Table for five

by Susan Wiggs

  Slowly, he pulled back onto the empty road. The headlights illuminated a set of skid marks snaking across both lanes. That was the closest he’d ever come to hitting something, except for the time in college when Derek had driven him out to the coast to hit drives off the scenic overlook. Sean recalled that darkness had fallen on the way home and a raccoon had crossed their path. Derek had creamed it. He’d pulled over and wept.

  With that thought, Sean felt his hands turn wet again. What was up with that?

  He hadn’t thought about the coast road in years, hadn’t been out here since moving back to the States. But maybe…

  Sean drove west. He didn’t question the terrible feeling that sent him there. He didn’t even trust that he could find the spot once again. It had been years since he and Derek used to bring girls here, hoping they’d get lucky.

  He had no idea why Derek would bring Crystal to the overlook. Maybe it was like Maura had said on the phone. Maybe Derek and his ex-wife really were sneaking around together.

  That was, after all, his brother’s specialty.

  Sean veered away from the thought. He was in no position to judge Derek.

  He tried not to think the worst when he turned onto the coast road and noticed tire marks around the sharp hairpin turns. Everybody had trouble navigating this road, he told himself.

  Derek drove the latest model with all the latest features. A major sponsor had just given him the SUV and he knew better than to wreck it.

  The adulation, gifts and money heaped upon Derek boggled the mind. And Derek, of course, worked hard for those things, which made him such a good prospect for sponsors. Sean often lay awake at night, battling a poisonous envy. He often had to remind himself that Derek had earned everything that had come his way.

  He and Derek had both had the same shot at the moon. In fact, there was a time when Sean had been strongly favored over his brother for a stellar career in the PGA. He’d been the one with the early career high, the revved-up sports agent, the sponsors clamoring, the ranking on the PGA money list.

  It hadn’t lasted, of course. Sean didn’t know how to make things last.

  The truck fishtailed a little around a sharp, steeply downward bend in the road. The headlights streamed over the outside edge of the curve, and the guardrail disappeared. It was just starting to get light outside. Sean looked around. He vaguely remembered some sort of property-and-easement dispute that ended right there, at a sharp curve in the road, where the angry black slash of tire tracks arrowed straight at a pair of broken madrona trees.

  Sean killed the truck’s ignition. For a moment, perhaps the space of three heartbeats, he sat in utter silence. Then he switched off everything else—all the feelings of fear and panic—as he entered the numbers of Derek’s cell phone, pushing the buttons one by one with special care.

  When it started to ring, he stepped down from the truck, slammed the door and stood in the predawn quiet, hearing nothing but the shush of the waves far below and…the distant ringing of a cell phone.

  He was like an automaton, crossing the road to the opposite shoulder. His footsteps sounded like a robot’s, perfectly even, brisk but unhurried as they crunched in the roadside gravel. When Derek’s voice mail kicked on, Sean ended the call, paused and redialed. The ringing started again, louder now, closer.

  He was a machine. Nothing could penetrate his iron shell. He had a flashlight in his hands. He knew he’d need it.

  He felt nothing. He couldn’t let himself. Because even before he climbed down the steep, sheared-off bank, toward the sound of the ringing phone, he knew what he would find.

  He stumbled, fell, held on to thorny vines snaking down the slope, cursed and eventually made his way down through the wild blackberries and red-boned madrona trees growing out of the side of the cliff. He paused again to redial, then followed the sound of the ringing. A thorny branch raked like talons across his face. He felt something trickle down his cheek and swiped at it. His hand came away dark with blood.

  He was breathing hard, wheezing as he slipped and slid his way down. Early daylight crept over him. Dawn was breaking, though the deepest of shadows still haunted the primordial folds of the ravine. The flashlight’s beam flickered off something that didn’t belong there—the dull, intestinal undercarriage of the upside-down SUV.

  A chink opened in Sean’s self-imposed armor and a white-hot arrow of pain shot in, startling him with its intensity.

