He said he should have broken Richard and me up back in high school.
I offered him a joint.
We drank some more.
He told me how much I resembled my mother.
I told him I wanted to be known as more than a second-rate soprano and first-rate slut.
He slapped me hard across the face.
Then he broke down in my arms.
I don’t want to talk any more about that night.
~•~
For months, I paid no attention to anything that was going on. In the world, around me, or inside me.
Then, in the space of one weekend, I couldn’t zip my jeans.
I panicked. I cried.
Then I calmed myself down with a joint, and considered my options.
My future was shot. But then, after the way I’d neglected my voice and my studies, it probably was anyway.
Another procedure was out of the question. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face that terrible emptiness, those raw scars on the soul. I couldn’t face another voice in the night.
And a little voice kept saying, How bad can one baby be?
It certainly couldn’t be any worse than not having one.
But what could I do? I couldn’t go to Daddy, and no one else was likely to want me in the shape I would shortly be in. I knew myself well enough to know that I couldn’t cope on my own.
And, damn it, I was married. I wasn’t supposed to have to deal with IT alone.
So I went to the law library, looked up the laws on paternity, and made a decision.
I called Richard and asked him to meet me at our favorite restaurant.
I scarcely recognized my ardent young husband when I saw him. He had changed in those months apart; he seemed colder and harder. Although he stood politely for me when I approached the table where he was waiting, he didn’t reach for my hand, he didn’t take me in his arms… he acted as if I was an old girlfriend to whom common courtesy dictated that he be polite. I had fixed myself up very nicely, but clearly I had wasted my time. He wasn’t the least interested in my new hair style, the new fullness of my breasts artfully emphasized by a soft sweater, anything about me.
But he did listen. I told him that I wanted to come home, and I knew that he wanted to believe me. I caught him flicking a look at my breasts, and knew that I still had some power left. I knew him too well; he loved me (still) too much to turn me away. As I talked, as I let a tear slip down my face, I saw him soften, start to forgive, start to tell me that he wanted me home….
But Richard surprised me. He said, very levelly, that we needed to talk about the abortion first.
I had no choice but to tell him about the baby. He was so cold! I trembled the whole time I told him what I had done those months, and I guess, looking back, who could blame him? But, oh, God, if he could have known how I felt – I was falling apart, and I needed him – I needed someone—
And, of course, I didn’t tell him that. I became defensive, and he got angry, and within the space of a minute, we were fighting again. Quietly, because other people were around, but more viciously than we ever had before. Because now Richard’s anger came from that cold spot inside him, and not from the heat he had felt for me. And I – I told him things about himself he had never heard before.
I told him that he was a bloody selfish little brat who had never considered anyone but himself in his entire life. I told him that he wasn’t the crown prince of Ashmore Park to me, he was just another stupid, arrogant male who thought he could mount me on the wall like some god-damned trophy. I told him that, compared to the men I’d seen those months, he’d grown careless and lousy in bed because he was so busy studying and being Mr. Perfect, he never had any time for me… oh, who knows what else I said? I spilled years of resentment in those few minutes. I never knew some of the things I said had actually lived in my heart all those years.
Then, before I could finish telling him off, he stood up. “Give me your address, Diana,” and it was a command from the arrogant male I had just accused him of being.
“What the hell do you care?” I said, and I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. I saw someone look over at me and hoped to God it was no one I had screwed.
“Because,” said Richard with his awful courtesy, “I want to know where to serve the divorce papers.”
Well, that snapped any anger I felt right in half. When I had considered my options, that had not been one of them. For the first time, I got served notice that he was not going to forgive me, that I might truly be stuck with this. He might actually divorce me. I could be divorced, alone, pregnant, with my future completely ruined, at age twenty.
Faced with him putting on his jacket, preparing to leave as I had left him, I made my only smart move to date. I gambled that Richard, still loving me, no matter that he wished he didn’t, would not be proof against the sight of his pregnant wife weeping her eyes out.
