"The facade of the house comes off in panels. I had to figure it out. The whole thing is very cunningly constructed. I half expect there to be secret corridors inside. You know? The kind where the servants can come and go without sullying the view of their masters?"
"Do I detect an upstairs-downstairs attitude?"
"No, of course not," she said, her chin coming up. "I've always believed that it's not where you are but who you are. But ever since Orel Tremblay told me that my grandmother was trapped into working for someone she despised --"
"Are you sure she despised him?" Tom asked, looking back at Meg.
"Yes, I'm sure!" Meg said, shocked that he could even speculate. "You know what Orel Tremblay said — how distressed my grandmother was about Gordon Camplin's pursuit of her."
"I'm wondering whether it was a love-hate thing," Wyler admitted.
She simply stared. "God! What a cynic! Is this what happens to homicide detectives? They come to believe that every victim is a willing victim?"
"No, Meg," he said softly, straightening up again and watching her with an expression almost of pain. "That's not what they believe."
"I'm sorry," she said, biting her lip. "That was a stupid thing to say. But whatever gave you the idea that my grandmother was attracted to Gordon Camplin?"
He hesitated, then said, "It was something you said."
"I said? When?"
"When you were in your ... I guess I'm calling it a trance."
"Trance!"
He pulled up the old kitchen chair opposite her, then sat down and ran through the whole bizarre sequence for her. He repeated every line that she spoke, except for the French, which he admitted to her he hadn't understood.
When he got to the part about how she broke free of his and Joyce's grasp, he took both her hands in his, lifted them up, and mimicked her pounding gesture with them. Then he lowered her hands gently into her lap, like discarded props a magician no longer needs.
Meg didn't believe a word of it, of course; that was her first reaction. But even as she denied it, she was aware from the thumping of her heart that somewhere or other she'd actually experienced the event he was describing — either in her "trance," or on that October day in 1947. Or both.
"Oh, boy," she said, staring down at her folded hands. "Oh, boy," she repeated, overwhelmed.
He laughed under his breath. "My thought exactly," he said.
Neither one of them spoke for a moment. Then Tom leaned forward and cupped his hand under her chin, and lifted her face to his. "Hey. There's an explanation for this. Let's just take our time and work through it."
He seemed unbelievably tender to her just then: gentle, and reassuring, and absolutely confident that there was a rational explanation for her behavior. But she let her chin droop anyway, to hide the tumult she was feeling.
"Meg, listen to me," he said. "You mentioned that you'd been researching Gordon Camplin earlier, didn't you? Besides which, you'd also heard Orel Tremblay's version of those last hours. It wouldn't take a psychic to imagine a scenario like the one you just acted out. Hell, I was halfway there myself. Blame it on the dollhouse. It doesn't mean you're bewitched."
She wanted so desperately to believe him. "You don't understand," she said, her lip trembling. "I don't speak a word of French."
"Not ... a word?"
It was a blow, she could tell, but he only nodded and said, "Okay. Okay, we'll start right there. Does anybody in your family speak French?"
She shook her head, then said, "Maybe my dad, when he was a kid. I could check."
"Do any of your friends? Their relations? Did you take French in high school?"
"No to all of it. Oh, Tom ... this is ... what'll I ...? Oh, Tom," she said, balancing on the edge of hysteria. "You don't have any idea what I actually said when I spoke in French? Is it possible it was just French-sounding gibberish?"
"I don't think so. You spoke very fluently — and with a damn good accent, at least to my ears. But then, I only took a semester of French in college. I caught the words 'two' and 'sons' and that's about it. Maybe Zenobia knows French." He gave Meg a smile that she wrapped around her battered psyche like a thick blanket.
But Meg needed more. Shivering, she said, "M-maybe Zenobia can tell me how I happen to know French."
"Unlikely," he said flatly. He lifted a droopy lock of Meg's hair and tucked it behind her ear in a simple gesture that left Meg more weak-kneed than before.
