Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Couldn’t you have vindicated her?”

  “I couldn’t change the fact that she’d been married to a sick man, any more than I could change the fact that her children were flesh of his flesh.”

  “You could have established them as innocent victims.”

  “I could have.”

  “And others would have found the story interesting.”

  “But would the exploitation have been worth it? They’d moved to a new home in a new state. In the name of human interest, I’d have branded them all over again.”

  Tucking his hands in the pockets of his slacks, Derek dropped his gaze to the large marble tiles. They were variegated in shades of dark green, an urban version of a mossy forest floor. Atop their shiny finish, Sabrina’s feet looked slender and graceful. With the slightest shift of his own foot, the hard leather soles of his loafers would bruise her.

  The analogy wasn’t lost on him. He felt rough, almost uncouth beside Sabrina. He didn’t feel that way with others, but others didn’t convey the kind of dignified fragility she did. Strength and all, she was fragile. She pricked his conscience.

  Hesitantly raising his eyes, he asked, “Do you feel that I’m trying to exploit you?”

  “Why are you here?” she countered, curious rather than impertinent. “I’d have thought that the face before the camera did little of the groundwork.”

  “Was incapable of doing the groundwork?”

  “No. Too busy.”

  He shook his head. “My stories are mine. I do them because they interest me. I have people doing other kinds of legwork, but I like to interview the principals myself.”

  “I won’t be one of your principals.”

  “I’m not tying to exploit you.”

  “There’s a fine line—”

  “I’m not.”

  “Your intentions may be honorable, but the fact is that any story you do will be broadcast from coast to coast. That won’t do much for the low profile we try to keep.”

  “It may do some good for others in your position.”

  She gave a sad laugh. “Right about now, charity isn’t high on my list of priorities. I have my hands more than full trying to cope with … cope with…” Though her voiced trailed off, her eyes continued to speak.

  And Derek, who’d done his homework well, heard every word. She was trying to cope with endless days of constant child care, with one useless doctor’s appointment after another, with the total disruption of what would, given her husband’s standing, have been a socially active life. And through it all were worry and unsureness, questions without answers, a future in doubt.

  He steeled himself to press his bid, but it was hard, because her eyes held that pleading again. Then a beeping sound broke into his concentration. His watch. He’d set it to remind himself of a later appointment. He stabbed at the button in annoyance, asking himself why he’d set the alarm, knowing that it was his standard practice, wondering if it was crude.

  “Sorry,” he muttered and took a minute to get over his confusion. Then he asked, “Do you still write?”

  Her smile was sad this time, and she pressed a soft kiss to the baby’s head before she spoke. “I don’t have the time, much less the psychic energy.”

  “Perhaps it would be an outlet.”

  “Is that what your work is for you?”

  “It’s my vocation.”

  “But is it an outlet, too?” she asked.

  “For creative energy, yes.” He lowered his head and thought for a minute. “For nervous energy too, I suppose.”

  “What makes you nervous?”

  He knew that he should be turning the questions around. He was the interviewer, and there was the business of maintaining a professional facade. But the facade seemed suddenly artificial, and Sabrina’s clear gaze demanded better.

  “My life,” he answered. “Where I’m going. What I want.”

  “Why should those things make you nervous?”

  “Because I’m not always sure where I’ll end up and whether that’ll be where I want to be.”

  “Where do you want to be?”

  “I don’t know!” he said. Then, hearing his own frustration, ran a handful of fingers through his dark hair and forced a dry chuckle. “You’re nearing the jugular.”

  “But you seem so … confident. Given your position, I’d have thought that you’d be on top of the world.” She seemed genuinely interested, not to mention momentarily distracted from her own woes—which was why, when she asked if he was married, he answered.

  “No. No time.” He gave a crooked grin. “Like your writing?”

  “There’s a difference. I don’t have a choice.”

  “That,” he said gently but pointedly, “was what I wanted to explore.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, then sighed, then shifted the child again. It occurred to Derek that the baby had to be heavy.

  “May I hold him?” he asked, offering his arms.

  Sabrina seemed genuinely surprised. He wondered if no one else offered to help her with the work. He couldn’t believe that she shouldered it all herself, couldn’t believe that her husband didn’t take his turn. Then again …

  Very carefully, she transferred the child to his arms, and he knew a moment’s panic. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered with an urgency that brought a soft smile to her face. “I’m not much good with kids.” But as the baby collapsed against him, his long arms very naturally found a hold.

  “Nicky doesn’t demand much,” she said. “A warm body. A heartbeat.”

  A warm body. A heartbeat. Raising the child higher against his chest and securing him comfortably, Derek lowered his cheek to the soft waves and took in a long, deep, slightly uneven breath. A warm body. A heartbeat. Why did it feel so good to hold the child? Was it his baby-sweet smell, or that light, lingering one of his mother? Was it the sheer specialness of him? The total helplessness? Or was it a need in Derek for something warm and alive and personal?

