“I don’t know!”
“You say it wasn’t Ginny. Why not?”
“Iknow Ginny didn’t do it!”
“Well, who did?”
“I don’t know! I’ve been so worried about her, I haven’t thought!”
The reporter sighed. “Well, start thinking.” She turned abruptly to the dresser. “Is this the young man in her life?”
“Yes. That’s Buck.”
“Nice-looking fellow.”
“Yes,” Rina said guardedly.
“If she marries him, will she live happily ever after?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think she’ll marry him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not good enough for her. Not smart enough. She won’t throw herself away.”
“Doesn’t that mean she’s throwing herself away now?”
“Well, everyone makes mistakes when they’re young.”
Aggie Lyons sat down on the side of the bed and looked up at Rina. “Let’s count up mistakes,” she said. “One, the boyfriend isn’t good enough for her. Two, her grades are lousy even though she’s bright. Three, she yells at her grandmother and at the guests. With good cause, maybe, but running away—that’s four—is an overreaction. Now, none of that means she murdered John Spencer. But it means she’s got a problem, Mrs. Marshall. Something is eating her. Right?”
Rina said nothing. Finally she shrugged.
The reporter asked, “Does she do drugs?”
“No!” Rina flared. But the relentless unreadable lenses went on regarding her steadily, and she realized this woman would implacably track down Jan, Buck, Linda. She shrugged again. “Sometimes.”
“Heroin?”
“No, of course not! Pot, ludes. Not often.”
“Okay. Another symptom. Pot’s not very unusual, maybe, these days. Ludes I’d worry about.”
Rage was bubbling up in Rina again. “You want me to throw her out of the house for an experiment? Is that what Dr. Spock recommends?”
“No, no. All I’m saying is, put all those symptoms together and they say something is wrong, don’t they?”
“Look, who are you to tell me there’s something wrong? You don’t know anything about it! You don’t have a teenager, you don’t know what it’s like!”
“True.”
“You haven’t said one single thing that isn’t true of a lot of teenagers. She’s just a normal kid. It’s hard to grow up these days. But bad grades or even a few ludes don’t make her a criminal!”
“Of course not. But you telling me she makes straight A’s and is just a normal kid doesn’t clear her either. She needs more concrete help than that. Besides, she’s not just a normal kid.”
“What do you mean?” Angry tears blurred Rina’s eyes. She wanted to rip at that white coat, that enigmatic face, to give back some of the pain this invader was causing.
“I mean she’s very bright. Look at what she’s reading. And she’s enormously talented.” The reporter gestured at the sculptured doll. “And she’s enormously unhappy. How can you say she’s just a normal kid?”
The truth of every word rang in Rina’s heart. She sat down, suddenly exhausted, on the bed next to the younger woman, and faced facts. She picked up the soft little bear Ginny had made at age ten and ran her fingers over its round little ears.
“It was the genealogy chart,” she said at last, in a low voice.
“What?”
“A school assignment a couple of years ago. She wrote down Clint and me on the chart and didn’t comment. But she knew it was a lie. I should have said something.”
Aggie seemed off balance. “What could you have said?”
“I don’t mean I could have told her anything concrete. I’ve told her everything I know, but it’s almost nothing. Her mother was very young and couldn’t keep her. That’s all I know. No names, nothing. But at least I could have told her I knew it was rough for her.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I mean, I just answered her questions about my parents and Clint. It’s hard for me to talk about the—the adoption. I thought maybe she wouldn’t think about it much if I didn’t make a big thing of it.”
“When was all this?”
“A couple of years ago. And she avoided the subject too. Once or twice I brought it up, and she said, ‘Skip it, Mom.’ Maybe she sensed that I, well, didn’t like to talk about it. But that’s when she started ignoring her schoolwork. She quit ballet, took up with Buck, and so forth.”
“Meaning drugs?”
