Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil, Love and Hope

by Jude Deveraux

  Smiling, shaking his head at her, Adam looked down to see Darci staring with intense concentration at the older couple in the booth where she and Adam had always sat.

  “There!” she said after a moment, and Adam looked up to see the couple leaving. But of course they’d probably finished their coffee, so maybe that had something to do with their leaving, he thought, chuckling at her. But he wasn’t going to say that and risk making her angry again.

  “Good job,” he said, smiling at the top of her head; then they waited until the busboy had cleared the booth so they could sit down.

  “So tell me everything about this mirror,” she said as soon as they were seated.

  “You two want the specials, or should I just bring everything on the menu?” Sally, the waitress, said in her usual smirking way.

  “We’ll take whatever you recommend,” Adam answered, then smiled at her in a way that made her stop smacking her gum for a moment.

  Sally leaned toward Darci and said conspiratorially, “You got your hands full with this one, honey. Maybe you oughta stare at him like you did that old couple. Make him behave better.” With that, she went away laughing.

  “That woman is just too nosy!” Adam said after she left. “Small town,” Darci said in dismissal. “So now tell me everything.”

  “If Putnam is so rich and you’re marrying him, why do you need to count every penny?”

  “I already know about Putnam,” Darci said impatiently. “I want to know about this mirror. How did you find out about it?”

  “Long story,” he said as he looked down at the cuff of his shirt sticking out from under his sweater. “Did I tell you that the sweater you have on is a good color for you? It matches your eyes.”

  She glared at him. “This sweater is purple, and unless you’re color-blind, you’re trying to change the subject.”

  Adam took a while before he spoke, and when he did, it was so softly that she could barely hear him. She leaned forward, as he did, until their heads were almost touching. “I told you that the mirror tells the past. It shows what has happened, and something happened in the past that I want to know about.”

  When Adam said no more, Darci leaned against the back of the booth and thought about what he’d said, and thought about what she knew about him. “Your parents,” she said softly. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You said they died, but how did they die?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said so softly that again she could barely hear him. “Look, the truth is that this whole thing about the mirror is a legend. It could be a lie. Maybe the thing doesn’t really exist. Maybe—” He looked down again and seemed to consider whether or not he should tell her more. “It’s Nostradamus’s mirror,” he said in one breath.

  At that Darci’s mouth fell open. “This mirror is....”“Yes,” Adam said. “That one. He looked into it, saw the future, and wrote about it.”

  Darci’s eyes had a faraway look when she spoke. “But predicting the future was illegal in France in the sixteenth century, so he scrambled what he wrote so thoroughly that even today people don’t know what he predicted. During the Kennedy administration, half a dozen books came out saying that many of Nostradamus’s quatrains were about that family. But, of course, twenty years later, the writings were interpreted completely differently, no Kennedys at all. But then Dolores Cannon says— What?!” she snapped because Adam was staring at her as though she’d just sprouted a third head.

  “How in the world do you know so much about this mirror?!”

  Darci shrugged. “I’m interested in a great many things, and I read a lot. There’s not a lot to do in Putnam, and, believe it or not, the town does have a public library.”

  “Who owns it?” Adam asked quickly.

  “Putnam, of course. Senior, not junior, although Putnam does give his father lists of books that he thinks the library should buy.”

  “I see,” Adam said thoughtfully. “And who chooses the books that go onto those lists? Junior or senior?”

  “C’est moi,” Darci said happily, making Adam laugh.

  “I might have guessed,” he said. “So you get your fiancé to buy any books you want and put them in the library for you. Tell me, if he’s so rich, why aren’t you wearing an engagement ring?”

  “Don’t want one,” Darci said quickly and in a way that said she didn’t want to talk about that subject. “So you found the mirror,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered what happened to it. In fact, I’ve wondered what happened to all the magic objects. Aladdin’s magic lamp probably had a basis in truth. And what about the magic carpet? And what happened to the mirror that used to tell the queen she was the fairest of them all?”

  “What are you talking about?” Adam asked.

  “You know, in ‘Snow White’? The queen?”

  “Snow White. Is that the one who fell down the rabbit hole? No, that was a white rabbit. Or was it? So what does this have to do with a mirror? Did—”

  He stopped because Sally set platters full of food in front of them. There were slices of turkey with cranberry dressing, pureed squash, roast potatoes, succotash, and a basket full of tiny muffins with pieces of zucchini sticking out of them. “That should hold her for a while,” Sally said to Adam. “But I’ll go get the pumpkin pie ready anyway.”

  “Odd sense of humor that woman has,” Adam said, frowning.

  “She reminds me of the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ when she was fattening up the children.”

  “For what?”Adam asked as he reached for a muffin. He thought he’d better get one now before Darci ate the lot of them.

  “‘For what?’”

  “What was the witch fattening the children up for?”

  Darci looked at him is disbelief. “To eat them, of course. Where did you grow up that you don’t know fairy tales? You don’t know ‘Snow White’ or ‘Hansel and Gretel’?”

