“I wish I knew what to do,” Gwen said as she drained another glass of wine. “I mean, I make suggestions to Russell on how to play with Tess, tell him what she likes to do. But he seems completely uninterested. I don’t think it occurs to him that he might actually enjoy his granddaughter. Or she him.”
“Well, give him time,” Betsy said. “He’s been through a lot.” She looked quite grim. “The three Cs and all.” Now she completely lost it.
Sheila got up from the table and began clearing dishes.
“Look, Sheil, I don’t know these people, okay?” Betsy said. “And they wouldn’t have anything to do with me even if we did somehow meet.”
“I don’t know them either. That doesn’t mean I think it’s all a hoot.” She took a stack of dinner plates into the house, returning a minute later with a coffeepot and three mugs on a tray. Betsy and Gwen hadn’t said a word in her absence.
“How is the widower taking things?” Betsy asked as Sheila sat down.
“He looks…” Gwen shook her head and regretted the last glass of wine.
“He looks what?” Betsy asked.
“He looks incredibly…” She sighed. “Pass the wine, please.”
“Not until you finish telling us how he looks,” Betsy said.
“He looks…he looks beautiful!”
Both women snorted.
“It sounds strange, I know, but yesterday after the funeral I realized that something had changed about him. His eyes were so bright, his cheeks were darker, there was an intensity about him.”
“Mourning becomes Nick Lawrence,” Sheila said.
“And when I see him with Tess, the way he worships her…”
“Face it,” said Sheila as she poured Gwen a glass of wine. “Some women are turned on by a man’s wedding ring, some get off seeing a man acting all cuddly with a small child.”
Betsy shook her head with exaggerated disgust.
Gwen frowned with more disapproval than she felt. “I didn’t say I was turned on.”
“You didn’t have to,” Sheila said.
“Hey, you two didn’t have me over for dinner just to pump me for inside information, did you?”
“Gwendolyn Amiel!” Betsy put a hand to her chest. “Didn’t we have you to dinner last week, before the shit hit the fan?”
Gwen smiled. She’d never truly doubted their sincerity.
“More coffee?” Betsy asked, getting up from the table. Gwen nodded. Betsy started to pour from the pot, then stopped. “But only if you tell us what Dwight Hawkins wanted yesterday after the funeral.”
Gwen frowned. “I knew it.”
“The whole town saw him interrogating you,” Betsy said as she resumed pouring. “It’s all anyone’s been talking about.”
By week’s end, a pattern had been established. Gwen arrived at Penaquoit at eight, earlier than before the murder. She met Nick in the kitchen, where he fed Tess breakfast. He stood up and left the moment she walked in. Less than a minute later piano music, scales and arpeggios at first, filled the house.
Friday morning she spooned Tess a few remaining bits of cereal, wiped her face, and heard the music begin. The usual drill…but something was different, and it wasn’t just that he’d launched right into the piece he’d been working on all week, skipping the warm-up. The music was louder, more immediate. She wrestled Tess from her high chair and carried her toward the music, walking slowly through the big pantry, down the long service hallway past the breakfast room, and, pushing open the swinging door, into the foyer.
The music was so loud, so close, she knew instantly that her first reaction had been correct; something had changed. She stepped into the foyer, hesitated, then walked to the other side. She glanced into the living room and felt a chill make its way down her spine.
Nick’s piano had been moved to the center of the living room, displacing two sofas and a phalanx of chairs and tables. The living room was enormous, but the long Steinway still looked too big for its new location. The word “beached” came to mind, as if the piano had simply washed into the room, scattering less important furniture to the edge of the room in its wake.
But of course it hadn’t washed into the room, it had been carried there, to the very heart of the house, where it could never be overlooked.
She’d wanted some tangible recognition that Priscilla was gone. She had it now.
He must have sensed their presence, for he stopped playing abruptly and turned around.
