Leslie and Bette checked the house in futile hope, then sat in silence while Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, Grady, Michael, Tris and Paul fanned out for a quick look around the neighborhood. They turned up nothing.
“I’m going to call the police.” Leslie’s voice was calm, and her answers succinct as she gave the police dispatcher a brief description of April, but her hand shook.
The searchers went out again even before the police car arrived. The police officer was polite and reassuring, suggesting that a girl who didn’t know the area probably hadn’t gotten far. But Leslie didn’t feel reassured, even after he left with as many of his questions answered as she could, even with April’s description broadcast to other patrol cars, even with everyone else out looking.
Time became her enemy. Creeping by as she waited, while each minute added horrible possibilities to what had happened to April.
When Anna’s hungry cry demanded Bette’s attendance upstairs, she gave Leslie a hard hug before leaving.
The back door opened to Grady, and Leslie stopped her pacing and spun to face him.
“You found her?”
“No. I wanted to—”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
He reached for her, but she moved away and kept on pacing. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about April.”
“We’ll find her,” he said with an utter certainty that slashed her nerves. How could he be so certain? How could he be so certain everything would always work for him?
“Leslie,” he went on soothingly, “you need to—”
“I can tell you what I don’t need, Grady. I don’t need you.” He winced. She ignored it, turning away to keep on pacing. “Somebody to find April, that’s what I need.”
“Look, I know you’re upset. Scared about April, but it’ll be all right, Leslie, everything will be all right.”
“Why?” She spun on him and repeated it. “Why? Because you want it to be? Because you’re accustomed to having things the way you want them? Well, let me tell you something, Grady, things don’t always turn out the way you want them to. Things—”
“I know that.” But he said it too softly to penetrate her fear and frustration and sorrow.
“—don’t always go the way you want them to or the way you plan them or the way you pray they will. Things don’t always . . .” A shuddering breath stopped her words, but her eyes were dry.
“Leslie, let me hold you. Let me make it better. Just for a moment, I know, but—”
“No! Don’t you understand? There are things you can’t make better. But you don’t know that, do you? You think having children of your own and bringing them up the way you think you should have been brought up is going to make everything better. It isn’t. It’s not going to make your parents into loving people, it’s not going to erase your lonely childhood. And it’s a horrible reason to want to have a child. Horrible and selfish. And even if I could give you a baby, I don’t know if I’d want to because that’s not the reason to want a baby. But I can’t . . . God, I can’t.”
A sob overtook the words.
Grady stood, frozen. His arms, which had been reaching for her now looked as if they would hold her off.
Over the urge to let the tears come, she drove home the words he might try to tell himself he hadn’t heard: “I can’t have a baby and that’s something you can’t make better, not ever.”
In her heart, Grady’s stunned silence translated to the rejection she’d always known was waiting. But it didn’t change that she owed him an explanation. Bearing an infinite weariness, she tried to pay what she owed.
“I shouldn’t have let this go on so long. I didn’t intend to, but, well, you are used to getting what you go after.” The ironic tone faded to sadness. “The trouble is, this time what you went after wasn’t what you thought it was. I’m not what you thought I was.”
She sighed—tired, so tired—then spoke carefully. “I was married before, Grady. His family and mine have been friends forever. I knew Frank all through school. We went to UVA together and were married right after graduation.
“We had exactly the life we’d planned. I had everything I wanted. We decided to start our family after a couple years. We want two boys and two girls, and I got pregnant almost right away. Frank teased me about being right on schedule, then he gave me this watch to celebrate.” She fingered the bracelet watch she always wore. “Everything was perfect . . . perfect.”
She wrapped one hand around the opposite elbow, a futile instinct to protect her innermost self.
“I was driving back from the obstetrician. He’d just told me—he’d promised me—everything was perfect. It was sleeting. The road was slick. It started with one car barely bumping another, but nobody could stop behind them. It was a chain reaction. I was in the middle, where the impact was worst. That’s what they told me. I don’t remember it. I just remember saying goodbye to the doctor’s receptionist, then waking up in the hospital four days later. They’d tried to save the baby but there’d been too much trauma from the accident. He didn’t have a chance. And I was hemorrhaging . . . The doctors were very good, I know that. They saved my life. I know they did everything they could. But I can’t ever have another baby.”
Memories spilled in then: the grim words, Frank’s shock, Grandma Beatrice’s strength. The numbing grief.
“Frank never said anything. Never reproached me, never said an unkind word, but I knew how he’d wanted children. And it was there between us. All the time between us. Like a wedge. And once a wedge is in place it opens up spots for more things to come between you. And pretty soon, you’ve drifted apart. That’s what happened to us, we drifted. I asked him if he wanted a divorce, and he said yes. I took my maiden name and left Charlottesville the day my son should have been six months old.”
He said nothing.
She started to walk past him. He put out an arm and she had to stop to avoid having him touch her.
