Before and Again

by Barbara Delinsky

  In an ideal world, I would have called Edward. He was one of the most rational people I knew. He had been able to think clearly on even the most emotional matters, until those emotions had grown bigger than us. But I no longer knew where he stood on me, much less on Devon or hacking. If he was part of whatever entity was buying the Inn, which would suffer negative fallout from this, he sure as hell would be no fan of the Emorys.

  So, no Edward.

  And no Mom.

  And no Cornelia, though I did consider telling her everything, just for her advice.

  That left Kevin. I waited until five thirty—just couldn’t wait longer than that—and, telling myself that he would be up soon anyway, texted, You awake?

  He replied a minute later. Sorry. Couldn’t find the phone. I’m calling. My cell rang. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  His voice was low. Jimmy would still be sleeping, but he wouldn’t want to leave the bed’s warmth. I didn’t care where he talked from. He had been asleep himself, I’d woken him, and his first concern was for me. Talk about defining a true friend.

  “I love you, Kevin,” I breathed, then quickly told him what Chris had asked and the dilemma I faced. “Am I right? Wrong? Noble? Out of my freaking mind?”

  “Not that, honey. Never that. But you’re asking the right questions. The problem here is Grace.”

  “Please forget that you don’t like her.”

  “I don’t really know her,” he admitted. “But do you? You say she has no one else, but why doesn’t she? Where are her parents?”

  “Where are yours?”

  There was a pause, then a quiet, “Touché. Family rift. But this kid has a father somewhere. What’s with him?”

  I hadn’t told him about that part of my discussion with Chris. “Funny you ask.”

  “Funny?

  “Chris wonders the same thing.”

  “Well, he’s how old? Fifteen? He should wonder. Lemme tell you, when I reached his age, I was looking at my father and thinking I had to be like him but couldn’t. He was looking at me and thinking I didn’t have his beard or his build or his guts. He was disappointed. I knew that. I told myself it was okay. I told myself that I must look like one of my uncles. Or my grandfather. That’s what boys do at that age. They look in the mirror every time someone tells them to brush their teeth or use deodorant. It’s like, who am I? Who do I want to be?”

  Passion had driven his voice higher. I heard a groggy murmur in the background and a reply aimed away from the phone. “I’m good, I’m good.” Back to me. “Sorry, the old hurts hang around.” He paused. Then, softly, he asked, “Who are you, Maggie?”

  The question wasn’t a literal one. He knew where I had come from and who I had been. How he could zero in so perfectly at not-even-six in the morning, I didn’t know, but it was why I had called.

  “I don’t know who I am. I’m trying to figure that out.”

  “Who do you want to be?”

  “A good person. I want to be a good person.”

  “There’s your answer.” There was another background murmur, more input from Jimmy. Seconds later, he added, “A heads-up, doll. Zwick’ll be there.”

  “Rutland?” I swore softly. “Not good.”

  “Not good,” he confirmed. “Still want to go?”

  Did I want to go, with a guarantee now that the media would be out in force? Absolutely not. The thought of it had my stomach knotting. But Chris’s disillusioned, I thought you liked me, and How can you not come, followed by that look of hope on Grace’s face?

  Who was I? I wasn’t a mother or a wife, and I was a daughter in name only. But I was a friend. Being a friend sometimes meant you left your own comfort zone for the sake of someone else. I wanted to be the kind of person who did that.

  * * *

  Grace texted me twice before seven. The first text told me to wear my purple herringbone tweed blazer. She had been with me when I bought it, and said that it was what was expected in court. I felt a stab of annoyance. I knew what was expected—God, did I. Since she didn’t know how cozy courtrooms and I had once been, her remark was innocent in that sense, but not so in another. She was making sure I knew I was coming. The second text sealed the deal. It said that the hearing was scheduled for ten, and that Jay was driving “us all” and would pick me up at eight.

