Bed of Lies

by Teresa Hill

  "No. It's how I feel, Gwen."

  It was how lousy and lost he felt.

  It was feeling like he'd just laid his soul bare to her, and she'd dismissed it as nothing at all. Which he knew wasn't fair. He'd just told her he'd cheated on her. She thought he was trying to make excuses. Hell, he supposed he was.

  I feel like shit, Gwen. I need help. It's bad, and I don't know what to do.

  If he said that, would she help him? Could anyone?

  He started again to try to explain it all, but a knock sounded on the door. A moment later, without waiting for an invitation, Gwen's assistant, Tina, walked in. "It's a quarter till. People will be arriving any minute for cocktails, and... I can hear you in the next room."

  Gwen looked embarrassed. "I'll be right there."

  Tina backed out and shut the door. Gwen sat down at her dressing table, covered all traces of her tears, then stood and faced him.

  "Don't go," he said. "There's more. Things I haven't even begun to tell you. Let's go somewhere. Talk this out."

  She shook her head. "Oh, stop it, Zach."

  "I need this, Gwen. Surely your father can get through one damned cocktail party without you."

  "Look, I'm furious, and I'm hurt, and I'd really like to smack you again. Maybe I will. But right now, I'm going to make sure this evening runs smoothly," she said. "And you're going back to finish your trial. We both knew going in what our relationship was going to be like, given our schedules, so I guess it can't come as any great surprise that this happened."

  To which he could say nothing.

  "I have to go," she said.

  "Should I call you? Or would that just make it harder?"

  "I don't know, Zach. I don't know anything right now."

  With that, she squared her shoulders and walked into the other room.

  * * *

  Julie packed her things from her office and drove home in a cold, dreary rain. She collapsed on the sofa, then thought of getting up and turning on the heat, because she was cold, but that seemed like too much trouble. So she pulled the afghan off the back of the sofa and wrapped herself up in it.

  Here she was, no fiancé, no job, no idea what she was going to do next. When the phone rang, she stared at it like it was some kind of monster. It couldn't possibly be good news.

  She let the answering machine pick up and braced herself to hear the message. It was Grace, asking if Julie had talked to Zach, because no one had been able to get in touch with him since the verdict came in. Julie was determined not to think about Zach today.

  "And... Well, I guess you heard," Grace said. "But just in case... your parents were arrested today. I'm sorry, Julie."

  Perfect. What a twenty-four hours. Sleep with an old friend. Lose a fiancé. Quit a job. And now her parents were in jail.

  Only one more thing could make it complete.

  Peter.

  Where was Peter?

  Julie drew her feet up onto the couch, hugging her legs to her chest, hunkering down into a little ball, just as she'd done when she was little and trying to make herself as tiny as possible. Wondering if people could just disappear. She had wanted to do that so badly.

  Grace finally hung up, and Julie thought she wanted Zach, impossible though it was to have him. She wanted him to hold her. It hadn't felt wrong in the darkest part of the night. It had felt...

  She didn't have the words. It had been... completely overwhelming and impossibly intense and so very good. It had taken everything else away for so long, and Julie almost never got to the point where the whole world just went away, like it didn't exist. When there was nothing but pleasure in the whole world.

  She must have imagined it.

  Nothing felt like that.

  Her body, even now, could feel the imprint of his, like he'd left an indelible mark on her. And some physical ones, as well. He'd scuffed her up with the stubble on his face anyplace his mouth had lingered for long.

  She had to stop thinking about it, was determined to, but it was hard when she still had the marks of his possession on her body. And when she wanted his arms around her so badly.

  She wondered what he'd say if she called him up and said, Come and hold me, Zach. It's an absolutely awful night, and I don't know how I'll make it through without you. Make me forget again.

  She remembered that first night she'd seen him in Memphis, when he'd said he was worried about her, and she'd teased him about coming to her rescue again.

  I would have, he'd said. Just like that. No questions asked. No hesitation.