"Meg ... look, memory is a mysterious and complex thing. Medical and legal experts have their hands full trying to explain it. The issue seems to come up for us all the time, especially in childhood abuse situations. People do funny things with their memories: repress them, alter them, enhance them, distort them. Who knows what your father told you when you were young? What he remembered from when he was young?"
"I think I would've remembered if my father and I had ever conversed in French," she said testily.
"And I'm telling you I've seen cases where far more sensational facts were repressed for a lifetime by all the parties concerned."
"Really?" She took some comfort from the thought. But it was such small, fleeting comfort. She leaned her head on the back of the chair and stared at the cobwebby, open-beamed ceiling of the shed. A tear rolled out the corner of one eye. She let it roll. "My grandmother was raped, wasn't she," she said dully.
"We don't know that."
"And left for dead."
"We don't know that."
"I thought he strangled her or something." She lifted her head. "But this seems so much worse."
"Meg, you're putting yourself through hell for nothing," Tom said, his voice becoming taut. "Don't do this to yourself."
"You track down murderers for a living, Tom," she said, gathering herself together, forcing herself to look straight into his blue-gray eyes. "Do you think we have a case against Gordon Camplin?"
He shook his head.
She wasn't willing to accept that. "It's not just the memory — repressed or whatever," she said doggedly. "There's more. When I was setting up the furnishings in the dollhouse, I knew where every single item went. I never once had to stop and think. Piece after piece, room after room ... it was almost as if —"
She took a deep breath and said, " — as if I'd been haunting the dollhouse for quite some time."
He turned to look at the enchanting toy. "Quaintly put," he allowed himself to say.
"There's nothing quaint about it!" she flashed, impatient with his patience. "Do I look like the type to fly through foot-high rooms? Do you think I enjoy telling you this? I'm just trying to be —"
"I know, brutally honest," he said, standing up. "It's your great charm." He took her by her hands and pulled her to her feet. "Time for bed, m'lady. Do you have something you can take to fall asleep?"
"What, you mean, like pills?" Pills were the same as alcohol in her mind; she had an irrational aversion for both. "I don't take pills just to sleep," she said curtly.
He seemed genuinely surprised. "Really? My wife did. I thought all women did."
Snorting, she shook her head. "Where did you live before you got married, Lieutenant? Under your desk?"
"Funny you should say that," he said amiably. "I got razzed a lot at the office for my workaholic ways. Okay, it's true. Before I married I never dated all that much. It was a pain, making dates and then having to break them. But it's not as if I had a choice: it's on Saturday nights that we do our best business," he said ironically.
"I wouldn't like that," she admitted, frowning. "I wouldn't like you to stand me up all the time."
"No," he said with a look more thoughtful than amused. "You're too committed to the ones you love."
She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. "That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with you," she said quickly. "You must've had to make some agonizing choices when you were married."
"I never did get the balance right," he admitted.
And in the meantime, Meg's hands were still in his. Th
e phrase "circle of joy" popped into her head, but immediately she put the thought aside. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong, wrong man.
"Well," she said, looking at their joined hands and shrugging guiltily out of his grip. The spell, like all true enchantments, broke at once.
"Meg —"
She looked up into his questioning eyes. "You're right," she whispered. "I am ready for bed."
That didn't come out quite right. She thought of the time she'd teased him with the exact same phrase, and she blushed: for then, for now, for every time she'd seen him in between. She'd been fighting the idea of him from the day she first saw him on her front lawn. And only now was she beginning to understand why: because right from the start, he'd been as irresistibly attractive to her as he was to Allie.
But there were two of them, and there was only one of him.
Chapter 11
"What I mean is ... I'm dead tired," Meg said, trying to sound as if she'd just got back from a barn raising.
"All right," he said. "I'll walk you to the house."
It killed her to have sent that signal. If it weren't 't for Allie ... always Allie ...
"No, truly," Meg said, "please don't bother —"
"I said I'll walk you to the house."
