Brass Ring

by Diane Chamberlain

  She had to admit that Vanessa didn’t make the most sympathetic victim. Her cursing at a much-loved senator didn’t play well with the public. Her past—the drug use, the teenage pregnancy, the alcoholism, all of which had been rapidly unearthed and paraded for

  the world to see—didn’t lend her credibility. It didn’t matter that she was now a respected physician. That was not nearly as sensational as her sordid past. Besides, people liked Zed Patterson. After breathing a long, collective sigh of relief at his acquittal in the molestation case, Patterson’s devotees didn’t want to hear any more allegations about his behavior.

  In the Post that morning, a psychologist had written an article offering half a dozen motives for Vanessa’s attack on the senator. The possibility that she might be telling the truth was not even considered. Vanessa had gotten a little too uncomfortably crazy during her testimony, Claire thought.

  Somehow, a reporter had learned that Claire was Vanessa’s sister. He’d contacted her, asking her to verify the information Vanessa had offered, and she had done so willingly. Yes, she’d said, Zed Patterson had worked for her grandparents, and yes, she had sent Vanessa out to the barn to help him that morning, not knowing there was any danger. And yes, she believed her sister’s account of what happened. And although she carried with her the prestige of the Harte-Mathias Foundation, no one seemed to take her thoughts on the subject very seriously. Vanessa Gray was either a troubled woman who, in all innocence, had her facts twisted, or she was a clever zealot with some obscure political ax to grind against Patterson.

  She had told Debra Parlow about Vanessa’s visit, and she’d wept in the therapist’s office for the sister she had lost and couldn’t seem to regain. Ironically, that painful session had left her more comfortable with Debra, more trusting of her nonjudgmental support. Maybe someday she would be able to talk with Debra about her memories.

  Claire walked into the lounge to find the TV on and Jon and Pat deep in conversation. They sat with their chairs facing each other, leaning toward one another, close enough to touch. Indeed, Pat had her hand on Jon’s arm. Claire turned her eyes away, and Pat immediately let go of Jon and sat back in her chair.

  “Hi, Claire.” Pat picked up her briefcase from the floor, rested it in her lap, and wheeled past Jon toward the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I’ll have to watch the news tonight to see what Patterson has to say.”

  “’Night, Pat,” Jon said.

  “Good-night.” Claire sat down in one of the upholstered straight-backed chairs by the table and looked up at the TV. A commercial was on, but the sound was off.

  She felt Jon’s eyes on her. “Do you believe Vanessa?” he asked.

  The question surprised her. Of course she believed her. Yet wasn’t there that little speck of doubt still lurking in the back of her mind? She didn’t know Vanessa, and Vanessa was doing all she could to be certain they remained strangers. She was still bothered by Vanessa’s continued allusions to a chariot on the carousel. And she didn’t really know what had happened in the barn that day.

  “I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s telling the truth,” she said.

  Jon looked at the screen, where a woman with deep lines across her forehead was studying a bottle of cold medicine. “Well, I believe her one hundred percent,” he said.

  His words touched her. She studied his face. From where she sat in the darkening room, the brown of his eyes looked like amber, and she could see the full length of his eyelashes in the light from the television. Silver-dusted hair, high cheekbones, hollow cheeks. The tightness low in her belly took her by surprise. Jon Mathias would still be sexy when he was eighty.

  A group of people suddenly appeared on the screen, a few men and a woman standing behind a microphone-littered dais in a room with baby blue walls. Jon hit the sound button on the remote, and the muffled, cluttered noise of a pre-press-conference crowd filled the lounge.

  “I feel the need to share with all of you my response to the allegations of Dr. Vanessa Gray.” Zed Patterson let his eyes roam over the unseen crowd. Next to him stood a young, redheaded woman. Claire recognized her from pictures she’d seen in the newspaper. Patterson’s wife, Penny, age thirty-something, mother of his two young children.

