She wondered, for a little while, how she would have reacted back then if he had told her everything about him and Holly. But then she stopped wondering, because, it was irrelevant now. What counted now was that he had not told her. Had not trusted her.
Was only telling her now because he had no choice.
God, how she needed a drink!
Nick checked on Nina a few times in the night, and on Zoë, but he never went to bed. He was too afraid that if he got into bed with Nina, she might get out. He was afraid that if she stopped pretending to be asleep and got out of bed, she might leave the house.
Maybe even go to some illegal, after hours bar. It was against the law to serve liquor after two AM in California, but even if Nina had never been the kind of alcoholic who cared to go to private clubs where they broke the law behind closed doors, Nick figured she must have spoken to enough drunks over the years at AA meetings to know about those places.
Of course, she could just get drunk downstairs. They didn’t keep much in the house, but Nina insisted they always had enough stock to ensure visitors could drink what they wanted.
She had been sober for more than seven years. Even through the terrors of Phoebe’s fall and its repercussions and Zoë’s precarious early days; even when the police had destroyed Zoë’s homecoming. She’d come close then, but no more than that. And after they had taken him in after Carmel, she had been more outraged for him than for herself.
Nina was such a brave person. She deserved so much.
Nick sat on a straight chair in the kitchen, a cup of coffee going cold in front of him on the table, his mind numb.
Words his mother had spoken to him years ago, after Eleanor Bourne had found him with Holly in their summerhouse, came back.
How could you let us down like this? Kate Miller had asked him.
He was good at letting down people he loved.
How could you let yourself down? Ethan Miller had added.
He was good at that, too.
He didn’t mean to fall asleep at all, just to lie down for a while on the sofa in the living room, just to rest his eyes and brain a little. But he did sleep, and when he woke it was morning, and when he ran barefoot up the stairs and found both their bedroom and the nursery empty, he panicked, raced to pull on jeans and sneakers and a sweater, ready to go out in search of them.
Nina was in the kitchen sitting at the pine table, holding Zoë.
The relief was overpowering.
‘What did you expect?’ Nina asked quietly. The baby lay in her arms, staring intently up into her mother’s face, the picture of contentment.
Nick sat down opposite them. ‘I don’t know.’
‘That I’d have gone?’
‘Maybe.’
Nina’s expression gave nothing away. ‘We have a daughter. A home. A marriage of sorts.’
Fresh pain knifed through him.
‘I’m so sorry, Nina.’ He didn’t know what else to say.
‘I know you are.’
‘That isn’t enough, is it?’
‘Not really.’
‘I don’t know what else I can say,’ Nick said.
‘Probably because you’ve said it all.’ Nina paused. ‘Finally.’
Nick got up again, went over to the coffee pot. ‘Want some?’
‘No.’
He poured himself a cup. The pain was still there. Nina was here, in their house, with Zoë, with him, but he wasn’t certain how much that meant any more. A bottomless, infinite ocean had opened up between them. All the ease had gone, the closeness.
‘You didn’t trust me, Nick,’ she said from the table.
‘Oh, yes, I did,’ he said, coming back and sitting down again. ‘That wasn’t why I didn’t tell you.’
Her eyes met his. ‘You didn’t trust me to understand. Or to accept you, warts and all.’
He put his right hand around his cup and squeezed it tight. It was hot, but not enough to burn. ‘I thought I’d lose you.’
‘You might have.’
‘I couldn’t bear to risk that.’
‘You should have,’ Nina said.
‘Yes.’
In Nina’s arms, the baby kicked her little legs and gave one of her small squealing pleasure sounds. Any other morning, Nick knew he would have stood up and peered down over his wife’s shoulder, grinned foolishly at his daughter, stroked her golden carrot hair or tickled her tummy. But the ocean was still there and he was afraid of drowning.
‘I’m going to take Zoë to Arizona,’ Nina said, suddenly.
The knife again.
‘We’re leaving this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Just for a visit.’
More reassurance than he deserved.
‘I miss Phoebe too,’ Nick said.
‘I want to take this trip without you, Nick. I need to get away.’
‘I know.’
Silence fell.
‘Will we get past this?’ he asked her after a few moments.
She was a while answering.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
He knew it was the best he could hope for.
‘Do you really believe Holly’s behind all the things that have been happening to you?’ Nina asked a little before lunchtime in their bedroom, where she was folding nightdresses and skirts into a beige canvas suitcase. ‘Obviously you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have told me what you did.’
‘I can’t think of anyone else it could be.’
‘What are you planning to do about it?’ She looked down into the case which lay open on the bed, picked up her small make-up bag from the quilt, zipped it up and tucked it into a corner.
‘Other than trying to find out exactly what Holly’s been up to, I don’t know yet.’
‘You could tell the police,’ Nina suggested.
‘I tried telling them I’d been set up – they didn’t want to know.’
‘But they didn’t charge you with anything.’
‘That doesn’t mean they believed me,’ Nick pointed out. ‘And why would they? I have two strikes against me already, neither of them exactly in the parking fine league.’
‘Three,’ Nina said, ‘if you count your New York arrest.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘You’re welcome.’ She paused. ‘What about Chris Field?’
