She'll Never Tell

by Hunter Morgan

  But it felt good to be outside, to feel the sunshine on her face and the wind in her hair that she had left down after her shower this morning. She'd always had nice hair, silky, blond, but she'd worn it short for years. Close-cropped was sensible on a woman who had a demanding job, a husband and two kids. So what if it was dowdy? She had never been the kind of woman anyone would see as sexy anyway.

  Now Marcy liked the feel of her hair brushing her shoulders. She liked the way it swished when she walked, tickling her face and her neck. She'd get a trim because she needed it desperately, but there would be no "helmet hair" for her again.

  "Here we are," Phoebe announced as they passed the Albany Beach city limits sign. Down the street, she turned into a parking lot and zipped into a parking space in the front of the town's only diner.

  Loretta's looked like it was right out of the fifties and had been there that long. A structure built with a series of flat tarred roofs and small additions, painted silver to look like it had once been a railroad car, it was the gathering place of the locals year-round. The coffee was great and the homemade pancakes and pies were to die for.

  Marcy got out of the car and followed Phoebe up to the front door, feeling a bit conspicuous in the shorts and tank top she had borrowed from her sister. The shorts were actually big on her and hung too low on her hips. The tank top barely touched the shorts' waistband, so if she lifted her arm, her bare belly showed. Even her bra felt strange—also borrowed from Phoebe. It was just one of those cotton stretchy athletic kind, instead of the armor she had always worn. And tucked inside were someone else's breasts. Had to be. These were barely B cups, and amazingly pert considering their age and the months of breast feeding they had endured. Marcy felt like an alien inhabiting another body.

  "God Almighty, look at you!"

  The moment Marcy walked through the diner door, she was bombarded with the heavenly scent of coffee and the pudgy arms of Loretta Pugh, proprietor of the diner. Loretta was a big woman in height and girth, covered in a huge flowered apron that looked like a tablecloth. As far as anyone knew, Loretta never left the place. She was here day and night. The diner had probably been built around her and she would, most likely, live as long as the walls stood.

  "I can't believe it's you, sugar pie!" Loretta swore, her entire body jiggling with delight.

  Marcy gave her a pat around the shoulders, not so much because she felt like hugging the woman, who was somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty years old. It was just the only way she knew she'd be released from the embrace of the tablecloth and Loretta's arms.

  "How'd you know it was me and not Phoebe?" Marcy asked curiously. Phoebe's hair was a couple of inches longer, a little blonder from the sun, but beyond that, they truly were identical. "We look just alike now."

  "Pshaw!" Loretta released Marcy so that she could breathe again and gave a wave of the beige menus, forever preserved in laminate and smelling of maple syrup. "You don't look a bit alike."

  Marcy raised a pale eyebrow.

  "Phoebe's got that trashy look," Loretta explained matter-of-factly. "You either have it or you don't, sister."

  Phoebe slid into a Naugahyde-covered booth seat and turned a coffee mug, already set out, right side up. "I love you, too, Loretta," she said, not in the least bit offended. "Coffee for both of us, and a number four for me." She glanced at Marcy.

  Marcy nodded. She usually ordered the wheat toast, dry, and grapefruit with artificial sweetener, then watched her sister consume a stack of pancakes, two scrambled eggs, and three slices of scrapple. She knew full well she couldn't eat this way every day or she'd be tipping the scales over two hundred again, but this morning she was having the number four and she was going to enjoy every bite.

  "Okay, which one are you?" Ralph, who bused tables and washed dishes in the back, approached the table, carrying a coffee pot.

  "Which one is who?" Phoebe teasing. She was a flirt with any man, young, old, attractive, unattractive, it made no difference.

  Ralph chuckled. He'd been at the diner for years, too. In his late fifties, early sixties, he looked like someone's grandfather. He was tall, thin and bald except for a ring of white hair around his head. Despite his harmless, grandfatherly looks, he had always made Marcy feel a little uncomfortable. He was very mysterious about his past, and sometimes the strong odor of cough syrup permeated his clothes.

  "Which one's Phoebe and which one's Marcy?" he said.

  Before Phoebe could tease Ralph any further, thus extending his visit to the table, Marcy raised the cup he had poured full of coffee. "I'm Marcy."

