An honest response. Laura didn’t think she could have admitted such a thing herself. “It takes one to know one.”
Julie nodded.
“Besides,” Laura added for good measure, “you use a lot of my techniques. I’ll bet you’ve watched the video for ‘Midnight.’ You’ve got my mannerisms down pat.”
Julie sounded a shade rueful. “I guess I should have known better.”
“You probably couldn’t help it.” She could have added that, after a while, playacting became living, and reality and fantasy blurred into one. “It becomes second nature. You don’t even have to think about it, do you, when you’re with your father or Lucy. You just wear it like a skin.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“Well, think.”
A small respite. Julie sank into thought, and Laura left her alone. There was no point in pushing the girl. She’d just endured an unmasking with good grace and little hint of the pain that must have come with the ripping away of her veil.
Maybe she might even equate this moment with the humiliation of not going to the prom. A sensitive, intelligent young man might have divined that Julie Ashmore was, at heart, a fraud.
“You know,” Julie said into the sunlit silence, “they like me this way.”
“They don’t know you any other way.”
“Oh, come off it!” Julie’s eyes flashed. “You haven’t been around. You don’t know what’s going on. Dad likes me like this. He has this idea of a perfect little miss, and if that’s what he wants, then that’s what I’ll be. He’s a great dad and he deserves to have his daughter the way he wants. And Tom and Lucy – well, you ask them, they’ll tell you I’m the perfect niece. I’m polite, and I listen to my elders and I do exactly what they want, and they like me.”
Laura sat stone still.
“Tell me, dear Aunt Laura, you played such a great part, you were so sweet and meek and mild, did they like you for it? I’ve heard them talking about you for years. I remember when your first album came out, and Lucy and I saw it in the record store, and do you know what she thought at first when she saw your poster?” Julie stopped for breath. “Do you know?”
She sensed the volcano of emotion beneath Julie’s anger. Unknowingly, she had tapped into some deep vein of feeling that the girl had gone to great lengths to bury.
“I imagine,” she said quietly, to neutralize her words, “that she thought I was Francie.”
“They all did!” Julie burst out. “That’s how much you fooled them! Lucy – she bought your album, and I remember her playing it over and over that afternoon, and she looked like death. She played that song ‘Francie,’ and she couldn’t stop crying, because she said she’d never known you had such feeling in you, because you’d never shown any to her.”
“Oh, no.” She saw the picture Julie had so brutally drawn: Lucy sitting cross-legged on the floor, tears streaming down her face, mourning the sister who had hidden herself away.
“And my grandfather!” Julie hadn’t finished. “I’ll never forget how he looked!”
“Philip?” That dismayed her.
“Not him! Your father! Lucy made everyone get together for dinner. My father even came, even though he and my grandfather never got along. And no one could figure out what was going on. Lucy made me keep quiet, she said it was a surprise—”
“Oh, no.” She felt what was coming.
“Then after dinner, she put your CD on, ‘Francie.’ And I remember my mother, she started off looking sick, but then she just went blank, and she said something like, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not Francie, that’s not her tessitura.’ And Dad, he just looked tired and sad, and I could tell he wanted to leave. But he didn’t, he was going to stick it out as long as everyone else—”
She had heard enough. “Stop.”
“And then my grandfather.” Did Julie even realize that she was sobbing? “He yelled at Lucy, he told her to stop that song and take the CD and – and break it into a million pieces. And then he slammed out of the room. I don’t really remember what he said, I just remember his face and his yelling—”
“Julie.” She saw the horror of memory descend upon the girl’s shoulders, and she reached out for her. And Julie, after a second of hesitation, leaned against her and wept in wild fury and remembrance.
“His face. I never saw anyone look like that, not ever.”
“I can imagine.” She soothed back a strand of autumn hair.
“I saw him,” Julie wept. “Dad said that he’d had enough, and he told me to get my coat. So I did. And I saw him then. I saw him, Laura, your father that you tricked and deceived, that you wouldn’t even stay and help, that you hated so much you ran away from him and never even spoke to him again!”
