by Lora Roberts
“I have to tell you something.” I wrenched my hands away from him. “You like kids—you’re so fond of the Montrose children. Well, I can’t have children.”
Chapter 24
Drake’s face went blank. Then his arms came around me, crushing me to his chest. “Oh, Liz. I’m so sorry. How come?”
“Don’t be sorry. It was my own choice.”
I could feel him stiffen. Then his grasp loosened. “What do you mean?” His voice was carefully without emphasis.
“I—had a miscarriage. When I was married to Tony. I was in the hospital for that, so I had my tubes tied.”
“You had a miscarriage. Why?” Now there was anger in his voice.
“Drake—don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling at you. I just wish I could have been the one to blow that bastard’s brains out, that’s all. What happened? Did he throw you down the stairs? Kick you in the stomach?”
I hugged my arms around myself. “We don’t need to have this conversation if it upsets you so much.”
“Damn it, Liz.” He clutched at his hair. “Doesn’t it upset you?”
“It did.” I backed a little way down the walk. “Still does, I guess. When I think of what happened, how I let it happen, I feel sick with myself. I feel that no one can possibly have any respect for me, since I let that go on. I feel totally worthless.” I took a breath and steadied my voice. “Not all the time, but whenever I think about my life with Tony. And I always will, Paul. I will never be a person that stuff didn’t happen to. I will never be able to get back the things I lost with him. One of those things is that I can’t, won’t, have children.”
His arms came back around me again, and I let the comfort flow from him, because I knew it might be the last time he would want to comfort me.
“Lots of people can’t have children. It doesn’t make you less of a woman.” His voice was tentative.
“But if you hook up with me, you can’t have them, either. And I know you want them.”
He held me away a little, looking down at me. “I just see my friends settling in with their families, how important that is to them.”
“Of course you do. Of course you want that. I can’t give it to you.” I was having a hard time getting the words out. “Even if I hadn’t had my tubes tied, I still don’t feel capable of parenthood. It’s too much responsibility. I’m too—damaged.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“They’re true.” I walked past him, toward the porch steps, and he let me go. “You think about it, Paul. This is a good time to step back, step away. Just think about what you’re really getting into here.”
“You make it sound like I don’t know you.” He reached out, touched my arm. “I’ve been living next door to you for nearly a year now, Liz. I know you.” His fingers turned me, gently. “This is big news that you’ve given me. But it couldn’t change my feelings for you.”
“Just take a few days or weeks to digest it.” I glanced toward the house. Claudia pulled the curtain aside in the living room window; her dark bulk peered out at us. “Don’t let all our well-meaning friends push you into something because they want to see me settled. I can take care of myself. In fact, I like it that way.”
“I know. You’re your own worst enemy, and mine, too.” He sighed and let his hand fall. “I have to go back. Bruno wants to go over stuff, and there’s paperwork to do. But I’ll come over later. I’ve got the key.”
I stood on the bottom step, and Barker began his doorbell act from behind the front door. “You see,” I told Drake, “I have Barker to protect me.”
Drake made a sound between a laugh and a groan. “Liz—” Without finishing, he turned and walked away. I went on up the steps and into the house.
“So is Drake getting all domestic from his little stint here as surrogate daddy?” Claudia hardly waited for me to get in the door before she pounced on me.
“Not exactly.” I was in no mood to be subjected to more matchmaking innuendo. “He has police work to clear up, Claudia. He’s too busy to make time with me. And I am trying to be the moral preceptoress of four young, impressionable children. Not trying to seduce him.”
She drew back. “I wasn’t trying to imply—”
“I’m sorry.” It didn’t improve my mood to be snapping at one of my friends. “I just don’t like the way everyone pushes me to have a fling with Drake.”
“Nobody’s pushing you,” Claudia said, patting me on the arm. “Or at least, we don’t mean to be.” She hesitated. “Don’t tell me if you’d rather not, but why don’t you want to have a fling with Drake? He’s cute, available, and lusts after you.”