  He peered down at her with cataract-cloudy eyes.

  "Damn, I'll be. It's true. McCormick was just in here this morning telling us how spooky it was. I guess he'd seen you at the hospital." He glanced at Phoebe and then back at Marcy again. "You look just like her now." He shuddered. "Weird, if you ask me, how doctors can do that. I saw this show that explained how JFK was really killed in the war. They took somebody else and gave him that new face. So JFK wasn't really president. Have you seen that one?"

  "Nope. Missed it. Must have been asleep." Marcy gave Ralph a quick smile and reached for the cream and sweetener. When she looked back to Phoebe, Ralph had moved to the next booth with the coffee pot. "I see some things never change," she said under her breath. "Ralph's as loony as he ever was."

  Phoebe blew on her coffee and took a sip. She drank it black, the stronger and thicker, the better. "You should have seen him yesterday. It was pretty pathetic. Crying about Patti, slobbering all over everyone. Saying how he loved her and how he wanted to marry her." She rolled her eyes, pursed her pink lips, and took another drink of coffee.

  Marcy watched Ralph duck under the counter and disappear into the back. "I ran into Claire Drummond on my way out of the hospital yesterday." She shook her head, sipping her coffee. "I just can't believe someone killed Patti. She was a nice girl—"

  Phoebe gave a snort. "If you think that, you didn't know her very well. She was the town whore."

  Marcy cut her eyes at her sister. "She's dead, for heaven's sake. Murdered. Don't you have any couth?"

  "Two number fours," Loretta announced, sliding the oval plates across the authentic Formica table. "Anything else I can get you lovely ladies?"

  "That's it, thanks, Loretta." Marcy smiled up at her as she reached for her silverware wrapped in the paper napkin. Her first bite of pancake was a sensuous experience.

  "Did you hear how she died?" Phoebe scooped up egg on her fork.

  "I've been asleep for six months. I haven't caught up on all the gossip."

  Chuckling, Phoebe took a mouthful of egg. "She bled to death. Slashed wrists."

  "She killed herself at the state park? I thought everyone was saying someone killed her. A lover's quarrel or something. That's what the nurses were saying."

  Phoebe shook her head, a silly grin on her face. She loved gossip, and she especially loved gossip no one else had heard yet. "It wasn't suicide. Somebody killed her and dumped her body."

  Marcy took another bite of pancake. It was only her third mouthful, and she was already beginning to feel full. She could see she was going to have to take this eating thing slowly. "How do you know?"

  "Ryan McCormick."

  "The cop?" Marcy took a nibble of scrapple. "Are you dating him again?"

  Phoebe lifted a thin, suntanned shoulder beneath her bright pink spaghetti strap. "I saw him at Calloway's last night. He bought me a drink."

  Calloway's was a local bar built out on a dock over the bay. It was open year-round, unlike most of the bars in Albany Beach, so it was a locals' hangout.

  "You've gone out with him before, Phoebe. You said he wasn't good for you. Wasn't he the one who you said liked it rough?" She glanced around to be sure no one was eavesdropping. "Handcuffs and stuff?"

  "We're just talking about a drink and a little juicy information, Marcy. For God's sake, I didn't screw the guy." Her tone became conspiratorial again. "But apparentl
y Patti did. Regularly." Phoebe lifted her coffee cup. "Loretta, more java?"

  Marcy stared at her plate, still heaped with all the treasures of the number four breakfast platter. She set down her fork, her stomach protesting. She couldn't eat another bite. "McCormick say who they think might have done it?"

  "They're going to look into that guy, Billy, she lived with for a while. Apparently she still hung out with him sometimes. Doper. Of course, if it was someone she was dating who killed her, could have been any of a number of guys."

  Phoebe had always used the word "dating" in a different way than Marcy. When Phoebe said dating, she meant having sex with.

  Phoebe lowered her voice, giving her sister the eye. "Including Patrolman First Class Ryan McCormick."

  "Phoebe, that's ridiculous. You shouldn't be making such accusations." She looked around at the patrons in the diner. Many she knew, but already tourists were moving in for the summer, bringing their minivans, bicycles, and beach umbrellas... and millions of dollars of revenue. "Someone might hear you."

