The Secret Hour

by Luanne Rice

  No, she was pretty sure that any second he'd get dropped off by his coach or Mrs. Carroll. He'd come to Maggie's room, ask her how school was. Since their mother's death, and with their father always working so hard, Teddy tried to act like her parent. That was why he said he'd make place cards with her. Her big, strong, soccer-playing brother, coming home to draw with Maggie.

  It made her heart ache, to think of her brother loving her so much. Did he know how much she loved him, too? Holding Kate's note, Maggie closed her eyes and put Teddy right at the top of things to be thankful for. She would make her family, especially Teddy, the most beautiful centerpiece imaginable.

  She wouldn't stop with dry grasses.

  She'd pick bayberry and bittersweet, vines of woodbine and ivy. Beach grass, goldenrod, rose hips, dry lavender, wild thyme . . . and she'd go down on the sand to pick up scallop, ladyslipper, and clam shells to scatter around the table.

  Running upstairs, to place Kate's note in her special drawer, she grabbed her Swiss Army knife for cutting tough stems. She stuck it into her pocket like a good tomboy.

  And then she headed out on her Thanksgiving mission.

  chapter 22

  The house was as nice as Kate remembered it—although she had only been inside for a little while, the morning of the brick. Late afternoon light streamed in, through the new plate-glass window, making squares of sunlight on the Oriental rug.

  Kate took in the seascapes on the wall, the family photos on the piano. Her gaze traveled to a picture of Sally Carroll with another woman—very trim, pretty, with bright blue eyes. The two friends, grinning, wore white tennis dresses and held a gold trophy between them. That same trophy stood on the mantel, engraved with the names and date: Theresa O'Rourke and Sally Carroll, Club Champions, September 15, 1999.

  Kate glanced at John, but he was already shepherding the dogs upstairs. She followed behind and, laughing, they filled the big upstairs bathtub with water. The enterprise seemed hilarious, and the more they thought about it, the harder they laughed. John undid his tie. Kate tossed off her beret. Both rolled up their sleeves. The dogs, as if sensing what was about to befall them, hid under the bed in John's room.

  “What're they doing?” John asked, on his knees and peering under the skirt of the big bed.

  “Making themselves as flat as pancakes, hoping you won't notice them there,” Kate called from the other side, trying to lure Bonnie out with a dog treat she'd carried for the walk.

  “He's pretty obvious under there . . . big yellow dog,” John said, peering under the bed, catching Kate's eye on the other side.

  “Not Bonnie,” Kate laughed. “Look at her, all curled up in a ball, doing her best imitation of a stuffed animal.”

  They finally got Brainer out first, threw him into the tub, and soaped him up. He sat very still, sad eyes beseeching them to stop, leave him his dignity, as soap clung to his beard and eyebrows and made Kate and John laugh even harder.

  “Think we're hurting his feelings?” John asked.

  “No way,” Kate said. “He's about to become the handsomest hound in Silver Bay.”

  “Yeah? You sure?”

  “Haven't you ever given your dog a bath before?”

  “I have to confess—no.”

  “Well, wait till we're done. He'll be so happy and proud, you won't believe it.”

  “He was the last time,” John said. “And the best part was, you made Teddy really happy by doing it. Teddy worries about Brainer.”

  “Willa used to worry about Bonnie,” Kate said.

  “How?”

  “Oh, that she'd get Lyme disease or heartworm . . . or that she'd slip her collar and get lost somewhere.” Kate laughed. “She was so concerned, she nearly got Bonnie tattooed. They do that in France, she'd heard. Tattoo license numbers inside animals' ears, as a way of identifying them.”

  “France?”

  “Yes. She became a Francophile on one of our trips. We used to take these vacations . . . anyway, she loves France and everything French. We sometimes used to speak French together.”

  “Say something in French.”

  Kate smiled, suddenly shy.

  “Go ahead,” John said, forearms submerged in dirty water, the smell of wet dog rising around him, soap suds on his cheek.

  “D'accord,” Kate said. “Ce chien est très beau.”

  “Okay, translate.”