  8

  The Federal Courthouse in Rutland was modest by big-city standards, but seeing it through the tinted windows of Jay’s back seat, knowing that I actually had to enter it, I felt a mild panic. The building was imposing. Standing three stories, it had tall, narrow windows, arched cornices, and double columns typical of the Italianate style. Red brick spanned its forehead, pale granite its mouth and cheeks. Built in 1869, Jay narrated, likely as a diversion, but no diversion could erase the media on the steps. They were clustered in the center of three sections marked by handrails. Alone near the top, positioned so that the backdrop would be the middle one of three massive doors, was Ben Zwick.

  Grace swore.

  So did I, though I kept it silent.

  When Chris broke off from jiggling his leg and straightened to look, I rubbed his arm to remind him he wasn’t alone. Back in Boston, I had needed that. All too clearly, I remembered the sense of being targeted, shot at, even smothered by the enemy. Fortunately, I’d had Edward.

  Actually, I had not. For the first court appearances, yes. But by the time my trial rolled around, the silence in our house had driven us apart, the grief was so impenetrable that we couldn’t get past it to talk. So Edward had been there in body but not spirit, and the pain of that? Salt on an open wound.

  Grace swore again, now on a higher-pitched note. I wanted to touch her shoulder, hold her arm, do something to comfort her. Wasn’t that why I was here? Wasn’t that the only reason I was here? She had been silent through the drive, barely glancing at Chris as she burrowed into her coat in the passenger seat. Suddenly, she was back in force and upset, but I was sitting behind Jay and couldn’t reach her.

  I continued to hold Chris’s arm, so the tremor I felt might have been his, might have been mine. Kevin had warned me that Zwick would be there, but his brazenness was still a shock.

  “Is he really holding a press conference?” I asked. A wave of loathing took the edge off my nerves.

  “Yup,” confirmed Jay.

  “I thought the hearing was closed.” This from Grace in a panicky shriek.

  Jay remained calm. “It is. Zwick won’t be in the courtroom, and he can’t pull stunts like this in the hallways, but the front steps are fair game.”

  “Is there a back entrance?” I asked as Edward had five years before.

  “Heading there now,” Jay said and did just that.

  We parked and made it through the back door with only a handful of reporters closing in before they were stayed by a guard. Were film crews scattered along those back streets? I’d bet on it. And though cameras weren’t allowed inside, enough of the people we passed on our way to the courtroom were shifting phones in and around ears to suggest that there were at least a few surreptitious shots being taken.

  Jay guided Grace, who held Chris’s arm. The boy had his hood up, and her face was shielded between hair and fur hood. I had only my bangs, which weren’t much of a shield. Had I thought ahead, I might have raised my own hood or worn dark glasses, though any attempt to hide at this point would only draw attention. I wanted to touch my bangs to make sure they covered the scar, but even that would be a tip-off. The best I could do was to keep my eyes straight ahead and my expression cool, like I was here in an official capacity, maybe as Jay’s assistant.

  The courtroom, surprisingly, proved a refuge. When I was a defendant, it had been mobbed, but since this was a juvenile proceeding, the only people allowed in were the AG and his assistant, the judge, the clerk, a court reporter taking notes, and us.

  Jay and Chris sat at a table in the front, Jay wearing a respectable suit, Chris a shirt and slacks. Grace and I sat immediately behind them.
Once we had our coats off, I took her hand. She immediately tightened her fingers around mine. Bitten nails? Oh yeah. She always kept her nails short; her work demanded that. But this was something else. I covered them with my free hand so that neither of us could see.

  “All rise,” said the clerk.

  The judge entered wearing her black robe, and though her words bore the weight of authority, her voice was agreeable. “Arraignment in juvenile proceedings … United States of America versus Christopher P. Emory … charges of Internet fraud and wire fraud.”

  As I listened, I pushed memory away. Grace’s death grip on my hand helped with that, as did the judge. Mine had been male, sharp-voiced, and grim. This one was younger and seemed kinder. If she was a mother herself, we might have a leg up when it came to sympathy. I suspected Jay had fought to get her assigned to the case. That was how it worked.