  "I'm not making any accusations," Phoebe scoffed. Then she grinned slyly. "But you have to admit, it is food for thought. A dead girl, a dozen guys she's slept with this winter. An on-again, off-again relationship with a pothead. Who did it? Was it a drug deal gone bad? A jealous lover? Someone who didn't like the way she served the coffee in this dive?" She laughed at her own joke.

  Marcy wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. "So's your divorce final?" she asked, changing the subject.

  Phoebe spread butter and then strawberry jam on a piece of white toast. "Almost."

  "That like being almost not pregnant?"

  "I'm definitely not pregnant." Phoebe laughed. "No, all the paper work is in; we're just waiting for a court date. The restaurant makes things more complicated." She was studying her plate intently now, not meeting Marcy's gaze.

  "Jake said that after the accident, you offered to stay with the kids. That was nice of you."

  "You'd have done the same for me." Phoebe sawed off a bite of scrapple, giving it great attention.

  "Of course I would have." What Marcy didn't say was that she was shocked as all get-out that Phoebe would have voluntarily done anything for anyone else, her of all people. She hadn't known her sister had it in her.

  Marcy used her fork to push around some uneaten egg on her plate. "So, you working?"

  Phoebe glanced up, instantly hostile. "What's with the twenty questions?"

  "I haven't seen you in six months. I know a lot's happened in your life... was happening when I had the accident. I just—"

  "You mean my life was a disaster again, six months ago."

  "I didn't mean it that way," Marcy defended herself. And she didn't. She just wanted to know what was going on... with everyone. Six months was a long nap.

  "I've got some applications in." Phoebe leaned back to let Loretta pour her a second cup of coffee. "You know how hard it is to get a job around here in the winter."

  Meaning Phoebe hadn't worked the entire time Marcy had been in the coma. Meaning, she had been living off her and Jake all this time, because she certainly hadn't left her marriage with anything.

  Phoebe and husband number three, Matt, a smalltime gambler from New Jersey, had been up to their eyeballs in debt when they parted company. Their credit cards had been maxed out, and food and liquor bills for their restaurant were past due all over the state. After the bankruptcy hearing when her five-bedroom beach house was seized, as well as the restaurant, Phoebe had probably been left with nothing but the convertible she paid cash for seven years ago with her inheritance from their parents, and the clothes on her back.

  As Loretta turned to go, Marcy brushed her hand against the older woman's arm. "I'm really sorry about Patti, Loretta," she said quietly. "I know she meant a lot to you."

  Loretta's pale eyes filled instantly with tears. "I appreciate that, Marcy. That kid was like a daughter to me. Always come in here with some cockamamie scheme to get rich on. Always thinking the new man in her life was going to take her away from this." She gestured to the diner with the coffee pot. "Guess one of them did," she finished sadly.

  Marcy let Loretta go, taking a minute before she glanced at her sister across the table. "I'm sorry you had to put your life on hold for me," she said carefully. "I want you to know that I appreciate it. All you've done." And she meant it, at least on some level. "But I'm okay now. The doctor said he sees no reason why there will be any residual brain damage. I'm going to be fine, so please don't feel like you have to hang around and baby-sit me."

  Phoebe dropped her fork and it clattered on her plate. "Jeez, didn't you hear me? I said I was looking for a job, Marcy. I'll be out of your hair and your house just as soon as I get a job."

  Marcy knew better than to argue. Phoebe always had to have the last word and it always had to be about her. Today, Marcy let her have it. She drained her coffee cup and reached into her shorts pocket for the twenty Jake had left on the counter for her this morning. "I'm going to get some change for the tip." She slid out of the booth, sweeping the bill up with her hand.

  When Marcy returned to the table, Phoebe had already gone. Outside catching a smoke, probably. No smoking in public places in Delaware anymore.

  Marcy left too large a tip on the table and then walked out to the gravel parking lot. The sun was incredibly bright, and she shaded her eyes with her hand. Phoebe was standing in the gravel parking lot, leaning against her car, inhaling deeply on a menthol light.

  "I've got some stuff to do," Phoebe said. "Want me to run you home first?"

