The Escape Artist

by Diane Chamberlain

  Susanna had married Jim the summer before Linc's release from prison, and she'd wanted Linc and Jim to get to know one another. She had visions of the three of them doing things together. Linc would need friends, she told Jim. He'd need family. But Jim was not only cool to the idea, he was dead set against it.

  "I don't want an ex-con as my best buddy," he told her. "I'm going for a law degree. I need to keep clean."

  There was no way she could cut off her own long-standing friendship with her former neighbor, though, and she asked Jim if he would mind her seeing Linc every once in awhile. She could visit him at Geri's, she suggested, or go out to dinner with him some night when Jim had class. Jim forbade it, flat out, and she was too afraid of fighting with him to try to negotiate a compromise. So she saw Linc on the sly. She nurtured that old friendship. She encouraged Linc when he was looking for a job in radio, listened to the trials and tribulations of his relationships with other women, and called him when she was troubled about something and Jim was not around to listen. It had been a mistake, though, trying to keep that relationship a secret from Jim, and when Jim finally realized she was seeing Linc, he assumed there was more between them than friendship. "Your father was right!" he'd yelled at her one night, after spotting them together in a restaurant. "You've probably been fucking him since you were fifteen!"

  She'd tried to reassure him that her relationship with Linc was as pure and platonic as that of a brother and sister. Linc even called Jim to talk to him about it, but Jim could not be reasoned with. She knew later that reason was not what Jim was after. He was looking for an excuse to leave their marriage.

  The beginning of the end came when she attended a bank conference in Denver. She checked into the hotel on a Friday evening, locked herself in her room, and pulled out a home pregnancy test she'd bought earlier that day. Her period was ten days late, and she was hopeful and excited. She'd said nothing to Jim about it, in case she was wrong, but she was not surprised when the test bore out her suspicions.

  She thought of calling Jim, but decided against it. She wanted to celebrate with him by her side, not alone in a hotel room an hour from home. Besides, if it hadn't been for the conference, this weekend would have been their first together in their new house. She could zip home, spend the night with her husband, and return to Denver before the meetings began in the morning. Within a few minutes of making that decision, she was on the road back to Boulder.

  There was a strange car in their driveway when she pulled up to the new house in Wonderland. She figured Jim was showing the house to one of his friends and hoped she'd be able to get him alone long enough to tell him her news.

  When she walked in the front door, the living room lights were dim, and soft music played on the stereo. She called out Jim's name, but there was no response, and she started up the stairs to their bedroom.

  When she opened the bedroom door, she was greeted with gasps of surprise and a flurry of sheets being drawn up, covering flesh. Susanna stared at her husband and the woman in her bed, unable to speak. They seemed equally frozen, Peggy watching her from beneath her tousled dark hair, Jim open-mouthed in shock.

  She was finally able to step out of the room and close the door. Walking numbly down the stairs, she wondered how she had failed him. She had not been good enough for him. Not pretty enough or smart enough. The image of that beautiful woman in bed with Jim would never leave her mind.

  She had to escape, from the scene upstairs as well as from the pain in her heart. She drove to Linc's house, where he held her and let her cry, let her curse. What he wouldn't let her do was blame or belittle herself.

  "Jim's done enough of that," Linc said. "You don't need to do it to yourself."

  Jim came over the following day—he'd had no problem figuring out where she'd gone. He explained that he wanted to end their marriage, that he was sorry, he hadn't wanted her to find out that way. He'd buy her out of the house, he said, but it would take him a few years to pay her off. He went on and on about financial details while she pretended to listen.

  When he finally paused for breath, she told him about the pregnancy and he reacted with anger. She'd stopped the pill too soon, he said. Yes, he'd said they could start a family when he was done with law school, but he hadn't meant right away. She would have to have an abortion.

  He began badgering her about it, calling her several times a day at Linc's to try to persuade her, and she slipped deeper and deeper into a pit of despair. She couldn't go to work, couldn't even get out of bed in the morning. Permanent escape began to sound like a wonderful idea, but when she confided that thought to Linc, he called Valerie, who arranged to have her admitted to a psychiatric ward. She was bitter about that for a few days, but as she began to feel better, she became grateful for their intervention.