“That should be enough, I know.”
She grinned. “More than enough for nine out of ten people.”
“That makes me feel so special.” I appreciated Claudia’s unusual restraint—usually when she’s curious about anything, she just bludgeons away with her questions until the victim, in sheer self-preservation, coughs up the goods. “I don’t not like Drake, but I’m not cut out for flings, and he deserves someone more—domestic—for anything long-term.”
Claudia made a rude-sounding noise, somewhere between a snort and a sniff. “Balls. He’s lucky to latch onto someone like you, and he knows it. Otherwise, why has he hung around with so little encouragement from you?”
“Claudia—”
“I know. I should just butt out.”
“Yes.” I looked around the living room. It was surprisingly neat, all the toys put away in the baskets. The two older boys sat together on the couch, their heads together over a book. Mick was slumped in the easy chair, sound asleep. There was no sign of Moira.
“Bridget called.” Claudia returned to the attack. “I told her you and Drake went over to your house and hadn’t come back yet. We discussed the whole situation and agreed you two were perfect for each other. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“You just don’t know.” I shook my head wearily, but I didn’t want to go into the details of my sewn-up fallopian tubes. It had been hard enough to deal with then, more than ten years ago, when the whole wretched experience had happened. I didn’t want to keep recalling that time if I could avoid it. “Listen, do Drake and me a favor. Let us work things out our own way. If possible, I’d like to remain friends with him.”
Claudia looked interested, but had mercy on me. “So did you find out any more from him about the case?”
“That’s what took so long.” I told her about the strange sight of Nelson in consultation with Old Mackie, and we puzzled over it for a few minutes while Corky and Sam finished up The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sharks and Whales. I picked up Mick, marveling at how heavy such a relatively small person could be, and how luxuriously boneless was his sleep. He snuggled into his bed with a contented sigh, and I pulled the covers up over his square little shoulders. Sam didn’t object when I tucked him in, too, and even Corky accepted my smoothing the covers, and one more smooth on those flaming curls. I turned out the light in the boys’ room and stood for a moment in the doorway of Moira’Ss room, listening to her even breathing. I liked the comfy feeling that they were snug for the night. I just didn’t like being responsible for their continued well-being in the face of danger.
Claudia wasn’t ready to go home just yet. She got herself another bowl of the Peninsula Creamery ice cream we’d had for dessert and made herself comfortable on the couch. I knelt in front of the CD player. It had just occurred to me that music was one of the luxuries I’d done without for a long time. Most of the music in the square plastic boxes was unfamiliar to me. In spite of not wanting to deal with the past, I found myself reaching for Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark and awkwardly loaded it into the machine.
The first notes transported me back, as music can, and I was twenty, falling in love. With an effort, I put the music in the background, where my past should have been, and tried to listen to what Claudia was saying.
“If only we knew more ab
out the first body,” she fretted.
“The only body. Richard looks like he’s pulling through.”
“He won’t be the same. No one is after a head injury like that.” Claudia sounded pessimistic. “He might qualify as a walking body. At any rate, if we knew more about the first guy, we might get a handle on all this.”
“They know who he is, anyway.” I leaned back farther in my chair, suddenly exhausted by everything that had happened in that eventful day. “Maybe he’s in Melanie’s picture. We could ask her to bring the album over.”
Claudia wanted to know about the picture, and I went ahead and filled her in on Melanie’s surprise relationship to Richard. This was a tidbit sufficient to distract her from everything else.
“Actually married! That must mean something.” The wheels turned visibly behind Claudia’s furrowed brow.
“You know, all this doesn’t have to be related. The skeleton and the attack on Richard, I mean. Richard could have been dotted by someone from his excavation team—”
“A disgruntled past-al worker?” Claudia guffawed.
I suppressed my own smile, with difficulty. “You’re detached from this, so you can treat it academically, Claudia. Melanie is not very amused by what’s happened.”