“Leslie—” His voice sounded rusty, ragged. “Leslie, give me a chance. Give me a chance to think, to come up with something to say to you, to—”
“No, Grady.” She held out her arm as if to ward off a blow. “Even if you say all the right things, it won’t work. I walked away from my marriage with only this engraved watch, but with you I don’t think I could bear to keep even that much. I can’t afford to strip myself clean again. I won’t risk it.”
The door opening was like a shot in the silence.
“Grady! Oh, there you are.” Michael looked from Grady to Leslie and back.
“What do you want, Michael?” Grady stepped forward, blocking any view of Leslie.
“A couple of neighbors who’d been out bicycling just told Mrs. M. they saw a girl who looked like April heading to town about an hour ago. I was going to drive in and check it out. Thought you’d want to come.”
“Yes. I’ll be right there.”
Michael took his cue. Grady waited until the door closed behind him. “Leslie—”
“Don’t, Grady. Just find April. Please.”
He hesitated a moment, the walked out.
* * * *
“Nothing—damn it.”
“Make another circuit. Michael.”
“Okay.” He turned a corner. “Grady, if talking would help . . .”
“If I knew what the hell to say it might. But thanks.”
Silently, both intently squinting beyond the streetlights into shadows, they circled Lake Forest’s business square for the fourth time.
Grady leaned forward, peering across the tracks at the train station. “Let’s check over there.”
Before Michael stopped the car in the parking lot, Grady was out of it, making for the darkest corner of the platform where he’d spotted an even darker shadow.
* * * *
After Bette took Michael’s call from the train station, Leslie let herself be shepherded with the rest of the returned hunters into the family room by Mrs.
Monroe, who was busy dispensing heavily sugared iced tea.
The door opened, and April walked in, flanked by Michael and Grady.
“April!”
“She’s all right,” Grady reassured.
“Where were you? What did you do? Why did you— Oh, God, the things that could have happened—” Leslie swallowed a sob.
April looked at her in surprise, then hung her head.
“Leslie, I’d like to talk to you.” Grady’s voice, pitched low, was stiff, perhaps with nerves.
“No. There’s nothing more to talk about.” She turned to the others. “I want to thank you—all of you—for looking for April, for . . . and for finding her.” Her eyes didn’t quite reach Grady’s. “I am so grateful for your help. I don’t know what I would have done—” Blinking hard, she took her relative’s arm. “But now I think April and I need to do some talking—”
“Ah, no. No talking. Not tonight,” interrupted Mrs. Monroe, separating Leslie and April. “Most certainly not tonight. I am taking this child to tuck her into bed right this moment. And you stay where you are,” she ordered Grady, who’d taken a step toward Leslie. “I said no talking tonight, and I meant it. Besides, you're needed down here to help that nice policeman fill out his report. They said he’d be over in a few minutes. Tris, why don’t you take Leslie in hand and get her into a hot tub and get some of that tension out of her? And, Jim, I think a bit of brandy for everyone else wouldn’t be amiss.”
“Except Bette,” Paul interposed.
“A swallow would be good for her and won’t hurt the baby. I used it myself as a young mother. How do you think I survived having you?”
With that parting shot, she herded Leslie, Tris and April out of the room, secure everything had been arranged to her satisfaction.
* * * *
Tris not only got Leslie into a hot, scented bath, she returned shortly with a generous snifter of brandy, and insisted Leslie drink it.
With fear for April seeping out of her blood and brandy seeping in, Leslie found herself telling her story for the second time that night.
The strange thing was that by the end she felt better.
Would she have felt this way if she’d told Tris all those years ago when Tris had confided her past sorrows?
“And you told Grady all this tonight?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“What did he say?” Tris demanded.
“It doesn’t matter what he said. Because that won’t change the facts.”
Tris looked at her levelly. “You mean the fact that you can’t have children.”
Somehow it sounded different when Tris said it than when it echoed in her own heart. Not better; it would never sound better. But less . . . less defining. She wasn’t sure that made sense, and she wasn’t prepared now to examine it.
“Yes. That, and the facts about Grady.”
Tris shook her head. “I’m not so sure about the facts about Grady anymore. I know I’m the one who warned you about him, but—”
“Not that. I’m talking about the fact that from the start Grady has pushed aside obstacles between us as if a relationship were a challenging game to be won. But this—” She patted the abdomen that would never again grow round with a child. “Is one obstacle that all his wealth and charm and power and good looks can’t overcome, one situation he can’t change. And when he realizes that, he’ll know the game’s lost and he’ll be grateful I ended it now.”
* * * *
“What are you doing sitting here in the dark, Grady?”
Waiting for the light, he thought. But the light he hoped for wouldn’t come with the fast-approaching morning.
“Are you all right?” added Nancy Monroe.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look it, dear.” She softened the words with a hand on his shoulder. “At my age having trouble sleeping’s to be expected, but you’re too young.”
He didn’t feel young.
Leslie’s refusal to talk to him wasn’t all bad from Grady’s viewpoint. He had a lot of sorting out to do. But sorting out was not conducive to sleep.
“I’ll make some coffee.”