  While in the hospital, she decided she couldn't have an abortion. She had no family. Her father was dead, her mother was as good as dead, and she no longer had a husband. She wanted her child above all else, and it was concern for her baby that finally got her well. She would have to be strong and healthy to take care of a child on her own.

  Linc told her that if Jim wouldn't be there for her, he would be, and he meant it. He called Jim and told him to stop harassing her about an abortion. He went to her doctor's appointments with her. He was there for her first sonogram, and he never missed any of the childbirth classes. The woman he'd been dating broke up with him because of his "obsession" with Susanna and the baby, but he didn't seem to care.

  He was with her every minute of her labor, and he was there during those frantic moments in the delivery room when it became obvious that something was terribly wrong. But it was when she saw Linc weeping over her baby's tiny, gray body that, in her mind, he became Tyler's father. Jim was nothing to her after that. Less than nothing. As though they shared her feelings, everyone at the hospital treated Linc as if he were indeed Tyler's father. The nurses. The social worker. After all, Jim was nowhere to be found.

  "He was anxious to be there," Peggy had said on the witness stand, "but he stayed away out of consideration for Susanna. He knew what a difficult time that was for her and didn't want to make things harder for her."

  Tyler was four months old when she and Linc became lovers. She'd been sleeping in his guest room for over a year by then, and one night he simply came into her room, woke her up, took her by the hand, and walked her back to his own bedroom. And there he made love to her, and it felt so rational, so simply right, that she wondered why they had put it off for so long. The commitment between them had been forged a long, long time ago, and they both knew it.

  "Pete Seeger created this next song when he set a biblical passage to music." Linc's slow, soft radio voice floated in the air behind Kim's head, "It's sung here by the Byrds."

  There was a lump in Kim's throat as the music started for "Turn, Turn, Turn." Linc's voice had sounded so close. She could shut her eyes and pretend he was lying next to her on the bed. Eyes closed, she reached out and touched the other pillow, imagining that she was stroking Linc's cheek with her fingers, touching his lips. She rolled away from the pillow with a sense of defeat. How could she go on this way, living for Sunday nights, when she could lie in the darkness, listening to Linc's voice, imagining she was with him? And all the while she would know that the morning would reveal the truth: her lover would be gone, leaving in his place only the impersonal hum of a stranger's voice on the radio.

  –16–

  What do you want on your sub?" Peggy asked her brother. She was talking to Ron from the phone in her Legal Aid office.

  "The works," Ron said. "Except hold the raw onions. I still have some patients to see today."

  "All right. I'll be over in a little while." She hung up the phone and picked up the one remaining chart on her desk before walking down the hall toward the waiting room. She would see her last client for the day, Bonnie Higgins, the woman whose husband wanted a divorce, then grab a couple of subs and drive to Ron's office to have lunch
with him. There were a few things she wanted to talk to her brother about.

  Bonnie stood up as soon as she saw Peggy at the door of the waiting room. Once again, she looked as though she'd been doing more than her share of crying.

  "Everything's changed," she said as she followed Peggy back to her office.

  "For better or worse?" Peggy asked, although the answer was obvious.

  "A thousand times worse." Bonnie sat down in front of Peggy's desk and pulled a tissue from her purse. "I found out he's been having an affair," she said, blowing her nose.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said, although she was not surprised.

  "It's been going on for years." Bonnie still looked stunned by the news. "It's his secretary. He's not even original. I've talked to that woman on the phone a million times a week. She's one of those…trashy looking women, you know what I mean? Tight clothes, too much makeup. I never thought he'd be interested in someone like that."

  "Do you have evidence?" Peggy started making notes on a legal pad. "How did you find out?"

  "She called me and told me all about it. She asked me to please let him go. 'Don't make it so hard on him,' she said. Is that enough evidence for you?"

  "Has he denied it?"

  "No. He told me everything. He's feeling guilty."

