Perfect Lies
Page 28
“That she was absolutely stunning. Really. She’s a truly beautiful woman. With a lot of grace, as well. Natural elegance.”
“But you didn’t like her.”
“I don’t think she gave anybody room to. She was too busy concentrating on herself. But who could blame her? Or you? I can imagine what it was like. I mean, it was probably enough just to look at her most of the time.”
“It was,” Abe said, smiling to himself. “Like having a Monet water lily painting living with you. There was so much I could project into her—so much I saw there. I loved her beauty, as much as I’ve loved anything in my life. I know that doesn’t speak very well of my character, but I couldn’t think beyond her smile, those eyes. And, you see, the important thing for me was the realization that she was mine. This business of ownership. I felt so proprietary. This incredible masterpiece was hanging in my living room. I didn’t want anyone else looking at her. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to move up here. To isolate us. Keep others from staring.”
“But you also loved this part of the world,” Meg interjected, wanting to deflect Abe’s criticism. “And you and Becca were having problems. Lark told me.”
“Becca was still modeling. Mostly runway work in Europe. We fought about it because I hated having her be away from me and because she always came back on a cocaine high. Every damn time. I’d help her clean up her act just in time for her to go flying off again—in both senses of the word. The thing was: she promised me when we got married that she wanted to have children, too. And here we were, trying, and she was doing coke. Yes, you could say we were having our problems.”
“I didn’t know you wanted children.”
“That’s how I finally learned about Ethan. Though I knew subconsciously—had known for a long time. For one thing, I felt this new rapport with Lark. I could feel her—at parties, at Yoder’s, the post office—making herself available to me, sort of hovering. I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand that it was a part of the amazing sympathy, this unbelievable support, she gave to Ethan. At one point I even misread the signals, thought she was coming on to me, and I tried to gently tell her how much I loved Becca. I think back on that now—that sad, knowing look she gave me—and I want to just cry.”
“When did you find out?”
“Becca told me she had been pregnant about a year ago.”
“Pregnant?”
“Had been. She wasn’t sure if it was Ethan’s baby or mine—but she didn’t want it. For some reason, I was the one who got the bill from the clinic. Typical insurance paperwork screwup-—Becca had already paid for the abortion the day she had it.”
“Oh, Abe.”
“Yeah. Poor, dumb Abe,” he said, turning back to the fire. This time, it did need his ministrations, though Meg sensed that he took longer than was necessary fanning it back to life. “When I confronted her with the evidence, she didn’t flinch. Told me the truth. Straight out. She thought I already knew most of it. How she’d been carrying on with Ethan for over a year. She was surprised that I was so shocked. Thought I’d been aware of the whole thing and had just turned a blind eye. That we had an ‘understanding.’ ”
“I’m sorry.
“You see, she knew then she was losing him,” Abe went on, as though he hadn’t heard Meg. “She didn’t tell me this. Lark was the one who filled me in later. But he’d already moved on, had grown tired of her demands. I’ve no doubt Becca loved Ethan. I can even feel truly sorry for her now. The fact is he played her as much for a fool as she played me. She had the abortion, of course, because she knew Ethan was looking elsewhere and she didn’t want to lose her figure, not when she needed to appear at her best to win Ethan back. I don’t think she thought for a single instant about what say I might have in the matter.”
“I went to see her the other day,” Meg told him. “I needed to ask her what she was doing at the studio the morning Ethan was killed.”
“You went to see Becca?” He frowned down at her.
“I found out where she was working. On a catalog shoot. She was using cocaine pretty heavily from what I was told. She wasn’t in good shape.”
“She hasn’t really been in her right mind since, well, I suppose, since Ethan was killed,” Abe said. “She was really at the studio the morning he was murdered? How do you know?”
“Janine saw her, though it’s hardly a secret. Becca herself told the police.”
“I wonder what she was doing there.”
