All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2)

by Forrest, Lindsey

  Chapter 18: The Pecking Order

  MARK ST. BRIDE HAD ALWAYS obeyed the rules.

  As a toddler, he’d learned that his place in the world depended on a strict observance of a hierarchy into which he, unfortunately, had been born out of order. The heir and the spare, a bank client had said to Matthew St. Bride, and his father had ruffled his hair and said fondly that Mark would make a splendid second-in-command to his older brother.

  In prep school, he’d overheard one of his tutors commenting that no one could expect a family to produce a second genius. At that moment, it dawned on Mark that his excellence in math and his ability to make sense of the densest statistics did not and would not ever matter. He was the Younger Brother. He was not destined to Be a Great Man and Do Great Things.

  As an adult, he toed the line. Ever the dutiful son, he joined the bank after his MBA. He adopted the lifestyle of an up-and-coming investment banker and learned to play a decent game of golf. He accompanied his mother to church every Sunday. He dined with his parents every week and invited his father to lunch every month. He dated suitable girls of his own class and steered clear of captivating cocktail waitresses, sweet shopgirls, and witchy women. He introduced one date to her future husband and suffered the ignominy of ushering at the wedding. “Mark,” burbled the bride, “I can’t thank you enough. You’re like my brother.”

  He never gave his parents a moment of unnecessary worry – not like Emma, going through husbands like tissues, not like Cam, calling one winter night to announce that – surprise! – he was the father of a four-month-old daughter and he had married the child’s mother that day in a quick ceremony at City Hall. And did anyone thank him? Did anyone notice his strict adherence to the rules? Did anyone say that at least the St. Brides should be thankful for their one sterling offspring?

  No, they did not. No one noticed him at all.

  He was the perfect son, brother, brother-in-law. When his mother took to painting nudes, he winced but gamely went to the showing. When his father celebrated retirement by growing a mustache and buying himself a Harley, he didn’t blink. He never betrayed how ridiculous he found Emma’s temper tantrums, how offended he was by her up-and-down marital history. He never showed his distaste for his brother’s casual sexual ethic, equating stray women with fast food.

  Not once had he shown his anger at the way his family overlooked his faithfulness to the Way Things Were Supposed to Be Done. Not once had he let them see how suffocating he found the life they had foisted on him. Not once had he stood up at a family dinner and announced that he’d had enough, he was throwing it all over and running off to Rio to live on the beach.

  He had been a loyal lieutenant, first to his father and then to his brother. When Cam had asked him to be his CFO at St. Bride Data, he had jumped ship without a moment’s hesitation. Mark was thrilled, at long last, to be a player. To be in a position to Do Things Right.

  He had kept his distance from his brother’s wife, but not for the reason everyone thought. No, of course he didn’t approve of the way their marriage had started and the way his brother brushed off the age difference and the belated wedding date, as if getting a teenage girl pregnant were no big deal. But the moment he met young Mrs. St. Bride and saw an unexpected flash in her mysterious green eyes, he felt a distinctly unchristian envy and the even more unchristian thought that here, at last, was the witchy woman who might make breaking the rules worth it all.

  That was when he started to ask himself some hard questions.

  Where was it written that he always had to come in last? Why, when it was he who designed and orchestrated the IPO for St. Bride Data, was it Cam who became the darling of Wall Street? Why did the business magazines fawn all over Cam for his brilliance and business acumen, when the trains ran on time because Mark was manning the switch? Why, when he couldn’t get a girl who didn’t fall for a friend or run off to Patagonia to find herself, did a tomcat like Cam so easily win and keep a girl like Laura?

  The commandment said not to covet your neighbor’s wife, but what if your neighbor was your brother? And what if that wife felt passion for her husband – unmistakable in those first few years – but didn’t love him – also unmistakable? And what if your brother acted like a dissolute jackass, catting around like a single man, even taking up with her sister? What if you realized, as you passed her the yams at Thanksgiving dinner, that she too wanted to scream that she was running off to Brazil, and you knew that a flight left that night? What were you to do?

  You kept out of the way, that’s what you did. You put family first, and you were loyal to your brother, and you were cool and formal to your sister-in-law. You remembered your place in the pecking order, because life had decreed that this witchy woman was not for the likes of you.

  You followed the rules.

  But what if, one day, the worst thing in the world happened? What if, in one bright, horrific morning, your older brother, the man you looked up to, worked for, admired, resented, would do anything for – what if suddenly he were gone? What if you now stood in his place, master of the universe, head of a successful company, a rich, powerful, desirable man? What if your brother had placed his wife in your safekeeping? What if you read a letter that stood your idea of that marriage on its head – the young unwed mother suddenly morphed into the woman of destiny you had glimpsed behind her eyes?

  What if all you had ever wanted was suddenly yours for the taking?

  And what if, just when you thought she would fall into your arms, she slipped away, with some cockamamie story about making things right with her long-estranged family? What if she met again the man you had always thought must be there somewhere, and she spent the entire weekend in bed with him? And what if you gave into temptation during that long flight home, and you looked up the GPS locater code you had promised yourself you would never use, only to find that, at 3:00 a.m. Virginia time, she – or her phone – was not where she was supposed to be? What if, when you drilled down on that unknown location, you found that she was sleeping at that man’s home?