  “‘This dog is very handsome.' And now,” Kate said, because she felt embarrassed by the amused delight she saw in John's eyes, “it's Bonnie's turn . . .”

  They drained the bathtub and filled it again, drying Brainer off with a dozen clean towels. He raced through the big house, rolling on the carpets, shaking himself off. John laughed in amazement. “It's wild—I wish the kids could be here to see this. Their mother would never in a million years have given Brainer a bath in our bathroom . . .”

  Kate waited.

  “She always filled a washbin outside.”

  The conversation stopped. As if realizing that he had just crossed into territory where he didn't want to be, John turned stern. He went back into the room, waited while Kate caught Bonnie and plunked her into the warm tub.

  “You can tell me,” Kate said, quietly, rubbing shampoo into Bonnie's black fur. “You've let me talk about missing Willa. It's your turn to talk about missing Theresa.”

  He didn't speak for a minute. “That's one way of putting it,” he said.

  Kate looked up.

  “We were very happy for a long time,” he said. “Very much in love.”

  Kate nodded. Why did the words feel so sharp? She thought of herself and Andrew, of how it used to feel to be happy together, what it was like to have it all drain away. As John spoke, he rinsed the soap through Bonnie's brindle coat, combing out twigs. Kate stared at his hands, listening.

  “High school sweethearts,” he said. “Inseparable. We made it through college, got married during law school, and came back here. We had a great pack of old friends—did everything as a pack. Us, Sally and her husband, Billy and Jen Manning, and the Jenkinses.”

  “Felicity and Barkley?”

  John nodded, his eyes narrowing.

  “I'm so sorry you lost her,” Kate said. “It must have ripped everything apart.”

  “Her accident?” John asked.

  Kate knew from her own experience that there were layers and layers in a marriage, so many things to be pulled away before the final tear. She stared at John, wondering whether she should be polite and pretend she didn't know what he was going to tell her. Kate couldn't fake it—it would have been like trying to hide a scar.

  “I know, John,” she said. “I could tell from the questions you've asked me. About me and Andrew and Willa . . .”

  He leaned on the bathtub, looking into her eyes. “I thought you might have guessed,” he said. “I wasn't sure, but I thought you'd understand. You're right—everything was ripped apart before her accident. See, Theresa was on her way home from a date that night. A tryst.”

  Kate just watched him, listened to the way he said the word: tryst. Such a pretty word for such a horrible thing.

  “She was having an affair, Kate,” he said, his eyes bruised and his voice suddenly hoarse, as if telling her had hurt his throat. “With Barkley Jenkins.”

  “I'm sorry,” Kate said, tears suddenly filling her eyes. An old friend: someone John had trusted. Water ran down her arm, soaking her shirt. She couldn't move, thinking of John finding out, of the pain of knowing the person you love wants someone else.

  “She was on her way home from being with him,” John said. “The night of the accident.”

  “I'm so sorry,” she said.

  “She was very pretty, like the girl next door, but with something more . . . her eyes were full of secrets, and that made her, somehow, gorgeous. Exotic, in a black-Irish way. She'd look at you as if she knew you inside out, your deepest darkest secrets, before you'd even said a word. Men were always drawn to her.”

 
Kate waited, listening, holding her breath.

  “I got so I hated secrets,” John said.

  As he looked down, Kate saw him try to hide the pain in his eyes.

  “Because that was her great gift. She'd make men feel there was nothing they couldn't tell her. She'd take in their secrets—I'd see her huddled in the corner with someone at a cocktail party, and I'd know she was drawing it out of him . . . the one thing he'd never told anyone before. . . . Everyone has a gift. Painting, acting, soccer, the law . . . Theresa's was listening.”

  “She must have listened to you,” Kate said. “Heard all of your secrets . . .”

  John shook his head. “I couldn't tell her mine,” he said. “She was my wife, but knowing that she listened to everyone else made me hold back.”

  “That must have hurt,” Kate said quietly.

  John nodded, his face hard. He scrubbed the dog, and Kate noticed that, in contrast to his expression, his hands were moving so tenderly over Bonnie's back. He touched the Scottie as if he knew she was small and delicate, and he didn't want to scare or hurt her.

