“No, I suppose not. Unless we tell them.”
“Good. We won’t.”
And for years now Ginny had hardly mentioned the subject. Rina worried sometimes, because she suspected that it was still important to her daughter, but she was relieved too. Talking about it always frightened Rina. Always ripped open the old wounds, the old cycle of bereavement as, month after month, she had failed to conceive. “Well,cara,” her mother had said from across a great gulf, trying to comfort her, “perhaps God doesn’t mean for you to be a mother. He has another plan.” And slowly, weeping, she had accepted it. But there were children, she knew, who needed love and guidance as much as she needed to love and guide. Surely God wanted her at least to love and guide a child?
But often she still feared that He didn’t.
And Ginny’s questions were hard to answer in another way. Be positive about the first mother, the agency had decreed. Raise the child to be moral and sensible. But how? How could you tell a daughter that sex and children belonged in a context of love and commitment, not casual lust, and at the same time maintain that her unmarried young mother had been a good person? How could you explain that you rejoiced at the happenstance that had brought her to you, and at the same time denounce irresponsible sex? Rina found her own feelings so mixed and confused that she despaired of ever being able to explain them to Ginny. She did the necessary: bought books on the facts of life, even got birth control pills for her. But she seldom brought up the subject of Ginny’s birth mother, and was relieved that Ginny did not.
But the rebellions became more vigorous, and then Mamma had lost her house and moved in with them. Ginny’s grades had fallen, her dance lessons had been abandoned, friends like Jan neglected. Before long Buck, and drugs, had entered her life.
And now she had run away.
Rina picked up a sample of blue calico. Too purple. She put it aside.
But running away couldn’t be connected to the adoption. Because where could she run? She didn’t have that young mother’s name, and could never get it. No one could. It was sealed away. Ginny might know she had been adopted in New York City, but there was no way to get more specific information there either. Rina had contacted the agency two or three times herself, asking timidly for more information about the mother’s talents and interests, but her questions had been politely rebuffed. Besides, Ginny had gone to Philadelphia, not New York. So it couldn’t be connected to the adoption.
And it wasn’t connected to Buck, not directly at least.
Did that mean it was drugs?
Rina had pored over pamphlets and books, and had concluded that Ginny had experimented, as most kids had. But could it be more serious than she thought?
Or could it be a kidnapping, after all?
But then why no ransom note? Why no fear in Ginny’s voice on the phone?
Clint came in, and Rina put down the scraps of calico she had been testing for color. “What did they say at the bank?” she asked.
“She withdrew eighty dollars.” He hugged her and took off his trench coat.
“That’s not a lot, is it?”
“No. Bus ticket to Philadelphia. Food.”
“She would have taken more if it was for drugs, don’t you think?”
“Rina, I don’t know. It wouldn’t pay for a lot, anyway.”
“Okay, I understand what you mean. I won’t get my hopes up.”
“Well, there’s got to be a reason she won’t tell us her friends’ names!” he exploded. “If I could just give Paul Buchanan’s office a name, they could look!”
“I know, Clint. But she didn’t know how serious it is. She hung up before I could tell her anything about it. When she knows the police want to talk to her, she’ll tell us where we can find her, I’m sure.”
“I know, honey, but it’s so damn frustrating!”
“Yes. We’ll just have to tell her first thing, so she can’t hang up the way she did before. I shouldn’t have—”
“Hush, honey, you did what any good mother would have done, you asked about her first.”
Rina squeezed his hand gratefully.
“And you know,” he continued, frowning down at the floor a moment, “she’s obviously got troubles, but somehow—well, I guess I just have faith in her not to do anything absolutely stupid.”
“Yes,” said Rina eagerly. “I feel that too.”
The police came two hours later. Detectives Trainer and Carmody again, a fingerprint man, and a photographer. This time they wanted to search Ginny’s room and look around the rest of the house.
“Okay,” said Rina, “but I already hunted, and there’s nothing. No note, or anything.”
“We’ll just take a quick look, Mrs. Marshall.”
