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"No thanks. I'll stick with Sugar Babe."
Buddy and I laughed.
"You won't be a stranger, now," Billie said, clicking her fancy camera in my direction. She was wearing the same white outfit I'd seen her in the first day, which seemed like a year ago. She was a truly lovely person, I thought, and again I was struck with the notion that she was on the wrong end of the camera. I flashed her a smile and hoped the camera would reveal how I felt.
"Even Diablo couldn't keep me away," I said. I looked at Allison and couldn't quite hold the smile. We'd hardly talked since first the police and then Martha and Fay's husband had arrived. Things had happened so fast, I thought. And there'd been too much to say and too little time to say it.
"The check's in the mail," she said.
"You already paid me, Allie."
She took my hands, pulled me close. "You'll see." She leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "Thank you."
I looked at her blankly.
"For Billie."
I looked into her eyes, looked at Billie and smiled. Billie was beaming. "Don't thank me," I said. "Billie's the one who's put up with you all this time. Congratulations."
She hugged me good-bye, a good, innocent hug that lasted only a second longer than absolutely necessary. I swung up onto Diablo, who immediately laid his ears back, and I clicked my tongue, urging him forward.
"Ride 'em cowgirl!" I turned in time to see Karen tip her baseball cap in my direction. She had her arm around Sabrina, a lopsided grin on her face. Sabrina just smiled, and Reeva, standing next to them, shot me a thumbs up.
Lacy, looking as much like Shirley Temple as ever, was rocking on her heels, waving enthusiastically. I waved back, even at Holly who was off in a corner pretending to study the fence. I thought I caught a real smile, but I wasn't sure. It may have been a smirk.
"Didn't take you long to make friends," Martha said. She was on a big dun mare who plodded along the trail like a somnambulant cow.
"It's not making friends that's hard," I said, feeling ridiculously philosophical. "It's keeping them."
"Well, you've managed to keep me all these years. You can't be all bad."
"Face it, Harper. You're easy.'
"With women, maybe. Not with friends." I knew this was true, and let it drop.
The really great thing about best friends is you don't have to talk. We rode down the mountain behind Buddy in companionable silence. I listened to the waterfalls recede, and the smell of sulphur, which I'd grown used to, slowly dissipated. I could picture the lake getting smaller and smaller behind me. I felt the tiny cabins disappear into the past. I imagined Allison's smile, her touch, her laughing eyes, and knew I'd carry them with me no matter how distant the memory became. And I thought of Fay, carrying a sadness with her all these years until it turned to rage and became the sole focus of her life. Then I saw Sabrina blowing blond bangs off her forehead, an unlikely warrior scoring the final point. Finally, opening my eyes to the bright sunshine around me, I nudged Diablo with my heels and challenged Martha to a race across the last meadow leading to T-Bone Ranch.
Chapter Twenty-three
The brief series of storms had passed and the sun beat down on my dock as if summer had never been interrupted. Maggie was trying out a fly rod we'd bought at a garage sale. Luckily there was no hook attached, because Panic and Gammon leaped at every backcast she made, more often than not catching the tiny fly before she had a chance to whip it into the water.
"Looks like you're getting the hang of it," I said, honestly glad to be back home. I sat down on the warm dock and pulled Gammon onto my lap.
Maggie grimaced, then cast again. She wasn't really speaking to me yet. I'd gotten home late Sunday, and hadn't seen her until this morning. I'd missed our anniversary. Worse, with everything that had happened, I hadn't had time to do anything about her present. She brought my present with her. That's when I realized I'd screwed up.
"Open it," she said. "You may as well."
"Maggie."
"It's okay, Cass. I know you've been under a lot of pressure. I know there were no stores up there with all those naked lesbians walking around. I understand."
I sighed. "Maggie, what makes you think there were naked lesbians walking around?"
"Weren't there?"
To my utter dismay, I blushed.
"That's what I thought," she said, whipping the line into the water.
"Maggie, I didn't forget. Honest. It's just..."
"Cass, it's okay. I'm not mad. Really." She set the rod down on the dock and came over. She was wearing a ridiculously sexy blouse tucked into cutoffs. Her legs were long and tan, her green eyes as captivating as ever. My heart did a little skip when she took my hands.
"I just missed you," she said.
"I missed you too."
"Even with all those women fawning all over you?"
"Nobody fawned," I assured her.
"Not even that presidential doctor? The one with the red hair? The one you shared a room with while you were posing as her girlfriend?"
I sighed. I sighed again. I tried not to blush.
"She did, didn't she? Shit! She fawned over you! I can't believe it!"
"She didn't fawn," I said.
"What then? Something happened. I can tell!"
"Maggie, nothing happened. Okay? Nothing. She hired me. I did my job. In the process we became friends. That's it."
She picked up the present she'd brought. It was large and flat, and looked suspiciously like a picture. It was wrapped in red paper. I was afraid she might throw it into the water.