  If Nicky was aware of the change of hands, he didn’t make a peep. Derek told himself that he had to be doing something right. He knew that something felt right. Right, and deep, and natural. When he turned his head back to Sabrina, he found her watching him intently. He couldn’t speak, because that would have been to interrupt what she was saying and he wanted to hear.

  Thank you for accepting him. Most people don’t, and it’s going to get worse. But I love him dearly. And I’m trying to do what’s right. Dear God, I’m trying.

  So eloquent without a single word. He nearly melted beneath the softness of her touch.

  With a hard swallow that was clearly visible, she turned her face to the park. He wondered what she was thinking, whether she wished she were a bird and could fly freely. She raised one hand absently to massage her shoulder. Then, with the abruptness of sudden remembrance, she glanced down at her watch.

  “You’d better leave,” she murmured as she reached for the child. “My husband is due home soon.”

  Derek held the baby a minute longer, peering down at his vacant expression, feeling a great sadness. When he transferred the limp bundle back to its mother, he let the back of his hand linger on the child’s soft, silky hair.

  “He’s very special,” he said.

  She nodded.

  Derek met her gaze. He wanted to ask whether she’d think about doing the story, but he knew better. She had her mind made up. He could cajole and badger and lobby with every bit of the skill he’d honed over the years, but he doubted she’d yield. And in a sense, he was glad. He almost felt as though Sabrina and her baby were his secret. He didn’t want them spoiled. He wanted to remember them always as they’d been in their rooftop garden. Quiet. Gentle. Very special, both of them.

  Tucking the memories in a special spot in his mind, he saw himself to the door.

  Chapter 1

  PARKERSVILLE WASN’T quite what she’d expected. Rising from the woods of Berkshire County, the main building was attractive in an old New Engla
nd kind of way. The facade was three stories’ worth of aged brick; the vast slate roof was broken by dormers and turrets. Had there been ivy climbing the walls, it might have been taken for a rural college.

  But there was no ivy, and the effect was farther ruined by the guard towers that stood prominently at either side.

  Controlling her apprehension with an act of will, Sabrina drew her cashmere topcoat higher on her neck and, boots crunching on the snow-crusted walk, advanced toward the steps. Once up and through a pair of innocuous-looking oak doors, she found herself confronted by a trio of prison personnel who looked anything but innocuous in their starched khaki uniforms and stern expressions. The three were safely ensconced in a cubicle behind layers of bulletproof glass.

  Approaching the cubicle, she leaned toward its mouthpiece. Again in a conscious act, she projected a voice that sounded steady. “My name is Sabrina Stone. I’m here to see Derek McGill.”

  The guard nearest the speaker studied her. He wasn’t a young man, and there was no hint of a leer in his comprehensive gaze. He studied her coolly and clinically, then asked at last in an authoritative, emotionless voice, “Is he expecting you?”

  “No.”

  The guard to his right began to flip through the pages of a large loose-leaf notebook. He said something to the first guard, who repeated into the mouthpiece, “Sabrina Stone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a relative?”

  She shook her head.

  “Lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Business associate? Media?”

  “Just a friend,” she said.

  The second guard reached the page he sought. Sabrina watched him draw a slow finger down its length, pause once, then again before going on, then speak to the first guard, who announced, “You’re not on his visitors list.”

  She hadn’t known of a visitors list. In fact she knew nothing whatsoever of prison protocol save what the visiting hours were—and that she learned through the call she’d made from a pay phone earlier that day.

  Visiting Derek had been on impulse. She’d thought about him often in the eighteen months since he’d appeared on her terrace, but she hadn’t envisioned having the opportunity, much less the guts, to seek him out—until she left New York the day before.

  “Does that mean I can’t see him?” she asked, nervously fingering the leather strap of her shoulder bag.

  “It means we have to check.” The guard tossed his chin toward a long wooden bench behind and to Sabrina’s right. “Sit down. We’ll let you know.”

  Sabrina envisioned a review of her character that would take hours. “But I have … time is limited. I have to be back in New York tonight.”

  The guard let the firm set of his mouth speak for him. He directed another, more pointed glance at the bench.

  Short of creating a stir, which was the last thing Sabrina wanted to do, she had no choice but to obey. So she sat and watched and waited, all the while trying to calm the butterflies in her stomach.

  Sitting was uncomfortable. The bench was hard, and between the drive from New York to Vermont the day before, and Vermont to Massachusetts today, she’d been sitting far more than usual. Her bottom ached.

  Watching was discouraging. The building lost its charm once she’d passed through its doors, and the steady scrutiny of the guards was unnerving. Several other visitors straggled in after her; each was questioned briefly, then allowed to pass through each of three sets of bars. She forced the image of the bars from her mind and tried to do the same for the visitors. There was a similarity to them, a coarse, downtrodden air, which said something about the men they visited—Derek’s current companions—which gave her a chill.

  So she dropped her eyes to her lap and focused on the suede skirt she’d worn for warmth, on the hand-tooled leather of her hip-hugging belt and the gentle folds of the oversized sweater it cinched. She studied her neatly filed nails and her Florentined wedding band and the stylish gold watch that circled her wrist. These things were her link to another, more genteel world, and looking at them, she could almost block out her present surroundings.

