My tit-for-tat didn’t seem to register as she continued to puzzle over my eyes and hair, and I had the sudden thought that she was comparing them to something else she had seen.
Like the picture of another woman.
No. Not People, I realized with a shock. Not The Devon Times. Hell, not even Google.
The Boston Globe.
I held steady. Coincidence, I told myself. Guilty conscience, I told myself. There was still a chance I was wrong. When she ducked her head to peer under my bangs, though, I knew I was not.
“Mackenzie Cooper,” she breathed, a question but not.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t dare.
“I had no idea, none. I’m so sorry,” she said with true feeling, and when I didn’t react, added, “About your daughter.”
At least her priorities were right. But this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. It wasn’t one I was prepared for, though I should have been. I should have known it would occur one day. But what kind of person assumed nightmares came true and had an actual, viable plan of attack?
Actually, most people would. I hadn’t, because even though my mind had known it might happen, my heart denied it. Even with Edward’s coming and my heightened fear of exposure, I hadn’t thought far enough to know how to react.
So I focused on breathing. I didn’t want to make it obvious; the tightness in my chest was only starting.
“I remember when you first got here,” Nina went on in a voice that was kind enough. “It wasn’t so long after me, maybe two years, but those first few times we worked together, you were quieter. I can’t imagine what you went through, Maggie.” She paused. “Maggie? Mackenzie?”
As the question hung, I wanted to curse Edward for coming to town and curse Jack Quillmer for interviewing him. I wanted to curse Nina for nosing around online, but it was done. And yet—and yet I couldn’t quite get myself to acknowledge Mackenzie.
Nina seemed oblivious to my angst, clearly blinded by her own need to know. “If you and Ned are divorced, why is he here? Were you always in touch, even after you moved?”
Stay or run? I didn’t know which to do, but my feet didn’t move, so I was momentarily trapped. My chest wasn’t getting worse. But it wasn’t getting better. And now I felt a tremor deep in my gut. Wrapping my arms around my waist to hold things steady, I drew in a slow breath and, slowly, let it out.
“I go back to Cleveland to see my parents,” she went on, “and my sister comes here every so often, but you’ve never left for long or had anyone here to visit—ah, but your brother.” Her eyes widened in realization. “How did that come about?”
I felt no pressure to answer. She was doing just fine on her own.
“He showed up right around the time Ned did, and he’s going to be running a restaurant owned by the Inn group. That can’t be a coincidence.”
No shit, Sherlock, I thought.
“Was it all part of a plan—you come here first to get set up and make sure it was the right place?”
I was incredulous.
But she seemed oblivious to that, too. “Do you have other family—like, parents? I didn’t read about them being around.”
I took the deepest breath yet, closing my eyes for a second longer than a blink. My exhale sounded like a sigh. Nina wasn’t good with girlfriends. She had told me that, herself. But if she had an ounce of innate compassion, she would have shut up. Her questions were tedious. Actually, her questions were infuriating. She had to see that I didn’t want to talk, had to see that her questions were causing me pain. If this was her idea of being assertive, I could understand why strong women got a bad name, which was patently unfair, since persistence was a good trait. But to be persistent at the expense of human decency?
“I think I should leave,” I said as levelly as I could with my insides unsteady and my anger rising.
“Is Ned why you’ve never dated? Do you love him?”
“Nina…”
“Why four years? And why Devon?” she asked. “From what I read, you had a life filled with people, but you’ve been alone here. How do you do it?”
That was it, one question too many. “Is there a point to this?” I asked sharply and was startled when her voice became a hoarse whisper.
“There is. I had a life filled with people, too, but I don’t here. Here I have respect and anonymity and nice people and perfect makeup”—desperation appeared in her eyes—“and a shitload of hours all alone with nothing to do but relive the past, which I can’t do a thing to change. It’s lonely and depressing, and I know you know what I mean. You’ve been on the unfair side of life, so you have to know the anger of it, and coming here is both the best thing and the worst. It’s an escape but not. I want to know how you do it. I need help, Maggie—and I call you Maggie, because it’s the name of someone I trust. I don’t care what happened in Boston. How do you do it here, now?”
I might have laughed hysterically. Was she was actually looking for help from me? All the care I’d taken to protect my identity, to protect my heart, to what end? I’d royally botched it.
The thought lasted for only a split second, because just then Edward emerged from the innards of the Inn, passed Joyce’s desk with a small pat—like a thank-you for calling him—and joined us.
The hand that touched my back was light, but not so light that I didn’t feel it. I sought his eyes, actually hoping their pale-blue would take me to Lily and dampen my anger. But those eyes were all Edward, whom I liked but didn’t, whom I wanted but didn’t, and who by any account had helped cause this mess.
“Everything okay here?” he asked Nina.
She seemed nonplussed, like she hadn’t anticipated his arrival and didn’t know what to say.
