A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  He smiled. “Perhaps we’ll come across one.”

  The woman came back and wrapped Léon’s order. “Thank you, monsieur. I hope to see you again soon.”

  “I hope so. But the next shop will be in Paris,” he said to Stephanie when they were outside again. “I’ll have to find a whole new set of shopkeepers.”

  Stephanie stopped in the street. “You’re turning your life upside down because of me.”

  “There is no better reason in all the world.”

  They kissed beneath the trees of Avignon, and then they walked on, arm in arm, in love, free of the tentacles that seemed to reach for them in Cavaillon. “Soon,” Léon murmured. “A new life. I feel like an explorer beginning a new adventure.”

  Two adventures, Stephanie thought. The one we make together and the one I still travel alone: finding the other half of myself. And I will. Soon. Léon will help me. And who knows what I’ll find in Vézelay or Paris that will be the key I’ve been looking for all this time?

  Part III

  CHAPTER 17

  In Avignon, on a hot October afternoon, Sabrina stood at the counter of Monet Fournitures Artistiques. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with a long red and orange scarf tied around the crown, and she spoke with the owner of the shop about two people who had been there a few weeks before.

  “The woman did not tell me her name,” the owner said. “But when I was in the other room, she and her friend were talking together and he called her by her name. And she spoke her husband’s name.”

  Sabrina looked at her, waiting.

  “Her name was Sabrina,” the woman said. “And the husband’s name was Max.”

  The colorful shelves seemed to tilt around her and Sabrina put a hand on the counter to steady herself. Sabrina and Max. She had come to Avignon looking for a ghost. And she had found two of them.

  It could not be coincidence. Someone was deliberately impersonating Sabrina Longworth, even going so far as to create a man named Max. But why? Everyone thought Sabrina Longworth was dead; why would anyone impersonate a dead woman? It made no sense. Unless . . .

  Unless . . .

  Unless she was Stephanie. Stephanie Andersen, still playing the role of her sister Sabrina. Stephanie . . . alive.

  She couldn’t be. There was no way . . .

  But who else would look exactly like her and be named Sabrina and be with a man named Max?

  What if she hadn’t been killed? What if she was alive?

  Oh, my God, Stephanie, if you really could be . . .

  “Madame,” said the woman, and Sabrina saw that she was offering a glass of water.

  “Thank you.” The glass was heavy and deeply ridged, a bistro glass, comforting in the hand. “I need to know more about them. Please believe me, I was not that woman.”

  “Then, madame, she could only have been your twin sister; such an astonishing resemblance—”

  “I must know more about them. Please, is there nothing else you can tell me?”

  “Nothing, madame. I had not seen them before. The man, the painter, most likely does not live in Avignon; otherwise, I am sure he would have been in my shop many times. I would guess he is from a nearby town, perhaps Les Baux; many artists live there.”

  “And . . . the woman? Where might she live?”

  “I cannot say. But even though they spoke of a husband, they seemed to me like two people who live together. Or perhaps . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I did think that perhaps they were running away together. There was a kind of urgency—” A customer came into the shop and the woman put her hand briefly on Sabrina’s. “That is all I can tell you, madame; I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” And then she was in the street again, in the early afternoon heat. Crowds walked past, heading purposefully to cafés; shopkeepers hung Closed signs in doors and windows. Lunchtime, Sabrina thought vaguely. One o’clock. My flight from Marseilles to London. And tomorrow, to Chicago.

  But she could not move. She stood in the shade of a plane tree, her thoughts chasing each other.

  Her name was Sabrina. And the husband’s name was Max.

  Sabrina and Max. Not so many miles from Monte Carlo, where there had been an explosion . . .

  The street emptied. She leaned against the tree, breathing rapidly.

  To live another life. Stephanie in Hong Kong, one year ago. An adventure, Sabrina! A week. Just one incredible week.

  And Sabrina hesitating: You might get greedy.

  Was that what had happened? Had she wanted more? Had she wanted a lifetime, and so she and Max had arranged to disappear?