“Stop.” She put all the authority of her years into her voice.
“I won’t stop! You listen to me! He was standing out in Lucy’s garden, next to her roses, and I heard him humming under his breath, and his hands were moving like the orchestra was playing—”
“Oh, God—”
“ ‘Francie,’ that’s what he was humming. And he turned around and he saw me, and he beckoned to me to come closer, and do you know what he said? Do you know? He said—”
“No—”
“He said, ‘Laurie wrote that song when she was a little older than you are now, Julie. She wrote it all down in her journal. She must still have that journal.’ And then my father came and – and I had to go with him. But I looked back at my grandfather one more time, I looked at him there, standing in the rose garden, and he had tears in his eyes.”
~•~
At midnight, Julie Ashmore looked into the mirror while she was brushing her hair, and realized that her mask had shattered forever.
She had scrambled wildly to cover herself at dinner with her father. He had asked casually if she’d enjoyed her day with her famous aunt, and he had nearly dropped his coffee when Julie had said without thinking first, “Well, she’s the most brutally honest person I ever met, that’s for sure.”
She had caught herself, as her father’s eyes darkened, and tried desperately to repair the damage. Before he could demand an explanation, she had blurted out the story of Laura’s last year at home, her short romance with Neil Redmond, Dominic’s decree about her future, her job at the bookstore, her theft of Renée Dane’s jewelry. Nothing had worked; Richard’s face had steadily hardened as she talked.
“Are you upset she told me all that?” Julie asked finally. Better he blame Laura than her for talking out of turn.
“No,” said Richard slowly, and Julie watched something flicker behind his eyes. “No, I’m upset that she didn’t say anything to the rest of us.”
She tried hard, all evening, to recapture the sweet, innocent Julie Ashmore who had gone out merrily for a day with Cat Courtney. She tried all the sweet-Julie things that had served her so well for so long. She made her father his favorite cookies. She called Lucy to see how her aunt was feeling. She composed an email to Meg St. Bride, introducing herself, describing her life in the most Pollyannish of terms, spilling sweetness and light onto the screen until she reread it and wanted to throw up.
My God, she thought frantically. What’s happened to me?
Laura Abbott had happened to her.
Damn! She’d done just what the rest of them had always done; she’d underestimated Laura. She should have known better. Hadn’t she always felt, right from the beginning, that anyone who could execute such a disappearance must be smarter and stronger than anyone had ever guessed?
Strength. And Laura saying, with a touch of humor, It takes one to know one.
Julie stared into the etched mirror above her dressing table. She didn’t look different; she was still the same flat-chested, too-tall girl who’d walked out the front door that morning. But inside, she felt light, a weight lifting that she’d never even suspected was there.
Someone had finally seen through the mask, and hadn’t rejected her.
She went to bed. But, at dawn, she awoke with a single thought.
The sketch. Cat Courtney. Laura for Francie.
She opened her door and peered around the landing towards her father’s room, but his door still remained shut. He was a heavy sleeper; she knew from past experience that he wasn’t likely to wake up until his alarm rang. Still, he was due to fly to Charleston early; he might be up at any minute.
Not a second to waste, then.
She found his portfolio still lying on the edge of the desk where Laura had shoved it almost a full day before. Cat Courtney, he’d said, and Julie knew that her father always arranged his work in chronological order, so that he could track the evolution of his ability in time and space. He signed and dated every drawing, so that there could never be any question where it belonged.
Cat Courtney’s first album had gone out six years before, so she knew where to start.
But Cat wasn’t there. Julie flipped through the pages and found nothing except the sketch he had done of Cat’s concert. There it was, nestled between Westminster Abbey and the Crescent at Bath; she recognized the dress Cat Courtney had worn.
By no stretch of the imagination could anyone call this sketch sensuous – at least, not enough to upset Laura. Of the two outfits Cat Courtney had worn that night, Richard Ashmore had chosen to sketch the golden ball gown, not even the very little black dress that Julie remembered so vividly from the second half of the concert.