They were very thorough. After the fingerprint man had finished, Carmody and Trainer examined Ginny’s schoolbooks and notebooks, her sewing table, the closet and bookshelves. They looked behind the books, Tolstoy and Haley and Dickens and Blume; they looked under the bed. Every little stuffed animal or doll was frisked; every magazine, even thePlaygirl, riffled with care. Trainer replaced it quietly, without comment, just as he later replaced the birth control pills in the drawer. Rina, although hopeful that they would notice something she had missed, nevertheless felt that she was allowing Ginny to be violated.
Clint was standing behind Rina in the hall outside the bedroom door, frowning. “Sergeant Trainer, what is all this about?”
“We’re trying to find your daughter, Mr. Marshall.”
“Yes, I appreciate that. But she left Thursday night. This is Saturday afternoon, and suddenly you start working on the case!”
“We’ve been working on it, sir.” Trainer came into the hall. “We’re about finished in there now. May we look around the rest of the house?”
“Of course,” said Rina.
“But what’s the purpose of this?” Clint demanded.
“They’re trying to find Ginny!” Rina said.
“I know, honey. But this doesn’t feel right.” Clint’s jaw was jutting, the way it did when he was working on a hotly contested legal case.
The police searched all the drawers and closets, even in the garage and the laundry area and in Mamma’s room. Politely, they opened Ginny’s brightly wrapped birthday presents, trying not to rip the paper. Finally they were finished and Trainer came to see Clint and Rina, who were sitting in the living room.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall,” he said. Detective Carmody waited partway down the half-flight of steps by the front door.
“Sergeant, can’t you tell us what this is all about?” asked Clint. “Maybe we can help.”
“Yes, sir, perhaps you can. We appreciate your cooperation.” Sergeant Trainer’s light-blue eyes were wary. “You see, we’ve found the weapon that killed Mr. Spencer.”
“The weapon?”
“Yes, sir. In Buck Landon’s car.”
X
“But I want to go to the park!” Sarah pouted at Nick.
“Will is too sick to go.” And Ginny is too upset, and your mother is too worried, and your old dad here is not exactly a model of cheeriness either. More like the “before” pictures in an Alka-Seltzer ad. Nick jammed the last of the forks into the dishwasher, sprinkled detergent into the cup, and tried to comfort his daughter. “You helped me walk Zelle this morning, remember? So you did get to go for a while.”
“Sometimes Alison gets to go twice.” She dug her toe at the floor tiles. Zelle sniffed the spot hopefully, hunting for crumbs left behind by the departing guests.
“Sometimes you get to go twice too. But not today,” said Nick firmly. He latched the dishwasher door and started the machine. “Look,” he suggested over the throb of the pump, “why don’t we go up to the exercise room? We can dance or do some gymnastics and still be around here if Will needs us.”
“Well—” This was clearly second-best to the park.
“But maybe you’d better run up and see if Ginny wants to dance with us,” he added. �
�Make sure she’s not taking a nap in there.”
“Okay.” The idea that Ginny might participate cheered her. She trotted upstairs while Nick let Zelle out into the little backyard and then wiped the last of the brunch crumbs from the dining room sideboard.
Sarah’s invitation must have been persuasive. Ginny agreed to borrow one of Maggie’s leotards, and Maggie herself decided to join them. She’d been reading to Will, but the fretful little boy now seemed more interested in napping than anything else. The four of them changed and trooped up to the top floor. Kakiy, who had been supervising Will’s storytime, streaked upstairs past them and leaped to the sunny windowsill, where he settled calmly to observe them with inscrutable golden eyes.
They all started with warm-up stretches at the barre. Although he kept himself in shape, no waste on his burly body, Nick felt massive, almost Falstaffian, next to the three female forms. A tun of man. Maggie was linear, long strong bones, a womanly lightness softening the lean stretch of muscle. Sarah, fawnlike, had no bulk at all, just springiness, as though she worked by rubber bands. Ginny’s newly ripe young figure was slender, not as rangy as Maggie’s, not as flexible at first. But as she warmed up she seemed to relax, letting herself respond to the music of the little tape recorder, dreamily. The long black hair, caught in a ponytail, swayed with her movements. Nick saw Maggie watching the girl, delight in her gaze, and had to agree. There was strength and grace there, and not just from Maggie. Ginny’s father had also been a gymnast.