  Facing Chris, she asked if he understood the charges. He nodded. With a small smile and a tip of her head to the court reporter, she asked Chris to speak his reply for the record. Once he had, she read the charges. Jay’s influence showed here, too. In the course of multiple weekend calls, he had convinced the prosecutors to forego charges for each offending post, leaving only the two biggies. And they were big. As she read them, the words reverberated across the high ceilings of the near-empty room.

  Chris pleaded not guilty. The judge ruled that the conditions of his release were the same as previously established. She set a date one month later for a status conference to hear motions.

  Five minutes. That was all it took. I held it together until we left the courtroom, but once the media closed in, threads of panic returned. I lowered my head, likely a mistake given the vulnerability it showed, and the press pounced on vulnerability like no tomorrow. Recorders were shoved in my face along with demands for my name, my take on the accused, the hearing, the crime itself.

  I couldn’t have spoken if my life had depended on it. Jay hustled us along with a hand raised to fend off the press.

  We were almost at the door when someone called my name—at least, I thought that was what I heard, though, upset as I was, it could have been any two-syllable shout with similar sounds. Whatever, it resembled Maggie, not Mackenzie, so it would have been someone from Devon. Everyone there knew Grace and I were friends. The only danger lay in a journalist picking up on my name.

  Then again, it might have been Michael Shanahan.

  Needing to know, I looked back. I didn’t see Michael, but I did see Ben Zwick. Tall and sandy-haired, he stood off to the side with a wounded air and his eyes locked on Grace.

  * * *

  I had another rough night. For starters, even though I knew it was asking for trouble, I’d felt compelled to surf every local news outlet, read what was there, and then click through to related stories. My face appeared often, and while I was always in the background and never identified by name, it was upending. The last thing I wanted was someone from my past connecting the dots, coming to Devon to check, and destroying what was left of my privacy.

  That fear brought dreams, which played out during brief spurts of sleep. In one, I was having a seaweed wrap at the Spa, unable to move as clients entered the room and took selfies with me; in another, the players in my Boston nightmare were trekking up Pepin Hill cradling semi-automatic weapons in their arms. There was an erotic dream that involved Edward and was frighteningly coherent. And then there was the one about Lily, which had nothing to do with the fear of exposure and everything to do with a loss so profound that, even sprawled in bed, I was brought to my knees. I could see her. She was hurt and crying for me, reaching for me, begging for me to help. But I couldn’t get to her. First there was an opaque wall that allowed nothing through but the sound of her increasingly shrill screams, then a dense web through which I could see a distorted view of her face, then, more cruelly, a piece of plastic wrap through which I could see and hear perfectly but not pass.

  I’d had this one before. Many times. As always, I woke up alone in my bed, my house, my life. When I was first here, I would wake up in tears. Now when I woke, I simply struggled for air. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat. Breathe in, breathe out, repeat.

  Leaving Jonah asleep on the bed, I went down to the living room. The cats followed. Actually, the cats led. Seeming to understand that I didn’t want to be alone, their warm little bodies crowded in, rubbing close, on my legs and in my lap the instant I curled up on the sofa. Burying my face in their fur, I held them for as long as they allowed.

  No amount of makeup could hide what was inside, so while I looked outwardly normal entering the pottery studio, Kevin saw more. Half a dozen other potters were working and another had followed me up the stairs, which meant we couldn’t really talk, but that was fine. It was all about his hug. It was about taking my hand away from my hair when I went to touch my bangs for a third time in as many minutes. It was about indulging me when I did nothing but wedge. Oh, I thought about making a teapot, but my mother’s special today was butterscotch brownies, which seemed to demand a plate more than a pot, and a plate here would be empty. I thought about making a vase—the flower shop in town had fresh tulips—but my hands didn’t move. I even thought about making something Lily liked, like a harmless little bunny. My therapist had been after me to just ease up on purpose and design, and let the clay take me where it would. I hadn’t dared do that before. But I was already upset, so why not?