“I’m sorry. It’s rotten of me, of course. A stress reaction,” Claudia said hopefully. “I crack bad jokes when I’m under the gun.”
“You’re not under the gun here.”
“Of course I am. I’m going to figure it out while Drake runs around town with his nose to the ground, looking like a bloodhound on a bad-hair day.”
I felt immensely more tired. “Personally, I vote for letting Drake get on with it, and getting some sleep ourselves. The kids are up early, you know.”
Claudia ignored this. “You said something about a picture?”
“People from the seventies. Standing around on the front porch of this house. Melanie and Richard are in it, and a bunch of others. It’s in an album—maybe lots of pictures from that time. You should go over and ask her to show it to you.”
Claudia rushed to the telephone. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, hoping the music would wash away all the tensions. “I was a free man in Paris,” Joni sang, somewhat inaccurate as to gender.
“She’s bringing it over here,” Claudia announced. “I knew you wouldn’t want to be left out. And I told her to bring her journal, too. Maria’s there to stay with the kids while Melanie’s out.”
“Journal? She didn’t show me a journal.”
“But I knew she would have one from that year.” Claudia wore her look of triumph. “We took a workshop a while ago, and she said in that prissy voice of hers that she’d been keeping a journal since she was in eighth grade.”
“Drake would like to see it, I bet.” I suppressed a yawn.
“She’ll never show it to him or anyone, but she might tell us the relevant parts.” Claudia leaned closer, peering at me. “You’re looking very tired, Liz.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am tired.”
“You should get right to bed after Melanie leaves. Don’t sit up late reading.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She smiled sweetly at me. “Your welfare is important to me, dear.”
Then she fell into an abstraction, and I closed my eyes again, trying to think of nothing more weighty than what CD to put on next.
Chapter 25
The music was nearly over before Melanie arrived. She clacked in on her wooden clogs, her loose linen jacket and pants just wrinkled enough for fashion, but not enough to suggest frowziness. She clutched the leather-bound album and glared at Claudia.
“Why’d you have to drag me over here like this? I’d just poured my glass of wine!”
“I didn’t drag you,” Claudia protested. “You wanted to come. And you can have wine here, right, Liz?”
“I guess. There must be some somewhere.”
This didn’t mollify Melanie. “You know you forced me to come here by implying that Richard put poor old Nado under the sidewalk. That’s total bull.” She shook the album at Claudia. “Richard never did anything of the sort! He wasn’t even living here when Nado disappeared. He lived across the street, and then we moved to Menlo Park together, so he was busy. I would have remembered if my boyfriend had slipped out in the night to dig holes in the sidewalk!”
“You were in love with the guy. You wouldn’t have noticed if he’d dug holes in the living room, probably.”
“And another thing,” Melanie raged on, ignoring Claudia’s interruption. “I did not bring my journal. My journal is a very private document. Before I show it to you or anyone, I would burn it!”
Before Claudia could return fire again, I got up and yanked the front door open, letting in the fresh, cold night air. “Melanie, Claudia, if you want to shout, please go outside where the police can come and make you shut up. Don’t do it in here where babies are sleeping!”
Caught in mid-tirade, both of them looked sheepish. In the resultant quiet, we could hear Moira’s soft, pre-wail noise. Melanie reverted instantly from irate harpy to mom. “She’ll go back to sleep if we just talk quietly,” she said, her ear still cocked to the bedroom. “Maybe we should go into the kitchen.”
Claudia found some merlot. With the album open on the kitchen table, we hung over it in silence while Claudia paged through. The usual pictures of twenty-somethings having fun at the beach, at the park, in Bridget’s house and others’, at parties and one-on-one. The people had long hair and long sideburns and Afros and granny glasses and bell-bottoms and long pointed collars on their shirts. I could recognize Melanie in the pictures, but not because she looked like her current self.