  “It took me a while to piece it all together,” Patterson said, “and I’ll do my best to tell you all I know.” He spoke with an unhurried, easygoing style; there was a despicable hint of a smile on his lips.

  “I hate him,” Claire said, the words surprising her. “I hate this man.”

  “I was indeed the sheriff of Jeremy, Pennsylvania, in 1962, the year in which Dr. Gray alleges the abuse took place,” Patterson said. “I was twenty-seven years old, a young man with a penchant for law and order and a growing interest in our legal system. As many of my constituents know, I didn’t come from a privileged background. My father was an automobile mechanic, and that was the first trade I learned. So when Vince Siparo, one of the farmers in Jeremy, was looking for a mechanic to help with the machinery that ran the rather amazing carousel he was building in his barn, I offered my services. Dr. Gray is accurate to that point. I did help her grandfather one summer—the exact year I couldn’t say. Her grandparents were fine people. Fine, hardworking people.”

  He stopped to take a sip from a glass on the dais.

  “I’ve racked my brain to try to remember more about the home situation there on the farm. I know Siparo’s daughter and son-in-law were there from time to time, and I believe there were some children around. Boys, girls, I don’t remember.” He took another drink from the glass, and Claire pressed her hand to her mouth.

  “He’s lying,” she said. “He knows perfectly well who was there. He gave me presents, Jon.”

  Patterson looked at his wife, who gave him an encouraging smile. “So that brings me to Dr. Gray’s accusations,” he continued, “and believe me, I’ve given this a lot of thought. Dr. Gray is in a position of responsibility and esteem in a children’s hospital in Seattle. I can’t—and none of us should—simply shrug off her serious accusations. I would guess that she sincerely believes what she is saying. Something probably did happen to her way back then. It just didn’t happen at my hands. The mind works in funny ways. Maybe when she heard about the recent accusations against me, she made the leap in her reasoning that, since I was around then, I must have been the person who abused her. Otherwise, why on earth didn’t she come forward with this some other time in the past thirty years?”

  His wife nodded, shielding her eyes against the lights in the room.

  “People know me and will continue to trust me as an advocate for the rights of abused women and children, and I think Dr. Gray is right—we do need to provide services for adolescents who suffered abuse in their younger years.”

  Penny Patterson nodded again, like a robot. Claire felt sorry for her.

  “Therefore,” Patterson continued, “I plan to have services for adolescents added to the Aid to Adult Survivors Bill. The fact is, despite all she’s accomplished professionally, this one incident obviously did traumatize Dr. Gray to an enormous extent—as we all witnessed on the Hill on Wednesday.” He offered a wry, condescending smile to the camera. “Although she was misguided, it must have taken great courage on her part to come forward in that way, and I must thank her for bringing the matter of how childhood abuse can wreak havoc on the adult to our attention so graphically.”

  “Oh, he’s a flaming prick!” Claire pounded her fist on the table.

  Patterson fielded a few questions after speaking, but only a few, and he said nothing new. His wife was asked to comment, and she said something about it being “fashionable” these days for “grown women” to accuse men of long-ago abuse, and how “such behavior” can steal the focus from “today’s real victims.”

  “I simply don’t understand Dr. Gray’s motives,” she added. “My husband is, I’m afraid, more toleraut than I am on this issue.”

  They watched in silence as the p
ress conference came to a close, and Claire was aware of how dark the room had become with only the television for light. She could smell the soft scent of Jon’s aftershave. On the wall, the clock ticked toward the hour of the play. Randy was probably wondering what had happened to her.

  She touched Jon’s arm lightly. “I have to go.”

  “To Randy,” Jon said. He didn’t often mention Randy these days.

  “It’s the opening night of his new play.”

  “Ah.”

  Jon clicked off the television, and darkness swept across the room. Neither of them moved.

  “Jon?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I want you to know that it’s not physical with Randy.” That was misleading, she thought. “What I mean is, that was never what motivated me, and—”

  “Shut up, Claire.”

  She cringed. She wasn’t saying this well. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever known.” She tried again. “I just want to be sure you know that my attraction to Randy had nothing to do with sex. It was a different sort of need altogether.”

  Jon wheeled over to the door and flicked the light switch on the wall. “See you Monday?” he asked. There were red blotches on his cheeks and neck, and she knew he wanted to be rid of her and her impulsive rambling.

  She blinked against the sudden brightness in the room. She wished she could talk with him longer. She wanted to tell him she was trying to learn to take care of herself. It was hard, she would say. Scary.

  But she stood up instead and, with a sigh, bent over to brush her lips across his temple.

  “Monday, yes,” she said. “Good-night.”

  49

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  VANESSA AND BRIAN RENTED a paddleboat in the Tidal Basin Saturday morning, and as they pushed off from shore, Vanessa felt a welcome sense of isolation from the rest of the world. The cherry trees surrounding the basin had dropped their blossoms, which circled the water with a faded pink-and-white blanket. The sky was a rich, cloudless blue. Ahead of them, Thomas Jefferson stood silhouetted in his domed monument.

  Late last night, they’d checked out of the Omni and into a smaller, more intimate hotel under Brian’s name. They had lost the wolves, they hoped, and they’d called their respective employers to let them know they were taking a few more days off. The city was beautiful, signs of spring were everywhere, and they were determined to escape Vanessa’s tormentors without having to leave Washington itself.

  Out in the middle of the basin, Vanessa stopped pedaling. She slipped off her lightweight jacket and raised her face to the sun. Brian took her lead, taking off his own jacket, then putting his arm around her and letting the little boat drift idly in the water.

  Reporters could be frighteningly quick and ruthless, Vanessa had learned. They had dug up enough information on her teenage years to fuel any argument against her credibility. And they were not her only tormentors.

  Terri Roos had tracked her down the night before. Vanessa had already heard from a few other people in the network. Most expressed a stunned, but reserved, sympathy. Terri, though, was clearly angry.

  “You put your personal agenda ahead of the greater good,” she’d said. Vanessa had simply hung up on her.

  Doug Jenks, the chief executive officer of Lassiter Children’s Hospital, had called to tell her she should have thought through the potential repercussions of her testimony, both to herself and to Lassiter, before going public with her allegations. But it was the call from the reporter who said he had learned that she’d relinquished a baby for adoption twenty years ago—and was trying to track that young woman down—that propelled them into changing hotels.

  “Please, don’t,” was all Vanessa had managed to say before her tears started. She was tired. Tired of the phone calls. Tired of the questions.

  The one truly heartening call had come from Darcy, who’d cried on the phone and chastised Vanessa for not having told her. Brian suggested that if she returned the calls from Claire, she might find support there as well. He was probably right, but she didn’t have the strength to talk to her sister right now.

  “I’ll call her when we get back to Seattle,” she promised. And she would. Her anger toward Claire was gone, and she realized it had been misdirected all along. In its place was a mounting sympathy. Claire was battling old memories. Vanessa had seen too many women in the midst of that fight to be able to shrug off her sister’s suffering. But she couldn’t deal with it now.

  The boat rocked lightly in the basin, and the sun warmed her face, and despite the trauma of the past few days, Vanessa felt more at peace with herself than she had in a long time. She’d done what she had to do. If they believed her, fine. If not, what did it matter? It was obvious to her, if to no one else, that she had scared Zed Patterson. He was going to include aid for adolescents in his bill just to keep her off his back.

  “Let’s not go back to shore,” Brian said.

  She rolled her head to his shoulder. “Never?”

  “Maybe to eat every once in a while. That’s all.”

  “Maybe to see a doctor,” Vanessa suggested.

  “A doctor?”

  “I’m a week and a half late.”

  Brian’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Stress?”

  “Could be. I’ve been under a little.”

  They were quiet for a moment. She could feel Brian absorbing the news, and she smiled to herself.

  “Have you ever been a week and a half late before?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Van.” His voice was thick, and she put her arms around him and held him close to her as their boat drifted gently under a cloudless sky.

  50

  WINCHESTER VILLAGE AMUSEMENT PARK,

  PENNSYLVANIA

  WINCHESTER VILLAGE WAS DESERTED. Claire and Randy walked between the skeleton of a sprawling roller coaster and an enormous sky-scraping claw that probably held cars full of screaming teenagers in the summer. The amusement park was not due to open until late May, and it had the feel of a ghost town, lifeless and forgotten. It was hard to picture it alive.

  She’d had no trouble at all getting permission to enter the village out of season. She’d called the public relations department for the park and spoken to a man named Scott Merrick. She’d told him she was the granddaughter of Vincent Siparo and that she hadn’t seen his carousel since her childhood. She asked if there was a chance she could see it now, and Merrick told her she would be welcome anytime. He was clearly a carousel enthusiast, and they chatted on the phone for several minutes about the Siparo horses of her great-grandfather’s era. Merrick had ridden them as a child, he said. He could barely tell the difference between the horses carved by her grandfather and those carved by her great-grandfather, except for the signature floral decorations that adorned the Joseph Siparo bridles. This man did indeed know his painted ponies.

  He wanted to be with her when she saw the carousel. She could tell by the way he was talking. “I’ll show you how we’ve restored the horses,” he said. “True to your grandfather’s colors and designs. We even used the gold leaf like he did.”

  “Mr. Merrick,” she began, “would it be too much to ask if I could see the carousel alone? You see, I think it’s going to be a little emotional for me. Would you mind very much?”

  Merrick had hesitated, and she could almost hear the disappointment in the silence. “Of course. You stop by the office here, and I’ll give you the key to the carousel house.”

  She had intended to make the trip by herself, but Randy asked to join her, and she was glad for his company. Over the past week, she had watched him wrestle with the new boundaries of their relationship as he tried to determine how close to her he could sit, how intimately he could touch her. She appreciated the effort he made to keep their friendship alive despite the limits she had set on it.

  They had left Virginia shortly after breakfast that morning and arrived at Scott Merrick’s office close to noon. Merrick had warmly shaken her ha
nd before pressing the key into her palm. She’d brought him a gift from the old photograph album, a picture of her grandfather carving a horse head in the workroom of the barn. Merrick had been ecstatic. He would blow it up, he said, and hang it on the wall of the carousel house.

  “If you’d let me come with you, I could turn the carousel on for you,” he negotiated. “Otherwise, you’ll only get to see it standing still.”

  “That’s fine.” Claire had smiled at him, the key burning in her palm. “That’s all I need.”

  The carousel house was at the opposite end of the park from the office. Claire held tight to the key as she and Randy walked among the hibernating rides and boarded-up concessions. She had to stop herself from running now that she was this close.

  “I wonder if I’ll be disappointed,” she said to Randy. Maybe Titan wouldn’t be as beautiful and noble as in her memory. “You know how the things you thought were so wonderful when you were a child turn out to be smaller and less spectacular than you remembered?”

  “Right,” Randy said. “I know what you mean.”

  They rounded a huge covered platform of some sort, and the white carousel house suddenly sprang up in front of them. The building looked as though it had barely survived the winter. The

  white paint had a definite grayish hue. Scott Merrick had said the house was due to be painted in a few weeks.

  The building was fronted by three wide garage-type doors. Apparently the rear of the building remained permanently closed, although the hundreds of small windows would let in light. With the key, Claire unlocked the center door, and Randy helped her roll it up. Directly in front of her, as he had always been in the barn, stood Titan, nostrils flaring, gold mane glinting in the spring sunlight.

  “Oh.” She took a step backward to study the horse, and her concern about being disappointed vanished. Titan was magnificent, his windblown mane wilder than in her memory. His huge brown eyes were stormy. His well-shaped head was lined with veins, and his gold-trimmed English saddle had the mellowed gloss of well-worn leather.