  Adam opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and looked down at his food.

  “Instead of thinking up a lie, why don’t you just tell me the truth?” she suggested.

  “I will as soon as you tell me about you and money and Putnam,” he shot back at her.

  Darci started to speak, but, instead, she put a large bite of turkey and dressing in her mouth, then waved her hand that she couldn’t talk.

  “I thought so,” Adam said. “And as for your fairy tales, if they’re about witches fattening up children so they can be eaten, I’m glad I never heard them. They sound horrible.”

  “Quite bad, really. I once wrote a paper on the origin of fairy tales and found out that they’ve been toned down considerably since they were first told. Did you know that most of the Mother Goose rhymes started out as political jingles?”

  “No, tell me,” Adam said, as he handed her the basket of muffins. Two nights ago he had been the lecturer about foods and wines, but tonight it was her turn to tell him what she knew. At first Adam’s only intent in asking her to tell him about some ridiculous nursery rhymes was to keep her from asking more questions about the mirror and how he knew what he knew. But as he listened, Adam found that he was interested in what she was saying.

  All in all, he had to admit that his conversations with her beat what usually went on when he had dinner with a woman. Most of the time, he felt as though he’d been put under a spotlight and was being interrogated. “Where did you grow up?” “What schools did you attend?” they’d ask. “Oh? Are you any relation to those Montgomerys?” This last was said with what his cousin Michael called The Money Look.

  But today Darci had found out about his family and, except for being pleased that she’d found out something he hadn’t wanted her to know, he couldn’t see that her attitude toward him was any different. Smiling, he asked her to tell him more about the nursery rhymes. Meanwhile, in the back of his mind, he was formulating a Plan. Maybe they couldn’t find out anything in the library or on the Internet, but there was someone who knew a great deal
: the man who ran the store, the man who’d fled at the sight of Darci’s left hand.

  Still smiling, Adam nodded at what Darci was saying.

  9

  ADAM DIDN’T DARE SET an alarm clock for four A.M. because he was sure that Darci would hear it go off. Instead, he willed himself to wake early, and as a consequence, he woke at three forty-five. Not bad, he told himself as he glanced at the luminous dial on the clock. Very slowly, with no noise at all, he moved back the covers and stepped out of the bed.

  Last night in the diner, while Darci had been talking, he’d listened to her, but he’d also planned all of this carefully. He didn’t want to leave her alone, unprotected, for even minutes, but he figured that if he had to leave her, then early morning was better than nighttime. So, last night, while Darci showered, Adam had stashed some clothes in the bottom drawer in the table beside the couch in the living room. Now, he tiptoed in there and dressed silently. When there was still no sound from Darci, he smiled, feeling that he was about to pull off a major coup. She was so damned perceptive! he thought. It was a wonder she hadn’t found the clothes he’d hidden and deduced what he was planning to do.

  When Adam was dressed in a dark sweat suit, he wrote a note saying that he’d gone out for a morning run, then put the note on the dining table by the window. Slowly and with absolute silence, he opened the front door and tiptoed out. If luck was with him, he thought he’d be back before Darci woke up. Last night he’d managed to make up an excuse to go outside long enough that he could move the car. He wanted it farther from their guest house so the noise of the engine early in the morning wouldn’t wake Darci up.

  Once he was inside the car, with the engine running, Adam relaxed his shoulders and smiled. That hadn’t been so difficult, had it?

  The passenger door flew open, and Darci jumped into the empty seat. She was wearing her T-shirt nightgown, her clothes thrown over her arm. She didn’t so much as look at him but kept her eyes straight ahead.

  Adam opened his mouth to tell her that he didn’t want her to go with him, that he had something personal to do, and that she had to stay behind. He wanted to tell her to get out of the car and wait for him. He wanted to tell her—

  But he knew that he’d be wasting his breath. Instead of giving her the lecture he wanted to, he sighed and put the car in reverse. “Are you going to last without food?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile that let him know that she knew she’d won. “I can go for days without eating.”

  “I do not want to know how you know that,” Adam said as he turned the car and headed toward the road where the country store was located.

  Darci spread out her jeans, then began to pull them on under her long gown. “People forgot to feed me until I learned how to use True Persuasion on them,” she said, her voice telling him how happy she was to have found him.

  Adam was trying his absolute best not to look at her while she dressed. It seemed that, once again, she was making him feel as though he were a randy high school boy. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll bite. What exactly is your True Persuasion, and how does it work?” He needed something to distract him. Was she going to take the nightgown off before she pulled on that turtleneck?

  “Anyone can do it,” Darci said, removing the top of her nightgown under the cover of the turtleneck and therefore not exposing any skin. “When I was quite young, I read a book about how if you put your mind to something, you can make it happen. All you have to do is think really hard about what you want a person to do and you can make them do it.”

  “Like staring at the back of someone’s head and making them turn around?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “But you’ve developed it into an art form.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Yes. But if I don’t find some humor in this situation, I may stop the car and tie you in the trunk. Didn’t you realize that if I was leaving without telling you where I was going that I didn’t want you to go with me?”