  That is, if any sleeping were actually taking place.

  You might bide your time, swallow your anger, and obey the rules.

  Or you might decide, To hell with the rules. Where had obeying the rules ever gotten you?

  ~•~

  “Julie! Tone that down!”

  Laura woke up to a man trying to make himself heard over the crashing chords of Wagner.

  For the second day in a row, she was the last one up. In the music room, Julie was unleashing the Valkyries, the barely lowered volume signaling that a night’s sleep had made no difference to her desire to drive the invaders out of the house. In the solarium, Meg, headphones on, was working through her barre routine. Max was meowing for his breakfast, and Richard, cooling down from his morning run, was fixing himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” he said unsmilingly. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, I—” She reached out to touch him, and he walked straight by her and sat down at the oak table.

  “That’s good,” he said, and pulled the morning paper in front of him and started to read.

  Laura stared at him.

  She knew he liked her doting on him; he hadn’t made a big deal of it – too much the independent male – but in the week they had been together, she had sensed that he was starved for simple, everyday affection. He liked that contact, his hand against her back or her hand on his arm. So why was she on one side of the room and he on the other?

  Maybe her imagination was running riot. Maybe he hadn’t meant to withdraw; maybe he hadn’t seen her reaching out to him.

  “Did you sleep okay?” she asked. “Was the bed big enough?”

  The Ashmore Minor master bedroom had only a queen-size bed. He’d joked the afternoon before about his feet hanging off the end. She thought guiltily of luxuriating in his big bed all night, with more than enough space.

  “It was fine,” he said, and didn’t loo
k at her.

  No, she was not imagining this. She wasn’t imagining anything at all.

  He’d retreated other times, but usually in response to tension between them. This didn’t feel like a tactical retreat to avoid an excess of emotion; it felt like – to be honest, it felt like a slap in the face.

  But maybe she was reading into his attitude a snub he didn’t intend. Cam had been a grouch at breakfast when he’d spent the night wrestling with a stubborn piece of code; after a few tearful arguments early in their marriage, she had learned never to take his morning moods personally. Maybe Richard’s work hadn’t progressed well the night before. Maybe, on top of being on the receiving end of Meg’s needling, he’d had a frustrating evening where nothing went right.

  Maybe this had nothing to do with her.

  “Did you get your work done?” she ventured. “Last night?”

  He glanced up briefly and took a sip of coffee. “Yes, thank you. I finished my edits.”

  Yes, thank you? He’d been more forthcoming about his work before; she’d heard all about the Charleston project and what a coup it represented for Ashmore & McIntire. She moved away nervously to the kitchen island. “I’m going to make omelets. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Too much trouble. This from the man who had asked for seconds last Sunday because, he’d said, he and Julie were not the most creative cooks on the planet, and he was tired of pizza and hamburgers. And he knew better. He knew she loved to cook. Surely he knew that she’d never consider it too much trouble to make his breakfast after all the trouble he had gone to for her.

  No, this was not the man who had greeted her the morning before with warm eyes and voice. This was not the man who had cheerfully threatened to set up a webcam next to the Jacuzzi tub so that, in his bachelor exile, he could watch her taking a bath. He was distant, disengaged, using that newspaper like a shield. He couldn’t make it any clearer: I do not want to talk to you.

  She couldn’t help it. She took it personally. She felt hurt.

  And she felt, beneath the hurt, more than a little irritation.

  She said nothing as she pulled breakfast fixings from the refrigerator. This was not how she had foreseen the morning, sharing a chilly silence with a man who, inexplicably, had turned cold overnight. She had thought they might take a trip to the grocery store; she had been appalled to find the Sub-zero full of frozen pizza and microwavable boxes, and even the food they had transferred from Edwards Lake didn’t dent the nutritional deficiencies of the Ashmore larder. Lying in bed, listening to the Valkyries ride again, she’d envisioned a light-hearted outing, shopping for food, planning a family cookout—

  Daddy grilling the steaks, Mommy making the salad, and two beaming, charming daughters to round out the image of the perfect family.

  Idiot, she told herself fiercely as she broke eggs into a mixing bowl. When was she going to learn? When was she going to let go of her fantasies and face the fact that this man, burned so terribly in the past, would not easily let another woman move into his heart?

  All right, so maybe he’d had second thoughts about their living arrangements. Maybe he’d had enough of Meg and her rudeness. Maybe he really did want his bed back. He didn’t have to be cold or nasty about it. All he had to say was, Laura, I’ve thought it over, and it would be better if you moved to a hotel, and she’d do it.

  With hurt feelings, that went without saying, but she’d do it.

  She busied herself for a few minutes, grating cheese and chopping up ham. Out in the music room, Julie finally wrapped up Wagner, and blessed silence reigned. She’d have to talk to Julie about using the piano for a few hours so she could run through her exercises. She’d neglected her voice for a couple of days, and Dale would chew her out royally on Monday when he found she’d been goofing off.