  Well, it couldn't be like that anymore. Sex changed things. Any kind of sex. Including the desperate, get-me-through-the-night kind of sex.

  She groaned. She had to find a bottom point in her life somewhere, she kept thinking. Time and time again, she'd thought surely she'd found it. So far, she hadn't. Was this it? Today? Or would it still go lower?

  The phone rang just as she got to that thought. Things could get worse.

  She wanted to shove the phone across the room, shatter it against the wall as Zach had shattered the glass, and maybe she wanted a drink. She'd always thought someday that particular family trait might catch up to her. So far, it hadn't. But someday... she hated herself sometimes. All her weaknesses. All the mistakes. All the lies.

  The answering machine clicked on.

  "Ms. Morrison? This is JoAnne Reed with Child and Family Services in Baxter, Ohio."

  There it was. The bottom. The worst.

  "I'm trying to reach Peter Morrison's sister," the woman continued.

  Julie swallowed back a groan as something that felt like a physical pain moved through her body.

  And then another voice came into her living room, courtesy of that awful answering machine. Peter's voice? Was that him? He sounded so big. So different. So angry. No surprise there.

  He was yelling. The same words over and over again. She won't come. I told you, she won't come.

  He sounded like he hated her, and his words shamed her as nothing else ever had. It was too late for so many things in her life. For her and her mother. For her and her real father, who'd died ages ago. Her and Steve. Her and Zach. It sounded like it was too late for her and Peter, too, but he was desperate.

  Maybe, as bad as things were, she still had a chance with him. Julie hadn't gotten many second chances.

  What could she do for him, anyway? Teach him to lie and run away? She was good at that. She could teach him to laugh when the situation wasn't funny at all. Maybe she could teach him just to keep going, because somehow she'd always managed to do that.

  That's when she decided.

  She was going back to Baxter, Ohio.

  She called and told Ms. Reed that she'd be there the next day and turned down an offer to talk to Peter herself. Then she threw some clothes into a suitcase and stared at her bed. It was a seven- or eight-hour drive, depending on traffic. She was in no shape for the trip now, but thought she wouldn't sleep on her own, either. Too many regrets and too many fears were running through her head.

  In the end, she dug through her medicine cabinet for the pain pills her doctor had given her last year when she'd wrenched her knee. She'd taken them rarely, because they put her to sleep. But she'd kept them around for when her headaches got so bad for days on end.

  Julie took one pill and climbed into bed.

  The drug started to kick in. Her lids got heavy and the thoughts weren't rushing through her brain so frantically. Everything was slowing down quite nicely. If drinking could feel this good, no wonder her mother and stepfather drank. These pills... Well, she was thankful the doctor had given her only ten. It wasn't the feeling she got from being in Zach's arms, but it was the best she could do tonight.

  Chapter 8

  In what Julie considered the cruelest of ironies, the town she had grown up in was a perfect image of small-town America.

  Not just perfect, but Christmas perfect.

  Gently twinkling lights, ribbons and wreaths, warm fires burn
ing in the fireplaces, Christmas trees in the front windows. White clapboard churches, bells ringing. Carolers singing in the streets. Snow gently falling. Kindness. Happiness. Joy.

  It was the "Christmas town."

  Zach, in fact, had grown up in the "Christmas house."

  She'd been in something of a daze the first time she realized it. She'd made friends with a little girl in the Christmas house, and played there all the time.

  It was all Zach and Grace's grandfather's fault. He'd turned snow globes into an elaborate art form, and the images he created of Baxter, Ohio, were known around the world.

  When Julie and her parents had moved here, she'd had a book of The Night Before Christmas featuring his images from this town, and she'd always thought it must be the perfect place to live, maybe even that her mother and stepfather would stop yelling and stop drinking.

  She quickly realized how foolish those dreams were. Life went on mostly the way it always had, except when she escaped to Grace's house, as often as she could manage.

