Crimson Rain

by Meg O'Brien

  Paul sighed. “A surprise.”

  How could the woman he had known as Lacey possibly be Angela, a child he had raised from the ages of one through five and then mourned the loss of all these years? How could she have been so deceitful? And how could he not have known?

  “The thing is,” Daniel said, “once I saw what she did to the Crystal Cave, I knew how much she hated you, and I worried that she might do something worse. She even told me that the other day. ‘His stupid Crystal Cave is just the beginning,’ she said. I didn’t know what she meant, but, Paul, I never dreamed she’d actually…” Again he looked quickly at Gina, then away. “I mean, you know…”

  A silence fell over the table. Rachel laid her head on her arms and closed her eyes. Gina cried quietly into her cupped hands. Daniel studied his coffee cup, his expression one of misery, and Paul sat hunched over, holding back the angry cry of grief that had been threatening to explode for the past hour. The rain drummed on, banging against the windows like an angry spirit trying to get inside.

  23

  They came together the next day in Al Duarte’s room at Harborview Medical Center: Paul, Gina and Victoria Lessing.

  “Don’t be too long,” the nurse said. “He still needs plenty of rest.”

  “What I need is to get out of this place and back to work,” Al grumped. His head was bandaged on one side where Angela’s bullet had grazed it. “I’ve had worse injuries than this just raiding a cathouse.”

  He looked closely at Gina, then Paul. “You two look like you’ve been through hell and back.”

  “I’m not sure of the back part yet,” Paul said. “We do agree with you, though, that it’s a good idea to get together here and go over what’s happened. That is, if you’re sure you’re up to it?”

  “Up to it? For Pete’s sake, man, I’ve been going nuts here alone, just wondering what’s been going on.”

  “The sheriff’s deputy said he’d call you last night,” Paul said. “Didn’t he tell you what happened?”

  “All he said was that they had Lacey—Angela, that is—in custody and that the rest of you were all right. That’s not the same thing as hearing it from you.”

  “Al,” Gina said, sitting beside him in a chair and touching his arm gently, “it was awful, but it’s over now. I can’t believe you managed to call the sheriff’s station even though you were wounded.”

  “Yeah, well, I almost went to the morgue instead. If Angela had been a better shot, I wouldn’t even be here now.” He smiled. “It was good thinking on Rachel’s part to leave me a message. I picked it up when I came to and I called the precinct and the paramedics. Hal at the precinct called the Camano sheriff’s office for me.”

  He looked around the room. “Which reminds me. There’s somebody missing here. Where is Rachel? Is she all right?”

  “She was great last night,” Gina said, “but she fell apart on the way home. We put her straight to bed and called Vicky.”

  “I talked with her quite a while,” Victoria said. “Then I went up to Coupeville on Whidbey and talked with Angela.”

  “Coupeville is the main precinct for Island County,” Al told them. “She’ll be charged with assault, at least, for tonight, and she’ll have to stand trial in Island County. Seattle will probably want her after that, for abducting Rachel.”

  He sipped water from a glass, then pulled the straw out impatiently and tossed it aside. “How was she when you saw her?” he asked Vicky.

  “I can’t go into specifics, of course. I can tell you she was relatively docile. Almost too docile, in fact. With a good lawyer, she may be able to convince a judge she’s mentally incompetent to stand trial.”

  “You mean she might get off?” Gina exclaimed.

  “Well, not completely, of course. She would certainly have to spend some time under psychiatric care.”

  “Oh, God,” Gina said. She was finding it hard, now, to remember that she had once loved Angela, the child. It was as if that little girl had never existed, as if she’d been a figment of her imagination.

  Paul filled Duarte in on the events of the night before.

  “Poor Rachel,” Duarte said. “I should’ve been there for her.”

  “Actually,” Paul said with a smile, “she did pretty good on her own. I can’t believe she came up there all by herself, just to protect us in case something went wrong.”

  “That’s what she said?” Duarte asked.