She had no idea whether he was being chivalric, protective, or obstinate. All she knew was that they were ambling down the garden path that hours before he'd walked with Allie. She was intensely aware of him — of his height, and his nearness, and the slight hesitation that still remained in his step. The night was misty, inky, and cold, and if Meg had any sense, she'd be making a beeline for the cozy warmth of her room. Instead, she wrapped his jacket more tightly around herself and made him stop and smell a sweet, wet clump of pale roses drooping from the pergola that Lloyd had built three years earlier as a birthday present for her.
"Smells great," Tom said, his voice low and magical in the darkness. "I'm not much of a gardener," he admitted. "What are they?"
"Roses," she said, amazed that he wouldn't know. "A climbing multiflora, to be more exact."
"The only kind I know are the tall red ones they sell by the stem in Dominicks — that's a supermarket chain in Chicago," he explained.
"You never had roses when you were growing up? Of any kind?"
"They're not one of the four basic food groups," he said in that dry way he had.
You never had sisters, either, Meg suddenly remembered. Her life was so much richer than his. It made her want to comfort him twice over. No flowers, no family. How could he bear it?
He might have been reading her mind. "I talked a little with your nephew Terry earlier this evening," he said. "He's a bright kid. I like him."
Meg was glad to hear it. "Really?" she asked, smiling. "What did you two talk about?"
"Pipe bombs, as a matter of fact. Terry wanted to know how they were made."
In a near-choke she said, "My God — you didn't tell him, did you?"
"I didn't give him the recipe, if that's what you mean," Tom said ironically. "But I think his interest was merely academic."
"Ha. Don't be too sure," Meg said, only half kidding. "He's doing rotten in school, and his social skills — well, you see for yourself. He has us all worried. After all, no one wants him to grow up to be a serial killer," she quipped, picking the most horrific career she could think of.
"If he doesn't torture small animals, wet his bed and set a lot of fires, you have nothing to worry about," Tom answered in a perfectly conversational tone.
It tripped so easily off his tongue, this profile of a serial killer. Meg stopped where she was, shocked that Tom Wyler could know such things about the human psyche. Yes, he dealt with homicide, and yes, he'd been at it a long time. But these were things no normal person knew. Normal persons — normal law enforcement persons — knew how to give Breathalyzer tests and fill out accident reports. Not this stuff.
"I hope one out of three doesn't count," she said, trying to sound lighthearted. "Last fall Terry did start a fire in a locker-room wastebasket."
Tom said, "Really."
"Anyway, I'll be sure to watch Coughdrop for cigarette burns," Meg said, trying to match Tom's ironic cynicism. They were standing in the brick path, engulfed by the scent of roses. In this magical place their conversation seemed particularly outrageous.
"I'm sorry," he said, sensing her distress. "You don't think much of gallows humor. We tend to hide behind it a lot in our work. I didn't mean to shock you. Forget it."
"No, no, I'm not shocked," she lied. "Serial killers are an everyday fact of life. Just because I'm from a small town in Maine, that doesn't mean I go around with a bushel basket over my head. We have newspapers. We have cable."
"You don't have a city morgue," he said bluntly. "And that makes Bar Harbor seem like a little corner of paradise."
Meg heard the wistfulness in his voice. In some indefinable way, her spirits lifted. "You sound like maybe you've had it with homicide," she ventured.
"That's what I came to Maine to find out," he admitted. "There are days that I think I can never go back," he said as they walked up the back steps, "and there are days when I know I will."
"And what kind of day was today?" Meg whispered, unable to resist asking.
He laughed. It was a low and intimate sound, new to her ears. "What do you think?"
Meg glanced guiltily through the screen door; the kitchen, thank God, was empty of Atwells. "I ... I'd say today was the kind of day that would make you jump on the first plane out."
"How wrong you'd be," he murmured, trailing his finger along the sleeve of her blouse.
"Or maybe you're the type who can never resist a funhouse," she said, faint from the nearness of him.