  "Mind dropping me off at the beach instead?" Marcy slid into the passenger seat and reached into the glove compartment for the spare pair of sunglasses she knew her sister kept there. "Maybe I'll walk home."

  Phoebe took one last deep drag and dropped the cigarette in the gravel, grinding it out with her sandal. "You sure you ought to be doing that?"

  "Why not? It's not much more than a mile if you let me out near Dauber Street. I've walked that a million times, even as a fat girl. You don't think I can walk a mile sixty-five pounds lighter?"

  Phoebe slammed the door. "I meant, do you think your doctor would approve. Jake'll freak out if he finds out I left you on the beach."

  "So you are supposed to be baby-sitting me?"

  Phoebe pulled her sunglasses down off her head, over her blue eyes that were identical to Marcy's, and started the engine. "Suit yourself."

  * * *

  At the dunes that separated the street from the beach, Marcy slipped out of her sandals and picked them up. Behind her, she heard Phoebe tear down the street in her convertible. She hadn't intended to anger her sister this morning, or seem ungrateful, but she knew Phoebe too well. She had to be told in no uncertain terms that she couldn't stay with them forever. She had to get a job, support herself, and find her own place. With the luck Phoebe had, she'd have a new husband within the year to support her anyway. At least until that relationship fell apart, too.

  Marcy followed the footpath over the dunes onto the beach that was already dotted with early-season sun-bathers. A mother walked a toddler in a bright orange bathing suit along the water's edge. An elderly man and woman sat under a large rainbow beach umbrella in sweatshirts and long pants, reading a newspaper. She smiled to herself. She had always loved the beach. The briny smell of the ocean, the warm sand under her bare feet, the blue sky that seemed endless overhead. As if on cue, a seagull soared overhead, calling.

  Reaching the water's edge, Marcy turned north. She'd only walk a couple of blocks and then turn back. Despite her bravado with Phoebe, she knew she had to be careful not to overdo it physically in the next few days and weeks. The physical therapist she had spoken with at the hospital had explained that it would take a while to regain muscle tone. Even with the exercises physical therapists did each day with their unconscious patients, muscles still atrophied. It was one of the reasons Dr. Larson didn't want her going back to work. Not that she was anxious t
o go. With this new body, this new face, she was thinking that maybe she needed a new job, too.

  Marcy sidestepped an incoming wave, giving a squeal of surprise as the cold water washed over her feet. Not looking where she was going, she bumped into a jogger, running with his dog in the opposite direction. She glanced up, embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she sputtered.

  The guy had grabbed her arm to keep them from both tumbling into the wet sand, and released her. "No problem."

  She looked up to realize it was Ty Addison, a recent college graduate who had baby-sat the kids for her on occasion when he'd been in high school. He was shirtless and wearing orange swim trunks like the ones lifeguards were issued. He was handsome, with the blond surfer look that was so popular these days. He had a nice face... and an even nicer chest.

  "You okay?" he asked. His dog barked and sat down in the wet sand.

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." She laughed, flustered. Through the dark lenses of Phoebe's spare sunglasses, she could see Ty checking her out.

  "It's Marcy Edmond," she said. "You used to watch my son Ben and my daughter Katie for me."

  "Mrs. Edmond." He snapped his fingers and grinned. "I'll be. I've heard the gossip, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself. You look—"

  "I know, just like my sister."

  "Actually, I was going to say great." He grinned.

  "Thanks." She smiled back, feeling a little awkward. "Well, sorry to slow you down." She gave a lame wave and headed north again. When she glanced over her shoulder, he was still standing there, watching her, and apparently admiring her caboose in the shorts that hung too low on her hips.

  She turned around, feeling her cheeks grow warm. Horny college boys. She was embarrassed, but pleasantly so. She'd spent what seemed like her whole life watching men watch Phoebe that way. Now it was her the cute guy was looking at, and it made her feel shamelessly good inside. Hopeful.

  Marcy continued to walk along the wet, hard sand, glancing up occasionally to be sure she didn't run into anyone else. As she walked, she let her mind roam. Things still seemed a little fuzzy in certain areas of her memory, but her mind was still her own. The plastic surgeons had only altered her face, not her brain.