  “Yes. Apparently, Angela called the house after Gina had left that day. She told Rachel that she knew Gina and I would be at the Camano house that night, and she was going up there to see them and confess she was the one who kidnapped Rachel. She wanted to make it up to them somehow, she said, and hoped they could be a family again.”

  Duarte raised a brow. “And Rachel?”

  “She wasn’t sure whether to believe her, so she went up there to protect us, just in case.”

  There was a brief silence. “I guess that makes sense,” Duarte said finally, “since she called me for the same reason.”

  “Are you questioning Rachel’s story?” Paul asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. They’ve got me so full of drugs here, my mind isn’t working right at all.” But he frowned. “Vicky? What did Angela have to say?”

  “She said it was all Rachel’s idea for everyone to go up there last night.”

  “Hmm. What do you think?” Duarte said.

  “Well, from what I know, now, of Angela, I think we can assume she’s lying. I’m more concerned about Rachel, to be honest. It sounds like this has all taken quite a toll on her.”

  “She barely talked to us on the way home,” Gina said.

  “I’ve suggested she spend a few days at Falling Leaf,” Vicky told Al, referring to the private psychiatric hospital she was affiliated with. “Rachel is tired, and terribly stressed. At Falling Leaf I can see her every day, and she’ll get some respite from whatever memories might come up at home.”

  “How did she take that?” Al asked.

  “She agreed, and I’m taking her out there later today. I’m also recommending she transfer out of Berkeley and up here to U-Dub. I feel very strongly that she should continue in therapy, either with me or someone else she trusts.”

  “But she’ll be all right?” Duarte asked.

  “I think she’ll be fine.” But Vicky’s brow wrinkled. “The thing about RAD—if Rachel is suffering from some form of that, as I now suspect—is that it’s difficult even for a psychiatrist to tell if someone is all right, or just pretending to be. Frankly, I’m feeling rather inept at the moment. I wish I had recognized how troubled Rachel really was, years ago. I wouldn’t mind calling in a consultant, in fact.”

  “If you feel that’s the right thing, we can do that,” Gina said. “You know we’ll do anything for Rachel.”

  “Anything,” Paul agreed. “Vicky, what about that Web site, and the note in Rachel’s pocket? And was Angela the one who pushed us off the road that night?”

  “She’s admitted all of that to the police,” Victoria said. “And she’s given me permission to tell you about it. In fact, she seems almost proud of the things she’s done. The way I see it, Paul, everything Angela has done is part of her illness. She got some kind of warped thrill out of setting up the Web site up in her name and then putting Rachel’s bio on it, or rather, what she thought of as ‘Rachel’s perfect life.’ In her mind, she would show the Web site to you and see how you reacted. She would sit there as Lacey, and you would share your doubts and fears with her. You would see her as a sort of heroine for ‘helping’ you, and you would end up loving her more than Rachel.”

  Paul remembered Lacey’s final words the night before: “I had you in a way Rachel never could.” Vicky was putting a kinder light on what Angela had told her, he thought—perhaps purposely, to help him save face in front of Gina. But he knew firsthand the games Angela had played, and the fact that he was blind enough to fall for them shook him to the core.

  “Paul,” Vick
y said, as if intuiting the way he felt, “you can’t expect to make sense of many of the things Angela has done. I think I told you that these things often have no logical reason. It’s part of an illness that we still haven’t a clear picture of.”

  “All that aside,” Paul said, “what I’m having a hard time with is that Daniel killed Dr. Chase.”

  “Well, I, for one, am glad he did it!” Gina said. “Daniel was right—Chase was a monster. He deserved whatever he got.”

  “For once, you’ve said something I agree with!” Roberta Evans remarked as she sashayed into the room. A green silky cape billowed around a tight purple cat suit. Her lipstick was pink this time, but her boots were chartreuse.

  Peering at Duarte, she added, “You look like hell.”