Richard was easier to correlate. He had the same jutting chin, although obscured with a beard in some pictures, the same hair pulled back in a ponytail, only with a hairline much closer to his eyebrows than it currently was.
“Who’s this?” Claudia put a finger on a man standing off to the side of the group on the steps of Bridget’s house, the man who’d looked familiar to me that afternoon.
“I don’t remember.” Melanie glanced at the face almost lost in enormous sideburns, the wealth of dark curls. “Although somehow I associate him with Mondale.”
“I’ve seen him somewhere.” Claudia studied the picture. “Yes, and that fellow beside him, too. The lanky one.”
“I thought the same earlier.” I looked again at the other man, who had a long chin and alert eyes that belied his sleepy smile.
“I read somewhere that ears don’t change. That’s how they identify people after a long time.” Melanie offered this tidbit. “Oh, there’s Nado.”
We turned our attention to a picture on the opposite page. After a moment, I realized it was the Baylands, with the interpretive center in the background, looking much newer, not yet covered with bird shit. Some people played Frisbee in the nearby parking lot, while a group closer to the camera watched a couple of men adjust homemade sailboards for launching. One of the sailboarders was Richard. The other one was the lanky man from the previous picture.
“Skipper,” Melanie said suddenly. “We called that guy Skipper because he loved the water. Richard and he used to be out at the Baylands often.” She put her finger on a grinning, shirtless man, a step back from the action at the boat ramp, who lifted a cigarette to his mouth. Not a cigarette—a joint.
“That’s Nado,” Melanie said, tapping her fingernail on the joint. “He always had whatever you wanted.” A slight note of regret sounded in her voice. “He wasn’t a very nice person, but he came to all our parties.”
“How can you remember so clearly when he disappeared?” Claudia was faintly skeptical.
Melanie caught that. She hesitated a moment. “I did look through my journal for that year after you left today, Liz. I didn’t want the police to know I had it.” She cast me a resentful look. “I guess there’s no chance of that now. I was looking for something about this incident—Richard mentioned it Sunday
evening, after the fight.”
“It wasn’t a fight,” Claudia said. “Just ceremonial posturing by the males.”
Melanie threw her a look. “Whatever. My journal is very personal; it’s mostly about Richard. I wouldn’t want to show it to anyone. Hugh might not—understand.” Melanie was blushing. Like me, Claudia was probably seized with a strong desire to read that journal. “I did mention some of the other things that were going on. One of them was this incident.”
“What incident?” Claudia demanded.
Melanie took a deep breath. “Nado sold some PCP, or MDM, or one of those initial things—I don’t really remember because I never did that stuff. But a couple of the guys did it, and one of them ended up a vegetable. I mean, his brain was fried. Nado said it wasn’t his fault, but it turned out he’d cut the PCP, and whatever he cut it with caused this kid to have a stroke or something. He was mentally impaired for quite a while—I don’t know how long, or if he eventually died.” Melanie shivered. “I do remember some people cleaned up their act after that, though. And when we didn’t see Nado anymore, we just assumed he was ashamed of himself or had gotten busted or something.”
We looked at the pictures, quiet for a moment. “Which one is the boy who had his slate wiped clean?” Claudia said.
Melanie shrugged. “I hadn’t written down the name, and at this point I don’t remember. Richard was my main concern—and Aimee.” She pointed out a willowy, exotic-looking girl among the Frisbee players. “She’s the one he went off on the dig with, and then wouldn’t give up when he came back.” She looked at the picture with loathing. “Now if it had been her body under the sidewalk, you could write me down as a suspect.”
I sat back and had a sip of merlot, trying to put it together. Parts of the story seemed to overlap, like watching a movie I’d seen before, so long ago that I’d forgotten most of it.
Or else I was having déjà vu.
Claudia started to say something, then cocked an ear. “Is that one of the boys crying?”
We all listened to the roaring that grew gradually louder.