"How good of friends?" she asked. I thought about it, thought about how to answer. "Very," I said. "We became very good friends." I looked her in the eye. I held the gaze. I did not blush. I didn't need to.
"I made the frame," she said finally. "Rick did the rest."
"He did? He's painting again?" My eyes teary, I carefully ripped open the package. I couldn't believe what I saw. "That's us!" I said, dumbfounded. "Oh, Maggie, it's beautiful!"
"It was his idea." She was clearly as moved as I was. The painting showed two women, one with black glossy curls and sea-green eyes, the other a laughing blonde. They were running hand in hand through a field of wildflowers. To me, it was the best painting Rick had ever done.
We were still gazing at it when we heard the sound of an approaching boat.
"Isn't that Tommy?" she asked.
Sure enough, Tommy Greene, the marina attendant, was coming toward us at putt-putt speed. It was so unusual to see him going slowly, that we both stood and watched.
"What's that he's got behind him?" Maggie asked. It looked like he was towing something. And he was heading straight for our dock.
"Have to wait and see," I said. Frankly, I had no idea. I carefully set the picture in the cabin of my Sea Swirl and went back to stand beside Maggie.
"Looks like a sailboat," she said. It did. And no sooner had she said it than I recognized the emblem on the sail, flapping benevolently in the breeze behind Tommy's boat.
" 'Afternoon, ladies," Tommy shouted. His sunburned, elfin face was grinning from ear to pointy ear.
"'Afternoon, Tommy." My throat had constricted and I felt my face grow warm.
"Understand there's cause to celebrate!"
Maggie looked at me questioningly. I shrugged. What else could I do?
"They said this was a rush order, so I brought it right out. Guess I'll let you two get back to, well, whatever it is you were doing." He turned away, and quickly tied the sailboat to a metal cleat on the dock. He hopped back into his boat and roared away, leaving the little boat to rock against the dock.
"You didn't forget," Maggie said, hugging me to her. "God, it's just perfect! How'd you know I've been dying for a sailboat? Come on, hop in!"
Even though it was barely big enough for the two of us, I got in, looking up at the single sail luffing in the breeze. She was right, it was perfect. The two hearts, intertwined, seemed to glow with the sun behind them.
Epilogue
In September I was summoned to Portland to testify in Fay Daniels' trial but on the day I was to appear, the case was settled. Fay's attorney had plea bargained with the prosecution, and even Allison supported the decision that Fay spend time getting help rather than in prison. The judge placed Fay on probation for five years, provided a portion of that time be spent in Veteran's Hospital in Seattle where she was to undergo psychiatric treatment. She was still there when I visited almost a year later.
I came unannounced, but it was clear that Fay had been expecting someone. She was waiting in the visiting lounge and when I entered her face lit up momentarily before she realized who I was.
"Oh! I thought you were someone else," she said. We stood staring at each other for a long moment until finally she regained her composure. "Come on in." She ushered me to the far corner, away from the television set and the few other people in the room. I sat on a plastic chair and marveled at how she'd changed. Her once-long ponytail was gone and her hair was now nearly as short as Reeva's. Somehow, the change suited her. It was almost as if, free of the ponytail, she had become younger, more at-ease with herself. She was wearing a bright orange turtleneck that accentuated her ample physique and I wondered what had happened to all those oversized, gray sweatshirts.
"You want some coffee?" She walked to a table set up with an aluminum dispenser and a stack of Styrofoam cups. Not waiting for an answer, she poured black liquid into two cups, and came to sit across from me.
I took a tentative sip, remembering her propensity for poisoning people, and her eyes met mine. "You want to know why I did it, I suppose." She sat back against her chair and took a dainty sip from her cup.
"Actually, I wanted to know how you were," I said. She appraised me coolly. I sighed. "Okay, I also want to understand why you did it."
She laughed aloud and seemed to relax a little. "Go ahead and drink your coffee, Cass. No poison, honest! It's decaf."
"Your husband explained quite a bit," I said, embarrassed that she'd read me so easily. "When Andy died, you had no one to blame but her for taking her own life. To all appearances, Allison was straight. Then, all these years later when you discovered Allison was not only gay, but the president of a successful lesbian organization, you —"
"Go ahead and say it. I lost it. And all that's true, to an extent. But what my well-meaning husband didn't understand, is that I never really did blame Andy." She looked up at the ceiling as if gathering resolve. "I blamed myself." She took another drink and leveled her gaze at me. "It's taken a lot of work for me to finally be able to say this. I, too, had feelings for girls, though God knows I never admitted it, even to myself." She looked at me, waiting for some reaction. I returned her gaze and waited. "When Andy killed herself, I thought that somehow her infatuation with Allison was my fault. That somehow my own secret perversion had rubbed off on her."
The TV blared suddenly, causing me to start. "But how did you get from blaming yourself to blaming Allison, and from there, to wanting to kill her?"
