Any gift she’d had for laughter had died with Francie.
And so here – on Francie’s deathbed, scene of who only knew what pain and terror in those last terrible minutes – Laura forgot Francie’s betrayal, her selfish disregard of everything blocking her destruction of Diana (and if that had included Laura’s unseen child, what of it?). She cast away the anger and shame she had carried across the years that separated her from Francie’s death. She let the waters wash over her toes and watched the gulls screeching overhead, and she thought that she would forgive Francie anything, if only she could hear her twin laugh again.
Later, she did not remember falling asleep.
The rush of the waters rocked her to sleep, and the sun laid its healing cover over her. She slept away her grief, and when she awoke, the afternoon had begun to wane.
She had buried her dead. Francie and her unknown baby both – they had deserved her mourning, and she had finally given it. She stopped at her car, brushed the sand off as best she could, and looked back towards the bay in farewell.
I will never come here again.
Chapter 8: Three Little Maids Are We
LUCY MAITLAND HAD NEVER STOPPED looking for her missing sisters. A waste of time, her husband told her after it became apparent that they weren’t to be found. “Give it up, don’t break your heart over this,” Tom advised. “They’ll turn up when they feel like it.”
Her brother-in-law counseled her to save her energy and money. All the ads in the world wouldn’t help, Richard said, Laura would never come back.
Her sister Diana cut to the heart of the matter. Francie, she announced, had damn well better not return, not while she was still drawing breath.
But still Lucy searched. Newspaper and Internet ads, news alerts, calls to Cat Courtney’s management, a PI once when her Christmas bonus permitted – anything that might work, anything that might bring her sisters home again.
Because, no matter what, they were still a family. She believed that, she had taken on the responsibility of keeping the family together, she had willingly served as its core all these years. And she knew that, until she had all her sisters back, the family would never be complete.
So why, on a morning when she should have been ecstatic, when half of her search had come to an end – why did she feel nothing so much as hurt and resentful and not really sure that she wanted her prodigal sister back after all?
~•~
She slammed down the phone and glared at her brother-in-law. “Where is she?”
“How would I know?” Richard snapped back. “I’m not her keeper.”
“Well, you saw her last.” Lucy buried her face in her hands for a moment and told her stomach to settle down. She didn’t need this excitement; nausea had haunted her all morning, and Richard’s terrible mood only made it worse. “Didn’t she say anything? Shopping, swimming, anything?”
“Not a thing.” Richard leaned back. She peeked through her fingers and noticed that, although his voice had gentled, his expression seemed just as moody. “Maybe she went to visit some old friends.”
“I don’t remember that she had any friends,” said Lucy. “Of course, we were away at school those last years, but she always seemed to be such a loner. Did she mention anyone that she might want to look up, places to visit for old time’s sake?”
He shook his head. A gauzy curtain of dust motes floating on the plane of sunlight softened the lines of exhaustion around his eyes; Lucy thought that he had not slept well and noticed, irrelevantly, that he needed a haircut. “She really didn’t say much. She was fairly close-mouthed about her plans—” this from the man who posted No Trespassing signs all over his personal life— “except that she’s staying at Edwards Lake for a couple of months. Something about needing privacy to write some songs.”
You’re lying through your teeth.
That bothered her. He usually told her everything (well, almost everything – he maintained an admirable if maddening silence about the women inhabiting the fringes of his life). That he chose to cast a fine reticent shade over the previous evening drew her suspicions. Something had disturbed Richard’s generally even temperament; something had dampened the enthusiasm she’d thought he’d show over Laura’s return.
She realized, with a start, that he had not mentioned Francie.
Even as she formed the question, he scraped back the chair. “Good luck, Luce. I’ve got to run.”
“You’re leaving?” She hadn’t counted on this.
He touched her cheek. “I’m in Charleston next week. I need to get some work done. You don’t want me here anyway. The Abbott girls need to spend some time together without the rest of us.”
