A trio played for after-dinner dancing, and when they danced, she felt feather-light in his arms. The diamond ring burned a hole in Jay's pocket. He could hardly wait to give it to her and see her eyes become enormous with pleasure and brimming with happy tears.
When the music stopped he said, "Let's get out of here," and she didn't even speak, just nodded and looked at him with those huge eyes. He threw money on the table and then they were outside hurrying to his car.
"Let's go for a walk on the beach," she suggested impulsively as they drove out of the parking lot. "It's a full moon."
"That brings out all the crazies," he said.
"Like us?" she said, moving close to him, and he laughed and kissed her because he was crazy, crazy about her.
He drove the car into one of the parking spaces near the wooden stairs to the sand. They had to pass a group of chattering teenagers, but when they reached the bottom of the steps, the beach was deserted. Lisa steadied herself with a hand on his arm and pulled off her shoes, and Jay took off his shoes and socks, too. He paused to roll up his pants legs, and Lisa, suddenly playful, danced tantalizingly out of reach at the edge of the surf until he chased her and caught her in the circle of his arms.
"I love you, Lisa," he said, holding her tight against him. "I love you so much. Has any other couple ever loved this much?"
"I suppose every couple asks themselves that question," Lisa said more thoughtfully than he had expected.
"Hmm," he said. He released her but caught her hand in his.
"Maybe the real question should be 'Has any other couple known each other as well?'" she said.
He darted a quick look in her direction. He wondered if she'd recently talked to someone who had known him long ago. Who could it have been? His mind ranged over a list of acquaintances and old friends, but he could think of no one. She was probably just congratulating herself on their getting to know each other so well in such a short period of time. And they had. Except...
"Lisa," he said quietly and with great gravity, "I feel as if I've known you all my life. Maybe it's always that way when you find another person who feels the same way you do about so many things. We have a mutual interest in the mission and in Connie, and—well, I could go on and on."
"Oh, do," she said in that impish way of hers. She hadn't yet caught his serious mood.
"I have something I should tell you. I probably wouldn't have to, and it won't be as important to you as it is to me, but I want to get it out of the way. I don't want you to hear it from somebody else."
Her eyes were clear and puzzled. "What in the world are you talking about, Jay?"
"Something happened a long time ago, and it changed my life. I didn't mean to do it, and I've been paying for it ever since," he said evenly.
She stopped walking, and her face froze. "You make yourself sound like a criminal."
He captured both her hands in his and gazed down at her. "I am," he said. "I killed a woman."
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she inhaled a deep breath, an inrush of surprised air. "I don't believe you," she said, her eyes searching his face.
"It was an accident," he said rapidly. "I'd been drinking at a graduation party when I was seventeen years old, and my car skidded through a red light in the rain and hit another car, a sports-car convertible. The girl who was driving it died. It was an accident, Lisa," he said when he saw the look of horror in her eyes.
"Megan," she said in a very small voice.
"What?" he said, clearly disconcerted.
"Megan. That's how Megan was killed, in the same way. The boy who killed her got almost no sentence at all—the judge sentenced him to weekends in jail and community-service work." She pulled her hands away from his and stood staring at him.
"That's what my sentence was," he told her. "It's how I got interested in kids and art. I taught my first art class to a group of disadvantaged kids in Gainesville when I was at the University of Florida. I was trying to make up for what I'd done."
"No," Lisa said clearly and distinctly. She had added the numbers in her head. Jay was twenty-eight years old, and Megan had been killed almost twelve years ago. Jay's birthday was next week. That would have made Jay seventeen years old in June of 2000, exactly the right age to be the driver of the car killed Megan.
"Lisa—"
"You're him. You're the one who killed her. My God, how can you be?" She sank down on the sand exactly where she stood and wrapped her arms around herself. She was trembling.
"Lisa?" he said, kneeling beside her. He'd never seen her like this.