  Apparently there was a reason why not, somewhere in the great subconscious, because I couldn’t get past wedging. And that was fine. If wedging was all I could do, I would wedge. I had always found the pulling, pushing, and slamming to be therapeutic, and it definitely was now. By the time I left the studio, I was feeling grounded.

  The Spa reinforced that with its infusion of lemon verbena and, today, the whisper-soft melody of a harp.

  As always, Joyce’s face lit up when she saw me. This time, though, with a small swing of her bob, she directed me to the sitting area. Michael Shanahan was rising from the sofa, resplendent in navy blazer, checked shirt, and a pink tie with little blue whales. His preppy soul was so out of place in a Zen world of scented candles, artfully angled cushions, and the tiny waterfalls that were part of the décor, that it might have been laughable, had the sight of him not brought a chill.

  “Michael.” I was slightly breathless, the peace I had found at the pottery studio that quickly gone.

  “Where can we talk?” he asked.

  The makeup room was the obvious place, but his cologne—Burberry Brit, he had proudly announced when I commented on it once—had an unpleasant way of lingering there, and besides, I had a client in half an hour and still had to shower and dress. Hoping to keep the talk short, I gestured to the cushions he had just left. Joyce was the only one in sight, and her desk was out of earshot. Between the trickle of water and the strum of the harp, we would have privacy until new clients arrived. Their appearance would remind Michael that I had work to do.

  Rather than sitting, he moved to the open area between the sofa and the soaring windows that made up the wall. I joined him there.

  “What’s up?” I asked in a Spa-low voice, though I knew the answer too well. I had dared the devil, and here he was.

  “I saw you in Rutland, Maggie. Why were you there?” He sounded personally aggrieved, like I’d disappointed him in a major way.

  So he had been the one to call my name. It wasn’t a total surprise. Nor was it reassuring, given the power he held. But I wasn’t backing down. “Grace is my friend. She needed support. She had no one else.”

  “She had her lawyer and her son. She didn’t need you, especially after I asked you to steer clear of her. Why didn’t you at least call me to get an okay?”

  “I didn’t think I had to. I wasn’t leaving the state.”

  He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “But this looks bad, Maggie, don’t you see? The kid did some awful stuff.”

  “Not proven.”

  “Not yet, but the charges wouldn’t
be brought without evidence. And there you are all over the news? You’re putting me in a shitty position.”

  I couldn’t muster sympathy for him. For Grace and Chris? Yes. Even, considering nightmares and fears, for me. But for Michael? No. He was being unreasonable, tone-deaf about the meaning of friendship. So maybe he didn’t know what it was. Maybe he didn’t have friends. That was cause for sympathy, I supposed.

  We stood with our backs to the rest of the room. Just beyond the windows were trees and shrubs that seemed manicured even in March. I studied them until their tranquility eased me.

  Then I said a quiet, “I’m sorry.” I did regret putting him in an awkward position. He wasn’t a bad guy, and he was only doing his job. But I did not regret going to court with Grace and Chris. “I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal. The hearing took all of five minutes. It was just a formality.”

  “The terms of your probation are clear,” he said, all stern, I-am-the-law. “You’re supposed to pick good friends and stay clean. You’re supposed to avoid anything that is even vaguely smelly. And there you were in a courtroom with a guy who’s up for two felony counts? That smells really bad. So what am I supposed to do, Maggie? I mean, I like you, but this is my job. Do I report it?”

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from behind, and goose bumps rose on my skin. Edward’s voice would always be that familiar to me.

  Suddenly he was right there with us, and how could I not compare the two men? Both were tall, but even though Michael had a couple of inches on him, Edward was more classy, more confident, more imposing, like he was the real thing beside a wannabe. He wore a quarter-zip sweater and slacks; the sweater was cashmere and black, the slacks a lighter gray and cut of fine wool; loafers had replaced mud-crusted boots. His long hair was neatly brushed but, paired with the facial hair, seemed somehow wild.