  “Of course I did. But if I did what you wanted me to, I’d just be sitting and waiting for heaven only knows what. Do you want to hear more about True Persuasion or not? It might help you sometime. In fact, the more I know you, the more I think you need some True Persuasion in your life. How could you have grown up so rich and yet be such a Sad Sack?”

  Against his will, Adam smiled. “I haven’t heard that term in a long time. Rich isn’t everything. There are other things in life besides money.”

  “Did you ever notice that only rich people say that?” Darci said. “The poor people are concentrating so hard on paying their bills that they can’t think of anything besides money.”

  “Is that your problem? You have bills to pay? Is that why you scramble around looking for nickels?” When Darci didn’t answer, Adam’s tone changed. “Look, if you need money for something, I can help you.”

  She took a moment before speaking. “Do you have masses and masses of money?” she asked softly.

  Turning, Adam saw that she was again staring straight ahead and the expression on her face was serious. “Yes, I do,” he said. “How much do you need?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered as she turned to look out the side window. “I’d have to add it up. But I think it’s about seven million.”

  At that Adam pulled the car to the side of the road, turned off the engine, then turned to look at her. “All right, now tell me again. You need money. How much money do you need?”

  “About seven million dollars,” she said, sounding as though she were saying seven dollars. “But it’s okay; there are other ways to pay back the money. I think we better go. Storekeepers get up early. That is where you’re going, isn’t it?”

  Adam waited, but Darci didn’t say another word. “You’re not going to tell me any more about this money you owe?”

  “Not if I can get out of it,” Darci said, then closed her mouth firmly.

  Adam started the car again and pulled back onto the road. “Sometime you and I are going to have to have a long talk.”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “How about if you go first? I want to know all about your parents and why you don’t know how they died and how you know about this mirror, and, of course, I’ll want to be told the whole truth about why you hired me. Besides that I can look into this mirror and see the future, that is. And the past. And how do you know that these people have the mirror? You want to tell me all that?”

  “About as much as you want to tell me your story,” Adam said tightly; then he slowed the car because they were near the turnoff to the store. “Now listen to me,” he said, his voice sounding urgent. “I want you to stay here in the car while I go talk to this man.”

  “Talk to him? If you wanted to talk to him, shouldn’t you have visited him during store hours?” It was just now showing early-morning light.

  “All right, so maybe I want to strong-arm him a bit. The truth is that I’m at a dead end. I thought that this mirror would be easier to find than this. I thought—” Breaking off, he gave her a sideways look.

  “I see. You thought I’d be some sort of magnet for the thing, didn’t you? Your psychic told you I’d find this mirror for you so you thought that I’d be like a water witch and divine where it is? You did, didn’t you?”

  “You have a very annoying way of putting things,” Adam said as he opened the car door, then looked back at her. “You heard what I said, didn’t you? You’re to stay in this car with all the doors locked.” For a moment, Adam’s face paled; four young women who fit Darci’s description had disappeared in this area, and later their mutilated bodies had been found far away.

  “I’m not going,” he said, closing the door and reaching for the key.

  “Well, I am!” Darci said, then she got out of the car before he could stop her.

  He had to give it to her, she could certainly run across the Connecticut woodland! She was as agile as one of those deer that roamed freely and ate everything the homeow
ners planted, all while leaving behind millions of deer ticks. Adam ran behind her, wanting to shout at her, but at the same time not wanting to alert anyone who might be at the store.”I will kill her myself,” he said as he jumped over a fallen tree.

  He caught her by the back of the neck just as she stepped onto the gravel of the parking lot behind the store. But before Adam could say anything, he heard a car approach. In one motion, he fell to the ground, taking Darci down with him. Once they were on the ground, he wrapped his arm around her body and put his hand over her mouth. For all he knew, if she saw the store clerk, she’d call out to the man and ask him what he knew. He could almost hear her asking the man about “moley hands.”

  But the car didn’t stop. Instead, it circled the store twice, the second time slowing to a crawl as it passed them. As it did, Adam ducked his head down and tucked Darci so completely under him that there was little of her visible.

  The car left the parking lot after the second pass, but Adam waited until he could see the car through the trees as it went back onto the highway. “All right,” he whispered to Darci, “let’s go.”

  “And where do you think you’re going?” said a voice from behind them.

  Adam rolled over, ready to kick up at the person behind them, but the man was standing too far away to reach. Obviously, he’d used the cover of the sound of the car on the gravel to keep them from hearing his approach. Even though the man’s face was concealed, Adam saw right away that he was not the man from the country store. This man was taller and leaner, and even though he was clad in a loose black running suit, he looked as though he was in good shape. His face was hidden by a black ski mask, and in his hand was a semiautomatic, a .38, was Adam’s guess.

  “You two want to move over there?” the man said slowly, motioning with the gun toward an opening in the trees.

  Adam stepped in front of Darci. “Let her go. She has nothing to do with this.”