"I don't feel okay right now. My stomach hurts." She leaned her head on her knees.
"Lisa, I—" he said, and he touched her shoulder.
She lifted her head. Suddenly the pieces tumbled into place. But how could it be? What weird coincidence had brought the two of them together? How could she have fallen in love with the man who killed Megan? A wave of nausea swept over her, and she stumbled to her feet and reeled away from him in revulsion. On the day of Megan's funeral, she had vowed to kill the man who brought Megan's life to an end, and even though that was a long time ago and she'd been in the first stages of her grief, she still harbored an anger toward him that would never go away.
Jay followed her, caught her by the wrist and whipped her around to face him.
"I don't know what you think," he said desperately, and she knew that he hadn't caught on yet.
"Megan," she cried. "My best friend. You killed her. But your name—it's all wrong, and I don't know, I don't know how." Suddenly he understood. Adele's daughter, the one who had died young—her name had been Megan. And the woman he had killed had been named Megan, too. His victim's surname hadn't been the same as Adele's, but he recalled that Adele had remarried and been widowed since that time.
At first he was too numb to speak. "I was James Watkins then," he said at last. "My stepfather adopted me later."
Lisa wrenched away from him and stumbled back toward the steps to the parking lot.
"Lisa, wait," but Jay's heart had fallen to the pit of his stomach and his voice hadn't found its full timbre. A wave of self-loathing swept over him, threatening to cut off his air.
"Go away," she cried, and he tried to hold her in his arms, to make her talk to him, but she was beyond talking. She beat her fists against his chest; she was hysterical.
There were people in the parking lot above them and she was out of control; now she was heading toward the ocean and he grabbed her and pulled her back. A wave broke too far inland, slamming against their knees before catching them in its ebb, and the sand eroded beneath their feet. The water surged around their ankles as he struggled with her, trying to hold her up when she would have collapsed.
She summoned every bit of her strength and lurched away from him, this time, thank goodness, in the direction of the shore. The water sucked at his feet, holding him back, and he cursed it and tried to reach her. Lisa was already running past the debris at the high-tide mark when he caught up with her.
"Lisa, don't do this! We need to talk!" He was aware of the people above them in the parking area—what if they heard, what if they saw? They would think he was assaulting her.
She kicked at him, broke away, and he did the only thing he could think of. He brought her down with a football tackle.
She struggled beneath him for a few moments, then gradually her flailing stopped and she lay beneath him gasping. When he felt all the fight drain out of her, he relaxed and sat up. She lay in the sand, her skirt wet and clinging to her legs, her face swollen with crying. But reason had returned to her eyes, and for that he was grateful.
"If we could just talk," he said heavily.
"I never want to talk to you again," she said clearly and distinctly. He was halted by the steadiness of her gaze.
"Lisa, I'm a different person now."
"You killed my best friend," she said in the most cold, dispassionate voice he'd ever heard
. She stood up and found her shoes and purse in the sand, but now she didn't run. With an eerie calm she walked up the steps to the path and the parking lot beyond with Jay trailing after her.
"What are you going to do?" he asked as she fumbled in her purse.
She slid open her phone. "I'm calling a cab."
"For God's sake, Lisa, I'll take you home," he said.
She ignored him until she'd completed the call. Then she walked to the road and stood slightly apart from the talking, laughing group by the steps, some of whom kept glancing at them curiously.
"Lisa, will you please get in my car? I promise I won't say one more word about the accident, about Megan. Please let me take you home." Her thin wet skirt was wound around her legs, but she didn't move. He himself was barefoot. He didn't care.
Hostile and stony-eyed, her back ramrod straight, she continued to ignore him, and in five minutes or so the taxi arrived. She yanked open the door as soon as it slid to a stop, and he touched her arm.
"Get your hands off me. I never want to see you again," she said, and when he realized that she meant it, his hand fell away and she slammed the taxi door behind her.
