by Susan Wiggs
INVITATION
THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE
IS REQUESTED
BY GEORGE AND CHARLES BELLAMY
ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST OFFICIAL
BELLAMY FAMILY REUNION.
SATURDAY THE 21ST OF AUGUST, 2010.
CAMP KIOGA, RR #47, AVALON,
ULSTER COUNTY, NEW YORK.
RUSTIC ACCOMMODATIONS PROVIDED.
Twenty-Six
Claire had been mere inches away from believing love could change everything. What she’d found with Ross was that powerful, a seismic shift. As she lay in his arms, feeling safe and protected and adored, she was able to forget the whole world. How had she lived so long without this? How could anyone?
Once found, her love for Ross felt as necessary and as natural as breathing.
She thought she’d mastered the art of detachment long ago. She’d taught herself to keep her distance from people, and had accepted that this was the way it had to be. It was working well for her—until Ross Bellamy came along. He had undone all her hard work, taking away the wall around her heart.
And like an idiot, she’d allowed it. One night with Ross had turned her into a different person, filled with emotions she’d never dared to feel before. The timing of the call back to reality had been cruel in the extreme. She’d been drowsing in Ross’s arms, floating with happiness as she relived the night before.
The outside world had intruded in the form of a text message. She had glanced at her mobile phone where it lay on the floor by the bed, gleefully abandoned the night before. The message light was blinking insistently.
She had slipped from Ross’s bed with painstaking care, praying there had not been some crisis with George in the night. There hadn’t. This crisis was hers and hers alone. The message had come from Mel Reno many hours ago. She’d been so preoccupied with Ross that she hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t like her to be so careless.
Then again, she wasn’t herself at all where Ross was concerned. He turned her into someone entirely new, reinvented out of whole cloth. With Ross, she became someone she barely recognized—a woman filled with love and joy and vulnerability, a woman whose future looked completely different from the bleak self-isolation she’d once envisioned for herself.
It was all a fantasy, as delicate and friable as spun sugar. She should have known better, of course. She did know better, but with Ross, she’d encountered something much more powerful than reason. But then, one glance at the message had driven home the insanity of what she’d just done. It hadn’t felt crazy at the time, though. It had felt exactly right, and leaving him was like ripping a hole in herself.
She had gone quietly outside. The sun was just coming up, and a shimmery calm glazed the lake, reflecting the rich pink and amber light. The temptation to leave a note for George was almost overwhelming, but she had resisted. Though she’d come close to forgetting the rules last night, reality had slammed home with brutal force. The only way to stay safe and keep others from being harmed was to leave no trace, no footprint in other people’s lives. She had tried calling Mel. Tried sending a text. There was no response. This was unheard of. He always responded, night or day, no matter what.
Though she purposely kept herself from knowing too much about him, she did have a number for his landlord. The guy was groggy, but the news galvanized her. Mel had been mugged. He was in the ICU at University Hospital. She called and frantically asked for a report.
“Are you family?” the receptionist had asked.
“I’m…” Not anything. She wasn’t anything to anyone. “His daughter,” she lied, scribbling the address and room number.
The report was bad. He’d apparently been left for dead and was in critical condition. There was not a doubt in her mind about why he’d been attacked. And not a doubt about what she had to do. She’d almost forgotten about the belongings she’d stashed by the resort exit. Almost, but not quite.
She retrieved the bag, caught an early train to the city and joined the anonymous stream of humanity, making her way on the subway from Grand Central to Penn Station and from there to Newark. She went straight to the hospital but outside the building, she balked. He’d almost been killed. By going to see him, she was exposing him to even greater risk. Still, she was a nurse. Perhaps she could fake her way in. She rummaged in her bag for her phone, but it was missing. She must have left it behind, or dropped it. Pacing back and forth near the round plaza in front of the hospital, she tried to remember what she’d done with it. Careless. She’d never been so careless. Falling in love with Ross had made her stupid on top of everything else. It was a given that she couldn’t go back to Avalon. Ever. She’d never see Ross again, or any of the Bellamys. She wouldn’t be with George at the end, wouldn’t be there for Ross. I’m sorry, she thought, her throat aching. I’m so sorry.
She couldn’t let herself dwell on what she’d lost. She had work to do, arrangements to make.
The plaza of the hospital campus was jammed with pedestrians sweltering in the summer heat. She didn’t trust anyone in the department, but she couldn’t put this off any longer. She needed to buy another phone and minutes card with cash, find an Internet café she knew of and—
“You are one hard girl to find,” said a quiet male voice. “I suppose you know that.”
She spun around, already in defensive mode. At the same time, recognition clicked in. “Ross. What are you doing here?” she asked, ignoring an urge to tumble into his arms. “How did you find me?”
He handed over her phone. “You left something behind.”
He must have figured out where she was by the last number she’d called—the hospital. Stupid.
“And I flew, with Duke Elder,” he added.
The parachute guy.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, but she already felt herself wavering.