"That's one of the things I've been working on in therapy. You have to understand that until recently, I didn't realize that I'd been blaming myself. Discovering Allison was one of life's little ironies. It gave me a focus for my bottled up anger. It's also what has allowed me to finally accept who I am." She paused, exhaling noisily. "The people at Women On Top were the first real family I'd had since Andy died. I hadn't expected to feel welcomed. I wanted to hate them all."
"But you didn't."
"How could I? They were everything Andy would've been. They were what I should have been all along." She got up to refill her coffee, seemingly embarrassed by this admission. There were so many things I wanted to ask her, but they seemed insignificant in light of what she'd just told me.
Again, Fay seemed to read my mind. "You probably wonder why I stuck you with a needle that day." She came to stand in front of me. "As I'm sure you know, I was an RN in the Army. Good at it, too. I probably know as much about dosages as Allison does. It wasn't difficult to get my hands on some Nitroglycerin. Truth is, I could've tried harder to kill you. For that matter, I could've tried harder to kill Allison." She took a breath, and went on. "My shrink says that the reason I never succeeded in killing anyone was because I didn't really want to. I don't know. At the time, I sure thought I did. When you started getting in the way, I had no choice but to come after you. If it's any consolation, I really did like you. Things just got out of hand, that's all."
This was probably the understatement of the year, but I decided not to press the issue.
"Tell me about the football notes," I said at last.
"You thought it was Reeva, didn't you? At first, I mean. I wasn't really trying to frame her, so much as make fun of her. I know it sounds crazy, but she was such an obvious culprit. Maybe I wasn't making fun of her as much as I was making fun of everyone else. You did just about fall for it, didn't you?"
I admitted that I had. "What about the pate? And the cereal?"
"Cereal? You lost me."
I explained about Allison's cereal and Fay frowned. "It was the milk. Damn, I didn't know about the cat." She stood again and started to pace. "I wondered what happened. It seemed like everything I tried backfired. Of course, I couldn't ask anyone. Half the time, I never knew what went wrong. Allison wasn't telling anyone anything, and I wasn't exactly thinking clearly."
She stopped suddenly and thrust her hands on her hips, gracing me with a crooked smile. "You almost caught me that night I was leaving the pate in Allison's cabin. I think, subconsciously, I was hoping to get caught. I just didn't know it."
"What was in the pate?" I asked. I'd always wondered.
"Oleander."
"No rat poison?"
"I hadn't thought of that," she said, giggling. Despite myself, I laughed. This woman was growing on me. "More coffee?" she asked. I looked at my empty cup and back at her calm gray eyes. Maybe it was I who was nuts. I handed her my cup.
"This is Andy," she said, taking a yellowing photo encased in plastic from her back pocket. "Sixteen and the whole world in front of her. God she was sweet."
"You don't look anything alike," I said. No wonder Allison hadn't recognized Fay.
"Isn't that the truth? You know what they called me in sixth grade? Art-fay. That's Pig Latin, of course. It carried over all the way into high school. I'm just glad I was out of there before Andy's freshman year. At least she didn't have my sorry face hanging over her through high school." She gazed fondly at the photo before returning it to her pocket. "Unlike me, she was very popular. Could've had any boy in school. Then Allison Crane came along." She took an exaggerated breath and rested her head against the wall. "I'm still not totally okay with this," she said, letting her breath out slowly. "But you'd be surprised how far I've come."
"It's obvious how far you've come, Fay. I think Andy would be proud."
"Yeah, well. The thing is, the big fucking ironic thing is, that if I had met an Allison Crane when I was sixteen, I would've never done this, and maybe Andy might still be alive. Where was I when she needed a big sister to tell her that what she was feeling was natural? I was such a loser, Cass. Andy ended up dead, but I was the loser. She had more guts than I ever did. I've never even kissed a woman."
"It's not too late, Fay."
She looked up, eyes wet and glossy. "I know. Actually, I think I've met someone. I hope. She comes in to visit her sister every week and we've struck up a friendship. I've told her everything. Even about Allison. She's a good listener and I think she likes me, too." She smiled a smile I'd seen before. It was the look of someone who has recently discovered the possibility of love. I finished my coffee, smiling myself, and got up to go.
Suddenly, the visitor's door opened again and Fay stood up, nervously smoothing her hair.
I followed her gaze and saw the object of Fay's new-found desire. The woman was in her forties, with short dark hair and cheeks flushed pink with the cold. Clutched in her gloved hand was a single red rose. She beamed at Fay, then saw me and her smile froze. "Oh!" she said.
"I was just leaving. Fay and I are old friends. "Oh." She seemed relieved, if a little doubtful.
"Cass is one of the ones I tried to kill," Fay blurted.
The woman looked from me to Fay with concern. "Oh. I see." She moved the rose to her other hand, unsure what to do. "You seem to have come through it all right," she said, finally. Even Fay laughed at this.
I turned to Fay and extended my hand. "Good luck," I said.
"Thank you. It means a lot that you came." She held onto my hand another moment, then turned to her visitor and accepted the proffered rose.