“Come in,” he said. He had taken off his shirt and was wearing only loose-fitting green shorts. Sweat glistened on his back, his upper arms. His hair looked tousled and damp, as if he’d been exercising. Indeed, he had the body of an athlete, lean and efficient. Gwen stepped just inside the arched entrance.
“A lot of pianists use the Pathetique to show off,” he said. “They drag out the opening, holding those half notes as if challenging the listener not to squirm. It’s like a staring contest—you know, who’ll blink first?”
She nodded as she put Tess down, hoping she looked as though she knew what the hell he was talking about.
“Then they really let loose in the first movement,” he said. “‘Look! Look how fast I can play, look!’”
She watched a bead of sweat run down his neck onto his shoulder. He turned completely, facing her, knees spread apart, a hand on each thigh.
“That’s one advantage to performing only for yourself. Your allegiance is solely to the music. I don’t have to impress anyone except myself, and my standards are very high.”
Runner’s legs, she thought, long and muscular. Yet she’d never seen him exercise much, other than the occasional swim.
“Do you agree?”
She blinked, felt her face flush. “I…excuse me?”
He studied her a moment, his expression more curious than anything else, though he must have known where her thoughts had been.
“I asked if you thought the piano sounded better in here.”
“I’m not sure I can tell the difference.”
A brief frown, which softened into a grin. “You always tell the truth, don’t you, Gwendolyn? Is that your real name, Gwendolyn?”
His mouth wrapped around the three syllables like sucking candy. Always so precise in his diction: Gwen-do-lyn.
“Yes, but I never use it.”
“It is very rare to find truly honest people. I hope you are the real article.”
“Don’t you mean the real McCoy?” He scowled and she quickly added, “Or the genuine article?”
“Are you the genuine article?” he said in an icy voice. Apparently he hated to be corrected.
“I hope so.”
Though if she were truly honest she’d tell him what she really thought when she saw the tumescent Steinway in its new quarters: how she found it monstrous that he’d waited less than two days after the funeral before taking over the house, placing himself and his music at its very core. How she’d never forget her first glimpse of the Steinway beached in the center of the room, all other furniture, Cunningham furniture, shoved aside like so many meaningless impediments to his one true desire.
“I should really change Tess now.” She turned and almost tripped over a stack of books and papers on the floor. Several volumes fell from the pile.
“Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t had time to organize my music.”
She picked up the fallen books and placed them on a small table. A few loose papers slipped back onto the floor.
“Never mind,” he said, but she picked up the papers anyway. There were notes, written in his hand, a few yellowed newspaper clippings, a receipt of some kind. She placed them on top of the books on the table.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Vienna,” she said as she straightened the pile.
“Me too,” he replied.
“Oh.” She looked at the piece of paper on top of the pile. “Doesn’t ‘Wein’ mean Vienna?”
He stood up and examined the receipt. “Ah, the Beethoven fantasy. I haven’t played that in
years.” He searched through the pile of music and pulled out a thin sheaf. “Here it is. Patelson’s in New York must have purchased this in Vienna, for resale. See? It’s a German edition.”
She glanced at the music and nodded.
“I always dreamed of travel,” he said quietly. “And ended up here.”
“Someday I’m sure—”
“Beethoven lived in seventeen different houses in Vienna alone. I fear I shall never live anywhere but here.”
She tried to look sympathetic as she knelt to pick up Tess.
“Would you like to swim?” he said suddenly.
“But I have to change Tess, clean her room…” God, she hated talking diapers to his Ludwig van Beethoven.
“Always so conscientious. And yet I don’t see you as anyone’s housekeeper. What were you, really, in your former life?”
“A neatness freak.”
He returned her grin. When he smiled his face became handsome, but alarmingly so; such perfection always came at a price.
“Put Tess down for her morning nap, it’s almost time.” She was about to say something when he turned back to the keyboard. “I’ll meet you by the pool in twenty minutes.”