  The waiting was the worst. If sitting was uncomfortable and watching discouraging, waiting was a torment. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—each minute meant time to think, and thinking about what she was doing made her uneasy. Impulsive decisions were just fine as long as they could be carried out on the wave of the impulse. Having to wait, having to think diluted the impulsiveness and allowed the slow insurgence of reason.

  She should have driven straight back to New York. Her son would be needing her. Her husband would be furious that she’d left Nicky at all. And if Nicholas knew that she’d stopped to see Derek, his fury would know no bounds.

  She had so many doubts. About this. About everything. It seemed that lately, doubts were all she had.

  “Sabrina Stone!”

  Her head jerked up, eyes flying to the guard box. Seconds later, she was on her feet, being gestured toward the first of the bars to the left of the cubicle. The lock clicked loudly. As she’d seen the others do before her, she pushed, letting herself into the first of two caged areas. The door closed and locked behind her as she focused on a flurry of instructions from the guard.

  Through a window at that side of the guard box, her shoulder bag was searched. She removed her topcoat; it, too, was searched. A second lock clicked loudly. At the waggle of the guard’s finger, she entered the second compartment. This time she was asked to step into a side room, where she was thoroughly frisked. Once through the third and final set of bars, she was escorted down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor.

  Institutional was the most generous word she could find to describe her surroundings. The halls were painted the same bland gray-green that she’d seen in far too many hospitals of late. The look was antiseptic, and the smell would have been, too, had not the odor of dubious cafeteria cooking wafted through the halls. And then there were the sounds—the clanging of bars, the banging of steel, distant shouts, not-so-distant calls. The overall effect was one of an echo chamber—unsettling and endless.

  After passing through another barred door, she was delivered into the visiting room. It was a large room, very bright and very hot. Grateful that she’d already removed her coat, she searched the faces in the room. There were half a dozen men in standard-issue denims with their guests, all seated in straight-backed wooden chairs that were scattered randomly around the room. Guards were scattered less randomly, so that no inmate was more than nine or ten feet from reach.

  There was no sign of Derek.

  Unsure of what to do, but feeling distinctively awkward after having been abandoned by her escort just inside the door, Sabrina crossed to a pair of chairs that was removed from the others. She sank into one, draped her coat across her lap and set to studying the wrinkles on her palm caused by her tight grip on her bag.

  Moments later, a door opened on the far side of the room. She looked up. Her heartbeat tripped, then sped. Doubts crowded in, but the deed was done. She was here and Derek had arrived. It was too late to do anything about the impulse that had brought her uninvited to his ghastly world.

  He stood inside the door staring at her. Unable to help herself, she stared right back. She was stunned and a little frightened. He looked so different.

  Gone were the tailored blazer, the trim slacks, the polished loafers. He wore a blue work shirt, jeans and worn running shoes. A nondescript jacket was hooked on a finger over his shoulder. His dark hair was longer and slightly shaggy. His face seemed leaner, as did his hips. She’d have thought that he’d lost a good twenty pounds since his incarceration—except that his shoulders were broader, and where his sleeves had been rolled, sinewy forearms were exposed.

  He looked taller than she’d remembered. He held himself very straight, almost defensively, in a stance made bold by the pride of a man stripped of pride. He was intimidating that way, intimidating and unapproachable, and the oth
er changes in him didn’t help. A small but jagged scar lay just beyond his right eye; it was a dull red shade, clearly a recent acquisition. The pallor of his skin emphasized the shadow of his beard, which, in turn, gave him a hardened look.

  He did look hard. And he certainly didn’t look pleased to see her.

  Why am I here? she cried in a split second’s silent panic. Then, with slow strides, Derek approached and she had no time for either panic or regret. His eyes held hers. There was something compelling in them that even the mask of control couldn’t conceal.

  He stopped by the chair near hers and stood with his hand on its back and his shoulders straight. “Sabrina.” His voice was cool, either truly emotionless or carefully schooled to sound that way.

  She nodded and held her breath.

  “How are you?”

  “Okay,” she said, then paused before adding, “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me.”

  “I remember you.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “Eighteen months,” he said without a blink.

  Sabrina knew his exact knowledge of the time they’d last met had nothing to do with her personally. The man had been arrested three months later, he’d been incarcerated since then. She was sure that he knew to the exact day how long it had been since he’d lost his freedom.

  He continued to study her. Her cheeks felt warm, but she attributed that to the hissing radiator, since his gaze was even cooler than his voice had been. His eyes were gray. She hadn’t known that before. All that had registered in her memory from that long-ago meeting was their warmth and understanding. But that was gone now. Compelling eyes, indeed they were, but they were hard as flint.

  She wished he would say something, but then remembered that she’d been the one to initiate the visit. So she asked, “How have you been?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a tight shrug. His gaze didn’t waver. He was annoyed that she’d come, and perhaps he had a right. She was nothing to him. She’d quite possibly interrupted something—whatever it was that inmates did at two on a weekday afternoon. It suddenly occurred to her that the interruption might cause him trouble.