  “Gee, thanks,” he said. “I guess this is your idea of a mercy call?”

  “As if I’d waste my mercy on the likes of you,” Roberta said. She placed her palm over Al’s forehead. “You don’t have a temperature. How do you rate all this company?”

  “Careful,” he said, frowning. “We were just getting to the good part—where I tell them all about you.”

  Roberta withdrew her hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Or,” Al said, “you could tell them yourself. You may make a better job of it.”

  “I don’t know what you think you know—” she began.

  “The support group?” Al said. “I have my sources.”

  Roberta fanned herself with an imaginary fan. “Oh, all right.” She looked at Vicky. “I’ve just been doing what she told me to do.”

  “Meaning what?” Gina said.

  “Meaning that Vicky told me, over and over the past few years, that I needed to wean myself away from my family—from you, Gina, and Paul and Rachel. She felt I’d become too involved in your problems, and I needed to have a life of my own.”

  “Mom, I didn’t realize you felt that way,” Gina said.

  “Well, I didn’t either. But I found myself slipping into a deep depression after we lost Angela, and then you and Paul started falling apart. Sorry,” she said when Gina frowned, “but it’s the truth.

  “Anyway, I tried to focus all my love on Rachel, but you know how independent she was as a child. It wasn’t until she was older that she even let me get to know her. I worried that she might have a mild form of RAD—nothing as severe as Angela’s, of course, but something like it—so for the past year I’ve been going to a support group and conferences for families of children with RAD. That’s why I’ve been gone so much. I’ve been visiting abused children in hospitals and women’s shelters, too, sort of as a grandma, I guess. Anyway, that’s what they call me.”

  “But that’s great, Mom! Why didn’t you tell us?” Gina said.

  “Because,” Roberta said, her jaw firming, “I needed something that was my own and only my own. I didn’t want it to become part of our everyday chats, with you asking me how it was going all the time, and wanting to know what it was like. If I was going to wean myself away, I figured the only way was to go all the way.”

  “But did that mean you couldn’t even spend Christmas with us?”

  “No, but to be frank, I was getting tired of spending Christmas with you,” Roberta said.

  Gina gasped. “Well, Mother, why don’t you just tell us how you really feel?”

  “I doubt that I have to,” Roberta replied. “You must have grown tired of Paul’s moodiness every Christmas season. The thing that really irritated me, however, is why you didn’t try to do something about it.”

  “I can’t control the way Paul acts, Mother!”

  “No, of course you can’t. But you don’t even try. You just put up with it, year after year, and the longer it goes on, the more distant the two of you become.”

  “So you just left town? How nice and easy for you!”

  “You’re damned right,” Roberta Evans said. “For once, someone in this family has done something nice and easy.”

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  Paul and Gina had lived apart since the incident on Camano Island, and Paul was nervous about seeing his wife now. He had no idea why she wanted to meet with him, or why the door to the Crystal Cave had been locked this morning when he came in.

  Daniel had warned him not to try to open it. “Trust me,” he had said.

  That was precisely what Paul had decided to do. The murder of Dr. Chase had occurred several years ago and, the way Paul saw it, that moment in time was gone forever, as well as the motivation for it. Further, Daniel had redeemed himself since then in many ways. As far as Paul was concerned, Daniel was welcome to work at Soleil as long as he liked; in fact, Paul could imagine him taking over the business one day.

  He wondered if the young man—who still went by the name of Daniel, although his past was now known—had prepared something in the Crystal Cave as a thank-you for being allowed to stay on. Daniel’s relief was so great when he found that no charges would be brought against him for Chase’s murder, he had thrown himself into his work with renewed fervor.

  There was one person in particular responsible for Daniel’s freedom, and that was Al Duarte. When Paul had talked to him about Daniel’s past, and the things he’d been through, mentioning that he would like to keep him on at Soleil—give him a break, if possible—Al had said simply, “Let me think about it.”