  No. The roar of denial erupted through him, but he made no sound as he approached the vehicle. The flashlight shook uncontrollably as he shone it toward Derek’s truck.

  No. He wrestled the flashlight into submission and forced himself to hold it steady. What kind of chickenshit brother was he, shaking like a girl when he knew damned well his brother was—

  No. He plunged to his knees beside the window. It had broken into a zillion shatterproof pieces, and then had somehow been ripped out of the windshield. It took him a moment to realize the truck was teetering, and there was still plenty of distance yet to fall.

  Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Someone had once taught him how to pray, but that had been a long time ago. It was too late for that, anyhow. He knew it in his bones.

  The beam of light was steady and unwavering as Sean forced himself to ignore the precarious creak of the teetering truck. From deep within the vehicle, a cell phone beeped, signaling a message waiting. He found a gap where the window had been and shone the light inside.

  Live, goddamn it. Be alive, please.

  He found Crystal. Though she lay at an impossible angle, her beauty queen face was a perfect mask. She looked like a statue of a renaissance angel. Even her eyes were a statue’s eyes, open, unblinking and blank. There was no expression on her face. He forced himself to say her name, to gently touch her, to check for breathing and a pulse. Nothing. Judging by the eerie chill of her smooth skin, she had been gone for a while.

  Sean had seen his mother dead, but this was different. Painful as it had been, his mother was supposed to be dead. After suffering for a year with her illness, everyone had expected it, and she’d been laid out for viewing, a decent Irish Catholic to the end. There was nothing remotely decent about this, he realized, his thoughts tumbling over one another.

  Derek. Where was Derek?

  A lash of panic whipped through Sean. He called his brother’s name, his voice echoing through the ravine, into the dawn silence. It seemed weird and horrible to be yelling while Crystal lay there, but he called again, startling a pair of birds skyward. Maybe Derek had been thrown from the truck, or maybe he’d survived and gone to look for help.

  But maybe not.

  Sean squatted down and peeled away the remains of the windshield. Something sliced into his hand but he kept working. The truck teetered some more but he didn’t stop.

  Everything in the SUV had landed in the wrong place. There were stray golf clubs stabbing into upholstery, a lost shoe on the crushed dashboard. The DVD player, of which Derek was so proud, was mangled and smashed. He came across Crystal’s purse and it was virtually empty, as though someone had turned it inside out.

  Sean became desperate, half crawling into the truck, searching for his brother. He brushed past Crystal’s bony limbs. Something slick coated the heaved-up dashboard. A terrible odor infested the cab.

  Then he realized where Derek was.

  Sean paused to gather his thoughts. It couldn’t be done. It was impossible to think. Slowly, gingerly, he got out of the car, slipping in blood. His hand shook so bad he couldn’t hold his phone still enough to dial. He finally sank to his knees, putting the phone on the ground to keep it steady while he stabbed at the numbers: 9-1-1. Send.

  chapter 14

  Saturday

  6:30 a.m.

  Lily was startled from sleep. She should not have been sleeping at all, she thought, leaping up from the sofa, pacing the living room as soon as her feet touched the floor. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She had no right to relax her vigilance until she made sure
Crystal was all right.

  She checked the wall clock—6:30 a.m. Outside, the world was a monochromatic gray. She grabbed the handset of the phone and quickly checked the caller ID to make sure she hadn’t missed a call. She had not. Still, she felt guilty for having dozed off.

  Maybe she should have had coffee with Sean Maguire. No, she thought. Coffee was bad for you, even in an emergency. She shuddered herself fully awake with the thought. Get a grip, Lily.

  The TV, which she’d muted hours ago, flickered with the hyperrealistic colors of a paid-programming broadcast. She picked up the remote to click it off. Then a terrible thought seized her and she switched to a local station and turned up the volume. A talking-head anchorwoman, looking impossibly perky at this hour of the morning, offered a farm-and-ranch report.