“She wouldn’t tell me. But from what Lark and Janine said, I don’t think Becca ever gave up on the hope that she could somehow win Ethan back.”
“Except for now,” Abe pointed out sadly. “She’s given it up now.”
Periodically throughout the day and evening, Meg had checked her messages hoping to hear from Lucinda. There were calls from Peter Boardman, Hannah, and Francine, and various clicks and silences, but still nothing from the person she wanted most to hear from. Now she followed Abe up the beautiful curving wooden stairs wondering under what diminished circumstances Lucinda would be sleeping that night.
Abe had been wrong about one thing: knowing what happened between Becca and Abe didn’t make it any easier initially for Meg to sleep in the bed they had once shared. Like everything else in the house it was selected with impeccable taste: a lowlying teak box frame, a delicately patterned blue and white Japanese print coverlet, and the as-advertised black sheets and pillowcases. She’d been looking forward all day to being with Abe again but, as she waited in bed for him, she realized that her passion had been deflated. Naked beneath the sheets, she thought she was able to pick up a faint scent of perfume—a lingering citrusy aroma. It was like Becca herself, so ingrained in the structure and fiber of Abe’s life that he would never be free of her. The question that was bothering her, though, was—did he really want to be?
“What?” he asked after he’d climbed in beside her.
“Was this her side?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s switch.”
It was better after that, and soon it didn’t matter. Abe, perhaps sensing some of Meg’s reservations, seemed intent on making her feel loved. Slowly and tenderly, he kissed and caressed the length of her body. She writhed in pleasure as his mouth closed over her right breast, then her left. Every fiber in her body felt tensed, ready, fired with longing.
“Please …” she murmured. “Please, Abe …”
“Are you begging me, Meg Hardwick?” His eyes were black with desire. Catching him off guard, she wrestled out of his grasp and, laughing, turned quickly and straddled him. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. He was erect, as aroused as she was. He moaned as she took him into her mouth, and he arched back against the pillows in pure pleasure.
“It’s my turn to beg,” he said, looking up at her with a languid smile. After he put on a condom, he guided her onto him gently, his hands on her hips. Slowly, at first, she moved up and down on him until they were moving as one. Finally, as their pace quickened, as she felt herself losing control, he pulled her down so that she was beside him, and he pulled her knees up around his waist and penetrated her. They came together, looking into each other eyes—Abe’s smile lingering long after the shuddering climax was over.
He curled up against her, arms around her waist, his face nestled in her hair. She could feel his breathing start to deepen.
“Abe?”
“Hmmm?”
“How do you feel about Becca now?”
“It’s a little late for this, isn’t it?”
“Not for me.”
He was silent for a moment or two and Meg could feel his arms tense, the alertness return to his body.
“I feel terribly, terribly sorry for her. She’s lost the only person in the world that she ever truly loved.”
Late into the night, the phone rang, its sound at first entering Meg’s dream as church bells pealing. Lucinda! she thought, only half awake, struggling up, but by then Abe had picked up the receiver.
Abe gently replaced the receiver. He sighed.
“Who was it?” Meg asked drowsily.
“Crank call,” Abe said, caressing her hair. “Nothing to worry about.”
35
Christmas day dawned an opalescent gray, the sun shining through in patches behind the rolling cloud banks. The snow had finally stopped falling, but it still filled the air: shimmering in the morning breeze across the long field in front of the house, ticking persistently against the windows.
Meg was the first up, leaving Abe tangled in the sheets, curled into himself like a little boy. She made some coffee, then bundled up as best she could in the clothes she’d brought and a hat and extra gloves borrowed from Abe. She went outside. It seemed to be the only place big enough for her to explore her newfound happiness.