“Not often. Look, I’ve read all the stuff about how to tell if your child is using drugs. And yes, she’s tried ludes. But only a couple of times! I bet you can’t find more than half a dozen kids in this county who haven’t tried them!”
“Yeah, that’s true in New York too.”
“No, what really bothered me was the self-portrait.”
“And you didn’t say anything even then?”
“I didn’t know what to say! They didn’t tell me what to say! They said everything would be normal, like a real family.”
“Like a real family.” The other woman’s voice was very tight.
“You know. A birth family.”
Aggie bounced up, strode away to the window, then turned back, the light behind her now. “Tell me what a real family is like.”
“What do you mean? Everyone knows.”
“For starts, a mommy and a daddy who are married, right?”
“Yes, of course!” Rina was puzzled. Why did this reporter care?
“For the first, last, and only time.” Aggie Lyons’s face was shadowed, unreadable against the misty brightness of the window behind her.
“Well, yes, ideally.”
“And there is a child.”
“Or children.”
“And the daddy earns the money, and the mommy doesn’t work.”
“Not when the kids are little. Maybe part-time.”
“You’ve eliminated my family twice already,” said Aggie.
“I don’t understand.”
“My husband was married once before. And I work, full-time. And we have kids.”
“You told Clint you had a daughter.”
“A six-year-old. And a three-year-old son. A relative is taking care of them at the moment.”
Rina said stiffly, “I’m sorry. I was talking about a sort of abstract ideal. I didn’t mean to insult your family.” She had been wrong, this woman did not understand. She got up from the bed and started out the door.
The reporter followed. “No, I refuse to take it as an insult. Because I don’t care whether my family is ideal or not, as long as I can have the one I have. The husband I have, the kids I have. We muddle along pretty well together, whether we’re ideal or not.”
Rina was silent, bitter. For a moment, as they had looked at Ginny’s sculpture, she had thought they were communicating, but the chasm was too great. This woman had children, had given birth. Rina had entrusted Ginny’s secrets to someone as blind as all the rest. Except that this one could publish them for all the world to see. What a stupid, stupid fool she’d been.
Aggie Lyons said uncertainly, “Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry. I just think that your family is a lot closer to that abstract ideal than a lot of others, including mine.”
“No doubt,” said Rina acidly, stalking down the hall. “I’ve heard that before. How ideal things are, how lucky I am. Next you’ll probably say you think I’m lucky because I didn’t have to go through all the annoyance of pregnancy and childbirth, right? And then you’ll say Ginny is luckier than most kids because she was chosen, right?” The younger woman raised her hand in dismay, but Rina charged ahead. “And you’ll say that Clint and I are just unbelievable saints because we can love someone else’s child, right? And then you’ll say that after all, you don’t even know how your own will turn out, right? And, let’s see, you probably will think that Ginny looks more like me than most daughters look like their mothers, right
? Look!” She dodged into the den and pulled a photo album from the bookshelf.
“Mrs. Marshall, I’m sorry!” Aggie Lyons sounded shaken.
“Look!” Rina insisted. She flipped the album open. Ginny, age three, beamed up at them from the page, the wide smile, the big blue eyes. “You’ll say she looks like me, right? All but the eyes, you’ll say. Look!” She flipped the pages again. Ginny, a serious ten, in a ballet pose, the black hair pulled back into a ponytail. “See what a saint I am to love her?”
“Stop it!” Aggie cried.
Shocked at the anguish in the voice, Rina glanced at her for the first time. Aggie was not looking; she had bowed her head, and was shielding her already hidden eyes with one angular hand. With a mixture of regret and bitter triumph, Rina closed the album.
The younger woman lowered her hand. “Spare me your kiddy stories,” she said in a ragged voice.
“My God!” The last threads of Rina’s control snapped; she slammed the album down on the table. “I didn’t invite you in! I’ve tried to explain, tried to be polite to you, tried to answer your questions. What the hell are you trying to do to us?”