"Wrong again. I get enough thrills and chills during office hours."
He cupped her chin in his hand, tilting her face to meet his. It was clear to Meg, even in her confusion of emotions, that he was going to kiss her. Her. "Wait ... wait ..." she whispered, averting her face from his. "There's been a mix-up —"
Meg was saved from having to explain to Tom how mixed up he was by a loud crash of broken glass from inside, followed by Comfort shouting, "I told you no roughhousing in the front room! Wait till your father gets home!"
After which Terry came flying through the screen door with Timmy at his heels and Coughdrop in hot pursuit of them both. Comfort stomped out next, looking for the kitchen broom.
"I'm sorry, Comfort. I left it in the shed. I'll get it," Meg said, embarrassed to be caught on the back porch with Tom.
"Never mind," said Comfort grimly. "I'll fetch it. And when I do I'm going to beat that boy from here to Portland with it. That kerosene lamp was in my family for a hundred years. That wicked child!" she said, steaming, as she brushed past them both.
Meg turned back to Tom with a sheepish smile. "How's that for a mood breaker?"
Tom didn't smile back. "Not as effective as your pushing me away," he said bluntly.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Meg said in a soft wail. "This whole night has been just ... such a ... mess," she said, fleeing inside and leaving Tom to figure out why.
****
The hours that followed were sleepless ones for Meg. Her heart was in a turmoil over Tom, and her soul was in a turmoil over her grandmother. Of the two, it was actually easier to deal with her feelings for Tom: She simply refused to think of them at all. They were too deep, too painful to dwell on, and so she shut them away.
But the weirdness in the shed, that made Meg toss and turn. She replayed Tom's account of the channeling — if that was what it was — over and over in her mind until she grew sick of it.
Sick, and yet oddly disengaged from it. She didn't actually remember any of what happened to her, after all. All she remembered were the scary parts around the edges: the eerie, dancing light from the dollhouse before her apparent trance, and her appalling weakness afterward. But the whole middle part, her grandmother's hysterical plea for mercy, that was gone. Lost.
; If it hadn't been for Tom's court-reporter recall, Meg might've gone away from the shed with nothing more than a disorienting headache. As it was, she ended up feeling as if she were trying out for the lead in a Stephen King movie — only without a script.
As for Allie, she never did come back that night. She called Meg early the next morning to tell her that she'd found Lisa in pieces, drunk and incoherent, and that she was still putting her friend back together. Allie's voice sounded tired and shaky — and frightened. Meg hadn't heard her sister sound like that in a long time. Very few things frightened Allie. Breakups and divorces — the kind of things that make women put their arms around their mates and hold on tight — those didn't scare her at all. But having a friend fall off the wagon, that terrified her.
"It could've been me, Meg," she whispered over the phone. "I want to believe I'm stronger than that — but it could've been me."
She sounded sixteen again. Meg's maternal instincts kicked instantly into overdrive. It was as if Allie were once again calling from a party where everyone else was high but her. Meg wanted desperately to scoop up her sister and carry her out of harm's way.
"Come home as soon as you can, Allie-cat," she said, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. "Is there anyone else who can stay with Lisa? Doesn't she have a mentor at AA?"
"Mary's coming over this morning, and then we'll see. How'd it go last night after I left?"
"It was completely bizarre. I'll tell you when you get back."
When Allie finally returned late in the afternoon, Meg had finished wallpapering a tiny guest-room bath and was in the kitchen, rummaging for something to eat.
The first thing Allie did was fall into her older sister's arms. Allie's hair smelled like stale smoke — Lisa's cigarettes — but her breath was alcohol-free. Meg felt her spirits soar, the way they did in the old days whenever her sister emerged sober through an especially trying time.
"I think Lisa's going to be all right," Allie said after Meg's long and reassuring hug. "Mary talked her into going back to see their high school volleyball coach. They both used to think she was really cool— you know, tuned in to their problems. She may be just the kick in the pants Lisa needs right now."
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