  Lily muted the sound again but left the station on the local news. She punched in the number of Sean’s mobile phone. Funny how she’d memorized it instantly, the moment he gave it to her. She got a recording and hung up without saying anything. He was probably out of range. Then she tried Crystal’s number, praying with every cell of her body that her friend would pick up, laugh and explain that she’d been swept away and ended up at a roadside motel with her ex-husband.

  No such luck.

  With a sigh, Lily tiptoed upstairs to check on her friend’s children. Crystal’s house was cluttered but beautiful, vintage furniture giving it a special air of permanence. It felt strangely intimate, almost invasive, to watch Crystal’s children sleep.

  Cameron lay facedown and spread-eagled, the covers in a tangle around his gangly limbs. Dim light through the window washed over the clutter of his room—schoolbooks, laundry, golf paraphernalia. There was a peculiar smell of gym shoes and grass in here, and the trash can overflowed with empty food wrappers. Crystal said he ate like a tapeworm host.

  Lily backed out of the room and closed the door, then went to check on the girls. Charlie slept amid a litter of stuffed animals. The glow of a SpongeBob night-light gave the toys a glassy-eyed, strangely sinister look, though Charlie seemed content enough.

  Across the room, Ashley had thrown off all her covers. She stirred and snuffled as Lily bent over the side of the crib and pulled a blanket up over her. As she tucked it around Ashley, Lily felt a peculiar warm contentment, stirred by the simple act of checking on the sleeping baby. The girls were so little, totally dependent. For someone not cut out to have kids, Lily was occasionally a victim of biological impulse, attacked by untimely tugs of a yearning she didn’t know how to assuage.

  A peculiar weight pressed down on her. She was going to kill Crystal for being such a flake and disappearing like this.

  She tiptoed out of the baby’s room and went downstairs to put the kettle on. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror and grimaced. Her hair was frizzed, her cheek imprinted with the texture of the sofa’s upholstery. How charming.

  She ducked into the bathroom to rinse her mouth, splash water on her face and drag a comb through her hair. Then she pressed her hands down flat on the countertop and tried to make them stop trembling.

  It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Only seeing Crystal walk through the door, blowing kisses and waving excuses around like a lace handkerchief, would help now.

  Worry felt like a live, loathsome thing, twisting and writhing in Lily’s gut. This, she thought, feeling nauseous and light-headed, this was what loving someone did to you. The moment you started to care about someone, they made you frantic with worry. As soon as you let yourself love someone, you were doomed.

  She rinsed her face again and glanced into the mirror. This was how she would look forty years from now, her face scored by lines of concern, eyes troubled and haunted by factors beyond her control. Old and afraid—that was how she looked.

  Crystal liked to tease her about her habit of avoiding matters of the heart. “You’re like someone who’s afraid of water,” she once said.

  “I am afraid of water,” Lily had reminded her.

  “And it’s totally irrational.”

  “No, giving yourself heart and soul to someone else and expecting to be taken care of, now, that’s irrational. Why would I do that?”

  Crystal had offered a smile that, after the end of her marriage, had been wistful and sad with hard-earned wisdom. “Because that’s when life finally makes sense.”

  My life makes perfect sense right now, Lily thought as she left the bathroom. Or rather, it had until last night, when she’d rushed over here to a missing-persons situation.

  She put the phone handset into the charger and went to fix a cup of herbal tea.

  Ginseng this morning, to sharpen her mind. The coffee smelled almost unbearably delicious, but she didn’t go near the glossy blue sack of imported Lavazza. When you were already insane with worry, she thought, why would you consume something that irritates your nerves?

  She paced the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil. Crystal called her kitchen Mission Control, but it usually looked like Mission Out-of-Control. Letters, bills and junk mail littered the built-in desk. The fridge was plastered with schoolwork old and new, recipes and diet tips, expired grocery coupons and school forms and permission slips, most of them out of date.