A convenient excuse, but he was right. Time enough for a grand family reunion when Laura showed up – if she showed up – and she and Diana had time to absorb this shock to their lives. Lucy pretended reluctance as she gave in. “Okay. Call me later, will you? And, Richard – you never said—”
“Hmmm?” He shrugged on his leather jacket.
She pondered how to ask. He’d proved himself a slippery customer when it came to eluding subjects he didn’t want to discuss. “Did Francie come with her?”
His eyes shuttered instantly. “No.”
He meant that cool retreat to intimidate. Lucy was made of stronger stuff. “So what did she say?”
“Ask her. Maybe she’ll tell you the truth.”
Lord! No mistaking the bitterness now. She certainly would ask. “Have you told Di yet?”
“No,” he said briefly. “She must have left early. I tried calling, and I went by her place before I came over here.”
Oh, no. No use making excuses. He knew that Diana was a late sleeper, that if she had deserted her bed at that hour, she must be sleeping in someone else’s.
“I didn’t leave a message.” He looked at her directly. “This isn’t something to hear on voice mail. And I’m out of pocket until evening, so—”
“I’ll tell her.” The less Richard and Diana had to deal with each other, the better. “She’s on tonight, so she’ll be in by four.”
“Thanks.” He gave her an unexpected hug. “Sorry I’ve been such a grouch, Luce. I’ve got a lot on my mind, and Diana being missing in action this morning didn’t help. Plus—”
She accepted his hesitation, because she had fears of her own, and she thought she understood his. “Plus, this changes everything. I don’t know if I’m ready. Are you?”
“Ready has nothing to do with it.” She sensed him stepping away mentally, even as he headed out. “Laura picked a bad time to come home, but then she didn’t consult us. Considering what happened to her, she didn’t need to.”
A sad commentary, thought Lucy, shutting the door, how little they had known Laura, how cheaply they had valued her, that her return loomed mostly as an inconvenience. Small wonder that she had so easily walked away. She must have vanished in spirit long before she vanished in body.
But not this time, thought Lucy. When I find you, you’re staying put.
She still could not fathom Richard’s anger (anger? yes, he had been angry), but she was honest enough to admit that Laura’s return disturbed her. She cherished being the family center. It was her right. She had kept the family together, and that gave her a certain dominance that she did not want to yield. Laura was no longer the mouse to do as she was told; she might well upset the balance of power.
Lucy retrieved her family scrapbook. Tom often joked that they would have to pry it from her on her deathbed, that she would still be rearranging the pictures and press clippings that documented the Abbott family. All fine and good for him to say! He came from a large, secure family with parents married for over forty years and siblings who all came home for Christmas. The Maitlands worked, and Lucy, whose mother had deserted her, whose father had left her stashed with the Ashmores so that he could junket around Europe with another man’s wife, whose sisters had walked away without a backward glance, valued the genuine love so lackin
g in her own family. The Abbotts had not worked. She saw the debris in Diana’s glazed eyes, in Julie’s immaturity, in the loneliness of Richard’s heart, in the missing places at Thanksgiving dinner – but that was no reason to pretend that the Abbotts had never existed.
She flipped over a few pages to a picture of the adult Laura. She had one photo among all the clippings, sent to her in response to one of her letters to Laura’s record company. (“Miss Courtney appreciates your interest and support of her music and hopes that you will enjoy her new album, Waterfalls, available in record stores everywhere.”) She’d nearly torn it up in anger, and one corner was still rumpled from its sojourn in the waste basket before she’d rescued it.
Cat Courtney. No doubt ever that Cat was Laura, not Francie in some elaborate charade. That voice identified her anywhere, low, huskier now, undeniably Laura’s. Other physical distinctions marked her too, things only her family would notice. The way she parted her hair, Diana thought. The needy look in those eyes, the legacy of never enough attention, Lucy said. Her damned ungrateful silence, snapped Dominic, nicely overlooking that his pet Francie had remained just as silent.