  “John,” she said softly, dropping her hands into the water, covering his on the dog's back.

  “You know,” he whispered. “I knew, as soon as you told me about your husband, that I could tell you about Theresa's affair. My secret.”

  “I guess I could feel that,” Kate said. “I just knew, by your questions.”

  “So much for secrets,” he said, trying to laugh.

  “Finding out about Andrew and Willa hurt more than anything I've ever felt in my life,” she said. “You think you won't survive. You think you'll fall off the face of the earth, that it will just keep turning and turning and no one will ever notice you're not there anymore.”

  “I'd notice, Kate,” John said, pulling her close to him, their hands all wet and not even caring. “I'd notice if you weren't here.”

  “You, too,” she said, touching his face.

  They kissed, hungry for each other, soaking wet from the tub. Kate felt herself melting inside, holding onto John. He was here, in her arms, solid and real. His kiss was fire, and Kate knew he wanted her the same way she wanted him. His fingers brushed, then interlocked with hers.

  Bonnie whimpered; Kate came back to earth.

  Breathless, breaking apart, she looked into John's eyes. Brown flecked with gold, they held her gaze. She felt her heart beating in her throat. She slowly pulled her hand away from his, reluctantly, looking down, turning back to Bonnie.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Blushing, she nodded as he helped her lift the Scottie from the tub. John held out fresh towels, and they dried her off.

  “I wanted you to come back,” he said as she put Bonnie down. The second the dog's short legs hit the tile floor, she went flying off in search of Brainer.

  “You did?” she asked, clearing her throat, still feeling overwhelmed.

  He nodded. “And not just to kiss you,” he said. “When I told my dad about you, about breaching Merrill's confidence to you, he asked if I talked to you a lot; confided in you often. Something like that . . . it got me to thinking. I wish I could tell you more.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Kate said. As she looked into his eyes, desire flowed into something else: a feeling of connection deep in her heart. “So many times after I got back to Washington, I'd think of you, and I'd wish I could ask you how things were going, how Maggie and Teddy were.”

  John kissed her again, more insistently than before. If their first kiss had been a surprise, and their second one had been filled with passion, then this one was a zero-to-sixty blood-rush neither of them had felt in years, and they both knew that in ten more seconds they'd be unable to stop.

  “Whoa, John,” Kate breathed, clutching his arms.

  “Kate . . .” he said, smiling widely, swaying with her, pulling her body against his.

  He laughed. Taking her hand, he led her from the marble bathroom into the master bedroom. It was getting dark out; the waves crashed, drawing her to the window. Branches scratched against the pane, stirred up by the building wind. Kate gazed down the coastline, seeing the waves break on the sandbar, her Chincoteague storm sense kicking in.

  “We're in for a nor'easter,” she said.

  “What?” John asked, standing behind her, kissing the back of her neck, as if weather was the last thing on his mind.

  Just then, John's phone rang; he reached for it. “I was out of the office all day, and just in case . . .” he explained apologetically to Kate.

  “Answer it,” she urged, smiling, still feeling the tingle on her neck.

  “Hello?” John said. Then, “Dad—what's wrong?”

  Kate froze, watching John's face twist.

  “Teddy?” John asked. “Is he all right? Is he home? Put him on the phone—”

  But Teddy couldn't, or wouldn't, come to the phone. Kate watched John's eyes as he listened to his father for another minute, and then he disconnected.

  “I have to go home,” he said. “Teddy needs me.”

  “Of course. I understand. Go—I'll head back to the inn.”

  “I want you to come with me, Kate,” he said urgently. “Please?”

  “Of course,” Kate said, taking his hand, looking deep into his eyes. “Of course, I'll come, John.”

  Hand-in-hand, damp dogs at their heels, John and Kate had raced together back to John's car in the turnaround. When they got to the Judge's house, they found Teddy wild with worry.

  “She's not here,” he kept saying, rushing around the house. “Maggie's supposed to be home, and I can't find her!”

  “Teddy,” John said, grabbing his son by the shoulders. “Slow down—tell me what's wrong!”