“I’m trying to tell you that you’ve got a wonderful daughter! And it doesn’t matter what’s ideal or not ideal, she’s lived with you! That’s a wonderful truth! What difference does it make what the rest of us think? Why are you making yourselves miserable with this fairy-tale ‘real family’ thing? Don’t you realize how lucky you are just to live with her?”
“Of course!” Furious, Rina glared back at her, astonished at Aggie’s intensity. “Is that all you want, for me to tell you I feel lucky? My God, you’ll never, never know how lucky I feel!”
Aggie too was struggling to bring herself under control. The long capable hands flapped once, uncharacteristically helpless. “Well, okay, I guess I knew that, really. Look, forget it, I’m sorry. Most unprofessional of me.”
Rina’s anger was waning. She could almost touch the younger woman’s unhappiness. She said uncertainly, “You said you had kids. You aren’t infertile.”
“Infertile?” The dark head cocked toward her, puzzled.
“It’s just that when I found out that I couldn’t have children, I was so jealous, so sad. Almost as though the babies I’d never have were dead. Every child I saw made me want to cry because it wasn’t mine. You just—it’s silly, but you just seem to be feeling the same way, somehow.”
Aggie was silent a moment. Finally she said, “I can’t really talk about it. But I’ve been so rude, I owe you an explanation. You see, I lost a baby girl once.”
“Oh, Aggie!” A rush of tenderness filled Rina, and she reached toward Aggie. “I know how terrible that must have been!”
“Yes, okay.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her knee pants, withdrawing, cooler now. “But it’s like a lot of other things, you can’t understand it, really understand it, unless it happened to you. So—”
But Rina was not to be put off that easily. She shook her head, sympathetic but determined. “I think I can, Aggie. Maybe it’s not exactly the same, but I really can understand. You mourn for one of your children. But you see, I mourn for all of mine.”
“All of yours.” Aggie was very still a moment, studying her, then suddenly reached out and took both of Rina’s hands. “What a smug, insufferable boor I’ve been! Of course you do. You do understand, and I’m the one who’s been dense. God! God, Rina, I didn’t think.”
“Well, how could you know?”
“God.” She shook her head, intent on Rina, reevaluating her. “Look, I need a lesson, okay? A minute ago I said something pompous about not caring if my family was an ideal family or not. Tell me why you care.”
“It’s not that I care. I adore my family, just the way it is. Like you. But it is different from that ideal. I mean, we went to such lengths to try to have children, and gradually accepted that we couldn’t, and we grieved. We still do, in a way. You look back at the unbroken chain of your ancestors and realize that the thread is cut forever. It hurts. And it hurts to know that for some reason you can’t do this thing that most loving couples can do, have a child together in your love. And—well, this is kind of frivolous, but I had looked forward to being pregnant, to giving birth, almost as though it was proof of my womanhood.” Aggie was shaking her head, and Rina said, “Oh, I know, with my mind I know it’s not true, but it’s hard to shake the expectations you grow up with. Even so, we came to terms with it, Clint and I. We cried together, and grieved, and finally decided that even though our biological children would never be, we still wanted to be parents together. We could love and care for a child, and that was what we really wanted most. So we applied to adopt a child.”
“I see.”
“Not to replace the children that would never be. We knew that it would be different, but wonderful. And we were right. But there are problems. You see, to adopt a child you have to pass tests.”
“Tests?”
“Interviews. Home studies. Someone checking to see if you’re good enough to have a baby. Most people just go ahead and have one. They don’t have to convince someone they’re great housekeepers, great nurses, great personalities, great cooks, great wives. They don’t have to prove that their only problem is bum tubes. Prove they aren’t psycho for wanting a child.” Rina smoothed back her hair. “My God, Aggie, all your life you’re told you’ll have a family someday. You just assume it. And then when you don’t have a baby, it really hurts. And everyone thinks it’s a tragedy. And you go to doctors and have operations, and when it turns out that you’re in the ninety percent that the operation doesn’t help, it’s a tragedy all over again. And after all that, the agency wants you to prove that you really want a child!”