  Stephanie would never do that.

  Her name was Sabrina. And the husband’s name was Max. Not so many miles from Monte Carlo.

  And the man in the map store, angry because she insisted she had never been there, had said, I understand that you are not especially interested in maps—that you deal with antique furniture instead . . .

  “Dear God,” Sabrina said aloud. “I don’t understand.”

  But . . . if Stephanie was alive . . .

  Stephanie. Alive.

  Her other half, the part of her that she had lost a year earlier and still mourned, still ached for, even in the midst of the greatest happiness she had ever known.

  Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie.

  She had to find her. Whatever she found, whatever it meant, whoever that woman was, she had to find her.

  You deal with antique furniture.

  Almost running, she retraced her steps through the sun-baked streets to the shaded stone courtyard of L’Europe. Lunch was being served to well-dressed guests who looked up in surprise at Sabrina’s flushed face and hurried footsteps, and she walked more slowly into the lobby and upstairs to her room.

  I’ll call, she thought. I haven’t time to run all over the countryside from one antique shop to another—

  Time. The flight from Marseilles to London. And tomorrow morning, from London to Chicago.

  She looked at her watch. One-thirty in Avignon. Seven-thirty in Evanston. They’ll be at breakfast. My family will be at breakfast. My husband and children will be at breakfast.

  The words sank like stones. My family. My husband and children.

  Garth, Garth, Garth.

  She clamped down on the thought. Not now. Later. Now is for Stephanie.

  Stephanie. Alive.

  Oh, Stephanie, I love you, I’ve missed you, sometimes I’ve felt so empty . . .

  But if she is, what does that mean? She’s been gone for a year. She let us think she was dead.

  Why would she do that? Because she still wants to be Sabrina Longworth? Married to Max?

  Max would want to disappear. That would not surprise anyone who knew him and could imagine what he would do when he heard that reporters were working on a series of stories exposing Westbridge Imports, art forgeries, and smuggled antiquities. Max Stuyvesant would have made careful plans and then, one day, vanished, and no one would have been surprised.

  But would Stephanie have wanted to share that exile with him? Could she be so much in love . . . ?

  But her husband. Her children. Her sister. How could she let us think she was dead?

  Wait . . . wait. She’s not alive. How could she be? It’s all a coincidence . . . an impostor . . .

  But there were too many coincidences, and the longer she thought of Stephanie alive, the more real it became.

  She hunched over in her chair, her hand trembling as she waited for the hotel operator to connect her to Evanston. Mrs. Thirkell answered, solid and comforting, and then Garth was there.

  “Oh, my love, my love,” Sabrina said, the words breaking loose before she could stop them.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” His voice, quick with concern, resonated inside her; she shut her eyes and felt his warmth, his lips on hers, the weight of him . . .

  “Nothing.” But she was trembling so violently the word was barely a whisper. I’m sorry, sh
e told him silently. I haven’t lied to you since you found out the truth about me; I believed I never would lie to you again. But I can’t tell you about this. I have to follow it myself; I have to find out what happened, because, in the deepest way, this is between Stephanie and me. I’m sorry, my love, I’m sorry, but I have to talk to Stephanie by myself—

  Talk to Stephanie?

  I can’t talk to her; she’s dead. She’s been dead for a year and I’ve had to get used to being without her. But if . . . if somehow she’s alive, then I have to talk to her by myself and find out why she’s done this. She’ll talk to me; we always could talk, about everything.

  She took a breath. “Nothing’s wrong; it’s just that I miss you, I love you . . . I miss all of you. I hate being away; nothing is any fun without you.”

  “Well, that’s easily solved.”

  “I know. I’m working on it. Now tell me what’s happening at home.”

  “You’re not coming back tomorrow.”

  Oh, Garth, you know me so well, you understand things before I say them.

  “No, I’m staying on for a few days. There are some things I want to look at, for Collectibles.”

  “Are you still in London?”