  “Let me go, Dad!” Teddy said, trying to wrench himself away, suddenly noticing Kate. “I have to find Maggie!” he said, facing her.

  “Of course, Teddy,” she said, instantly feeling his anguish.

  “Did something happen?” John asked.

  Teddy let out a cry. Kate watched the boy smash himself out of his father's grip, then run upstairs. John's eyes were wide, shocked, full of hurt. Maeve sat in a chair in the living room, murmuring softly as she fingered rosary beads dangling from her hand. The Judge, dressed in jacket and tie as before, shook his head with dismay.

  “I called you, John, because he's been like this since he got home.”

  “Where was he?”

  “At practice. He said he and Maggie had made plans to do something . . . draw pictures. He said she'd been looking forward to it, that she'd never miss it. He's completely beside himself—nothing I said would calm him down.”

  John didn't wait to hear any more. He followed Teddy upstairs, and Kate heard his voice drifting down, trying to talk to his son. The tone was calm but insistent, but it was met with a roaring sob. The boy's pain tugged her so hard, she didn't even hesitate, but ran up the stairs where she hadn't been invited.

  “Nothing happened, Dad,” Teddy shouted, “but that's the point—I don't want something to happen to Maggie. Enough's happened already.”

  “I know.”

  “You don't know,” Teddy cried. “Always talking about people's rights—but the rights of bad guys. Guys who hurt people. What about innocent people, Dad? Like those girls in the breakwaters? Maggie's not home, and she's supposed to be.”

  “She's grounded,” John said. “She's a good girl. She wouldn't go anywhere.”

  “Then where is she, Dad?”

  “Teddy,” John began, color rushing into his face, stepping closer to his son.

  But Teddy just tore into what had to be Maggie's room. A yellow nightgown was folded on the pillow, a blue robe with white lace cuffs hung on the bedpost. Kate and John exchanged glances as Teddy began to rifle Maggie's desk, her bedside table.

  “She came home from school, right?” John asked, panic building in his voice, as if Teddy's words had triggered real fear.

  “I don't know!” Teddy cried over his shoulder. �
��She wasn't here when I came in. Her bike's not in the yard.”

  “She's been here,” Kate said quietly, wanting to be calm.

  “How do you know?” John asked.

  Kate pointed. There, in the drawer, was the yellow envelope she'd left on the hall table just hours earlier. Addressed to Maggie, it had been opened. She saw the ragged tear marks left by a little girl eager to read the card.

  “You left this for her?” Teddy asked, picking it up, looking at Kate.

  She nodded. “I did.”

  “It must've meant a lot to her,” he said, his voice raw and eyes red. “This is her special drawer. She has one at home, too, where she keeps the things that matter to her. Except the scarf. She never takes the white scarf off.”

  “I'm glad she likes it,” Kate said quietly, meeting Teddy's gaze, feeling the primal power of the love he had for his sister.

  “She does. . . .”

  “Are you okay, Teddy?” she asked softly, some instinct making her careful not to touch him.

  He shrugged, shoulders heaving in silent sobs. Swallowing them back, when he could speak, he looked directly at Kate, excluding his father. “I can't be okay,” Teddy said, “till I know Maggie is.”

  “I'll go out and look for her,” John said.

  “Me, too,” Teddy said. “I'm coming too.”

  “I want you to stay here,” John said, hands on Teddy's shoulders. “Okay, Ted? Just wait here, and call me if your sister gets home before I find her.”

  “Where would she be?” Teddy asked, frowning. “Where are you going to look for her?”

  “Maybe the library,” John said. “Our old house—even though I told her not to go there . . .”

  Teddy touched Kate's note. “Maybe the East Wind,” he said. “Maggie knows Kate stayed there. Maybe she went over—to look for Kate.”

  “Good idea. I'll start there,” John said. Then, raising his eyes, he looked at Kate. “Will you stay with him?”

  Kate nodded. Suddenly her instinct took over, and she knew exactly what to do next: She put her arm around Teddy's shoulders—like an older sister, like a baby-sitter, like a mother—and gave him a strong squeeze. He felt big and strong, as if he had grown since she'd last been there, but he leaned, just like a little boy, into the curve of her embrace.