I was right, to a point. He left me sitting there sobbing. He told me to let him know if I needed money and, being Richard, couldn’t resist adding the parting shot that he hoped that I wasn’t stoning my poor baby into oblivion. Through my tears, I pictured him wearing his coffee, but somehow, that day, the vision failed to cheer me up.
Between the door and the parking lot, he had second thoughts. He was waiting for me at my car.
“I doubt we can get a divorce right now. I’ll wait until after you have the baby.” That didn’t sound encouraging, but it was better than having to slink home to Daddy. “You’d better come back, Di. I’ll sleep on the sofa. But—”
He asked the one question I didn’t want to answer, and I told him so.
“Too bad, Di.” And he asked it again.
Fine, I thought, you bloody, bloody, bloody self-righteous bastard.
So I told him.
Chapter 16: Knocking on Forbidden Doors
“LAURA.”
Richard’s voice filtered through her dreams, rich and soothing, irresistible and inviting, a lure towards the world of the real. Against her cheek, his hand brushed her, and in her slumber, she sought that warmth, turning towards it eagerly, reaching out when it slipped away. She sensed him nearby, a rustle of fine wool, a trace of after-shave lingering all these hours, even the disconcerting aroma of a recent cigarette. He sat at the edge of the sofa, bending over her, his breath a mere whisper on her face.
I wish I’d stayed asleep.
She barely opened her eyes, just enough to see him, but Richard caught her. “So you’re awake,” and she must have imagined the tenderness. “What on earth is going on? Is Diana here?”
She closed her eyes against the barrage. “Richard,” she mustered up all the normal irritability of being wrenched from a sound sleep, “if you have to wake me up, let me wake up, all right?”
Silence, and then he laughed. “Okay, sleepyhead.”
He reached out to haul her upright, brushed her hair out of her eyes, pulled the lapels of the bathrobe together, and tucked the blanket back around her. As if she were five years old! She loved every moment of the warmth of his hands, the brush of his breath. She rearranged the blanket to suit herself and gave him her most Cat Courtney-like look.
He didn’t notice.
“All right,” he said, settling back against the sofa, “what’s going on?”
“Di’s sick. We were over at Daddy’s, sorting out old clothes—”
“I know,” he said surprisingly. “Julie called me in Charleston and said something was wrong at the house. I came back as soon as I could.”
“Di got sick, so I ran her to the doctor—”
“Sick?” He looked over at the stairs leading up to Diana’s bedroom. “What’s wrong with her?”
She picked one of Meg’s favorites out of the air. “Female problems.”
“Female problems?” Richard sounded amused. He had probably written as many excuses for gym as she had. “Very original, Laura. Now what’s going on?”
He waited only seconds for the an
swer she didn’t have. Then he rose, quick, economical movements, and disappeared into the dark of the stairs, leaving her behind, still wrapped up, nervously waiting for the moment when he saw Diana and realized—
But he didn’t. She heard the door to Diana’s room open softly, but she heard no foot treads across the muffling carpet, no shocked words of discovery. Of course, Diana’s room was shrouded in shadows – she’d drawn the draperies earlier – and Diana herself still cocooned under the blankets, her telltale wrist hidden. Diana’s secret, and her own, remained safe for the time being.
No sounds, no words, nothing filtered down to her. She couldn’t resist the lure of that silence; she kept the blanket around her as she climbed the stairs, warding off imaginary chills and not-so-imaginary alarm, drawn by the mystery of the marriage unfolding above her.
At the top of those stairs, the prince of her childhood had come again to the chamber of his princess.
I’ll look at your face. I’ll look, and then I’ll know. Maybe Francie lied. Maybe it was her idea. Maybe she suggested it, and you were so caught up in your fight with Di that you didn’t take her seriously. No one but me ever did.
Maybe, for one instant, you agreed, and you never dreamed she’d follow through. I’ll believe that, I will believe anything, and I will forgive anything. Just let me look at your face, and I’ll know.
I’ll know if you still love Diana.
