.
Blake found out who she was, and he called her the next night.
And the one who got away quickly morphed into the one who wasn’t going anywhere.
Which was precisely the problem, Robin realized now. The woman Blake Upton thought he was getting, the girl with the quick retort and the confidence to walk away, was nothing like the needy bundle of anxieties he ultimately found himself saddled with.