He lifted his gaze from the floor, and I couldn’t help it. I recoiled at the sheer fury in his eyes. He rose to his feet, and I swallowed hard, my heart beating so fast that I thought he had to notice.
He picked up my shirt and dropped it on my still outstretched hand. “Put that on.”
The flatness of his voice said that he would not brook any defiance. The shirt was inside-out. I straightened it, my fingers shaking, and pulled it hastily over my head. As soft as the cotton was, it scraped over my well-used nipples, still erect from the pull of his mouth, and I thought I was going to jump out of my skin.
He watched me as I smoothed the shirt down. I remained kneeling; I couldn’t have stood up if my life depended on it.
“Richard,” I whispered. “Richard, please.”
Oh, God, it had come down to this. I was going to have to beg. This was his revenge for what I’d done. Francie hadn’t been the ultimate humiliation. He was going to make me beg for him.
But all wasn’t lost yet. I could see that he was still aroused. The Standing Stone of Ireland hadn’t gotten the message that I was toast.
“What are you up to, Diana?” he said, and his voice sounded strange. He was having to fight all his instincts, which were telling him to lay me right down, strip everything off my body, and make love to me until we forgot everything that had happened.
“I told you,” I said. “I want us to have a baby. I want us—” I had to swallow hard. “I want us to be married again.”
“This isn’t a marriage,” Richard said roughly. “A child deserves better than that – to be brought into the world under circumstances like these.”
Oh, God, was he going to go all idealistic on me? “Richard,” I said, and I tried to sound sweet and reasonable, “the circumstances could be better, but don’t you see? Making love will help make them better! If we wait for the perfect time, it’ll never get here.”
I put my hand on the sofa and bore down hard on the cushion to help myself stand up. I felt wobbly and shaky. He was standing absolutely still, watching me as if I were a dangerous chemical that might blow up in his face at any second.
I reached out for his arm and stopped, stunned, at the look in his eyes that said that it wasn’t worth my life to touch him.
“This is what you wanted,” I said, and my voice was starting to sound desperate. All I could see were more years of lonely days and empty nights ahead of me. “When we were growing up, when we were dating, that’s what I always heard from you, how someday we’d live here at Ashmore Park, and you’d be an architect, and I’d be your wife, and we’d have children. We’d be a family. You’ve got it, Richard. You wanted me to be your wife, the mother of your children. Well, now I want that too.”
He said nothing, but he never took his eyes from me.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” I said. “You want children, I’ll spend the next ten years barefoot and pregnant.” What a hideous thought. I noticed that his eyes immediately dropped to my bare feet and the little gold chain gleaming seductively around my ankle. “You want me to play the part of Mrs. Richard Ashmore, I’ll play it to the hilt, I’ll be the best architect’s wife you ever saw. You want me—” I had a sudden inspired idea— “you want me to forgive you for Francie, I forgive you. That’s all in the past, it’s all behind us. I just want the future with you.”
There. That ought to appeal to him. Lucy said he was all into forgiveness these days.
“Well, well, what a generous offer,” my husband said softly. “You’ll forgive me. You’ll play the part of Mrs. Richard Ashmore – leaving aside the fact that it isn’t a part, you are Mrs. Richard Ashmore, you’ve had seven years to get used to that. And, in the spirit of this newfound resolve of yours, you’ll let me take you to bed and get you with child – do I have that right?”
I heard the stiletto in his voice, but he had me pinned to the spot with his gaze. I nodded slowly, and I can’t remember when I have ever been so afraid. Even finding Daddy dying at the piano doesn’t compare to that moment.
“And how long will your resolve last, Diana?” he said. “Till your father comes home and crooks his little finger? How long would it take you then to scrape my child away?”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. I felt as if he had landed a chop right across my throat. “I wouldn’t,” I whispered, “I wouldn’t—”
“Sure you would, Diana,” he said, “it’ll be even easier the second time around.”
So much noise was crowding my mind, I had to grope for words. “I wouldn’t – I couldn’t – believe me, Richard, once was enough, I wouldn’t—”
“You know what I’ve always wondered? Why didn’t you get rid of Julie too? Maybe you were so stoned that year, you didn’t pay attention to anything that was going on, even if it was inside you – I’m betting you lost count of the weeks, and then it was too late. So you ran home to me, hoping I’d get you out of the mess you’d gotten yourself into.”
That was so close to the truth that I couldn’t clear the noise to answer him.
“I’m grateful,” he said, “that you can’t count. Julie is the treasure of my heart, and God knows she deserves better than the mother she got. She deserves more than someone who sleeps away half the day because she’s hung over from the night before.”
His voice was so brutal that I was starting to get mad.
“I don’t trust you, I won’t trust you again. You yelled at me once that you hated the idea of having a child with me, that you’d never let me get you pregnant again. And you know what, Diana? I believe you. Oh, you might sing a brave song right now, you’d go to bed with me tonight, and I’m sure it would be spectacular, because you were always spectacular in bed. But I also believe that, in a few months, when Dominic comes back and you’re feeling sick and out of sorts and you’re not liking what pregnancy is doing to your pretty body, you’ll abort this child just as easily as you did the first one.”