Aggie’s hand touched hers again. “Rina, I didn’t know. I never thought what it must be like.”
“Nobody does.”
“So ever since Ginny came you’ve been trying to be a real family. What the agency calls a real family.”
“How can you argue with them? You’ve already spent years praying to God. The agency is above God.” Rina looked at the other woman, whose sympathy was written in the tilt of head and shoulders, in the softness of the wide mouth, in the earnestness of the voice. She realized she was being indiscreet. She also realized she didn’t care. She smiled a little. “Those quilts you admire so much. That’s the agency’s fault too.”
“How do you mean?”
“I was working on a little pillow when we had our first home visit, there on Long Island. First one I’d ever made. I was trained as a commercial artist, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes. And I wasn’t especially excited about that pillow, we just happened to need one. I was working then, freelance, catalog illustrations. Mrs. Farnham from the agency wasn’t impressed. But she liked my dumb pillow. Said at least I was able to turn my talents to homemaking too.”
“She said that? God, Rina!”
“Well, then, I was stuck. I started making the baby a quilt for the next visit. And maybe you know, there’s a long period before the adoption is final, when they can still take the baby away if they decide …”
The doorbell chimed.
“Your husband?” Aggie asked hopefully.
“He’d use his key. Probably some reporter.”
“Yeah. Damn press.” Aggie stayed in the background while Rina hurried to the door and peeked through the curtained sidelight.
It was not the press. It was Rosamond Landon. Rina unlocked and opened the door. “Rosamond! Come in!”
Rosamond stepped in, her cashmeres charcoal-colored today. A diamond pin glittered on her collar. She patted absently at a stray strand of blonde hair, her eyes fixed accusingly on Rina. “Rina Marshall, just what have you told the police?”
“The police? About what?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb! They have my poor boy down there still! Three hours they’ve been there! Where’s your daughter?”
“She’s—not ba
ck yet.”
“I’ll bet she’s not back yet! You’ve sent her into hiding somewhere, haven’t you? You’re trying to make Buck take the blame!”
Aggie was drifting toward them from Ginny’s room. Rina said, “Of course not! I just told the truth! Rosamond, let’s not make things more difficult than they are. I’m sure the police have good reason to—”
“They have the reasons you fed them! Really, Rina, to take advantage of a young boy’s romantic feelings—well, you’re just going to have to go down there and tell them it’s not the truth!”
“What’s not the truth?”
“Buck wasn’t here Thursday! He never saw that dreadful old man!”
“But he was here! And high as a kite on Quaaludes!”
“What?” For an instant something fractured deep in Rosamond’s eyes, then glazed over again. “So that’s what you’ve been telling them! No wonder! Well, Rina Marshall, I warn you, you’re going to be—who’s this?” She focussed suddenly on Aggie, who was standing near them now, closing the catch on her shoulder bag.
“Aggie Lyons.New York Week.” Aggie stepped forward, hand extended, and shook Rosamond’s hand vigorously. “I’m so glad to meet you, Mrs. Landon! I’ve been wanting to ask you some questions!”
XV
“A reporter?” Rosamond stepped back in shock.
“I’m trying to find out the whole truth about Mr. Spencer’s death,” Aggie said. “Not just the sensational headlines.”
“A reporter! Rina, we’ll sue you! How could you bring in a reporter—spring her on me like this—” Rosamond was backing toward the door.
“I would have been ringing your bell pretty soon anyway,” Aggie said in a soothing tone of voice. She edged around Rina to stand next to the door, so that Rosamond’s advance toward it brought her closer to Aggie too.
Rosamond stopped and said, “You wouldn’t get in! I’ve told Maria, no reporters!”
“Look, all I want is to find out the truth. You say Buck wasn’t here Thursday. Mrs. Marshall says he was.”
“She’s just trying to dump the blame on Buck!”
“Where was he, then?”
Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8) Page 18