He watched the cab drive away, and a kid wearing baggy surfing shorts walked by and said, "Hey, I know how ya feel. Tough luck, buddy."
"Yeah," he said, turning his head quickly so the kid wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. "Tough luck."
Chapter 13
"You didn't wake me up last night, Lisa! Let me see your diamond ring!"
The mattress bounced, and Lisa opened her eyes to see Connie on her hands and knees, her earnest smiling face only inches from Lisa's in the strip of sunshine penetrating the curtains.
"Mmfgh," Lisa said, pushing Connie away and struggling to a sitting position.
"You're not wearing it. Lisa, didn't you get the engagement ring?" Connie had backed off and was staring at her with an expression of perplexity.
"No, I did not. What time is it?"
"Seven-thirty. Adele and I are going to Mass in a few minutes. Want to come along?"
"When did Adele start going to Mass again?"
"This morning. But you didn't tell me about the ring."
Last night came back to Lisa in all its revolting detail, and she slumped back onto the pillow.
"I'm not going to marry Jay," she said.
"Not marry Jay? Ohhhh," Connie said in one long disappointed exhalation, the light fading from her eyes.
That alone would have been bad enough, but the tears that followed were even worse. They coursed down Connie's plump cheeks in wide rivers, and Lisa wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out.
Instead, she slid out of bed and walked to the tissue box on the dresser, where she yanked several tissues out.
"Here," she said, handing them to Connie. "I wish I could explain, but I can't. It's just not right for us to get married, that's all." She climbed back on the bed and clasped her hands around her legs, resting her forehead on her kneecaps as she pictured that awful scene on the beach in her mind. Had she really hit him? Had he really tackled her?
"But Lisa, everything that Jay says will happen always happens, absolutely everything," Connie said in a bewildered tone.
Lisa lifted her head. "Not this time, honey," she said gently.
"Did I hear you say you're not getting married?" Adele asked in consternation as she stopped at the door of Lisa's room.
"That's right," Lisa said as the telephone rang.
Connie picked up the receiver from the phone beside Lisa's bed. She listened for a long moment to the caller. It was clear that she didn't know what to say.
"If it's Jay, I'd better take it," Adele said after a keen look at Lisa's tear-swollen and stubborn face, and Connie silently handed the phone to Adele.
Adele adroitly stepped into the breach. "Well, Jay," she said, "right now I'm the only one here who's not all teary-eyed. I don't know what's going on, but Connie and I will be late for Mass if we don't leave in a few minutes. Lisa?" Adele shot a look at her, and Lisa vigorously shook her head no.
"I'm afraid that Lisa doesn't want to speak with you. No, I don't know anything about it. Okay. All right. Goodbye, Jay," Adele said. She handed Connie another tissue and said, "Has the world become one big waterworks this morning? Will someone please tell me what is going on?"
"I guess you could say I broke our engagement," Lisa managed to say.
Adele rolled her eyes. "I don't know what the story is, but I suddenly feel in need of spiritual renewal, and it doesn't look like I'll get it here. Come along, Connie. We'd better go to church as planned."
"I'll get my sweater," Connie said disconsolately, and, eyes downcast, she left.
"Are you sure you're all right, Lisa?" Adele asked in a kindlier tone.
"I—I just want to be alone for a while. I can't talk about it yet," Lisa said.
"When you're ready, I'll listen. Look, Connie and I may go out for brunch after church," Adele told her.
"Go ahead. I'm fine," Lisa said, but she was aware that she didn't look fine.
After giving Lisa an encouraging pat on the shoulder, Adele left, closing the door softly behind her.
Lisa buried her face in her hands. How was she going to tell Adele that Jay was the person who killed Megan? There was no way to get around it. Adele liked Jay so much that she would expect an explanation for the breakup.