  Driving down that same street now, she hoped the town had gotten bigger and more impersonal, that she might be able to handle her family's problems with some degree of anonymity. But Baxter still reeked of small-town, picture-perfect images on this quiet day in late September. Trees towered overhead and the leaves seemed aflame with color. A hint of wind came and the leaves rained gently down and skittered along the street, pooling in the wide yards of the big Victorians that lined the streets.

  They all looked so pretty, so painstakingly restored and maintained.

  All of them except her parents' house, which looked sad and neglected. A great-aunt who died childless had left it to Julie's mother. It was a miracle they'd managed to hang on to it all these years.

  Julie had called Ms. Reed from the edge of town and the woman had offered to meet her here. Staring up at the place, she saw a dull, fading yellow structure with what had once been white trim and a white porch stretching along the front and down one side. The house was three stories, with tons of windows and three fireplaces, and someone should really rake the leaves. She'd be shocked if it wasn't mortgaged to within an inch of its life, and here she was, without a job or any real savings after all she'd spent on a wedding that would never take place.

  She got out of the car, the wind whipping around her, leaves fluttering softly to the ground, as she headed for the door.

  A feeling, maybe a sound, made her look up just before she got to the porch steps, and there in one of the second-floor windows, she saw a face in shadows. The shadow jerked back, the curtains falling once more into place. Peter? Watching for her, even though he'd claimed to know she'd never come?

  The door opened, and a kind-looking woman in her mid-fifties with a charming pink suit stood in the doorway smiling back at her.

  "Ms. Morrison?" she asked. "You must have left before the sun came up."

  "I did."

  "Well, come in." She stepped back from the doorway. "It's your parents' home, after all."

  Julie reluctantly walked inside. The house was as she remembered it, a bit too dark and tired-looking. What had her parents done with all that money they'd stolen?

  "I'm so glad you could come," the social worker said. "Peter was... Well..."

  "He didn't think I would." Julie said the words for the woman. Might as well get things out in the open. "No great surprise. I haven't seen him in eight years."

  A million regrets washed over her. She was so stupid to think she could ever do this.

  "There's really no one else to take him?" she blurted out.

  Ms. Reed gaped at Julie as if she thought everything had been settled. "A cousin of your stepfather in Iowa who's never met Peter. She said she hated the idea of him going into foster care. There's an aunt of your stepfather in Kansas, but she's seventy-two and hasn't seen him since he was a baby. If we had to, we could pursue a placement with the cousin, I suppose, but..."

  "No. I suspected as much." Julie pulled herself together. She'd come. Peter had seen her. She couldn't back out now. She went to the front window and looked outside. "I suppose if Peter needs someone to look after him, this mess with our parents isn't going to be resolved anytime soon?"

  "That's for the attorneys and the courts to decide, but... well, I asked the same question. They told me the judge set a fairly high bail and your parents didn't have the assets to cover it. So, it could be a while."

  Julie nodded, already dying to be anywhere but here. "Peter's upstairs?"

  "Yes." The woman hesitated. "You don't have children?"

  "No."

  "He's going to be a handful, I'm afraid."

  Julie nodded. "Runs in the family."

  Her mother had always claimed that one day Julie would pay for the hell she'd put her mother through when she was an adolescent. By then, she'd decided if she was going to be miserable, everyone around her might as well be miserable, too. The three of them had awful fights, yelling and screaming and stomping out of the house. Slamming doors. Roaring off in cars, her staying gone for days at a time.

  Peter was thirteen now.

  Just how bad had Julie been at thirteen?

  "You should know, there's been some trouble at school," Ms. Reed said. "Shoving and shouting, name-calling. A couple of suspensions. Problems with schoolwork and grades. Attendance. He needs to be in school. Every day."

  Julie barely managed not to laugh. She would be responsible for a barely teenage boy getting to school every day? But then she was well qualified. She knew all the good places to go when skipping school. Experience seemed to be a plus in this situation.

  "I'll see that he's in school," Julie promised rashly.