She was in love with Abe. She‘d been too worried and preoccupied over the past few weeks to keep track of how often he’d crossed her mind. She‘d been so cut off from so many people she cared about that she had been afraid to examine her feelings toward him. When had it started? That first kiss in his car? No, further back, she decided. For years, they’d enjoyed each other’s company. Laughed at each other’s jokes. Shared the private shorthand of people who work well together. But it had never been exactly a professional relationship, even then. Over the course of their many commutes back and forth to Red River, they’d told each other things—anecdotes of the workweek, plots to novels they were reading, reactions to a play they’d just seen. Things they probably didn’t have the time to share with anyone else. There’d been no sexual tension between them then, because Abe was so clearly “taken.” And if Abe gave her advice about men, it had always been done with a brotherly concern. It was he who had introduced her to Paul Stokes. But now she recalled his angry reaction to her breaking up with Paul—a man even Abe admitted was not her type—and to his hurt feelings when she refused to confide in him about the new man in her life. Had he been thinking about her even then—perhaps without realizing it?
Abe. The snow was deep and soft, sucking at her boots with each slogging step. Abe Sabin. It took a long time to reach the crest of the field to the north of the house. The limestone outcroppings, now covered with snow, had made construction here impossible, but it gave the best, most panoramic view of the town, the river winding through it, the lake nestled around its eastern perimeter, and the humpbacked mountains arching behind it with ghostly majesty. Behind Meg, rising like a slow wave, the rest of Abe’s property built to a rock-ridged peak.
She knew it was too soon to think about where they might be headed. It had been decades since she’d lost herself in romantic daydreams. But something felt different about this. Unlike Meg’s other illfated relationships, she knew who Abe was—his history, his character, his disappointments, his hopes. There were very few secrets left between them and yet, she sensed, there was still so much to discover. And share. With a giddy surge of joy, she recalled his telling her the night before about his hope for children. Could it be that after her long, hard search for a man with whom she could share her life, she had found him right here?
The first time Abe had kissed her she’d been surprised by how natural it seemed, almost inevitable. His touch steadied her. His kiss was gentle and knowing. Abe gave without asking anything in return. Meg had been able to control men all of her adult life—and sex had been just another weapon in her well-stocked arsenal. But with Abe there had been no sense of siege, not even the rising urge to compete. He made love to her with an intuition that left her completely without defenses.
She looked out over the long valley, the white steeple of the First Congregational Church, the smoke curling from the chimney of a farmhouse down the road, and she was struck by a feeling of déjà vu, as if she’d been here before and thought these things before. At that moment, her life stretched out as pure and unspoiled as the scene before her.
The ringing of the phone, a distant chiming across the snowbound fields, brought her back to the present and made her think of the call the night before that had half-woken her. She had a vague memory of Abe getting out of bed after that, of his going downstairs. Had he made another call? She’d fallen asleep again and woken up to find him sleeping heavily beside her, his body slack and unconscious, but his brow worried by his dreams.
By the time she got back to the house, Abe was up and drinking coffee in the kitchen. He was freshly shaved and neatly dressed: corduroys, a tweed jacket, blue shirt, and a darkly patterned tie that she had given him years ago as a birthday gift. And though it touched her that he had thought to wear that particular tie, the morning’s brightness had begun to fade. Meg had conveniently forgotten that he was going to spend Christmas with Lark and the girls and then attend the opening party at Clint and Janine’s new studio.
“Ah, the beautiful snow queen from the north,” he said looking at her closely. How had she failed before to notice that cleft in his right cheek when he smiled?
“You’re still going into town?” Meg asked. “The road’s impassable—there’s at least two feet of snow out there.”
“I’ve a plow on my pickup,” Abe replied, an apology in his tone. “And I promised Lark. But—just tell me. Would you rather I stayed?”
Of course, you idiot, she wanted to snap back, but Abe had this maddening way of bringing out the best in her. Especially this morning.
“No, really—you’re right to go.” Abe had handled the legal aspects of the Lindberghs’ new enterprise. “And besides, wouldn’t people think it odd if you didn’t show up?” She walked over to him and pretended to adjust his collar and tie, though it was just an excuse to be near him.