Nick was still angry with that father, with Alain Picaud.
With his head he knew that without Alain, without Ginny, Maggie would probably not have become the woman he loved. She would not have the depths of vulnerability and empathy that answered his soul’s needs. That was what he knew with his head.
But in his heart he was angry. And jealous, okay, that too. Young Maggie must have been bursting with life and defiance and joy. She still was. But she’d only been fifteen. How could that slimeball have taken advantage of a fifteen-year-old?
“Hey, look,” Maggie had said once, “you weren’t exactly a virgin either when I married you. Haven’t you ever thought there might be a kid out there somewhere that’s yours?”
No, he’d never thought that. Not seriously. Not Casanova O’Connor. And anyway, it wasn’t the same. He’d used protection. Well, usually. And Carmen and the others had been adults, not girls. And if one of them had told him she was pregnant, he would have—well, okay, he wouldn’t have married her. But he would have been responsible about it.
Alain had tried to give Maggie money, he knew. And she’d flung it back in his face.
Would Carmen have flung it in his face? Would Carmen even have told him?
So in theory, maybe, Maggie could be right. But only in theory. It hadn’t happened, damn it. And Alain disgusted him, whatever Maggie said.
Je ne regrette rien, was what she said.
After a few minutes Maggie changed the tape and started rearranging the mats. Nick warned, “Ginny, better come down to this end of the barre, or those two will run over you like trucks.” Sarah giggled at the thought. Ginny moved closer to the corner so that Maggie and Sarah could have the entire length of the room for their tumbling runs. Nick watched as the little girl tried to copy her mother’s combination: handspring to aerial somersault. The first time Sarah managed the handspring, but then something went wrong and she fell, eased to the mat by Maggie’s waiting hands.
“Think about the somie before you start the handspring,” Maggie suggested.
“Okay.” Undaunted, Sarah skipped back and started the run again. This time she bounced from the handspring high into the air, a little tennis ball, and Maggie, her hand ready to guide her daughter’s hips, helped her through the aerial lightly. Sarah landed beaming.
“Terrific!” said Maggie, ruffling her hair.
Ginny, beaming too, turned to Nick. “Hurray for Sarah!”
“Yes. An okay kid.” He was grinning also, proud of his insubstantial bouncy daughter. A daughter of most rare note.
“Hey, we’re done with the floor,” called Maggie, getting Sarah launched on the low beam. “All yours, Nick.”
“Okay, but I’ll need some help, Maggie. I’ve been having problems with one of the dances for the St. Louis show.” He shoved a mat aside and changed the tape. “Look, this is your part.” He demonstrated a simple sequence. “One two three four, turn jump three four, I lift you here, four, one two three four. Okay?”
She frowned, concentrating, and mimicked him. Sarah, practicing splits, was watching them closely.
“Okay. Now this time I’ll try my part too. I have to fall to my knees and then snap back up and around in time to do the lift. I couldn’t quite get it in rehearsal.”
He couldn’t quite get it here either. The fall to the knees left him facing awkwardly away from his partner, and he was not in position to swing her up easily.
“I think she’ll have to slow after the jump, just a little,” suggested Ginny from the sidelines. “You’ll pull something for sure, twisting and lifting like that.”
“Show us,” said Maggie. She stepped back to the barre, and Ginny joined Nick. When the count started she went through the steps neatly, and when he turned for the lift she was exactly right, ready to move with him as he swung her up and around.
“Great!” He was impressed; there were sound instincts here, sound training. “That felt a lot better. We’ll make that adjustment in St. Louis. Thanks.”
“That was wonderful, Ginny!” Maggie was glowing with pride.
“Yeah, well, thanks.” Her rubber band had slipped, and she pulled it off, shaking her hair free.