But I did. “I’m leaving,” I announced and, letting Edward’s soothing hand fall away, strode off. I didn’t look at Joyce as I passed her. Something about the way she’d contacted Edward said she knew everything, and, at that moment, I was too angry at the world for betraying me to be able to deal with the shame of my crime.
At least, Michael Shanahan hadn’t shown up, although the day wasn’t done.
I hurried down the corridor to the back exit, pushed the door open, rushed outside—and stopped short. Not Michael, but Chris Emory. With his gray hoodie, curved back, and gangly legs, he was propped barely six feet away on the split-rail fence that led to the parking lot. Though he had clearly tried to hide his hair in the fleece, wayward curls caught the late-day sun like a halo intent on escape, but that was the most benign thing about him. His hands were visible fists in the hoodie’s muff pocket, his shoulders hunched, his brows tight.
I didn’t look around for the press. Chris would have scoped the parking lot before exposing himself this way, not to mention that I was too irritated just then with all of it to care who saw me, him, us. As he stood, his expression went from forbidding to frightened. I should have been worried. But he was fifteen, no baby, and his face wasn’t what I needed.
Willing sympathy away, I stood rock-still and stared. “Problem?”
“Yeah.” He came toward me and said in a grudging voice, “People. Everyone’s talking about it, and Mom won’t answer texts.”
The door opened behind me. That would be Edward.
“She’s still working,” I said, but Chris was eying Edward with unease. “Ignore him. He’s with me. Does Grace know you’re here?”
His wary gaze hung on Edward for a minute, before sliding back to me. He lowered his voice to keep the conversation private, though Edward was there at my shoulder. “I told her I was. She didn’t say anything about that either—like, she doesn’t tell me to stay or leave, just ignores me, but I have to see her. She’s blaming me for everything.”
I raised both brows. “Uh, who else should she be blaming?”
Forgetting caution, he reeled off the list with full resentment. “People, Ben Zwick, the media, and the crazies who listen to their stuff—I don’t know. I didn’t ask them to come snooping around.”
“No.”
“Trying to goad your mother into telling you about your dad?”
He shook his head, but his mouth was shut so tight that I figured at least part of the answer was yes. “What did you hope to accomplish?”
He stuck out his chin.
“Do you understand that what you did was wrong?”
He looked away.
“Are you sorry, Chris? Tell me that, at least, please, tell me that.”
The gaze that met mine was liquid. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, more boy than man now. “If I could go back and delete everything, I would, but it was like”—frantic eyes skittered away, then returned—“like this addictive thing, and being able to do it was awesome, because I’m a nobody—I mean, a nobody. I’m not a star at much, and I was feeling screwed over, so I wanted to show them—show someone I could—only it blew up in my face. So now I’m totally fucked, but I didn’t know, I swear I never thought—never thought anything like this would happen.” His voice stopped, but his throat continued to work, his Adam’s apple bobbing at the hoodie’s throat.
Anger notwithstanding, my heart did chip then. Stepping forward, I rose on tiptoe and hugged him. He smelled of ratty sweatshirt and boy, and his breathing was rough, but I didn’t feel crying. He would refuse to do that with Edward watching.
I didn’t speak, and it had nothing to do with the March chill, our audience, or the fists pressing into my back. Truth be told, I was too keyed up to say anything profound.
Truth be told, I was too inexperienced to say anything profound. I didn’t have a child. Parenting anything older than a five-year-old was foreign to me.
When I pulled back, he was looking destroyed. The last two weeks had done that to him, and I hadn’t helped. My sin here, now, was one of style, though, not substance.
“Blaming everyone else won’t help,” I said softly.
“But my mom—”
I turned, about to tell Edward to get Grace, when he nodded his understanding and went back inside.
“She hates me.”
“A mother never hates her child.”
“Then why is she being like this? Doesn’t she know how I feel?”
“Have you told her?” I asked, but he couldn’t hear past himself.
“I am suffering. I go to school, and it’s like I have a disease. No one talks to me there, either.”
“No one?”
“Well, except for people who think what I did was cool, but it wasn’t, Maggie, I know that now, my mind just wasn’t there when I did it. And okay, so the Feds are watching what I do, but that doesn’t mean someone’ll get in trouble for walking to fucking class with me.”
“Language,” I warned in the voice of Grace. When he pouted, I asked, “You have friends. What about them?”
“Friends.” He rolled his eyes and, way too cynical for fifteen, said, “Oh yeah, friends. Well, we text sometimes, and they sound like they still like me, only they don’t want to be seen with me, and that’s okay, at least Mom’s right about that. She says it says something about them, and that if they can’t see past who I really am, the statement’s more about them than about me.”
“So she does talk to you.” That restored my faith, at least a bit.
“Not today. Why won’t she answer my texts?” He glanced at the door through which Edward had gone. “He’s not coming out with her so fast. Maybe he can’t find her. Maybe she’s refusing to come out. Maybe she’s not even in there. Maybe she’s gone into hiding.”
“She’s working, Chris. I know this for fact. She’s with a client.”