The door stood ajar, the hallway empty. She halted in the doorway, and looked at him, and knew.
Oh, dear God, she should never have looked into Pandora’s Box. She was sick with the answer. He’d moved to the bedside, where Diana slept sprawled out on her stomach, her head turned away from him, her hands mercifully shoved up under her pillows. He didn’t touch Diana, reach out his hand to caress her hair, whisper her name; he didn’t have to. He merely stood there, watching her sleep in her large bed, his eyes lifting slightly to travel around this room, as if he’d never seen it before.
She felt that she’d come upon them in the privacy of their marriage chamber.
He noticed her there, still absurdly wrapped in her blanket and bathrobe, and smiled at her. That smile did two things: it told her that he’d not yet tumbled to Diana’s real sickness, and it broke her heart. But she didn’t resist. He beckoned her to his side, and she obeyed, trailing the blanket behind her.
“You’re all in, Laura. Go on home.” His whisper reached her before she reached him. “Diana looks fine. Don’t tire yourself out.”
She hadn’t expected that. “I can’t. The doctor said not to leave her alone.”
Damn! That got his attention. He bent over Diana, no doubt looking for traces of the illness that demanded such constant supervision. “What’s the matter with her?” And this time, his voice warned, he would not be put off. “What the hell’s going on?”
“She got sick….”
“Sick covers a broad range.” The no-nonsense came through even in whispers. “What hap – good God!” His hand shot out and seized her wrist. “What did you do to your hands?”
She’d forgotten. She stared down at her hands, with their bandaged cuts. “Oh, Max scratched me.”
He took her other wrist and turned both her hands up in his. She couldn’t tell what he saw through the shadows of the room; she couldn’t read the look in his eyes. He’d bent his head slightly over her hands, and for one absurd moment, she imagined him lifting one poor abused hand to his mouth, healing her with the warmth of his mouth—
Richard and I are mated for life.
He dropped her hands and raised his head. God! She shuttered herself instantly against his stare. No telling what he’d seen, what longing she might have let loose into her eyes.
He said merely, “No tuna for Max tonight, I hope.”
“Oh, I forgot, I have to feed Max.” She turned towards the bathroom and the clothes she’d left lying in a heap on the floor. “Richard – she can’t be left alone, the doctor was very specific—”
“I’ll take care of her. Go on home.”
“I’ll be back soon, I promise.” She didn’t want him staying here; she couldn’t sustain the fiction of Diana’s illness for long. “Let me get dressed—”
In her search and seizure, she’d forgotten her clothes. She recoiled at the dampness of her blouse and jeans, still sticky with Diana’s blood. Damn it, she should have washed them earlier, and how was she going to get past Richard in blood-stained clothing?
Very quickly, that was how.
He stood by the window when she came out of the dressing room, and for a moment she might have escaped with her secrets intact. But she made the fatal mistake of hesitating.
He stood silhouetted against the dying day, his hands in the pockets of his pants, his head turned away from her so that he stared out through the sheer draperies at the darkening Atlantic. The shadows followed the planes and valleys of his face, so that the light touched only his mouth, his lashes, the tip of his nose. She saw him, for just a moment, not Prince Charming, not her unattainable knight in shining armor, but a man forced into solitude, a stranger in his wife’s bedroom.
And she lost her chance.
She must have made some small sound, a movement that attracted his attention, for he turned around and the moment shattered. He smiled at her, and she compounded her error, letting that smile draw her towards him, into the faint light filtering in from the east.
“She’s still asleep. Take your time. I’ll stay here until – good God!” The shock in his voice pushed her back. “What in the hell – blood—”
“Huh?” was all she came up with, even as she backed off, back into the inviting darkness of the room.
But he followed her, overtook her, his hands closing in on her shoulders to immobilize her even as she shrank back away from him.
“It’s still damp,” and he kept her in place with one hand while his other hand explored the ruined blouse, the soaked jeans. “What happened? And don’t lie about your cat. What did she do?”
“It wasn’t Di,” she managed, too late, as his hands dropped and he walked away.