  She sighed mentally. One more thing for Julie to resent her aunt taking over – her home, her father’s bedroom, her piano.

  She became aware that Richard had spoken. “I’m sorry – I was woolgathering. What did you—”

  “We need to talk,” Richard said in a cool voice that made her skin prickle. “Why don’t you leave the breakfast for a moment, and have a seat.”

  She felt her pulse beating furiously in her throat. She didn’t trust her voice; she merely nodded slowly, picked up a towel and wiped her hands, and crossed the room to the table, her body feeling heavy and sluggish. The scrape of the chair as she pulled it out clawed at her nerves.

  She felt like a student in the principal’s office. Or a child again, facing her father’s displeasure.

  He made a big deal – all right, now she probably was exaggerating – of folding his newspaper into precise folds, and with each passing second, she felt the flood of anxiety rising. Something was wrong, seriously wrong, and for the life of her, she could not imagine what. Oh, yes, he had been eager to leave the afternoon before – who wouldn’t, after hours of exposure to Miss Margaret – but not for a second had she thought that his irritation with her daughter extended to her. He had called her from his office during the evening, checking on her, breaking off only when Lucy had appeared at the door bearing takeout.

  She made herself breathe normally.

  For all his take-charge attitude, he wasn’t having an easy time finding the words either. She watched as he moved his coffee mug a couple of hairs from where it was, adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and then – revealingly – reached for cigarettes that weren’t there.

  She couldn’t bear the tension any longer. “What is it?” she whispered. “What is wrong?”

  He looked at her directly, and she saw then that he wasn’t angry. She couldn’t put a word to the look on his face, but her limbs abruptly weighed a ton. This was bad. Whatever it was, it was bad.

  “We need to discuss,” he said, “a statement you made two weeks ago, to which I took great exception – and still do. You intimated that I would find it convenient if Diana killed herself, that at last I’d be rid of her.”

  Oh, no, no, no. She heard herself again, lashing out at him, fueled by eleven years of bitterness. She didn’t move, a small animal not wanting to call attention to herself.

  He continued, in that same even voice, “Two nights ago, you asked me if I had ever hurt Diana. I told you no – and I hope to God you believe me. I have never lifted a hand to a woman in my life, and I do not intend to ever do so unless I have to defend my family.”

  She felt sick, feeling her words coming back to haunt her. She swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say.

  “I did – once – grab Diana hard on the wrist,” he said, “I had to get her away from Francie. She had knocked Francie into a tree, and I don’t know I put any thought into my action. I remember fearing she might kill Francie if I didn’t stop her. She was in that sort of rage. By that time in our marriage, I knew her rages.” Something had relaxed in him; he settled back now, and he picked up his coffee. “I want to know,” he said, “what prompted those questions. I want to know why you believe I might have ever wanted to do violence to Diana.”

  She stared at him, and he met her gaze for gaze. Unwavering, unyielding, deadly serious. She couldn’t think. Dear heavens, what had brought this on? What had happened last night, that he thought – but he had finally divined what lay beneath those stupid, thoughtless words that she would do anything in the world to take back now. That old suspicion – no, call it true, Laura, belief – she’d forgotten it in the past week. It had vanished in the reality of knowing him, loving him, seeing his essential goodness.

  “Why—”

  “I want an answer,” Richard said, and she heard that he was no longer prepared to overlook those bitter words. “I want to know if the woman who professes to love me believes I have ever wanted to hurt my wife.”

  She dared not tell him the truth, that for so long she had believed Francie’s stories. She could, she thought dimly, get away with a lot with him. She coul
d get away with turning his life topsy-turvy. She could get away with a daughter insulting his patriotism. She could probably get away with having a bigger bank account. But she could not get away with questioning his integrity after the years he had spent rebuilding himself.

  She took a breath. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Do you believe I have ever wanted her dead?”

  Laura shook her head slowly.

  “Do you believe I have ever asked anyone to harm her, or conspired to do harm to her?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Do you believe,” said Richard, “I would ever allow anyone to harm Diana?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Say it, Laura.”

  The pledge demanded, to wipe out the words she had flung at him before. She said – and where did she find the wherewithal to keep her voice steady? – “I don’t believe you ever wanted to hurt Diana.”

  “All right,” and now he stood up, and she saw the release of strain in his movement, the uncoiling of a tightly wound spring. He walked over to the island where she had left the omelet fixings, so that she had to turn around in her chair to let her eyes follow him. She didn’t dare take her eyes from him. “One more question.”

  She waited.

  He looked at her squarely. “Has anyone ever told you I wanted to harm Diana?”

  She felt herself go pale. She stared at him mutely.

  She was going to have to tell him about Francie. She was going to have to confess about Ash Marine. She was going to have to tell him—

  And then, miraculously, he rescued her. He turned the question into two. “Did your husband tell you I wanted to harm her?”

  The unexpectedness of that startled her. “No! No. Never.” A clamminess swept across her skin. “Why would you think that? He didn’t even know you.”

  “Because,” Richard said, “he made it clear the night I saw him that I was persona non grata. And because you have a bad habit of believing what people tell you without checking it out first.”