  "Okay." Peggy leaned forward. "This changes your case, but only slightly. It gives us something to use against him if he gives us a hard time, and we'd better get to work immediately on a property settlement. We need to take advantage of his guilt."

  She spent another forty-five minutes with Bonnie, then left the Legal Aid office and headed for the sub shop.

  Ron was waiting for her in his sunny office when she arrived.

  "Hi, sis." He kissed her cheek and sat down behind his desk.

  She took a seat herself and handed him his sub and a can of root beer.

  "How are you doing?" Ron popped the top on his soda and took a sip.

  "All right." She unwrapped her sandwich slowly. "This whole thing with Tyler is dragging on way too long, though."

  "How long's it been now?" Ron asked. "Three weeks?"

  "Three and a half. And babies change so quickly." She peered uninterestedly inside her turkey sub. She really wasn't hungry. "I worry that Tyler won't look like his picture very much longer. His birthday was two days ago, you know. He's a year old now."

  Tyler's birthday had been a sad day for her, made even sadder by the fact that Jim did not remember the date until she reminded him of it at dinner. Even then, Jim had looked perplexed. "His birthday is October eighth?" he'd asked. "I guess I never knew that."

  "A year already, huh?" Ron said. "Doesn't seem that long ago that I did his surgery."

  "I was thinking," Peggy said. "We should probably send some information about Tyler to general practitioners around the country, in addition to the cardiologists. You said yourself that he wouldn't need to be seen regularly by a cardiologist now. But Susanna will have to take him to a doctor at some point."

  Ron had already helped Bill Anderson put together a medical report on Tyler, which they'd sent to hospitals and pediatric cardiologists around the country. But that no longer seemed like enough to Peggy.

  Ron sighed. "I'm not going to write another report, Peggy. You can use the one I already wrote if you think it's so important."

  She played with a piece of lettuce hanging out of her sandwich, disturbed by his tone of voice. "I wasn't suggesting a new report." She could hear the hesitancy in her voice. "But…I guess I don't understand you, Ron. Why wouldn't you want to do everything possible to find Tyler?"

  "Peggy." He swallowed a bite of his sandwich, then set it down on the wrapper. "I can't continue to support you in this. Not to the extent you want, anyway. When I listen to you talk about all this supposed danger Tyler is in with his mother, I just…I can't be party to that sort of hysteria."

  "Hysteria?" She was incredulous.

  "Yes. I can't listen to you talk about this situation and keep my thoughts to myself any longer. If you want to tell me what's going on with Tyler, you're going to have to hear what I think."

  "Are you saying you think Tyler is better off with Susanna than he would be with us?"

  "If 'better off means having anything money can buy and the attention of two parents, then of course he's better off with you and Jim. But if it means being loved and well-cared for, then I see no difference which parent he's with."

  "The court—"

  "I don't care what the court said. Susanna didn't lose custody because she was an unfit mother. She lost because she lacked the resources to fight you and Jim."

  "Oh, Ron, that's simply not so." She slammed her root beer on his desk with such force that it bubbled out of the top of the can. "Money had very little to do with it. There were many other things that came into play, and you know it. What about Linc Sebastian? Susanna was probably going to end up married to him. Do you like the idea of Tyler living with someone like that?"

  "Linc served his time. He paid for what he did. And I think he genuinely cared about Tyler. When I was called into the hospital for Tyler's emergency surgery, it was Linc who was there. Not you. Not Jim."

  Peggy bristled. "We weren't there because we knew it would make things more complicated if we—"

  "Peggy," Ron interrupted her, "listen to me. Jim became interested in Tyler when you became interested in Tyler. If you can't accept—"

  "You've never liked Jim," she interrupted him. "You've always hated lawyers."

  Ron laughed. "You're a lawyer and I love you."

  "I don't feel very loved at the moment." She felt the pout forming on her face and wanted to kick herself. She was a competent woman, a competent lawyer. When she was with Ron, though, she became the little sister she'd always been with him.

  "I have nothing against Jim," Ron said. "You're missing my point. I think you're a wonderful person. So is Jim. So is Susanna, So is Linc Sebastian, as far as I know. There's no right or wrong here. There's just a lot of pain."