“But she takes breaks. That’s when she texts me back, only she’s not doing it now. What was so bad about People? It didn’t say anything new, but suddenly she’s gone apocalyptic on me.”
I had to smile. “Apocalyptic? I don’t think so.”
“Know what my problem is?” he asked and, before I could say the narcissism of being fifteen, answered. “Being fifteen. If I was eighteen, I’d run away, I mean, like, just disappear. I could do it now—there are a bazillion kids who run away from home every day. Only I don’t have the guts. I’m pathetic.”
Taking his shoulders, I gave a shake. “You are not pathetic, Chris. The fact that you say it—the fact that you’ve said all of what you just have, says something about the kind of adult you’ll grow to be.”
“But I’m serious, Maggie,” he warned. His brown eyes were suddenly large. “I am not kidding about this. I need to be in a different place where no one knows me.”
I was shaking my head before he’d finished. “Won’t help.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How? Your life is sweet. You don’t have psychologists trying to trip you up or government lawyers trying to lock you up or reporters trying to make you into a monster.”
His description so fit! “But I did,” I heard myself say.
He called my bluff. “When?”
I hadn’t thought this through, clearly hadn’t. Or maybe my subconscious had. Maybe my subconscious knew that the truth was out for Nina, possibly for Joyce, certainly for Jay, not to mention for other people who had seen the article on Edward, people who had seen us together at Town Meeting and wondered why I had come to Devon with no past.
Chris Emory, age fifteen and unlikely confessor, wouldn’t be wondering any of that. He was too into himself. If I told him the truth, it would be all on me. If I told him, he would tell his friends, who would tell their friends, who would tell their parents.
I wasn’t ready for that.
But if what I’d made of my life was a tapestry, the unraveling had already begun, and through no fault of my own. Maybe I needed to take control. Maybe I needed it now to be my fault.
Taking responsibility is a step toward redemption—and, okay, my mother had been talking about a serial killer then, but what the hell.
“When?” Chris demanded.
“Five years ago,” I said flatly. “I caused a car crash in which two people died. It was a high-profile case—lots of press, lots of speculation. I didn’t go to prison, but I’ve been on probation. My probation officer monitors everything I do. So I know what you’re feeling, Chris. I had the psychologists and the government lawyers and the reporters crawling all over me, too.”
His jaw had gone slack. It was a minute before he closed his mouth.
“I didn’t know,” he said, finally sounding contrite. “Mom never said.”
“Mom doesn’t know.” I let that sink in for a beat. “No one does—or did until recently. It’s not something I want spreading around.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” he hurried to say, that quickly the innocent boy with whom I’d played hide-and-seek in the woods. “I swear, Maggie, I won’t, I mean”—he scrunched up his face—“who would want to know that about you?”
I could think of a number of people, and, in fairness, it would be more curiosity than malicious intent. Nina was a good example. I don’t care what happened in Boston, she said. The problem was that I did.
I cupped his shoulders again, rubbing gently this time. “The only reason I’m telling you is so you’ll listen to what I say. As bad as life looks right now, it will get better. I know. I’ve been where you are.”
“Not around here,” Chris said, no longer ten years old and now way too smart. “You had to leave wherever you were before it could get better. So that’s what I’m saying. I have to leave.”
“Not now you don’t,” I
warned, retrieving my hands and stuffing them in my pockets. “You do not run away, Chris. Once everything’s done in court, you and your mother can decide what you want to do.”
“What if I’m in jail?”
“Then you won’t have to make a decision.”
“You’re supposed to say I’m not going to jail.”
“You’re not going to jail.”
“Were you afraid of jail?”
“Terrified.”
“Did you think of running away?”
“Then? No.”
“Afterward?”
I paused, looking back and up at the beautiful stone structure that was The Devon Inn and Spa. “I did. I came here.”
“Gah,” he sputtered, “that doesn’t help me. What if I skip school until the trial?”
I gave a slow headshake.
“Mom could homeschool me.”
Really? I asked with a look. We both knew the idea was absurd.
“Then I’m getting sick,” he said. “I’ll catch something … like Ebola.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.” His eyes held mine. “No?”
“No.”
“I’m telling you, running away is the best plan.”
I grabbed his arms this time. “That would make things ten times worse. Promise me you won’t, Chris? Promise me.”
“Fine. Okay.” Jutting his chin out, he looked away. A second later, with bravado, his eyes returned. “Then I’ll just shut myself in my room. I don’t have to eat dinner if Mom isn’t there. I don’t have to talk if she isn’t there. All I need’s a bag of nachos. I’ll get in bed and pull up the covers.”
I was about to tell him how childish that was, when I realized two things. First, taking a bag of chips to bed was harmless. Second, it was exactly what I wanted to do, myself.
“There’s a plan,” I said and, hearing the door open behind me, looked back. Grace emerged, followed closely by Edward. He seemed to be shepherding her, meaning that he may have forced her to come, but I lacked the wherewithal to analyze her expression. Not that it mattered what she felt. As long as she was there, I could leave.
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