  Lily put away the clean dishes. In the process, she came across a mug that still bore a smudge of lipstick in Crystal’s favorite shade. She moved to wash it off, then hesitated and set the mug on the sill above the sink. Then she nervously tried organizing the spice rack. She listened intently to the water in the kettle and took it off the heat before the whistle blew, then set the tea to steep.

  She tried to spend her nervous energy on tidying the cupboards. They were so disorganized that the kitchen was barely functional. Crystal was a creative person, but not an orderly one.

  Lily was standing in the middle of the kitchen, trying to decide where to stash a Pyrex measuring cup, when the sound of an engine crescendoed and then stopped. She heard the heartbeat thud of a car door opening and closing.

  Thank God, Lily thought, rushing to the back door. She’s finally home.

  It was Sean Maguire’s truck, she saw, her stomach dropping. He was alone. And walking slowly toward her.

  The rising sun painted everything with precise strokes in roseate hues. Each blade of grass, every brick of the driveway, the texture of the tree bark, the shapes of budding leaves—all had been picked out in excruciating, exquisite detail by the glowing light. The colors of the sunrise lay upon Sean Maguire’s broad shoulders, his unkempt hair. His imposing silhouette stood out starkly as the new sun lit him from behind.

  Lily stood on the threshold of the kitchen, her heart knowing the truth before her mind did. She couldn’t make out the expression on his face as he came toward her but, of course she didn’t have to. The terrible truth was in the aching stiffness of his gait as he approached.

  There was a moment—a split second, really—in which she allowed herself to hope. But that quickly died when he stepped into the slant of light from the kitchen and she saw his face.

  Lily decided to speak up first. At least that would buy a few more seconds. A few more seconds to believe the world was normal. A few more seconds to believe nothing had changed.

  “The children are asleep.” It came out as a whisper.

  He nodded. His throat worked up and down as he swallowed. Lily kept focusing on details—the way the beard stubble shadowed the shape of his jaw, the luxurious thickness of his eyelashes. She noticed a thin, fresh cut across the ridge of his cheek, held together by two small white butterfly bandages. The fact that he looked immeasurably older than when he’d left the house last night.

  Lily thought about screaming. Maybe if she screamed, it would drown out the words he would inevitably say to her. She didn’t, of course. No amount of screaming would make the truth go away.

  Stop. She made herself stop. This was absurd. “Where’s Crystal?” she finally asked. Oh, no, she thought, changing her mind, don’t say it, please don’t say it. A thickness of
tears gathered in her throat.

  “It was an accident,” Sean said.

  It was what he didn’t say that roared loudest in her head. He didn’t say Crystal was all right. He didn’t say they were working on her, that she’d make a full recovery. He said nothing of the sort.

  “Both of them?” she heard herself ask.

  He nodded, his eyes tortured.

  Lily had forgotten she was holding the Pyrex cup until she heard a thud and realized that she had dropped it. The cup hit the threshold and rolled onto the concrete walkway and, quite unexpectedly and bizarrely, stayed intact.

  Both Lily and Sean ignored it.

  She felt herself falling in slow motion, and the only way to stop was to fall against him, against his chest, and let the stranger’s arms come up around her.

  She felt the strength of him but found no comfort there. Crystal was already gone, and the truth of that tore a gaping hole in the world.

  And then it hit Lily that the man holding her had lost his brother. He shouldn’t be propping her up when he had grieving of his own to do.

  She pulled away from him. There were screams of shock and horror that needed to erupt from her, but she wouldn’t let them. She would do at least that much for Crystal. She would not let the children find her a sobbing, incoherent mess.

  Later, she told herself, stepping back from Sean Maguire. I’ll cry later.

  chapter 15

  Saturday

  6:45 a.m.

  “Where?” Lily asked, her whole body aching as though she’d been in an accident, too.

  “The coastal highway, a few miles south of the Seal Bay exit.”

  She wondered what they’d been doing way out there. “What happened?”

  “The car went off the road. He might have been swerving to keep from hitting something. The pavement was slick, and they went over an embankment.”