His eyes rested on me with a cool hardness.
“So I’m declining your offer. To put it in words that you’ll understand, I do not wish to have a child with you. I won’t take the chance that I will ever get you pregnant again. I want children, true. But I’ll pick a mother for them who wants them too, and not just as an excuse to get laid.”
And he turned on his heel, and started to walk over to his desk.
I stood there, utterly humiliated, feeling sicker than I had felt in my whole life. I saw him turn his briefcase towards him, saw him popping the locks with those long fingers that had explored me so gently just a few minutes before, saw him reach for a couple of folders. I didn’t even feel my feet moving, my mind didn’t say to my legs to walk over to him, to fight for him, but somehow I crossed the room.
I stood beside him, and he glanced over at me impatiently, because the great Richard Ashmore had said his piece, he’d put me once again in my place in the dust, and to him, that was that. I had no rights. I had no claim on a happy life. I was – I was nothing to him.
“I thought you were all into God these days,” I said. “All into being a good Christian and grace and mercy and all that. Doesn’t the Bible say—” I groped for a hazy memory of a long-ago Gospel reading at Mass, do unto others, seventy times seven, whatever— “aren’t you supposed to forgive others if you want to be forgiven yourself?”
He didn’t like that one bit, I could tell, although a sanctimonious soul like his should have loved being able to dispense forgiveness to his harlot wife.
“It also says something about not sleeping with your father,” said Richard, and deliberately started reading the paper in his hand.
I slapped it out of his hand.
“It only happened that once, you self-righteous bastard, so don’t you get on your high horse with me! If you’d paid any attention to me, maybe nothing would have ever happened. I got drunk, I made a mistake. It’s not like I went out of my way to be with him. You don’t do one damn thing to be a decent husband. If you’re so into your Bible these days, the
n maybe you’ll remember that you are bound by God to act like a husband, and that includes that thing Peter said about it’s better not to burn—”
“Paul.”
“Whatever! And while we’re on the subject of incest, let’s see what it says about fucking your wife’s sister—”
“It just says not to marry her while you’re alive.”
I saw it in his eyes. Don’t tempt me.
“Well, I’ll bet it says plenty about adultery, Richard Ashmore! As I recall, David paid through the nose for fooling around with his little floozy, and I could take you to the cleaners and take Julie with me! After all, you really don’t have any claim on her at all! You’re damn lucky I haven’t told your parents the truth about Francie—”
“And you’re damn lucky I don’t make a bigger deal out of your drinking,” Richard interrupted. “You’re damn lucky I haven’t taken your car keys away from you, although I’m about to, because I do not want you driving Julie anywhere. Our insurance is going through the roof. Let’s see, that latest dent makes how many in the last three months? Boy, you are shaking, aren’t you, Diana? You must need a drink pretty damn bad right now. You’re well on your way to becoming a raging alcoholic, darling. Better watch out – you’ll ruin your looks if you aren’t careful.” He looked at my face with a careful, examining contempt. “It’s already starting to show – you’re getting hard lines around the mouth, Diana, you’re going to start looking a hell of a lot older soon, you’ll be able to play Medea—”
I smashed his face in.
He moved in that last microsecond, so my fist plowed up across his jaw into his cheekbone instead of his nose. I caught the edge of his glasses and shattered them, and my engagement ring sliced across his jaw line and cut his face open.
We stood there for a couple of disoriented seconds – I don’t know who was more shocked, him or me. He had a look in his eyes of horror, and I think it was horror at how far he had gone, horror that he had goaded me into this. I don’t know what was on my face. I hope to God it wasn’t a smile.
Slowly, he took off his shattered glasses and put them down carefully on his desk. He put his hand to his face when I had cut him, and looked at the blood that came away on his fingers. Moving like someone in a dream, he reached over to a box of tissues, pulled one out, and lifted it to the cut.
He was going to have a hell of a bruise, maybe even worse than Francie’s. I’d always regretted that I didn’t get to see the bruise grow nice and dark on her face.
He said quietly, “Don’t ever do that again, Diana.”
I stepped up to him deliberately, and now I did smile. I felt what an evil smile it was.
And I spat right in his face.
He stared at me hard, not moving, and I felt my smile fade. I felt the adrenaline that had so wildly pumped through me start to drain, leaving me sick and afraid. I saw my dreams and my future, the hopes I’d had, all in tatters.
He wiped the spittle from his face and said, “What an unspeakable bitch you are.”
Then he walked past me over to the staircase. A few seconds later, I heard his bedroom door shut upstairs, and I heard running water.
I stood by his desk, I don’t know how long I stood there. Except for the sounds coming from his room, the house was completely silent. No Julie singing her little songs, no Richard playing a CD while he worked, nothing. It was like my life stretched all out before me, devoid of music and laughter, devoid of happiness.
I looked around the room I had worked on so carefully. I saw the walls I had painted, the crown moldings I had installed, the furniture I had rescued and made lovely and comfortable. I had worked so hard on this house, and for all my effort, I had failed to make a home. I had failed to make a family.