“Look,” Nick suggested. “While we’ve got you here, let’s put on some ballet music, okay?”
“Yeah! That’d be fun,” Ginny agreed.
Will’s crusted face appeared in the stairwell. “Mommy,” he whined, “it’s itching again.”
“Okay, just a minute, Will. I want to watch Ginny dance.”
“But it’sitching!” The whine escalated to a whimper.
“Don’t you want to—oh, hell.” Maggie started toward her miserable son. “I’ll come give you a soda bath, that’ll help. And I guess it’s time to start the biscuits too.”
“I’ll make biscuits!” exclaimed Sarah, rising from her split.
“Okay. Will, go on down to the bathroom and start the water, okay?” Maggie smiled regretfully at Ginny, and paused at the top of the stairs. “Come on, Sarah.”
“Bye, Kakiy!” Sarah ran to the windowsill and lugged the big orange cat to the middle of the floor, kissing him good-bye and then handing him solemnly to Ginny.
Amused, Ginny accepted the furry bundle. “See you later, Sarah.”
“Okay.” Sarah grinned at her, waved at Nick, then hurled herself at her mother. Maggie, laughing, caught her and hoisted her onto one hip, carrying her down the stairs, the little girl’s thin legs wound around her. Nick felt a rush of warmth, of delight at the happy fate that had connected him to this family. But when he glanced at Ginny, whose blue eyes were also following her mother and sister, he surprised a look of the rawest loss. The young hands holding the cat were tensed into claws. Nick was chilled. Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts.
He turned away hurriedly to pull out a couple of tapes. Best to get her dancing, hard body exercise to burn off that inner poison. “So, let’s see what we’ve got here. What do you want?” he babbled cheerfully, Nick the chucklehead. “How about an old chestnut,Swan Lake, maybe?”
“Fine.”
His back was to her, but he could hear jealousy and hatred thickening her voice. He inserted the new tape quickly and said, “Here we go!” He punched the button, turned back to her, and froze.
In the seconds it had taken him to change the tape, she had stripped off her leotard, tossed back her hair, and picked up Kakiy. For a throbbing moment nothing seemed real to Nick: the lush strains of Tchaikovsky filling the big room, the beautiful yo
ung woman facing him boldly, the hum of his own responding blood. She was holding Kakiy upright against her belly, his head between her breasts, his orange fur shaggy against silky skin. The slanting late light glossed them with a warm apricot glow. They were motionless, all three, except for the golden brush of Kakiy’s tail, flicking back and forth, back and forth, alternately concealing and disclosing the dusky pubic triangle. In that instant of ambiguity, the world teetered between reality and make-believe: the lovely body was forbidden, yet beckoning; it was his wife, yet not his wife; it was incest, yet not incest.
Nick shook his head, and the frozen moment shattered, reassembled itself into reality. What faced him here was a wily, lost, infinitely fragile human creature, foolish in her despair. “No, Ginny,” he said hoarsely, and cleared his throat.
She coaxed, “C’mon, it won’t mean anything. Just for fun.”
He wanted to escape downstairs, to jump out the window, to evaporate into the air, anything. He was also profoundly sad for her. “Be honest, Ginny. It won’t work.”
“Hey, c’mon, don’t be old-fashioned. Why shouldn’t it work?”
She was forcing him to be the one to summon up truth. Okay, so be it. “Two reasons,” he said brutally. “The big one is, she’ll never relinquish you again. Never. No matter what you do.”
He saw her reel as his words thrust aside the golden show of skin to display her true nakedness: the motive that she herself could not quite face. Nick the hatchet man. He went on relentlessly, “There’s nothing you can do, absolutely nothing, that would ever lead her to give you up again. Ifyou want to leave, okay, she’ll accept that. But she won’t ever turn you out, Ginny, no matter what. She’s grieved for you too long.”
“Grieved?”
“You think it’s easy to give up the person you love most in the world? Even when you think it’s best for her?”
Ginny fought back, dizzily, brandishing Maggie’s words at him like a sword. “She said she’d do it again!”
Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8) Page 11