  “No, in Avignon. I’m going to call some antique dealers in Provence; I don’t know how long it will take.”

  He was silent. He knows I’m lying, Sabrina thought. I came to Provence without telling him; I’m not being forthcoming now. He’ll wonder if I’m being pulled back to Europe, to my old life; if a year of domesticity was enough.

  “Garth, this came up all of a sudden; I hadn’t planned it.” She heard the pleading in her voice, but there was nothing she could do about it; she was pleading with fate, that everything would be fine. “Nothing’s really changed. I’ll meet you in Paris in two weeks, after your conference, just the way we planned it. Cliff and Penny will go to Vivian’s and you and I will have our week alone.”

  “Of course we will,” he said easily. “Now tell me what else you’ve been doing.”

  Sabrina sat back in her chair, breathing more easily. What was wrong with her that the first thing she thought of was that Garth would be angry or fearful? He knew that she had sold Ambassadors and her house on Cadogan Square; he knew she no longer wanted even a partial life in Europe. I’m seeing plots everywhere, she thought. “I saw Sidney Jones and signed the papers for Ambassadors; it’s all Alexandra’s now. But I spent a lot of time there, going over the books, talking to Brian, checking the inventory . . .”

  “Handling withdrawal pangs.”

  She smiled. “Something like that. It wasn’t hard; it just had a sort of melancholy about it. Like graduation.”

  He chuckled. “I like that. By the way, do you know what hotels you’ll be staying in before you get to Paris?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

  “Good. Our children are clamoring to talk to you; this is fair warning before the sound you hear goes up a few decibels.”

  “Thank you. I love you, Garth.”

  “I love you, my dear one.”

  Then Penny and Cliff were on extension phones, chattering about school and sports and friends, their voices riding over each other, evoking their life in Evanston: the three-story frame house with high-ceilinged rooms, polished wood floors, tiled fireplaces, shelves of books, a basement and an attic where unexpected treasures could be found, the kitchen with its sagging couch where everyone sat at some time during the day. My house, Sabrina thought, remembering the warm embrace with which it held their family together.

  Still, she felt a tug of impatience as the children talked and as soon as she hung up she opened the telephone book to antique shops and galleries, and thought of nothing else but this task. This search. For Stephanie.

  She began with shops in Avignon. She had admired Arjuna earlier that day, and so she called it first and asked if a woman named Sabrina Longworth worked there.

  “No, no one by that name,” said the owner, and was about to hang up when Sabrina said quickly, “Or anyone named Sabrina? Whatever the last name?”

  Again the answer was no. But now Sabrina knew what to ask: there was no reason to think that Stephanie would have continued to call herself Sabrina Longworth if she was in hiding with Max. They would have taken a new name.

  If it really is Stephanie. If she really is alive.

  But that thought was growing fainter. By now Sabrina was searching not for a ghost but for her sister.

  She telephoned antique shops in Avignon, Aries, Les Baux, and Saint-Rémy all that afternoon and evening—“Is there someone working in your shop named Sabrina?”—with no success. The next day, on a chance, she skipped to the east and called shops in Aix-en-Provence and Saint-Saturnin, but again had no success. After a quick lunch, with the map before her, she called shops in the small towns between Aix and Avignon: Apt, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, Carpentras, Orange, Gordes, Roussillon. And late in the afternoon she came to Cavaillon, and called Jacqueline en Provence.

  When a woman answered, Sabrina asked the question automatically; she had repeated it so often she barely heard herself say the words. “Is there someone working in your shop named Sabrina?”

  “Sabrina? Is that you?” asked the woman.

  Sabrina’s heart pounded. “You know her?”

  “Is this a joke? Sabrina, where are you?”

  “Please, does Sabrina work there?”

  “Well, I don’t understand . . . I could have sworn it was your voice . . . No, Sabrina no longer works here; she’s left town. Who is—”

  “Can you tell me where she went?”

  “No. Who is this?”