“Probably,” Abe said, putting down his coffee mug. “I’m sorry. You know I’d rather stay here, but Lark just called to make sure I was coming, and I accepted her invitation way before—” He stopped himself and shrugged, smiling down at her.
Meg followed Abe out to the garage after he’d put on his overcoat and snow boots. They were restricted by heavy wool and down, but he took her into his arms, backing her up against his truck.
“You,” he said, kissing her neck. “Do you feel the way I do?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a door handle jammed into your back?”
“Oh.” He stopped, switched their positions, and started kissing her again, with renewed urgency.
“Abe?”
“What? I should stop this, right?” he said, taking a step back as he kissed the top of her head. “I do feel the same way.”
It was cold in the garage, and their breath came out in little puffs, like smoke signals. And what they were trying to tell each other was also like smoke signals—the disconnected words, freighted with too much meaning.
Meg tried to eat some breakfast after Abe left, but without Abe’s banter and reassuring presence, the soaring rooms made her feel overly exposed and somehow vulnerable. The snowscape, which had earlier seemed so beautiful, now felt oppressive. Gauzy cloud cover replaced the patchy sunlight. By eleven o’clock, the day was completely overcast.
Once again, she called her apartment to check her answering machine. There were two new hang ups. No messages.
The snow started again a little after noon. Meg had been trying to read a novel, but found herself distracted by the thickening white landscape. She stood at the living-room windows and watched the horizon approach: the ridge of mountains fading, the tree line disappearing, and finally just a swirl of white—like static on an old television set—taking over the world. The day began to darken at three o’clock, the slow early evening collecting in the shadows behind the stairs. Again, she felt the essential coldness of the house, the sense of being exposed and—in some strange way that she knew was just her imagination—watched. She tried to build a fire t
o keep herself company, but it refused to take hold.
The first shrill ring made her jump, literally, a reflex action, her heart pumping wildly. She hadn’t realized that there was a phone on the side table next to her. With the second ring, she laughed a little in relief. She was starting to see and hear things that weren’t there. She wondered if she should answer after the third ring. It could be Abe, or even Lucinda—trying to reach her here. The message machine kicked in on the fourth ring. Meg recognized the voice immediately.
“I know you’re there.” Becca paused, waiting for the phone to be picked up.
“Listen, to me, Abe, I know you’re there.” The words were a little slurred. Meg heard ice clicking in a glass.
“Okay, okay. You go ahead and play your little games. But I’m telling you, you’re not going to get away with it. Do you hear me, you bastard? I’m not going to let you get away with it.”
Becca began to cry, the sobs echoing across the living room, the sound of deep, unstoppable grief. Meg fought down the impulse to pick up the receiver and try to comfort her. Becca was still sobbing as she said, “I thought it would be better for me if I kept my mouth shut, at first. But when Meg Hardwick told me that she didn’t believe Lucinda killed Ethan—that was when I began to think that maybe the police had figured it out, too. I didn’t want to lose your help, Abe—God knows, you’re the only real financial support I’ve got. But I’m not going to lie for you either. You bastard, I saw you. I came back to try to get him to reason with me, listen to me, and I saw you. Standing over his body like fucking St. George slaying the dragon. Just like you said you would. I’m telling you one more time—Hold on a sec—Who’s there? Listen, I got to go, but I’m warning you Abe. You tell them, or I will.”
36
No, it couldn’t be. Impossible. Not Abe. Not the man she had come to know and love. Throughout the terrible days after Ethan’s murder, he had been so supportive. Concerned. Not just to Meg. He’d made such an effort to help Lark out at the house, playing with Brook and Phoebe, driving Meg to see Lucinda. Steering Boardman Lucinda’s way. Listening. Advising. Standing beside Lark at the graveside, his arm around the shoulders of the new young widow. No, it couldn’t have been Abe. No one could be that duplicitous. Becca was simply hysterical—angry, jealous, out of her mind with grief. This was just her way of getting back at the world.