by Donna Ball
A plastic canopy had been set up over the site, but rain still dripped down his collar and chilled his spine. The sound of it was like a soft, steady drumbeat on the plastic, but the counterpoint was the thrum of the diesel engine and the ghastly creak of the chain as the coffin, spilling black loam into the pit below, was raised out of the earth.
A representative from the coroner’s office was there, as well as a technician from the lab he had hired. A priest stood by because he had insisted on it. Because Daniel might not care, but Ash did. And there was another man he did not know, a burly fellow with sandy hair who kept his hands thrust into the pockets of his Windbreaker, and who regarded Ash with a steady, unwavering gaze.
The coroner’s assistant came over to him. “We can do the procedure here,” she said. “It would save the time and expense of transporting the remains to the lab.”
Ash nodded tersely and signed the papers she presented to him. He looked straight ahead when they opened the coffin, and he didn’t blink until they had closed it again. Dear God, Sara, he thought, I’m glad you’re not here. I’m glad.
The entire business took less time than he had imagined. It was all very matter-of-fact and efficient, which was the way he liked things done. But in this case it seemed grotesque. The coffin was closed. The officials went away into the rain with their samples. The priest came forward and made the sign of the cross, began to murmur the words. And when he was finished, the gravediggers returned to hook up the chains.
Ash forestalled them by stepping forward. He placed one hand on the coffin. It was cold and slick with dampness, and there was an odor—of dark, dank earth and formaldehyde and things left best undisturbed—that he would never forget. Not as long as he lived.
“Good-bye, Daniel,” he said softly. And then, more heavily, “I’m sorry.”
He let his hand fall away from the metal casket, and he nodded abruptly to the gravediggers, who were waiting impatiently in the rain. And when he turned the burly sandy-haired man was standing beside him.
“Are you that lawyer?” he inquired, frowning at him. “The English one?”
Ash said, “I’m Ash Lindeman.”
The other man extended his hand. “I’m Jeff Delaney. Sara’s—Daniel’s, I guess—brother-in-law. It was good of you to call, and let us know . . .” He nodded uncomfortably toward the proceedings. “About all this.”
Ash shook his hand, feeling tired. “There was no one else to call,” he said simply. “Daniel had no other family.”
Jeff said, “My wife, Dixie, thought somebody should be here. But we’ve got kids and—well, the fact is, I didn’t want her to come.”
“I understand.”
“We didn’t expect you to fly all the way over here.”
Ash said, “He was my friend.”
A respectful silence, Then Jeff said, “Is Sara okay?”
It was a moment before Ash answered. Then all he could offer was, “I think so. I hope so. I think she will be.”
Jeff looked at him steadily for a time. Rain plopped on the plastic canopy. The diesel engines started to putter.
Jeff said, “You hungry? Dixie would never let me forget it if I didn’t bring you home for a meal.”
“Thank you.” It required an effort, but Ash managed a smile. “I think I’d like that.”
The chains began to creak, and the two men walked out into the rain and up the hill to the parking lot.
When Sara hung up the phone with Dixie, she was crying. Katherine muted the sound on the satellite transmission of Britain’s Got Talent, her favorite television show, and looked at her with concern. “Is everything all right at home, my dear?”
She didn’t know exactly how or when it had happened, but Sara awoke one morning and realized she was at home here. She never dreamed of the sound of gulls anymore. She could hardly remember the smell of the sea. And that was why the tears that clogged her throat and dampened her cheekbones were so inexplicable.
“No,” she answered Katherine, and pressed furiously at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I mean, yes. Yes, everything is fine. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I seem to cry at the drop of a hat these days.”
“Menopause,” observed Katherine succinctly. “I suggest hormones without delay. They are the only things that will preserve your skin.”
Sara gave a startled laugh and rubbed away the last of the tears. “I’m only forty-six!”
“Oh, it can go on for years,” Katherine assured her airily. She un-muted the television but turned the volume low. “Which is why you must remember you can still get pregnant. How do you think Ash ended up with a sister thirteen years younger than he?”
Sara laughed again and dropped down on the sofa beside Katherine, leaning her head back against the cushions. She watched, without seeing, a rather disastrous tumbling act for a time. She said, “Ash is coming this weekend.”
“How delightful of him.” Katherine did not inquire how this information should come to Sara via her sister, some three thousand miles away.
In the time since their last meeting Ash had resumed his habit of texting, rather than calling—usually every day, sometimes only one word: Okay? Well? And she could imagine him checking that off his to-do list every day from whatever time zone he was in. At first she had resented the fact that he never called, and then she was glad. What would she have said to him? She was uncomfortable and a little embarrassed about their last encounter, and no doubt he was, too. After all, she was the one who had begged him to stay. He was the one who had walked away.
Sara drew a shaky breath. “There’s this . . . thing . . . we have to do . . . to make sure—to find out who Alyssa’s father was.”
Katherine’s hand, slim and strong and supple, squeezed hers. “I know.”
Sara pressed her head back against the sofa cushions again, her gaze on the ceiling, and whispered, “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”
“Well, of course you are, my dear.” Katherine patted her hand briskly, as though, with that, the matter was settled. “You can’t go the rest of your life wondering, now, can you?”