I don’t know you, Lucy thought. I used to – and she flipped hastily back to a picture of the younger Laura, excited at wearing her first long dress at Diana’s wedding. I didn’t pay as much attention to you as I should have, and I’m sorry about that, I’m so sorry. You were still at home, and I had to stay away so he wouldn’t suck me into that whole dark sickness of his. And I left you there with Francie, and of course you got the short end of the stick.
I don’t know you now. I’ve wanted to see you for so long, and now you’re here, and I don’t know what to say to you. You sit in that photo, in all that mist and mystery, and you have nothing to do with the Laura I knew. And I don’t know if I want you back. I don’t want you disturbing everything I’ve worked for. I can take care of Di, now that Dominic’s gone. Richard’s way past everything that happened, and Julie is almost grown. They don’t need you.
But you need us, and, oh, I need you, said Lucy Maitland silently. You left such a hole in my heart. I’m damned if you’re walking away from me again.
She spent the afternoon moodily staring out the window, waiting for vendor deliveries, waiting for Diana to show up with some implausible excuse, waiting for Laura so that she could wring her neck.
Julie called, wanting to share her excitement. Funny, thought Lucy, listening to her niece bubble on, paging through her memories, but Laura might find that only Julie truly welcomed her back into the fold. Laura had disappeared shortly after Julie’s second birthday, so Julie had no real memories of the young Laura; she knew only the glamor and mystery of Cat Courtney. The years of Laura’s silence had never hurt or infuriated or drained her.
Probably because only Julie, of all of them, suffered no guilt.
“The only strange thing,” Julie babbled on, and Lucy wrenched her attention back to her niece. “I asked Dad about inviting her over for dinner – I mean, she’s going to live near us, so I thought it might be a – a welcoming thing to do.”
“It would,” concurred Lucy, and stopped at a photo of Laura Abbott on the steps of Ashmore Magna at fourteen, gazing adoringly at her oblivious brother-in-law. “She has a daughter a few years younger than you. She’d probably enjoy talking with you.”
“I don’t think he wants to,” said Julie. “He got really quiet and said that he’d have to check, he wasn’t sure she would be available. But of course she will be, that’s the whole point of her coming home, isn’t it, to see all of us? Do you think it’s because of 9/11? What should we say to her about that? Do you think she’s still in mourning?”
“I’d wait for her to bring the subject up,” said Lucy, who had no intention of waiting. “People do get over things, even as terrible as that. Your dad said she seemed to be doing pretty well.”
“Well,” said Julie, going into confidante mode, “it’s almost like he doesn’t want to see her again. What do you think that’s all about? I always thought they were friends, but then, I remember, I really had to pester him in London to get him to go backstage.”
Lucy murmured something soothing and noncommittal, she wasn’t sure what the moment the words left her mouth, but mentally, she started rearranging the jigsaw pieces. So Richard didn’t want to see Laura. She cast her mind back over their talk that morning, and in retrospect, his reticence loomed larger, darker, louder in its silence. What had happened the night before that Richard wanted to conceal?
She disentangled herself from the call. “Forget your father, Julie. I promise you’ll get to meet her.” Oh, famous last words, you can’t even find her yourself.
The bartender intruded upon her thoughts; deliveries and invoices demanded her attention. The afternoon had worn away; the staff would be trooping in soon, and she hadn’t accomplished anything on her to-do list.
She blamed that, with great pleasure, on Laura.
And where the hell was Diana?
~•~
“Ms. Maitland?” The bartender stuck his head around the door into the middle of a discussion with a supplier. “Your sister’s here for you.”
“Fine,” said Lucy absently, jotting down notes and figures. “Tell her I’m on my way out. No, no, tell her to get back here, she needs to take care of this.”
He disappeared, and Lucy turned back to wrangling a better net-10 discount. She enjoyed this; she was an excellent negotiator, and she liked the give-and-take of bargaining. Diana hated it, so Lucy wasn’t surprised that her sister dragged her feet joining them. No doubt Diana, Scotch in hand, was rehearsing an elaborate excuse to explain away her tardiness. Lucy had grown used to such stories; she’d listened to Diana lying her way out of trouble most of her life. So she was caught unawares when the supplier, in the midst of a calculation, looked beyond her shoulder and froze silent.