‘I don’t think he believed me any more than the cops did.’
‘If you say so.’
‘What about you?’ Nick asked, suddenly.
‘What about me?’
‘Do you believe me?’
She didn’t answer right away.
‘It’s a lot to take in,’ she said.
Nick felt a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
Nina stopped packing and sat down on the side of their bed. ‘Are you honestly trying to tell me that you think this woman might even have been behind the fax and Phoebe’s fall?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘It’s pretty hard to imagine.’
‘It’s insane,’ Nina said.
She got up again and went on packing.
‘Do you need all that?’ It looked to Nick as if she was taking enough for a month at least. The panic rose again.
‘It’s not so much.’ Nina looked down into the suitcase. ‘You’re right,’ she said, and shook her head wearily. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘Can I help?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
In the nursery next door, Zoë started to cry.
‘Shall I go?’ Nick asked.
‘Please.’
Nick went to the door and stopped. ‘Are you sure you want to take the baby to Arizona?’
Zoë was happy now to take a bottle, which had freed Nina for longer hours at Ford Realty – almost a necessity given that Phoebe looked like being out of the office for the foreseeable future.
‘It might be more of a break for you,’ Nick went on, ‘if you leave her with me.’
&
nbsp; The bleakness in Nina’s eyes floored him.
‘It isn’t Zoë I need a break from,’ she said.
Chapter Forty-two
I sat in my empty house, in the desolate bedroom, and made the call. It was five o’clock that same evening in San Francisco. Eight in Bethesda.
‘Mrs Bourne? This is Nick Miller.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Her voice hadn’t changed a bit. I could picture her, hair swept up, make-up understated but perfect, wearing something ‘comfortable’ and probably silky for an ordinary evening at home with her husband.
‘I’m calling from San Francisco,’ I said.
‘What can I do for you, Nick?’
I was almost surprised to hear her call me Nick. From the chilliness in her tone, ‘Mr Miller’ would have been more in keeping.
‘I need Holly’s address – or her telephone number.’ Straight to the point, that was the only way with Eleanor. ‘I know she’s in New York, but I don’t know her married name.’
‘No,’ Eleanor said.
‘I thought you might give me the information.’
‘No, Nick. I won’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I should have thought that was perfectly obvious.’
‘The past is long gone, Mrs Bourne,’ I tried pointing out. ‘We’re both settled now, both happily married. I just thought it might be nice to make contact again.’
‘Then perhaps you could write to her.’ Eleanor paused. ‘At our address. We’ll pass it on to her.’
I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere.
‘How is Holly?’
‘Very well. Thank you for asking.’
I waited until six in the morning to try to catch Richard Bourne (without Eleanor) at his office. Nine AM in Washington DC. It was a Saturday, but I remembered that in the past Holly’s father had more often than not worked on Saturday mornings.
Nothing had changed. Richard accepted the call and was a touch warmer than his wife had been, but gave away nothing much more useful.
‘Holly asked us some time ago not to pass on anything more than general information about her to you or your parents, Nick,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s happy now,’ Richard said. ‘Settled. You understand, I’m sure. We all feel it’s better this way.’
‘I guess you do.’
I did understand. Perfectly. It would, under other circumstances, have been the best news possible.
As it was, it still got me nowhere.
I caught a late Sunday morning United flight to DC, arriving mid-evening, too late to do anything but check into a hotel. Any hotel would do – something to eat, a bed for the night, a place to shower and drink coffee before bearding the protective father in his law office first thing next morning. I didn’t want too much time to think or to prepare; if I was going to break down Richard Bourne’s barriers, whatever I said was going to have to come straight from the heart and from as clear a mind as possible.
Not that, on past record, I’ve done too well with protective fathers, but I had considered the alternatives and there really weren’t any, since the cops obviously weren’t going to listen to me. So I was going to have to try my damnedest with Bourne.
At least, finally, I was going to do something.
And with Nina and Zoë away, what did I have to lose?
I thought I’d beat Bourne into his office, an impressive, tasteful affair – old wood, antique rugs, fine art and more than a hint of the lawyer’s pipe tobacco, smoothly blending with the electronic trappings of the new age – in a sleek building on Connecticut Avenue in downtown DC. But when I got there just after eight o’clock, Bourne’s secretary, Mrs Eileen Ridge, another early bird, told me serenely that her boss had already been hard at work for over an hour. Without an appointment, the middle-aged and affable Mrs Ridge told me, she very much doubted there was any chance of my seeing Mr Bourne. I gave her my most courteous, most humble smile and asked her to point out that I’d flown from the West Coast just to see him, and she said that she would do what she could for me.
She ushered me through a pair of tall, broad, oak doors less than fifteen minutes later. Richard Bourne, formal and easily elegant – just as I remembered him being in the old Bethesda days – was up on his handmade-shod feet beside his handsome desk, waiting for me. If he was angry, he wasn’t letting it show. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly wreathed in smiles either.
I couldn’t blame him.
‘Mrs Ridge tells me,’ Bourne said, shaking my hand firmly, coolly, ‘that you’ve come to Washington specifically to see me.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘I see.’