Without any hurry, I walked over to the hall mirror and took stock. I was mussed up – his hands had made short work of my hair earlier, there on the sofa. My lips still had that kissed look to them; my cheeks were bright red. And – I was imagining things – I saw a couple of tight lines down around my mouth.
I rubbed at a small crease and deliberately relaxed my mouth until the line faded into nothingness. Then I went back to his desk, picked up his unfinished glass of Merlot, and upended it in his briefcase.
I went to my bedroom and pulled the bag of weed from underneath the bras in my lingerie drawer. I found the three-quarters full bottle of Jack Daniels that I had stashed under the bed. I helped myself to a couple of lines from the bag in my jewelry case. Then I picked up my shoulder bag and my keys. I was not going to spend the night in my lonely bed, not tonight.
Still no Richard downstairs. I went over to his desk to survey the damage and saw, to my satisfaction, that the Merlot had soaked into the leather and completely ruined the contents. The bruise on his face would heal, but this damage was permanent – like the damage he’d done to me the weekend of the Valentine’s Day dance, like the damage I’d done a month later at the clinic. Like the damage that had started the day I’d lied to him, told him I’d been with Daddy, told him that Julie was not his child.
God, what a relief it is, to finally say it. I can’t even keep my lies straight anymore. I’m surprised I ever could.
The truth is a lot easier.
I remember standing there, looking down at his ruined briefcase, listening for – what? Did I hope that he would come out, confront me once again? But he wouldn’t. Richard had gone too far, and I suspected maliciously that he was confronting himself about that right then. I suspected that he had shaken himself down to his sinless soul.
I’d finally smashed his face in. I wished I found it more satisfying.
The Merlot had soaked into a pack of cigarettes in the briefcase. I picked the pack up, shook off the excess drops, and dropped it and his engraved lighter into my shoulder bag. I’d given him that lighter for Christmas the year before. Well, I was taking it back. I was taking everything back.
I went out through the kitchen through the utility room, and opened the door to the garage. I was just opening the door to my car when I looked across, and I saw the room on the other side of the garage, the room that would have made such a perfect music room for me, the room that he had taken over for his stupid model airplanes.
In the years we’d been back in Williamsburg, he had never asked me if I missed my piano.
I went into the room. I hadn’t been in there in years; I usually passed by without a second thought as I brought groceries in the house. But now I entered, and I looked. Where I would have hung delicate, feminine artwork, he had tacked schematics. When I would have placed flower arrangements, he had put workbenches that held model airplanes in all stages of construction. A laptop computer sat open on the nearest workbench, its screen dark. And, in the middle of the room, where my piano should have been, stood a doll house.
Except that it wasn’t a doll house. It was a model of the remodeled Folly that opened from the front – very clever – and showed the interior that he had designed. I looked at it, and around it, and in it. It was very grand – more than we could afford, but perhaps Philip was going to dispense money from the Great Lakes shipping trust. The whole house wrapped around a great room that opened up three stories. It had rooms labeled dining room, kitchen, Julie’s room, master suite, nursery.
Nothing for Diana’s room.
I wasn’t to occupy that master suite. I wasn’t to help fill that nursery.
He must have been working on this at night. He must not be able to sleep any more than I could.
I don’t know how long I stared at it.
Then I saw a toolkit lying beside the model, the toolkit that he had used to assemble this little masterpiece.
I picked up a hammer.
I smashed the computer screen. I smashed every one of the model airplanes, from the little biplane that he had built as a flight-dazzled six-year-old to the five-foot wing he was currently constructing. And then I smashed the model to bits. That took the longest, and made the most noise, and brought him out to t
he garage just as I had reduced it to rubble.
I threw the hammer to the ground and walked past him as he stood there, frozen in shock.
~•~
I don’t know what I intended when I left Ashmore Park, but I was on a high. I felt alive again; I felt more like Diana than I had felt in years.
I drove over to Virginia Beach because it was sufficiently far away from Williamsburg that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I found a club, thought it was too tame, and found another. This time, I had a blast.
I was twenty-five years old, in my prime, and I’d never looked better in my life. I met a lot of men willing to buy me drinks. I met even more who asked me outside to roll a few and lie on the beach and sink into the oblivion of the night. I found one who gave me what I hadn’t known with my husband for six long years… that surfeit of sensation and relaxation that came with a really good orgasm.
What happened, and how many times it happened, I don’t really know. I was stoned and drunk, and I did not care.
~•~
I sobered up on Sunday afternoon, and I went home to confront my destiny.
My head ached, and I felt drained, and I was busy counting days because I suspected, uneasily, that I’d had a lot of sex at the wrong time of the month. (That, of course, being the reason I’d picked then to make my approach to Richard.)
I tried to unlock the front door, and my keys didn’t work. I scarcely had time to work it out in my head – he’d changed the locks – when who should open the door, but Mr. Perfect himself.
“You’re not coming in, Diana,” he said, and came outside, closing the door behind him. He had one hell of a bruise and stitches on his face where I’d cut him.
I had no idea what to say to him. I had no idea where to start apologizing for my appalling behavior, and I couldn’t believe he’d actually locked me out of my own home.
At least, he hadn’t thrown all my stuff out on the lawn.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about apologizing.
Where the hell have you been….
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 58