As she stood in the shower under the sharp needles of spray, she wondered if there had been any possibility that she could have known Jay Quillian's true identity. Had there been any clue? He hadn't talked much about his childhood, but a lot of people didn't. Now that she thought about it, perhaps he'd been evasive about certain things, but she'd always put it down to an impatience with small talk or unwillingness to talk about something unimportant.
As she stepped out of the shower, she became aware of a heavy pounding on the front door. Wrapping herself in a towel, she ran to the bedroom window and saw the unwelcome sight of Jay's car parked in her driveway.
She backed away from the window and sat on the edge of the bed, struggling to think. She didn't want to see him or talk to him. The barrage of blows to the front door continued unabated until her head began to throb. She finally got up and pulled on a shirt and a pair of shorts.
Jay commenced ringing the doorbell. She drowned out the sound by turning on the hair dryer, but by the time her hair was dry, her hands were shaking so much that she could barely put on her lipstick.
"Lisa? I know you're in there!" she heard him shout, and she clung to the bathroom vanity, closing her ears against his familiar voice and wondering how to escape.
She glanced at the clock in her bedroom. Adele and Connie might be gone for hours. Maybe if she talked with Jay, he'd go away. When she threw open the front door, Jay was standing there wearing the same clothes he'd worn last night, all rumpled and dirty. His eyes seemed sunken into his skull, the whites bloodshot.
"Lisa," he said. "We have to talk."
"There's nothing to talk about," she said wearily. "Will you please go away and leave me in peace?"
He looked at the ground; he looked at the sky; he looked everywhere but at her. Finally he said, "We're engaged to be married and you don't think we have anything to talk about?"
"Were engaged. Big difference," she said.
"Lisa, I love you. I love you with all my heart. Surely we can find a way to work this out," he said desperately.
"I could never marry the man who killed my best friend," she said.
"I didn't mean to do it. It was a long time ago." He stopped talking and slumped against the column holding up the porch. It was only then that she noticed that he had a blood-soaked rag wrapped around his other hand.
"What happened?" she cried involuntarily.
"Got mugged in the parking lot at the beach," he mumbled.
"You got mugged? Last night?" she asked.
"I went back down to the beach to get my shoes, sat on the steps and stayed there until every
one else went away. It must have been three or four in the morning when a couple of punks showed up, started waving a broken beer bottle at me and demanded my wallet. They got it, but not without a fight. Thank goodness they didn't find your engagement ring in my suit pocket. Not that it matters to you, I take it."
Lisa ignored the bit about the ring. "Are you all right? You'd better come in. You look weak and sick," she said. She stood aside while he stepped inside.
"I'm sick all right, but not because of my hand."
"You'd better let me look at it," she said.
"Nice of you to be so solicitous when last night you said you wanted to kill me," he reminded her, but he held out his hand.
"This cut looks terrible, Jay. I'd better wash the sand off and put on an antibiotic. I can't believe you didn't take care of this sooner."
"I've been driving around all morning. I didn't want to go home. No Hildy and no you. I didn't think I could stand it."
"You should have gone to a doctor. Come with me," she said, all bustling efficiency, and she led him through the quiet house into her bathroom where she kept a small first-aid kit.
He sat on the edge of her bed while she doctored his hand. When she'd finished bandaging it, she said, "You'd better go now." She self-consciously busied herself with the first-aid kit.
"We have to talk." Jay stood and, with an air of deliberation, took the first-aid kit out of her hand, setting it gently on the bed.
"Please go away."
"Lisa, I'm not the same person that I was when I was seventeen years old. I've changed for the better. I've paid my debt to society. Can't you understand?"
"You've paid your debt to society, but how about to Megan? Can you give her back her life, Jay?"
He winced. "Of course I can't. But I've paid and I've paid. Because of all that community service work I did, I've found a niche working with kids who don't have much of a chance in life. Maybe I've given children like Connie and Mike, Ruy, Felipe and Alejandro a little bit of what they need to make it. I hope I've helped to save a few lives."
Sunshine and Shadows Page 17