“No,” Sara said, brushing another film of moisture from her eyes. “I can’t.”
“Then there you have it.”
She turned up the volume on a boy vocalist, and they watched until the commercial.
Katherine muted the television. “Clearly, this is none of my affair,” she said, “and you certainly don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But have you given any thought to what you will do when this matter of paternity is settled?”
Sara said, “Do you mean with the château?”
“I mean,” replied Katherine, “with your life.”
Sara was, for a moment, taken aback. It wasn’t as though the question had never crossed her mind—usually late at night when the stillness and the vastness of the place settled in on her and she could hear her own heart beating in the dark. After this, what? Or when she awoke, sick with terror, after a nightmare and had to go stand beside Alyssa’s bed to make sure she was okay, and she thought, What am I trying to do here? Ash was right. There was no happy ending. Either she would find out that her husband had been a liar and a coward, or that the little girl with whom she had already fallen completely in love was nothing more than an illusion. Either way, what would be left for her?
She said, carefully feeling out the truth for the first time, “I’m not the same person I was when I came here.”
“I don’t see how you possibly could be.”
“Ash thinks I should go back to work in the corporate world.”
“Well, of course he does. Work is Ash’s answer to everything.”
Sara smiled a little, though wanly. “I don’t know, maybe he’s right. He certainly seems happy.”
“My dear,” replied Katherine with calm certainty, “my son is many things, but happy is not one of them.”
Sara looked at her, startled.
“Oh, he pretends so well that sometimes it’s
difficult to see the truth. I wonder sometimes if even he knows how unhappy he is.” A small furrow marred Katherine’s perfect brow. “But he’s tormented by things you and I can only imagine. It has to do with his father dying so young, I think, and so unexpectedly. It’s as though there’s an emptiness inside him that he’s frantic to fill, and if he piles up enough victories—in business, mostly, but in other ways as well—the emptiness will go away. It doesn’t, of course, and he can’t understand why, so he starts all over again, chasing another victory. And then when Daniel died . . . Well, the two of them were the same age, you know. I frankly think it terrified him.”
Sara said, slowly, “I think Ash tries to do the right thing, most of the time. And most of the time he probably is right. But I guess when you’re that afraid of failing, you can’t always see what the right thing is.”
Katherine reached over and patted Sara’s hand, briefly. “Do you know, Sara,” she said matter-of-factly, “I’ve grown rather fond of you. I can’t say why. I think you may remind me of myself, when I was a young widow. I thought the world had ended, of course—and I was right. Everything I believed I would have forever turned out to be only an illusion. Good heavens, Ash was barely out of university and thought he could fill his father’s shoes. My Shelby was still in school and Margaret was a young mother with problems of her own. I cried for a year, and that’s the truth of it. I thought my life was over.” She paused a moment, her pale blue eyes lost in the pain of backward reflection—but only for a moment. “And then I woke up one morning,” she continued, “and realized that I was right. My life, the one I had planned for and hoped for and worked for day and night for over forty years, was over. So I sold my house, moved to the country, and started a completely new life. And,” she added, turning to survey Sara with a thorough, critical eye, “I got a new haircut.”
Sara tugged self-consciously at the ends of her hair. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Good heavens, girl, we’re two hours from the most glamorous city in the world. A new style would do wonders for your morale. And while there’s no truth whatsoever to the claim that a visit to Paris can cure all ills, I’ve always found it to be a marvelous diversion.”
Sara let her head slide down slowly until it rested lightly against Katherine’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came here,” she said softly.
Katherine seemed surprised, and then, rather awkwardly she reached up a hand and patted Sara’s cheek. “Well, then,” she said. And she tried to hide her smile as she turned up the volume of the television again.
SIXTEEN
Ash arrived at the end of the week with a very pleasant young female lab technician who made a game of swabbing Alyssa’s cheek for DNA, and who kept it all so quick and light that Alyssa didn’t even have a chance for a typical five-year-old’s recalcitrance, much less fear. Sara had to sign an affidavit that she had witnessed the procedure, and so did Katherine. Afterward, they all went down to the village for peach glace, and the lab technician took her samples and got on a train for Paris.
Sara had been nervous about seeing Ash again, about what she would see in his eyes, about what she would say to him, and most of all about how she would feel. She didn’t want to be awkward around him. She did not want any of those telling silences that would make his mother lift an eyebrow. She should have known better than to worry.
Ash was as smooth and as charming as ever. The first moments of his arrival were dominated by Alyssa, of course, and he scooped her up and laughed with her and listened to her stories as he always did until she squirmed away to go find Monsieur Le Chat. He kissed his mother’s cheek and then, politely, Sara’s. She noticed that his lips barely brushed her skin and that his eyes seemed oddly distant.