  Since then, it seemed that Al somehow couldn’t remember to do anything about it. In fact, when Paul had mentioned it again just before taking Daniel back on, Al had slapped the side of his head.

  “It must be that bullet to the noggin I got that night,” he’d said. “I just keep forgetting to mention anything about him to the lieutenant. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever remember what you told me about Daniel and all that business with…who was it? A Doctor Something or other?”

  As for Paul, Gina and Rachel, they had made a pact to tell no one. There had been enough suffering all the way around, and they would do nothing to prolong it.

  There was still Angela, of course. And Vicky. But as far as Paul could tell, Angela had told no one, and Vicky had said that it was not her business to be a cop.

  At Vicky’s recommendation, he and Gina hadn’t seen Angela since that night. They knew, however, that she had charmed a well-known Seattle criminal attorney into defending her pro bono—without charge. As expected, he’d advised her to plead mentally incompetent to stand trial. She had been sent to Trowbridge, a psychiatric facility in eastern Washington, for an unspecified period of time. When the doctors there felt she was well enough, she would stand trial. Meanwhile, Vicky would monitor her care and recovery, but had warned Paul and Gina that for Angela there would be no easy fixes; in fact, she might never be well enough to leave Trowbridge.

  Paul’s feelings were mixed about that. There were times when he remembered her as Lacey, and his heart hurt. Other times he remembered only her betrayal and his own. Thinking too much about that was like a steep descent into hell.

  Otherwise, it seemed that the Bradleys’ lives were settling down. Rachel had been under care at Falling Leaf for a month, and she seemed much better now. She was taking summer classes at the University of Washington and living at home. Vicky had assured Paul and Gina the other day that her weekly sessions with Rachel were going well; they could finally relax and stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Paul and Rachel often had lunch together at one of Rachel’s preferred little out-of-the-way places, and as Vicky had suggested, they seldom talked about that night on Camano Island, but rather about the future. He and Rachel had never seemed closer.

  As for Paul’s suspense over the Crystal Cave’s locked door, it ended when Gina breezed into Soleil at noon, carrying with her the scent of fresh air and summer flowers. They’d barely seen each other in the past six months, though they had talked on the phone several times about Rachel. Gina had seemed different to him, the few times he had seen her since that night. One time she was the woma
n he had met in college; another time she was the loving mother who had held the twins in her arms the day they adopted them at Saint Sympatica’s. And yet another time, she was the woman he’d held in his arms so many nights throughout their marriage.

  Until Lacey.

  At first, the memories of Angela as Lacey would overtake him, but little by little they had subsided, until the only memory left, now, was of the old days—Gina in his arms, Gina pressing close to him, Gina becoming one with him.

  She stood next to him now at the door to the Crystal Cave, handing him the key. “Go ahead, open it,” she said, a small uncertain smile in her eyes. “I, uh…sneaked something in last night.”

  Paul turned the key and braced himself, not knowing what to expect. He even half closed his eyes. But then he was inside the room and Gina was standing beside him, their arms touching, and he could barely catch his breath.

  “What do you think?” she asked, as if not really sure she had done the right thing.

  Paul could only stare in wonder. Over the past few months he had put the broken pieces of glass in boxes, then in the basement, as he hadn’t the heart to just throw them away. He’d replaced them with a few new vases, plates and glasses on the shelves along the walls. He hadn’t the usual passion for it, though, and hardly visited the Crystal Cave anymore.

  Now, in the center of the room, stood a huge and breathtakingly beautiful sculpture of colored glass. It didn’t take more than a second or two to realize that it had been put together from many of the pieces of art that had been broken by Angela.

  “Daniel brought that box to me from the basement, and I had a local glass artist design this,” Gina said. “I told her to be sure to incorporate the Gallès and Chihulys, because they were your favorites.”

  Remnants of the Chihuly sea forms were backlit from inside the sculpture, and looked extraordinarily beautiful that way. Fragments of Gallè cameo vases blended with them, in an astounding complementary honor to the originals.