So what had Laura seen?
She thought back to the previous morning, to the two combatants standing so close together, so that anyone not listening might have thought that they were lovers savoring each other. How old was she then? Laura had asked, and her father had said she was three.
And then he’d said something about another picture soon after, of Julie and her grandmother.
Fine. She knew which picture he meant; it was one of her favorites too. So the picture of Cat Courtney must be sadly out of order. Maybe it had fallen out at some point, and he had stuck it back in without checking to see where it went.
She found it easily enough, right after a sketch of the July 4th when she and her father had gone to Washington. She remembered that trip in every detail, from tagging along in boredom at the Air and Space Museum, to insisting that they climb the Washington Monument and tiring out halfway through. She had been five years old, and her mother had just left them.
And right after that, Cat Courtney in glowing detail.
She carried the sketch over to the western window.
Oh, now she saw. No wonder Laura had been so stunned. What did you do, sketch Francie in some motel room? (Francie and her father in a motel. She’d think about that later.) The woman in the picture indeed looked as if she’d just awakened from a wonderful nap, all heavy eyes and tousled hair and (even in pencil) flushed cheeks. Dreaming eyes that looked upon a lover. And, even though he had drawn only the hint of her shoulders, Julie had the feeling that this woman had lifted welcoming arms towards the man who watched her.
Vivid imagination, indeed.
But still, in space and time, out of place.
Julie turned the picture over, and her heart stopped.
Laura. Ash Marine. 8/6/91.
He had seen Laura then, he must have, to draw her so, looking back at her lover….
But, by then, Laura had been gone for three years.
Chapter 14: Ancient Crimes
IN THE SPACE OF TWO DAYS, Lucy had dissected her, Richard had ambushed her, and Julie had held up an unsparing mirror.
The last thing in the world Laura wanted to do, when she awoke the next morning, was carry out her unspoken promise to Diana.
~•~
“I’d love to see you, Laurie! I’ll be at Daddy’s. Come right over.”
So Laura went back to that house she had hoped never again to enter. Diana’s Mercedes sat in the parkway; the front door stood open onto the veranda; Stravinsky floated through the air. No ghosts greeted her as she approached, no phantoms of green-eyed sisters or the thin, austere man who’d ruled them all, only the Firebird and a strong atmosphere of old history too long packed away.
“Di?” she called cautiously into the house. “Di, you here?”
Footsteps moved overhead, and she ventured in.
“Up here.”
She mounted the stairs reluctantly, still unsure how to say what she had to say. And then she stopped, stunned.
Diana had changed again.
Laura had braced herself so fiercely for the worst that the best left her speechless. The sunlight from the window on the landing caught Diana’s hair like flame; she had tied it back at the nape with a gold clip, and in her plaid blouse and jeans, she looked much younger. Not sick, sad, alternatively giddy and depressed, but friendly, smiling, her complexion clear and lightly blushed—
And holding a broom in her hand.
Diana? Doing housework? Diana, who’d never lifted a finger in all the years they’d lived under the same roof?
How could she discuss Francie’s death with someone cleaning house?
“I’m so glad you came!” Diana exclaimed, apparently unaware that her sister had been struck dumb. She waved a hand towards the master bedroom. “I’ve been cleaning out Daddy’s closet, sorting through clothes, and it’s such boring work.”
Laura recovered herself. “What can I do to help?”
She followed Diana obediently into Dominic’s bedroom, and it struck her again how much her father had clung to the past. If Diana’s room had retained its regal silk, and her own had never been purged of Francie’s country cuteness, Dominic had never bothered to soften the monasticism he’d known before he left the priesthood to run off with his star. No soft blankets, no comfortable reading chair, just drab white sheets and the silver crucifix that had hung on the wall as long as she remembered.
It popped into her head, irreverently, that Dominic must never have entertained here. The bed was too narrow and the atmosphere too conducive to guilt.
