by Tami Hoag
“Was it all grist for the mill, Jack?” she asked, going slowly, shakily to the open French doors. “The way we made love? The way you cried when you told me about Evie? The way Annie died, and Savannah—is that all plot for the next best-seller?” The thought sickened her. “Everything we did together, everything we—I—felt . . .” The words trailed off, the prospects too cruel to consider aloud.
“You missed your calling, Jack,” she said bitterly. “You should have been an actor.”
He said nothing in his own defense. He just stood with his hands braced on the balcony railing, broad shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the bayou. His expression was hard, closed, remote, as if he had taken himself to some dark place of solitude—or torment—within himself. Laurel wanted to hit him. She wanted to pound a confession out of him, a confession that refuted the damning evidence he had handed her himself. But she didn't hit him, and he didn't recant a word of his testimony. There wasn't a judge in the country who wouldn't have convicted him—for crimes of the heart, at the very least.
“I guess you proved your point,” she whispered. “You're a bastard and a user. Bad for me.”
She stepped out onto the balcony, appalled that the day could be so beautiful, that the birds could be singing. Below them, the bayou moved, a sluggish stream of chocolate. Huey lay sleeping on the bank.
“I know that you can't help the things that shaped you,” she said, looking up at him through a watery haze that made him seem more dream than real. “None of us can. Savannah couldn't change the fact that our stepfather used her as his private whore. I can't change the fact that I knew and never did anything about it,” she admitted, her voice choked with pain. “But you know something, Jack? I'll be damned if I'll believe we don't have the power within us to get past all that and be something better.
“You put that in your book, Jack.” Chin up, tears streaming down her cheeks, she slipped the folded notepaper in his hip pocket. “And at least be decent enough to write me a happy ending.”
Standing on pride alone, she turned and left him . . . left L'Amour . . . left her heart in pieces.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The summons to Beauvoir came before Laurel could leave the house for Prejean's. Vivian was on the brink of one of her spells, distraught over the news of Savannah's death. Dr. Broussard and Reverend Stipple had been sent for, but what she really needed was the comfort of having her only remaining child nearby.
Laurel's strongest urge was to say no. Vivian had disowned Savannah in life, had long ago ceased to love her. She couldn't keep from thinking that this was a ploy to gain attention, not a plea for sympathy or support. Vivian and Savannah had been rivals since the day of Savannah's birth. Why would that change after her death?
But the burden of guilt and family duty won out in the end. Laurel found herself in Caroline's burgundy BMW, turning up the tree-lined drive of her childhood home, cursing herself for being weak. She could almost envision Savannah looking down on her with disapproval. Still scrambling for Mama's love, Baby? Aren't you pathetic.
She cut the engine and lay her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, shutting her eyes against the exhaustion that pulled at her. She couldn't have felt more battered if someone had taken a club to her. Every part of her felt bruised, every cell of her body ached—her skin, her hair, her teeth, her muscles, her heart. