Whispers and Lies

by Diane Pershing

  “I know plenty of women who are overweight and who have guys swarming around them like bees.”

  She let out a sigh. “I know. I’ve seen it and I’ve always marveled. I guess they feel good about themselves as human beings, whatever their bodies look like. Or maybe they think large bodies are fine. I just never had the knack.” She shook her head. The subject was depressing. “You know what, Will? This is all way too personal. I want you to stop asking questions. Now.”

  He got a look on his face she’d seen before. Soft, kind and filled with tenderness. “I wish I’d gotten to know you earlier.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re worth it. You’re fun. And you have a mind. And you make me laugh. And, whatever you say, and whatever your body is or isn’t, dammit, I think you’re sexy.”

  His green eyes were rich with one-hundred-percent approval of all she was, which she had a hard time accepting as real, even though she thought it probably was. “I was there all the time,” she replied softly. “You just didn’t notice.”

  He nodded. “I just didn’t notice.” He let a beat go by, then added, “I’m noticing now.”

  “Don’t, Will.”

  “Two days to put up with me.”

  She closed her eyes. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  She opened them again, made herself meet his gaze. “Flirt with me. Make me feel special.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this whole thing is kind of weird. I mean, you’re Nancy’s brother and there’s a wedding in the air and my mom just died and my house was broken into, and I’m not very well armored, even for two days.”

  “I like you not armored.”

  Suddenly she’d had it. Way too much exposure, way too much potential for deep pain. She stood, grabbed the strap of her purse, which was hanging off the back of her chair. “Enough, Will,” she snapped. “I’m going home.”

  The adamancy of her words and actions seemed to surprise him. But it got through to him, too. He nodded, said, “Okay. Sorry. Would you like me to walk you to your car?”

  “No need,” she said, and, waving at Nancy, walked out the door of the restaurant.

  She’d been abrupt there at the end, but she didn’t feel bad about it, not at all. Will had been trying to get inside her head from the moment she’d seen him yesterday morning at the clinic. He was nosy and pushy and way too curious.

  She’d never been as gut-level honest with any man, not even her husband in the good days, as she’d been this past day and a half with Will. He seemed to really want to know her. And he didn’t judge her. No, he was more of a cheerleader than a judge.

  Still, what good would all this honesty do, this opening up, this leaving herself exposed and emotionally naked? Two more days and he would be gone. Back to his life of no-commitments-please serial dating.

  Will Jamison was a waste of her time.

  Early Sunday morning, hours before the wedding, Lou packed her overnight case, put Anthony in the carrier and went home. She had decided to move back into her house. Just to be safe, she had also decided to bring Mr. Hyde upstairs with her—they were boarding the Doberman pinscher while his folks were on a much-needed second honeymoon, achieved after the last of their children had headed off to college. Mr. Hyde was a pussycat, canine-style, but could growl at intruders with the best of them.

  Lou shut up Anthony in her mother’s bedroom; he was in no danger from Mr. Hyde, unless being licked to death was a problem, but the poor little kitty needed to feel safe in a space of his own.

  Then she spent an hour or so putting things right. When she was done, it occurred to her that she hadn’t checked the attic. Had the intruders made it up there? She walked to the hallway between the bedrooms, reached up and slid open the ceiling door, then pulled down the folding ladder and climbed. As she neared the top, she heard the sound of scurrying feet. Mice, for sure. She made a mental note to get some traps.

  Once in the attic, she pulled at the chain for the overhead light and gazed around. Morning sunlight filtering through two dusty windows created interesting shadows on the walls and highlighted some of the debris, for that was the name for it. It was a classic messy attic, where the rejects of a life were stored. One day soon, she’d have to get up here and clean it thoroughly. But not today.

  What was obvious from the layer of dust on everything was that no one, intruders included, had been in the attic for a while. She was about to climb back downstairs when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny mouse scurry across the room and disappear behind a bookcase.

  A brief flash of memory came to her then. It had been moving-in day, nearly twenty years ago. Lou had been all excited about her new room and had come rushing up to the attic to tell Mom her decorating plans, just as Janice was pushing a bookcase into place.

  When Lou asked her if she needed any help, Mom had said curtly, “I’m fine. Go back to what you’re doing.”

  Lou had remembered being somewhat hurt by Mom’s attitude, but then had forgiven her. So much had been on her shoulders all these years and if Mom had been a little tense, it had been understandable.

  Now, the shadows in the room seemed to highlight a dark space to the left of the bookcase where the mouse had disappeared. But there shouldn’t have been a space there, not if the bookcase were flush against the wall.

  Curious now, Lou walked over to it. She removed old children’s books and cookbooks, a broken vase and some cups with saucers. Then she pushed at the now-empty bookcase to see what was behind it.

  She was surprised to see an indentation, like a small hiding hole, created by the shape of the ceiling beams and previously made invisible by the bookcase. On the floor sat a cardboard file box with a fitted cover on top, like the ones Lou used to store old tax returns. She lifted the box—it was quite light—and brought it out into the light.

  It was dusty on top, so she found a rag and wiped it off. No one had been near this thing for years. Pulling over a stool, which she also wiped off, she sat down, removed the top and looked.

  Inside were some faded postcards with brown ink on them. An old envelope contained pictures of two little girls, both wearing pinafores with puffed sleeves, socks edged with lace and shiny Mary Janes; the same two girls, older now, holding hands, smiling shyly. The younger of the two looked like what she imagined Mom would have looked like at that age. There was also a picture of a man and a woman, both stern-faced, he with a small mustache and flattened hair, she with short, permed hair, circa the late 1940s or early 1950s.

  Lou felt strangely disoriented. She was looking at what had to be mementos from her mother’s past. The picture was probably of her mom’s parents, Lou’s grandmother and grandfather. The sister who had died. Why had Mom kept this from her? Why had she needed to hide this at all?

  A manila envelope lay in the bottom of the box, its contents stiffer than the others. She undid the clasp and pulled out a folded, faded piece of paper. It was a birth certificate, registered in Ireland, with the name Rita Conlon on it. It gave her mother’s date of birth, but the year wasn’t the same—it was two years earlier. Was this the sister’s? Had her name been Rita? Was it a coincidence that the two girls were born exactly two years apart?

  Lou didn’t remember Janice ever mentioning her sibling’s name. The parents were listed as Joseph and Margo Conlon.

  There was also an old passport. Hands shaking, Lou pulled it out and opened it to the first page. Here, too, the name Rita Conlon was written, and staring at her from a faded photograph was one of the young girls in the pictures, the one who bore a strong resemblance to her mother. Was it her or was it the sister? Lou had always assumed McAndrews was Mom’s married name, so Conlon didn’t seem all that mysterious. But Rita? Who was Rita?

  And why, as she sat there and stared at all this mysterious evidence of someone’s past, did she feel as though shadows were gathering, that her life had changed unalterably and, quite possibly, not for the better?<
br />
  Chapter 6

  “And do you, Robert Joshua Weiss,” the somber-faced, deep-voiced judge intoned, “take this woman to love, cherish and honor all the days of your lives?”

  “I do.”

  “You may place the ring on her finger now.”

  The large room, the entire top floor of a three-story restaurant nestled at the base of the Catskills, was hushed. Lou, despite the inner agitation she’d been feeling since her attic discovery several hours earlier, and which she’d kept to herself, felt her eyes filling with tears. Nancy’s expression was one of sheer joy, that lopsided Jamison grin splitting her face in two.

  “And you, Nancy, may place the ring on his.”

  Bob’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. His eyes grew moist as he watched his bride place a plain gold band on his finger. He was so dear, Lou thought fondly. Such a nice man. He would care for her friend always; she knew it. Bob was one of the good guys.

  The judge spoke the words the bride and groom had written for their ceremony—how two cherished traditions—Welsh-American Protestant and Hungarian-American Jewish—were being joined today; how both vowed to respect each other’s heritage and give any future children schooling in both; and that the most important element in marriage was kindness, followed by communication.

  As he spoke, Lou shot a quick glance over to where Will was seated on the aisle, his brother-of-the-bride duties done. He wore his tux as though born to the diplomatic corps. At the moment, he was staring intently at his sister, a little up-and-down throat action there, too. He was moved, Lou could tell, and trying not to be too obvious about it. Or to cry, she suspected; as she’d learned, Will was one of those men who might admit the need for the occasional tear, but would hesitate to let anyone catch him in the act.

  “I now declare you husband and wife,” the judge said. “You may kiss the bride.”

  Happiness radiating from his kind, plain features, Bob took Nancy’s face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly, while all the onlookers cheered.

  The judge brought out a cloth napkin-wrapped champagne glass, spoke about the ancient Jewish tradition of stomping on a wineglass to seal the marriage and said both bride and groom had requested it be part of the ceremony. He set it down carefully at Bob’s feet. The groom lifted his foot and stomped it heartily, after which there were several cries of “Mazel tov!” from his relatives…and a few of Nancy’s, too.

  Then, hands joined, the two newlyweds ran back up the aisle as everyone stood, clapping and grinning. It was so moving, so lovely. Lou found herself not envious, exactly, but with a deep yearning to experience this kind of happiness one day. The next moment, she was telling herself there wasn’t a chance it was going to happen. Not to her.

  She caught herself midthought. There it was, she realized. What Will had mentioned last night. That low self-esteem thing of hers when it came to men and relationships. Was this way of thinking based in reality? Or was it, after all these years, just a habit, like grooves worn into an old LP? Was it time to change the record? Was she actually capable of attracting a man whom she also found attractive, and who might want to marry her and raise a family?

  Was she actually sexy, the way Will had insisted she was?

  That was a hard one to believe, really it was. Sexy had never been part of her personal vocabulary when assessing herself. Sure, she was thinner now than she’d ever been, even on useless diets of the past in which she’d lost weight and gained it right back. And sure, she knew she looked okay in her bridesmaid dress, pretty even; the peach shade flattered her own coloring.

  But it was all a lie. She’d only lost weight due to grief. In time, her appetite would return, and she’d wind up as she used to be—the same plain, frizzy-haired, chubby little person who was never the first, or even seventh, woman that men looked at when she entered a room.

  Oops. Again, she stopped herself midthought. Wow, she said silently. Talk about self-pitying inner monologues! She sounded like a broken record with the put-downs, the doubts, the sense of hopelessness. As Will had pointed out, she wasn’t like that in the rest of her life, was she? Grief aside, she was a much more upbeat, can-do, cheerful, even confident person.

  Hmm.

  As the rest of the bridal party made its way up the aisle toward the reception in the next room, Lou promised herself that she’d make the time to think this through, sort it out.

  She owed it to herself, to her future.

  Will raised his glass, signaling all the others to do the same.

  “Nancy,” he began, “if you’d told me that the infant who never stopped howling, the toddler who waddled around the house with thick diapers and a chocolate-smeared face, the tomboy who kept sneaking into my room and stealing my comic books, so that I had to put a lock on my door, the flat-chested adolescent with a whole host of obnoxious giggling girlfriends, and the teenager whose musical taste, played at decibel-breaking volume, made me think about murdering her and going back to being an only child…” Will paused to let the laughter fade out. “…If you’d told me that that female person would turn into the accomplished, poised, bright woman she is, and would make an astonishingly beautiful bride who is marrying someone who really appreciates her and deserves her, well then…” He paused again, this time to swallow down the small lump in his throat, before he could go on. “I would have told you, would have told everybody, they were nuts. Totally insane. Couldn’t be done. But look, I was wrong. And here you are.”

  He raised his glass again, saw the shining, tear-filled eyes of his baby sister—and truly, he nearly lost it. “To the bride.”

  “To the bride,” everyone said.

  “And now, I’ll let the best man extol the virtues of the man she married. Thank you.” Will sat down to cheers and more drinks, nodding and thinking that, yeah, it was your basic stupid wedding reception, made just a little more bearable by the fact that his baby sister was the center of attention.

  His glance wandered along the table that held the wedding party to stop at Lou, who sat with the two bridesmaids, whom she’d known forever. She could have sat with him, but she was avoiding him. They’d barely spoken since the dinner last night. Even though they had been sleeping in bedrooms in the same house, he hadn’t seen her or heard her. This morning, she was in and out of the bathroom without a sound, had left to return to her place before he even got up.

  His persistent questioning had hurt her, and he hadn’t meant it to, not in the least. It was just his nature to solicit information, and he was so curious about her, about all the layers beneath the layers. But he knew that, at some point during the wedding, he would apologize to her, to try to smooth the waters.

  Right before the ceremony, when he’d glimpsed her in her wedding finery, he’d been impressed. She’d done something with her hair, piled it on top of her head with combs, letting some of the curly strands dance around her face. The dress looked good on her. There was even a little cleavage showing. She wasn’t full-breasted, but small and firm and he found himself fantasizing slowly removing all she was wearing so he could check it out for himself.

  No doubt about it. Today, Dr. Lou looked classy and alluring at the same time, and probably would have laughed in his face if he’d mentioned it.

  He wanted her. It was as simple—and as surprising—as that.

  Yeah, she wasn’t his usual cool Nordic type, and yeah, she had a rotten track record with men. He had to admit ruefully that maybe this was some of the attraction she held for him. Will had a strong sense that Lou had never been properly loved, and as a fully functioning man who thoroughly enjoyed lovemaking, he couldn’t resist the challenge. He had to smile at himself; he was thinking just like the classic, arrogant male of the species, Petruchio to her Kate, confident he could tame a woman with his male equipment.

  A laughable notion, of course. Foolish, for sure. Nevertheless, the old, primitive instinct to possess was there.

  In spades.

  After dinner, Will obser
ved Lou standing at the end of the dessert table, talking animatedly with a couple he didn’t know. The woman was a pretty, pale blonde in the early stages of pregnancy and who seemed familiar, even though Will couldn’t place her. Her companion was a tall, scary-looking guy who looked as though he ought to be wearing Marine fatigues instead of a suit and tie. Curious, Will strolled over toward the threesome and grinned at Lou.

  “Hey, Dr. Lou,” he said. “You look gorgeous.”

  Sure enough, she blushed but recovered quickly. “But you’re a lot prettier,” she said. “A man who knows how to wear a tux.”

  He shrugged, then turned his attention to the couple. Nodding, he said, “Will Jamison, brother of the bride.”

  “Oh, sorry, Will,” Lou said, “you haven’t met. These are my dear friends, Kayla and Paul Fitzgerald.”

  Will shook Kayla’s hand, then squinted at her. “Kayla Fitzgerald,” he repeated. “Used to be Kayla Thorne, right?”

  “Yes.” There was a hint of defensiveness in the way she said it, and her husband put a protective arm around her shoulder.

  Will put up both hands and smiled easily. “Not raking up the past, promise. I’m a reporter and I remember the whole story. You’re a pretty brave lady,” he said to Kayla, then turned to Fitzgerald. “And you were the hero of the piece, from what I remember.”

  What he said seemed to ease the tension emanating from both of them. Kayla looked up at her husband, adoration shining from her eyes. “My Prince Charming.”

  “Yeah, right,” Fitzgerald said with mock disgust.

  “They can’t help it,” Will said with a grin. “It’s all those fairy tales. So, how do you two know Lou?”

  “She was my dog’s vet,” Kayla said, taking Lou’s elbow and putting her hand through it, squeezing it, “and now she’s my friend. I met your sister and Bob through her, and now we’re all friends. Lou is the best, most wonderful human being in the world.”