Diana still slept soundly, so soundly that she never stirred as her husband switched the light on and efficiently swept the covers back from her body. Not the intimacy of a lover, not even the wrath of a justly annoyed husband, but the disinterested movement of a man watching a strange woman in the bed. Diana’s body revealed nothing, and he must have seen all that in an instant, must have seen that Diana had fortuitously hidden part of herself away. He reached under her pillow and pulled out the bandaged wrist.
She saw that first betraying, instinctive recoil.
“It was an accident.” Oh, God, where she found the wherewithal to lie, she didn’t know, somewhere deep inside where she dared not look too closely. “We were moving furniture—”
He turned Diana’s wrist over, studying it, a scientist cataloging a particularly unappealing specimen.
“The mirror broke.” He hadn’t cut in, told her brusquely to stop lying, and he would have, surely, if he hadn’t believed her. “The glass cut both of us, but Di got hurt worse – she needed stitches—”
“Go home, Laura.”
Diana had chilled her; his voice now stripped her. He finished examining Diana’s wrist and laid it down gently; Diana might not have been attached to it, for all that it invaded her slumber. He hesitated a moment before he drew the comforter over her again, maybe studying her with the dispassionate eye of a man finding a strange woman sleeping in his bed, maybe seeing his bride, fragile, lovely, as she had once lain waiting for him.
A bride already destroyed by her own father.
Laura said faintly, “We can’t leave her alone.”
“I won’t.” He didn’t look at her; his eyes never moved from his wife. “Go home.”
She moved vaguely towards the door, the smell of the blood on her blouse assailing her, the means of the escape she had not taken earlier opening up before her. The hallway, the living room, the door
beyond, away from this man trapped on an unlovely carousel with his ice princess – and she’d almost made it to freedom at the front door when he said wearily behind her, “We’ll talk later, Laura. I’ll come as soon as I can find someone to stay with her.”
~•~
Laura had forgotten, and Richard had not reminded her, that her car was still parked miles away in front of her father’s house. The gathering darkness covered her, so that the taxi driver couldn’t see that his bedraggled passenger looked like a fugitive from a mass murder. She tipped him liberally to run the meter in front of Dominic’s house as she closed it up, and he stayed to help her when she ran back upstairs to fetch the boxes of Dominic’s financial papers.
She remained strong until the nightly call came from Texas.
“Mom!” cried Meg in alarm, when Laura reacted to the sound of her voice by bursting into tears. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Mark, come here! Something’s wrong with Mom!”
“It’s nothing,” Laura found herself explaining to Mark, in between sobs. “I felt homesick all of a sudden—”
I almost killed my sister this afternoon.
“I told you so,” said Mark briskly. “Let me know when you’re packed. I’ll send the jet up.”
“No.” Oh, not tonight of all nights! “I need to be here. If I come back now, it’ll be like I couldn’t handle it, and I can, I can, that’s not what—”
“No,” he said with no trace of sympathy, “you’ll be showing the first sign of good sense in months. Give up, Laura. Nothing good ever comes of stirring up the past. Have you seen that man yet?”
“You know what, Mark?” She couldn’t take this anymore. “Not everything that happens around here is Richard’s fault! You don’t even know him, and you have no call, Mark, no call to say anything. I don’t want to hear another word.”
I am defending a man I’ve believed guilty for eleven years.
And if he was guilty, I no longer care.
Only Meg’s reappearance on the conference line shelved what promised to devolve into another tense discussion. Mark left mother and daughter alone, and Laura took comfort in Meg’s chatter about ballet class and algebra tutoring and her running battle with Emma, who had cracked down on Meg’s choice of low-rise jeans. Meg was everyday, real life, sunlight in the darkness Diana had cast, and Laura drew strength from her daughter’s laughter and nonstop patter. Max, too, lent comfort. She had thrown her bloodied clothes in the washer and put on her old bathrobe, and he curled up on her terry-clothed lap and purred loudly against her arm.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 37