  “A . . . friend. I must talk to you about her. I’ll come to see you. What time do you open tomorrow?”

  “Ten. But I would not tell a stranger—”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  That night she did not sleep. She sat in a café in the Place de l’Horloge, watching the carousel revolve, watching the people, watching the hours pass on the clock tower. I’ll know tomorrow. They worked together; they would have talked. This woman will know her. At dawn she packed and checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the train station, where she rented a car and drove the forty miles to Cavaillon. She pretended she was Stephanie, looking at farmers preparing their small fields for winter, driving along high walls of meticulously pruned cypress trees that stopped abruptly to reveal snug stone farmhouses set back from the road, each with its own swimming pool and neat gardens. She heard a rooster crow, and then another, as the sky grew bright. If Stephanie had been in Avignon, and worked in Cavaillon, she would have driven on this road. She would have seen these fields, these houses, heard these roosters. So different from Evanston, so different from London . . .

  The traffic became heavier as she approached Cavaillon, and it took her a while to find the center of town. She reached it just before ten, driving around the central square with its fountain topped with a sculpture of metal spikes like the rays of the sun. Exuberant drops of water flew out from the fountain, sparkling in the morning sun, landing on Sabrina’s car. She barely noticed; her gaze was fixed ahead or glancing down briefly at the map on the seat beside her. Following it, she drove past small shops and cafés to the cours Gambetta and, turning onto it, saw Jacqueline en Provence, in the center of the block, its gold lettering beckoning her on.

  There was no place to park; she left the car jutting into an alley and rushed to the shop, pushing open the front door and stopping only when she found herself in a narrow space with furniture, floor lamps, and baskets of linens blocking her way. The air was faintly musty, the light soft and diffuse, the furnishings mellow with the polish of generations. My favorite kind of shop. And Stephanie’s, too.

  “Sabrina! My dear, I thought you had gone. You’ve changed your plans?”

  A tall woman, austerely beautiful, her ash blond hair pinned loosely back from her face, came from the rear of the shop, her hands outstretched. “I was worried
about you; such a quick farewell, without an address or an explanation . . . you and Léon both. I couldn’t imagine that he would leave his studio, just like that . . . and what of Max? I was quite concerned. You both just vanished. So much mystery.”

  Sabrina’s hands were held tightly and she was silent for a moment, caught in the absurdity of what was happening. Sabrina, who is playing Stephanie, being mistaken for Sabrina. She shook her head in despair. Will there ever be an end to this deception?

  “Not a mystery?” the woman asked, seeing Sabrina shake her head. “Then what is it?”

  She wished she could tell her the truth; she liked her. But there was nothing she could learn here. Without an address or an explanation . . . you and Léon both. Léon would be the artist buying supplies in Avignon. Both gone, vanished, and this woman knew nothing about it.

  Sabrina felt a sinking within her. Stephanie—if it is Stephanie—didn’t want this woman to know anything. They worked together, but she left without an address or an explanation. I can’t even ask her what Sabrina’s last name is.

  “My dear, what happened?”

  “Oh, it’s so complicated,” she said in frustration. “I came to find out . . . a few things.”

  The woman frowned. “This is very strange. A woman telephoned yesterday, asking about you. I would have sworn it was your voice.”

  Sabrina shook her head, and then remembered that both the woman at Monet Fournitures Artistiques and this woman had spoken of an urgency: Perhaps they were running away together. “Has anyone else been asking about me?”

  “No one. Well, your friend the priest, Robert, came to retrieve a jacket you had left here. He was quite evasive when I asked him if he knew where you’d gone. But that’s not what you meant. Sabrina, are you afraid of someone?”

  Someone else to ask. A priest who knows more than he wants to tell. I can find a priest named Robert; that shouldn’t be hard. She moved toward the door, impatient to be gone. “I don’t know. There are so many things I don’t understand. I’m sorry; I’d tell you everything if I could. Perhaps later I’ll come back and tell you everything. I’m sorry . . .” She opened the door and rushed to her car.