“Thanks, Mrs. M., that would be great.”
They drank coffee in silence as, through the French doors, the lake and sky gradually revealed themselves.
When he stood, Nancy Monroe said nothing, but looked at him inquiringly.
“Thought I’d go sailing this morning,” he said.
“It looks like a nice morning for it.” But she was looking at him rather than the weather. “Alone?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to try.”
“Be careful, Grady. Trying to help someone can be a dangerous business”
He thought of that as he stepped into the room Leslie and April shared. He absorbed the quiet as his eyes adjusted to the shadows. Leslie slept on her side, facing him. A frown stitched her brows as if pain squeezed them together even in sleep. Her hand was on her pillow, near her cheek. Two steps, and he’d be to the bed. He could hold her hand, stroke her hair and ease that frown.
Instead, he walked around the end of Leslie’s bed and touched April’s shoulder.
“C’mon, April, wake up. We’re going sailing.”
* * * *
A wave pushed the boat sideways, and April’s hold on the seat tightened.
“You sure you know how to run this thing?”
He didn’t smile. “I’m sure. I’ve been sailing since I was about half your age.”
He concentrated on the soothingly familiar actions, letting her adjust to the boat and to him. When they were out to where the open horizon carried equal weight with the shoreline behind them, he set the boat into an easy course.
“When I was about ten, I brought a boat out here and seriously considered never going back. I figured they’d never find me.”
She gave him a quick look, clearly bracing for a lecture on her stunt the night before. “You would have hit Michigan.”
“I’d turned north once I got out here. Since you know geography, you know there’s a lot of lake between here and land heading that way.”
“Somebody would have found you.” She sneered.
“Depends how soon they started looking. Big lake, small boat.”
“They would have missed you right away.” The jerk of her head indicated the land they’d left. The sneer was slightly less pronounced. “They would have sent somebody after you.”
“I didn’t know the Monroes yet.” He let that sink in. “I was out here nineteen and a half hours, from two-thirty in the afternoon until almost ten the next morning. And nobody came after me, because nobody missed me.”
“Your mom and dad—”
“Were in Europe. And the nanny they’d hired enjoyed her bourbon. She didn’t last long. But long enough.”
April stared at him, and he saw the aching loneliness that went to her core, and he wanted to cry for her, and the child he’d been, who understood her too damn well.
She bent her head in an absorbed study of her hands clasped in her lap.
“Gets awfully dark out here on the lake at night,” he said. “The water seems to swallow any light that makes it this far. It’s dark above you, and even darker below, and you have no idea which way you’re going—not only north or south, east or west, but up or down. There were times I thought for sure I was drowning even though I was still in the boat.”
“Why’d you come back, when nobody’d missed you?” Her whisper told him what he’d feared—she’d considered it—and what he’d hoped—she was looking for a reason not to.
He remembered Mrs. M.’s words: Be careful, Grady. Trying to help someone can be a dangerous business. The danger was not only to him but to the fragile girl across from him. With an inarticulate prayer, he spoke slowly.
“I would have missed me."
> Three tears splashed on the back of her folded hands. She hurriedly scrubbed them dry on her shorts.
“That night out here by myself, I realized that even if nobody else cared about my life, I did. I was pretty young, so the words weren’t real clear, but I figured it was my life, and I was going to do something about it. I saw other kids who tried to do their best because it made their parents happy. I was going to do my best, even though I had to do it for myself. Had to do it alone.”
He made a sound, not quite amusement. He hadn’t thought about that night for a long time. “You know, though, about the time I decided all this, the wind kicked up and I had to fight like hell to stay afloat.” Her surprised eyes came to his face. “It was almost as if the lake was telling me deciding’s not enough. You’ve got to work at it. Sometimes it’s harder than others.”
A half-gulped sob escaped, but she didn’t look away.
“And when I met the Monroes, I didn’t have to do it all alone anymore. They’re not my parents, but they are my family.”
Eyes brimming and mouth trembling, she stared. Would she reach out or pull back into that self-protective shell? He wished with all his heart that Leslie were here, no matter how much being with her would hurt. It would be worth the cost because surely she could help this child better than he could.
“It’s just . . ." At April’s uncertain words, his spirits leaped. “It’s just that I’m so lonely.”
The wail of that last word was one of the loveliest sounds he’d ever heard.
“I know you are, April. I know you are.”
Only a couple decades of sailing stopped him from going to her and risking overbalancing the boat. But when she stood, he tugged her onto the center seat alongside him, tucking her face against his shoulder and letting the boat rock them both.
“I don’t want to go back to Charlottesville because as soon as I get there, Melly’s going to drag me off on another of her trips.” She snuffled and sat up straighter. “I get in her way. She doesn’t want me around. She just thinks she has to and I hate it. I hate it!”
“What would you like to do?”
She looked startled that he hadn’t tried to reassure her that her mother did want her around. Startled, and then thoughtful, as if she’d never gotten past the point of what she didn’t want to do to consider what she did want to do.
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