His hands crashed down on a low, angry chord, which he held for several seconds before moving on to the next.
“You see,” he said over his shoulder. “I give the chord its full ration, but I will not belabor it.”
She nodded at his back and left the living room, determined not to swim with him. But then, after a short gasp of silence, the somber prologue gave way to an impassioned, vigorous, almost frenzied melody. She watched him attack the sonata with his entire body, the muscles straining in his shoulders and arms and back. He would never relate as intimately to another person as he did to his music, except perhaps to Tess.
Nick was already standing by the pool when she emerged from the cabana in her bathing suit. He watched her cross the patio and she was glad she’d brought her one-piece to Penaquoit, not her bikini. Nick was wearing striped swim trunks.
“Hello again,” he said, and his complete lack of surprise at her presence made her want to turn around and go back inside. Instead she looked beyond him. Milky waves of heat shimmered in the middle distance; beyond, the rounded peaks of the Ondaigas formed a dark, almost stern barrier.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she said.
He glanced around, eyes dispassionate. “Priscilla felt safe at Penaquoit, and never more so than when contemplating that view.” He pointed to the hills in the distance. “I think she believed those mountains would keep out danger, repel the barbarians.”
“Penaquoit was her Switzerland,” Gwen said. But the plain, squat Ondaigas were not the Alps. The feeling of safety had been an illusion.
“The view leaves me unmoved,” Nick said. “If I owned Penaquoit I’d cut down those damn hemlocks over there and have a large pond dug out in their place. In the morning it would reflect the house; in the afternoon, the mountains beyond would shimmer on its surface.” His eyes turned dreamy for a moment, then refocused on her. “I like a water view—there’s something incomplete about a landscape without at least a pond or lake.”
He stretched his arms overhead, filling his lungs. He exhaled and caught her watching. She dove into the pool and continued underwater to the opposite end. Four laps later she stopped at the edge of the shallow end. Nick was leaning against the side.
“You must have been on the swim team,” he said.
“Huntington High School,” she replied, still panting. “…On Long Island.”
“You should feel free to use the pool any time. Bring your son on weekends if you like.”
“Thank you.” She gathered her hair in one hand and squeezed out the water, then smoothed it along her neck. “Priscilla…I don’t think I ever saw her use the pool.”
He shrugged, looking annoyed. The reference to his wife sounded forced, but she felt the need to interpose Priscilla between them.
“I still have difficulty believing that she’s dead.” He glanced up at the house. “I keep expecting her to walk onto the patio for her cantaloupe and cottage cheese at lunchtime.” He sounded more spooked than wistful.
“Do you think you’ll stay here?” she asked quietly, though she knew what he’d be forfeiting if he left.
He let out a long, slow breath. “It’s too soon to make plans. What about you? Are you going to stick around?”
“I don’t know, really. This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for myself.”
“I hope you’ll at least stay until the end of the summer. We need you, Tess and I.”
She nodded. “Did you hear Tess crying at the ravine that day? After your father-in-law left the duffel bag?”
“I…no, I didn’t.”
She frowned. “I did, I know I did.”
“It was quite windy that afternoon, perhaps you thought you heard her crying. Or the cicadas might have fooled you.”
“No, it was Tess.” She looked away. “I know it was.” She felt her face flush.
“It’s too late for second thoughts,” he said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“The police…Dwight Hawkins…he’s talking to everyone I ever had any contact with here, questioning them about me.”
“Why is he doing that?”
“He must think I was involved. I can’t imagine why else he’d be asking about me.”
He squeezed her shoulder; then his palm slid a few inches down her back.
“What they think and what they can prove are two very different things.”
“Prove? You don’t—”
“Of course not.” His hand slid down her arm. “It’s so peaceful here now that the cicadas are gone—have you noticed? Well, perhaps not gone, but they’ve stopped that hideous noise. Their mating call, Piacevic tells me. I suppose they’re through mating. Think about it, seventeen years in the cold, dark earth, waiting for just three or four weeks of copulation. The grass is littered with their shells. I asked Piacevic to get rid of them.” He squeezed her arm gently, testing. She pulled away and headed toward the stairs.