We both sat down in leather chairs, and Richard Bourne took off his small half-glasses and laid them carefully on the desk blotter in front of him. A small, polished wood pipe rested in a heavy marble ashtray and I waited for Bourne to pick it up, tuck a little tobacco into the bowl and light it, slowly and pleasurably, the way I remembered him doing in the old days, but he did not. He shook his head just a little. Not even a ripple from his immaculately cut grey hair.
‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that I’d made my position clear, Nick. On the subject of divulging Holly’s whereabouts to you.’
‘You did, sir,’ I said. ‘Perfectly.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘To make my own position clear.’ I looked the other man in the eye. ‘And to make sure, at last, that you understand the situation that led to my calling you in the first place.’
‘I can’t see that it’s going to make a difference.’
‘I think it may,’ I said. ‘But you’ll have to be the judge of that.’
Richard Bourne’s small sigh was regretful, polite. The sigh of a man too innately courteous to want to send someone who’d come thousands of miles just to see him, back on his way without even a hearing.
‘Would you like some coffee, Nick?’
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Mr Bourne.’
Bourne smiled ruefully. ‘Somehow, I suspect that having Mrs Ridge bring us a pot of coffee may be the least of the trouble you intend to cause me.’
Coffee came, stylish as everything else in the office, in a silver pot on a silver tray complete with sugar tongs and tiny cookies. Bourne asked Mrs Ridge to cancel his first appointment and to hold his calls, then poured for himself and for me, and invited me to go right ahead with whatever it was I wanted to say.
‘Before I start,’ I said, ‘I want to thank you.’
‘No need,’ Bourne said.
‘You’re prepared to listen to me.’
‘You’re an old friend of my daughter’s,’ Richard Bourne said.
‘Not for a very long time,’ I said. ‘Longer than you realize.’
I skipped childhood, since Bourne knew all about that – or thought he did. I began with the NYU years, with Holly’s lies to others and to herself about the status of our relationship. I told Bourne about her obsessive dogging of my every move, about behaviour patterns that had become tantamount to stalking. About the day she’d deliberately got herself caught shoplifting so that I would come bail her out. And about the night that had followed, when Holly had had me beaten up by drug pushers and arrested for possession of dope she had herself stolen.
I even told him – because I had no choice, because I knew I had to tell the whole truth and nothing but, if I had a snowball’s chance in hell of being believed by this skilled jurist and father – about the night I went looking for Holly after she’d tried to poison Julie Monroe’s mind against me. The night Holly pushed me too far.
‘I’m not proud of that,’ I said, softly, harshly.
‘Of what exactly?’ Richard Bourne’s grey eyes were intent. Father’s eyes.
‘Of losing it.’ I paused. My whole body was growing tenser.
‘You struck my daughter?’ Bourne’s face was pale now.
‘Yes, sir.’
I didn
’t want to go on, but I knew I had no choice.
‘It appalled me. I didn’t think I was capable of thinking about, let alone actually hitting a woman.’ I veered away from Bourne’s eyes. ‘But Holly—’ I stopped again. How could I tell this decent man that his daughter had enjoyed being hit by me? ‘Holly wanted me to stay, regardless,’ I pushed on. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I knew I had to leave, right then, for both our sakes, but she begged me not to go. And then, when I wouldn’t, she said that if I didn’t stay with her, she would make me sorry.’ I faced up to Bourne again. ‘I was already sorrier than you can imagine.’
The office was very silent. Over on the mantelpiece above the unlit fireplace, an antique French carriage clock ticked smoothly, and beyond the splendid doors Eileen Ridge’s fingers tapped keyboard symphonies on her computer, but otherwise there was nothing except for our breathing. The coffee in both our cups was untouched and, I imagined, cold.
I waited a few moments before I went on. I think I was half expecting Bourne to throw me out, maybe even to throw a punch. But he just sat there, like a stone.
‘That was the night I decided to go to California,’ I went on. ‘To get away from Holly. I could say it was for both our sakes, but it was really for my own. And I managed pretty well. Well enough to believe that after six years, and after being happily married to my wife for two of those years, I could forget about the past.’ I took a breath. ‘But I know now that’s not true. Because Holly definitely has not forgotten.’
‘Sounds to me, Nick,’ Richard Bourne said, ‘as if you might be the obsessed party in this story.’
‘Does it?’ I sat forward, allowing fresh anger to pump adrenalin, to keep me alert and tightly focused. ‘Then maybe I’d better tell you what’s going on these days, Mr Bourne. Let’s forget the past and concentrate on what’s been happening to me and my family now – this very year – and then you tell me just how else I should feel.’
I told Richard Bourne about the fax addressed to my pregnant wife enticing her to the house in Haight-Ashbury, and about what had happened after Phoebe had gone in Nina’s place, and about the insurers finding out that it had been no accident and about them coming to me for answers. I told Bourne about the narcotics search on our house the day we were due to bring Zoë home from the hospital. And I told him about Carmel and the photographs. And about remembering, suddenly, out of nowhere, the time Holly had spread lies around school about me and an assault on a thirteen-year-old girl.
Too Close Page 18