“Sneaking out of a guy’s bed isn’t exactly unheard of,” he said. “But I’m not stalking you. After last night, I thought…Claire, you can’t just take off without any explanation.”
She wavered some more. He looked wonderful to her. Tired and exasperated, but…wonderful. There was something undeniably thrilling about having a guy come for her, so fast and decisively, driven by passion. Before she could turn soft and weak with emotion, she started walking briskly away. “I don’t think you’re stalking me. This has nothing to do with you. It’s a personal matter.”
“Wrong,” he said, falling in step with her. “It has everything to do with me. What’s going on?”
He sounded angry, hurt. He had every right to be. And she had every reason to distance herself from him. “I can’t explain, and I don’t have to. The situation with your grandfather wasn’t right for me.”
“How about the situation with me?” he asked. “Was that right for you?”
It was the best thing that ever happened to me. She wished she could tell him. Falling in love had been a revelation, like seeing the ocean for the first time. In one incredible night, she’d seen a glimpse of a happiness so complete it brought tears to her eyes. “Last night was a mistake.” The lies scratched her throat like sandpaper.
“I don’t believe that for a minute, and neither do you.”
“You don’t know me,” she lashed out in desperation. “You have no idea what I believe.”
“Claire, I need answers to some basic questions. Like who the hell you are. I already know you appropriated the social security number of a child who died twenty-five years ago,” he said.
“That’s ridic—”
“And that’s just the start. I can go deeper, and I will, if—”
“Please don’t.” She whispered the plea, and to her horror, felt her eyes burn with tears. “Please…”
“Then talk to me. I need to know what’s going on.” His smile was gentle now, tinged with sadness. “You’d be surprised what I know about you. Natalie checked out your background—”
“Natalie should mind her own business.”
“I asked h
er to. You’ve been on your own for a long time. You probably believe you’ll go through life alone. And that’s so insane, Claire, when all we both want is to be together.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “I’m not interested.” I can’t be. She felt a pounding sense of urgency. The longer he hung around here, arguing, the more danger he was exposed to. “Please go. I’m sorry for misleading you and giving you the wrong idea.”
“You’re apologizing?” He gave a bitter laugh of disbelief.
“Good point. I don’t need your forgiveness,” she said. “Goodbye, Ross. It’s best just to part ways now.” She felt the stares of passersby. Just what she needed—more attention. From the corner of her eye, she saw something. Police in uniform. They were looking around the crowded area, clearly in search of someone. One of them rested his hand on his holster.
Grabbing Ross by the shoulders, she drew herself into him, hiding against his tall, solid form. Forgive me, she thought, despite her earlier words. It was the quickest way she could think of to hide her face. As she held him close, she wished she could stay in his arms forever.
Instead she watched through slitted eyes. To her horror, the cops went inside the hospital.
She tore herself away. “I have to go.” She hurried into the main entrance. One of her former patients had been here, and she knew the way to the neuro ICU. To her relief, the two cops were headed in the opposite direction, toward the emergency department.
Ross was right behind her. “Claire, you’re acting crazy.”
“I’m here to see a sick friend, if you must know,” she said.
“You don’t have any friends,” he snapped. “Believe me, I checked.”
“You had no right to check on me,” she said, battling a fresh wave of tears.
“Excuse me?” He let out a laugh of disbelief. “Don’t you get it? I love you, Claire. I want to know everything about you. And I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
It was the I love you that broke her down. She swayed against him. “You have to,” she said, even though she couldn’t stop clinging to him. “You have to let me go.” She knew he wouldn’t. Not Ross. He embodied loyalty and caring; it was what she loved about him. Yes, loved. She wasn’t going to kid herself anymore. She thought about how safe and cherished she’d felt in his arms. How smart he was, how much she trusted him.
The world seemed to blur into the background. She didn’t see visitors and hospital staff walking by, didn’t hear the elevator bells or pages over the PA system or the sound of aircraft in the distance. She only saw Ross, and the way he was looking at her—expectant, insistent. As if he cared about her more than life itself.
With slow deliberation, she pulled a tissue from her bag and dried her face. What if she told him who she really was, and he changed his mind about her? On the other hand, how could they ever have anything real between them if she constantly lied about her history? By the time her tears were gone, she knew she was going to let him in, come what may. You can never really escape who you are, she realized. You can change your name. Move to a new home. Make up a new story for yourself. But ultimately the person at the core couldn’t change. She had needs and desires that would finally catch up and overtake her. She had a heart that couldn’t help falling in love. The terrible reality was, she could not go on alone, not after meeting Ross.
“I do need to check on someone,” she said softly, and found the charge nurse on duty. Though expected to recover, Mel was in an induced coma and on a ventilator. Standing next to Ross and watching through a wall of reinforced glass, she didn’t recognize the draped figure surrounded by tubes and monitors. “He’s the closest thing I have to a real friend,” she said. “And this happened to him because of me.”
“What?”