“I need to check on Tess,” she said. She left the pool, grabbed a towel, and hurried across the lawn. When she entered the house the cool air instantly raised goose bumps. In her eagerness to be away from him she’d left her dress in the pool house, but she didn’t want to go back and retrieve it just yet. Even with a towel wrapped around her she felt vulnerable in front of him. Perhaps with Tess in her arms she wouldn’t feel quite so exposed. She checked her watch: eleven-fifteen—Tess should be up soon.
She used the back staircase for a change, praying the Piacevics wouldn’t encounter her wearing a bathing suit, and cursing herself for giving in to the swim.
How could he touch her like that, so soon after Priscilla’s death? How could she let him touch her? He was getting to her, peeling away the protective shell she’d cloaked herself in when she’d driven upstate three months ago.
And it wasn’t just his obvious attractiveness that was chipping away at her, though God knew that was hard to ignore. It was something else, the way he looked at her, as if he could read her like a piece of music, and find the hidden rhythms and melodies. She thought of the cicada shells on the lawn, and wondered if hers would be among them soon.
Well, she’d promised to stay at Penaquoit for the summer. Come September she’d get the hell out of there.
She entered the nursery and stopped short. “Mr. Cunningham!”
He was looking out the window, holding Tess.
“She’s awake,” he said, turning to her. Behind him, through the window, she glimpsed a corner of the pool.
“I was just coming to check on her.”
He put Tess on the floor. She walked over and grabbed Gwen’s bare legs.
“You were swimming,” he said. “With my son-in-law.”
“He asked me…insisted, really. I’m sorry if I—”
“I’m paying your salary now. Nick couldn’t aff
ord you otherwise.”
Afford her?
“I don’t want you swimming while on duty, unless you’re with my granddaughter.”
She nodded.
“I think her diaper needs changing,” he said as he headed for the door. Then he turned and added: “Be careful with my son-in-law, Miss Amiel.”
“I don’t know what—”
“He spent the first twenty years of his life expecting great things of himself, only to find out he hadn’t the talent to achieve them.”
She picked up Tess and carried her to the changing table. Russell followed her across the room.
“Disillusioned men are the most dangerous, Miss Amiel. They’ve already lost their dream. Remember that.”
He turned and left the room.
Chapter 18
The weekend finally arrived, two full days away from Penaquoit. Gwen kept close to home for most of Saturday, playing catch with Jimmy in their small, fenced-in backyard, spraying him with the garden hose, drawing pictures together at the picnic table. Late Saturday afternoon they drove into town to rent a video.
While Jimmy selected a tape with his customary solemn deliberation, she began to notice that people were staring at her, occasionally pointing. Her initial reaction, that something was wrong with her hair, that she had a rip in her shorts, quickly gave way to the realization that it was her connection to the kidnapping that was attracting attention.
“Come on, Jimmy, choose something,” she said. “Anything.”
He frowned and grabbed a tape. At the counter she fished through her wallet for her rental card.
“Never mind, I know who you are,” said the heavyset, middle-aged woman behind the counter through pale, disapproving lips. “That’ll be two-fifty.” Gwen handed her the exact change. The woman shoved the rental agreement across the counter. “Sign.”
Gwen hesitated before picking up the pen. She thinks I was involved. They all do.
“The pen’s right there,” the woman said flatly without looking up from the cash drawer. Gwen scribbled her name on the receipt and got the hell out of there.
“Well, you’re an outsider,” Sheila told her on the phone after Gwen reported the video store incident. “I mean, people were suspicious of you the moment you set foot in town. Nobody moves to Sohegan. Especially someone with a hundred-dollar haircut and fancy clothes and—”
Disillusions Page 13