“How do you like Edwards Lake?” Diana was energetically dumping Dominic’s clothes into large plastic bags. “I don’t think I’d care to be so far from civilization.”
Lucky her, then, that she didn’t live at Ashmore Park.
“Actually, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.” Laura picked up a shirt to fold. “I don’t mind, honestly. You can’t believe how often I’ve wanted to be all by myself.”
“Country life!” Diana pretended a shudder and reached up onto a shelf. “Not for me, thanks! Oh, Laurie, could you give me a hand – this box must weigh a ton—”
The box had been lodged at the back of the closet, just high enough out of reach to cause the sacrifice of a fingernail each by the time they tore it free from its perch and wrestled it, raining old checks and letters, to the floor. The exertion became Diana; she looked disheveled, less than model-perfect, and utterly lovely as she ruefully examined the remains of her nails. Laura knew perfectly well that she looked like an urchin.
“Have you ever seen so much dust!” Diana sneezed dramatically to make her point. “Lucy’ll be proud of me. She’s been looking high and low for these checks, so she can do the final papers.”
“What papers?”
“On the estate. Oh, speaking of that, she found a bunch of stuff, your birth and baptismal certificates and your old Irish passport in his desk. He had it all with his will. We didn’t find Francie’s, but yours were right there.”
Funny, Laura noted, crawling around on hands and knees picking up stray papers, how even Diana showed no grief for their father. She’d asked the week before why Laura had not come to the funeral and had seemed satisfied with the excuse that she couldn’t get away from rehearsals. Apparently Lucy and Diana had not expected her to pretend sorrow.
“He left a will?” she asked casually, as she sorted out the papers.
Diana’s head jerked up. “Yes, he did. Why do you want to know?”
She hadn’t considered the threat her return might pose
to her sisters’ inheritance. “Oh, no reason,” she said hastily. “I know he didn’t leave me anything, Di, don’t think I’m asking for that, please. I just wondered.”
Diana’s suspicions weren’t so easily allayed. “Are you going to make a claim?”
“No.” She wanted nothing of Dominic’s. “Don’t give that another thought.”
She might have added more, but her thoughts, her rush to reassure Diana, died as soon as she looked at the check stub in her hand.
SBFA, read the logo, with an address at the St. Bride Building in Plano, and a phone number she knew as well as her own. St. Bride Family Administration, the group of accountants and assistants who existed to make the St. Brides’ lives easier. They paid Emma’s bills, administered Cam’s estate, addressed Mark’s Christmas cards, and prepared Cat Courtney’s income tax return. They sent reminders for dental appointments, made travel arrangements, and renewed license plates. She forgot Diana, chattering away, only so much noise in the background.
“I’m glad you feel that way. Daddy left me most everything, and to be honest, I need it more than you do—”
Payable to Dominic Abbott on April 1, 1995, for five thousand dollars.
“I’ve got the house, and Lucy got his royalties, such as they are. We’ve been trying to figure out his accounts since he died. He has the strangest royalties. They’re every month, even amounts, not like any royalties I’ve ever seen—”
Not so strange. Authorized by CDSB. Cameron David St. Bride. Charged to his account.
“But, Laurie,” Diana’s voice turned warm, impossible to resist even as the check trembled in Laura’s hand, “I don’t want you to feel left out. Look, there’s a ton of old clothes in the attic—”
And in the memo field, the notation monthly stipend: Dominic Abbott.
“—And some of them must be Mama’s. If you see something you want—”
Signed by Mark St. Bride, Comptroller.
And the stub underneath, from SBFA, dated a month later. And the next stub, the next month—
“Laurie?” Diana’s fingers snapped in front of her eyes.
“Sorry.” She scarcely knew what she was apologizing for. She bent over quickly to hide the shock in her eyes before Diana noticed anything amiss, and tucked the stubs into the middle of the papers in the box. “So there’s still stuff in the attic?”
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 31