When they went for ice cream he gave most of his attention to Alyssa, and merely smiled without comment when she told him about her new nurse. He admired the work that had been done on the apartment, and pretended to be fascinated by every detail of Alyssa’s new nursery. He suggested that they allow the nanny to put Alyssa to bed while they drove to a nearby town for dinner. He was, as ever, a delightful conversationalist and a charming host, and any other time Sara would have enjoyed herself immensely. But she could not help noticing that he did not address a single personal comment to her, and that the smile he gave her was the same one he gave his mother. And there was a vague and confused ache in the pit of her stomach she could not quite define.
A fine summer rain was falling when they returned to the château, which spoiled their plans for after-dinner drinks on the terrace. Sara worried, as she always did when it rained, about the roof. She had noticed a damp spot in one of the attics when she and Katherine directed the placement of some of the Orsays’ old furniture during the renovation.
“I doubt a rainfall this light will do much damage,” Ash remarked as they returned to the apartment. He served his mother a whiskey from the Orsays’ glass and marble bar, and poured sherry for Sara. “It’s probably just a loose tile. You should call Contandino.”
“Yes, and I should have him check the stability of the west wing while he’s about it, if I were you,” Katherine said. “I can’t think how long it’s been since anyone was back there.”
“I don’t know how he will get in there,” Ash said, “without taking the door off the hinges.” He sat down in one of the deep gold club chairs that Sara had purchased, stretching out and crossing his legs at the ankles. “The keys seemed to have disappeared over the years.”
“I should imagine Signor Contandino has a copy,” his mother said, “since he installed the lock.”
“Excellent idea.” Ash sipped his whiskey. He glanced around the room admiringly. “You ladies have done a fine job with the place. Very nice indeed.”
“So glad you approve,” replied Katherine, sipping her drink. “We charged your account.”
“I did not,” Sara objected quickly, and she thought she saw Ash’s lips twitch with amusement just before he lifted his own glass again. She added, “But thanks for refunding the tax money.”
He saluted her with a small lift of his glass. “Glad to contribute.” And then Ash looked at Sara as though seeing her for the first time. “You’ve done something different with your hair.”
His mother gave an impatient sniff. “Isn’t that just like a man? A two-hundred-euro haircut and it takes him half a day to notice.”
Sara shrugged it off, absently fingering the stylish fringes of hair that now swept forward to caress her neck and emphasize her cheekbones and eyes. “I think it’s too young for me. Your mother and I went to Paris for the day.”
“Did you, now? What did you do?”
And so they chatted for a while about Paris, and Ash told them about his trip to Argentina. He said nothing about North Carolina, and Sara kept waiting for him to look her in the eye. And then Katherine said, “I think we should have a party, Sara. We’ll invite the locals, and the expats who are living nearby . . . all the ones worth knowing, anyway. It will be a lovely way for you to get to know your neighbors.”
Ash suppressed a groan. “Please, mother, not one of your parties. Whatever has Sara done to deserve such a thing?”
She returned an arch look and Sara, who was already feeling more than a little annoyed with him, said, “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“We should do it at the end of the month,” Katherine pronounced, “when everyone has returned from holiday and before that dreadful cutting of the vines—”
“Burning of the vines,” Ash corrected.
“Yes, of course, before all that nonsense begins. It completely saturates the fall social season in this region and we want to be ahead of the curve on that, don’t we? Yes, I think this is perfect. I shall start writing out the guest list immediately.” She finished her drink and stood. “And now, my dears, I’ll be off and leave you two to do the things young people do. And,” she added over her shoulder as she exited the room, “don’t imagine I don’t know what they are. I was young once, to
o, you know.”
Ash smothered a half laugh in his glass as closed the door. “Good God,” he said. “I think I’ve just been given permission to have sex . . . by my mother.”
Sara smiled to cover her embarrassment and took a quick sip of her sherry. “I’m still getting over being called ‘young.’ ”
“The two of you seem to be getting along well. I suspected you would. But if you let her talk you into that party, please don’t try to say you weren’t warned.”
Easy conversation, comfortable topics. Two polite strangers in a room. Except that her heart was pounding hard and there was a knot in her stomach the size of a fist and she couldn’t stop sneaking quick glances at him . . . how long his fingers were, curved around the glass, the way his hair shadowed his forehead, the length of his legs, the texture of the skin on his neck. Remembering how he had felt, pressed against her. Remembering how he had tasted. Remembering how much she had missed him.
Sara said abruptly, “I hope you don’t think your mother got the impression we were sleeping together from me.”
Ash gazed into his glass, a slight tension appearing between his brows. “I rather suspect she got it from me,” he said. “Your name does seem to come up quite a bit, come to think of it. At any rate, I apologize.” He set down his drink, only half finished, and stood. “I’m rather tired. If you don’t mind, my dear, I think I’ll go to my room as well.”
Sara got to her feet, feeling confused and trying not to show it. “Some of the guest rooms in the apartment aren’t finished,” she said, “but I thought you might like—”
“No, that’s quite all right. I put my things in my customary room in the old part of the château. I have some work to catch up on and there’s an Internet connection.”
“So that’s where it is!” Sara exclaimed. “I should have known.”
He smiled. “There’s a wireless router. I’ll show you how to turn it on in the morning, and you can set up your computer anywhere in the château.”