She knew, she knew from the first flare of consternation in the man’s eyes, and for a moment she fought turning around. Anyone else, she thought wildly, she wasn’t ready for this, she didn’t know what to say, what could she say, what should she do—
“Lucy?” And there was no hiding now from the lilt of that voice, rich in all its history and longing and fear. Lucy drew in a shuddering breath and turned around.
Her first thought, absurdly, was that this was not Laura at all, but Francie.
Oh, Laura had changed. She cataloged all the changes in those first few seconds: Laura was taller now, a little curvier, infinitely more polished. Her perfectly tailored slacks were Bond Street chic, her blouse must have cost a thousand dollars, her shoes and shoulder bag whispered that she never consulted a budget. And her hair – Lucy frankly stared. Shorter than she’d expected, but beautifully cut and as far from the ponytail of old as she could imagine.
And Laura, unnervingly, returned her silence.
“Ms. Maitland?” the rep reminded her.
“I’m sorry. Excuse us, please,” said Lucy, without breaking the stare-down, and decisively shoved her errant sister out into the hall.
Her action broke the spell. She shut the door quickly and whipped around to see Laura wincing.
“You have a hell of a nerve showing up here.” She marveled at the icy control of her voice; she felt anything but cold. Such a cauldron of emotions boiled inside – rage, shock, heartsick relief that Laura had not run away again – that she felt herself teetering on the edge of explosion. Laura’s eyes widened at her tone, but she did not retreat in the face of her fury. Lucy, perversely, was glad of that.
“Yes.” Laura did not flinch. “I do have a hell of a nerve.”
That cool agreement knocked the wind out of Lucy’s sails. She preferred a fight. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling around all day, looking for you.”
“I’m sorry.” Laura’s voice offered conciliation. “I went out to the Eastern Shore, and I got lost coming back—”
“Not that,” Lucy said furiously. “Although you could have called, damn i
t, Richard said he gave you the number.” Her voice slipped into a tremble and betrayed her. “Damn you, Laurie, I’ve been worried sick about you! I looked for you! I wanted to know how you were, I wanted to make sure you were safe and happy, and you never even wrote me – or called me – or acted like you remembered us – you never answered Richard’s note – I couldn’t believe it when he told me—”
She caught her breath, and then Laura moved towards her, and she felt her sister’s arms closing around her, hugging her in closely. Her resistance lasted a second, maybe two; she was starved for this warmth, she treasured the tears that dropped onto her shoulder. Lucy clung to her fiercely. “Damn it, baby, I missed you! Don’t you even think of running away again! Ever!”
“Oh, Lucy,” and Laura laughed shakily, tears and laughter bubbling up together. “I don’t think I’d dare.”
~•~
“So why did you go to Richard first, brat?”
“I didn’t. He found me.” Laura leaned towards the mirror and attempted to repair her face. “Don’t ask how, either. I’m not sure myself.”
“A secret, huh?” The mirror reflected Lucy’s speculative glance at her. “He’s playing mystery man about last night. What happened?”
Thank heavens. That had worried her, not knowing what Richard might have told her sisters. She ducked her head and pretended to search for a comb. “Nothing. We talked for a while, then he had to leave to pick Julie up from babysitting.” Time to change the subject. “I’m really thirsty. Can we get something to drink?”
“Sure.” Lucy opened the door to the dressing room. “We have a whole bar at your command.”
Laura asked for a Perrier, and what might have been approval and might have been relief flashed across her sister’s face before Lucy waved her over to a side table and called out an order to the bartender. Coming here to the club might not have been the wisest thing to do. The room that had first appeared deserted, empty enough for a reunion that promised pain at worst and awkwardness at best, now seemed filled with people. Word had gotten around quickly that the missing Cat Courtney had walked in the door.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 16