“There’s a reason I don’t have any friends,” she whispered.
The charge nurse shooed them toward the exit. “You can call for a status check,” she said.
Once outside, Ross studied her closely. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But your grandfather—”
“Already warned me not to come back without you, Claire. Listen, whatever happened…you can level with me.”
“People who get close to me tend to get hurt,” she said.
“I’ll risk it.”
All right, she thought. He’d made it through two years in a war zone. He was as stubborn and tenacious as his grandfather.
“Let’s go in here,” she said, heading for an Internet café near the hospital. “I need to show you something.”
The atmosphere was dim and intimate, like a speakeasy. Although the webcam above the screen wasn’t enabled, she stuck a Post-it note over the lens, for good measure. He bought them each a soda and Claire typed in an address and an old, scanned photo came up, showing row upon row of flat pavers with grass in between. “Fairacre Burial Ground,” she said, and zoomed in on one of the pavers. The engraving was simple: “Mario and Joseph Balzano. D. 2001.” The sight of their names brought back echoes of the old horror. They’d just been a couple of kids. Then a man they’d trusted and respected had attacked like a cornered wolverine. “I’ve never gone to see their grave in person,” Claire told Ross. “I couldn’t risk it.”
“Who are they?”
She scrolled sideways to another paver marked “Clarissa Tancredi. D. 2001.” It always freaked her out, seeing it etched into a gravestone.
“And who’s that?” he asked.
“That,” she said, starting to tremble. “Is me.”
Twenty-Seven
The reason Claire had never slept with a guy had nothing to do with a set of moral standards or lofty ideals. The reason she’d never done it before was that she was afraid to make herself vulnerable. Yet with Ross, she’d wanted to do exactly that—to surrender, trusting him with the intimate landscape of her body…and her heart, as well.
She hadn’t been prepared for how powerful it could be. In that long, magical night, she’d discovered that sex was not just sex. It was a way to show him who she was without saying a word. For someone who had been hiding her identity for so long, this was a gift beyond price.
Now she had to use her words. Now, in order to tell him who she was, she had to tell him her terrible secret. Maybe if he understood who she used to be, he’d understand who she was. This was a leap into the unknown for her. She had done it before, to save her own life. This time, she was saving herself from something else.
She led the way outside and scanned the area, then headed toward a shady parking lot. There were security cameras here and there, but she kept her back to them. She looked up at Ross, seeing nothing but love and acceptance in his face. Then she inhaled a long, slow breath, as though preparing to jump off a high dive. “There’s something you have to know before I go on. If I tell you these things, you might be facing the same risk as I am.”
“What kind of risk?”
“There’s a guy who’s out to kill me. I’ve been hiding from him since I was seventeen. I think he might be behind the attack on Mel.”
“Whoa, hang on. Some guy wants to kill you?”
“Because of what I saw. Because of what Clarissa Tancredi saw.”
“And what was that?”
“A double murder.”
“You saw a double murder?”
Every night in my dreams, she thought. Even now.
She nodded, her heart speeding up as she realized what she was about to do. “The girl named Clarissa ceased to exist one sunny morning. I was reborn the next day in an alleyway behind a bar, when I walked away with nothing but a backpack and a large envelope filled with official documents. It was, um, the strangest, most radical thing you can imagine, dumping everything I’d been up until that point and becoming someone with a whole new story.”
“You switched identities? Are you telling me you’re in the witness protection program?”
“It’s not like the ones you see on crime shows. Those programs are for people who’ve seen a federal crime
. In the absence of a federal investigation, there’s no program, regardless of what I saw. Murder is a crime against the state, so it’s up to the state to protect any witnesses—or not.”
He took her hand, carried it to his mouth and pressed a kiss there. “I want to hear this, Claire. And then we’ll figure out what to do.”
Her heart pounding even faster, she started from the beginning. The story came out in quiet whispers, like a slow leak of air from a balloon.
From the day she’d entered the foster care system until she was sixteen, the program had worked for Clarissa Tancredi. Thanks to the compassion and dedication of her case worker, Clarissa was cared for by families that enriched her life.
At sixteen, she’d been placed with a foster family deemed ideal by every standard of the state system. Her new family consisted of a work-at-home mom, Teresa Jordan, and her husband, Vance, a police detective. There were already two foster brothers in residence—Mario and Jo-Jo Balzano. The Jordans lived in Forest Hill, a venerable old neighborhood that defied everyone’s preconceptions about Newark. Its historic mansions, tree-lined avenues and good schools made it a haven for prosperous families. The big house on Ridge Street was not the kind of place someone could live on a cop’s salary, but it was said Vance’s wife had money. She worked as a freelance theater set designer, more for the glamour than for the income. She was an aspiring playwright, though she’d never had anything produced. Her plays were intricately plotted, full of unexpected twists and turns. “I hate being predictable” was her motto.
When Claire was placed with the Jordans, she had every reason to expect the peace and security of a nurturing family life. That was what she’d been promised, anyway.