  "Whoever has him will have to," she said. "Adolescence is hard enough when a child doesn't have to cope with something like this. It's only been a day, and I haven't finished my evaluation of him yet, but I suspect it would be a good idea for Peter to talk to someone—someone outside the family—"

  "You mean... a psychologist?"

  "Yes. I believe you know the McRaes? They probably would have taken him themselves, but—"

  "Zach explained about the girls they have now."

  "You know Zach, too?"

  "Yes," she admitted.

  "He's a wonderful man." The woman looked relaxed and almost happy for a moment. So Julie got brownie points just for knowing Zach. "He's marrying a good friend of mine's daughter, in fact."

  "What?" Julie had only half been paying attention until she heard the word "marrying" in connection with Zach.

  "Zach. He's engaged to Senator Baker's daughter, Gwen. I went to school with her mother a long, long time ago. They're wonderful people. I couldn't be happier for all of them."

  "I didn't know Zach was engaged," Julie said. "He didn't mention that."

  Not at dinner with Steve and his family or at their engagement party. Not on the floor or in his bed, either.

  Julie nearly groaned aloud. How many relationships had they ruined that night?

  "Are you all right?" Ms. Reed asked, coming a step closer.

  "Yes. I'm sorry. I just... was just surprised. I've known Zach a long time. I used to be good friends with his sister Grace."

  "And you knew Emma, too?"

  "Yes."

  "That's the reason I brought up the family. I suppose you know Emma's a child psychologist. She has a private practice here in town and does some work for social services from time to time. If you wanted someone to talk to Peter, she's wonderful."

  "I'm sure she is." And she had that firsthand experience—alcoholic father who beat on their mother on a regular basis. "If we need a shrink, she'd be the one we'd call."

  Ms. Reed didn't seem to know how to take that.

  "Sorry. This house brings out the sarcastic streak in me, I'm afraid. But I meant what I said. I'm sure Emma's very good at her job. If Peter needs to see someone, she's the one I'd want to help him."

  And then, because no other stalling tactics came to mind, Julie turned to the
stairs and looked up. "I guess I should go up and say hello to him."

  "Go ahead. I'll wait here."

  Julie wondered what that meant. Was there some sort of test she had to pass? The fit-parent test? If she did, where in the hell were these people when she was growing up or for the first thirteen years of Peter's life?

  She went to the stairs and slowly started to climb. From above, she heard someone scrambling away. So he'd been listening at the top of the stairs. Great. She thought back over what she'd said. There's really no one else to take him? That should win her some points right off the bat.

  She made it to the top of the steps and into the hall. What used to be her room was off to the right. Briefly, she wondered what was there now. Her mother and stepfather's room was to the immediate left and Peter's was at the other end of the hall, door closed.

  She forced herself to knock. "Peter? It's me. I need to come in."

  No answer.

  "Peter? Come on. Just let me in."

  Still nothing.

  She tried the door. It was locked.

  She had vague memories of locking herself in her room, her mother on the other side of the door screaming at her, her stepfather shoving the door open. She wasn't going to do that.

  "Fine." Julie sat down on the floor instead, right on the other side of the door. "We can talk this way, if you want."

  Utter silence came from the room.

  "I'm sorry for leaving the way I did, Peter. I just... couldn't stand it here anymore. I had to get away. I thought it was the only thing I could do. For me." She couldn't have saved him then. "I missed you."

  He wrenched open the door and glared down at her. "You did not."

  "I did," she said, thinking, He's so big. So grown up.

  What had happened to the little boy she'd left behind?

  Julie got to her feet, dismayed to find that they stood nearly eye to eye. If anything, when she was shoeless he'd probably be a bit taller than she was. His bare feet were huge and somehow manlike, wide and long and bony. He had what seemed to be an impossible bulk to his chest, shoulders and arms, a sprinkling of dark hair on his upper lip, dark eyes brimming with anger, dark, thick brows and an unruly head of hair in sad need of a trim.