  "What do you mean, no right or wrong? Susanna broke the law, Ron. She kidnapped a baby and is probably hiding out under an alias somewhere. She's a criminal."

  "You and Jim made her into a criminal when you pressed criminal charges. You turned a loving, very frightened mother into a felon, for Christ's sake."

  "We had to make her a felon," Peggy argued. "The only way we could get the authorities to take the case seriously is if we took it seriously."

  Ron leaned across the desk toward her. "How would you have felt in Susanna's position? You get pregnant, then discover your husband is sleeping with another woman."

  Peggy winced. Ron was the one person to whom she'd confessed that miserable incident in Jim's bedroom. "I never should have told you," she said.

  "So you find your husband with another woman," Ron continued, "and then you have to give up your new home to her. Not only that, but—surprise!—the other woman wants your baby, too."

  "That's not fair. You're making me sound like a villain."

  "No one's a villain. But just because you were not lucky enough to be able to have a baby yourself doesn't mean you're entitled to someone else's."

  Peggy sat back in her seat, wounded. She could think of nothing else to say. She stared at her brother in silence for a moment, then rewrapped her sandwich, picked up her purse, and started for the door. He made no move to stop her.

  One hand on the doorknob, she turned around to look at him. "I thought I'd only lost my stepson," she said, her throat tight, "but I see now that I've lost my brother, too."

  "You haven't lost me." Ron didn't look the least bit upset by this exchange. "All I'm saying is that I can't, in good conscience, join you in bashing Susanna any longer."

  Jim was late getting home that night, so it wasn't until they were in bed together that she finally had the chance to tell him about her conversation with Ron. He listened, then put his arm around her.

  "Don't blame him," he said. "He doesn't really know Susann
a. He's just trying to be fair."

  "He said just because I can't have a baby of my own doesn't mean I'm entitled to Susanna's." Ron's words still cut through her. She hadn't known her brother could be so cruel.

  "But you are entitled to mine." Jim gave her shoulders a squeeze. "And so am I. We'll get him back, Peg, don't worry. Detective Rausch called me today to say they finally got a court order to disclose Susanna's credit card records. I guess she only has a Visa, and apparently, she hasn't used it yet. But we'll be able to trace her if she does."

  "That's good," she said, but she was thinking that if Susanna hadn't used her card by now, she would never use it. Susanna was smarter than Jim gave her credit for.

  Jim raised himself up on one elbow. "You're so beautiful," he said. He leaned down to kiss her. "All I want is for you to be happy." He kissed her again, with some heat this time, and she nearly started to cry. The last thing she felt like doing was making love. But she'd put him off for too long.

  She returned the kiss, determined to meet his passion with her own. It was going to be difficult, though, because when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the disappointment and disdain in her brother's face.

  –17–

  I love this early autumn smell." Ellen sat down in one of the rockers, a cup of tea in her hand, and took a deep breath. She smiled at Kim and Lucy. "It's one of those comforting smells from childhood, you know?"

  Kim did not know. The smell of an eastern fall was not familiar to her, but Lucy seemed to understand.

  "Oh, yes," Lucy said. "It's just like where I grew up in Pennsylvania."

  "I guess you didn't have this sort of smell as a kid in L.A., huh Kim?" Ellen asked.

  "No." Kim leaned over to fix the cuff on Cody's jeans. "It's the smell of smog that comforts me."

  They laughed, and Kim chuckled herself, pleased with the sense of ease she was beginning to feel with her two neighbors as she settled into Kim Stratton's life. As she created Kim Stratton's life. She'd learned to deal with Lucy's many questions by saying whatever popped into her head, and Lucy didn't seem put off by the inconsistencies in her answers. As a matter of fact, she didn't even seem to notice them. People accepted whatever you told them, Kim was discovering, as long as they had no reason to doubt your story. With each passing day, she was becoming more and more Kim Stratton. Susanna Miller was beginning to feel like some long-deceased relative she'd never taken the time to grieve over.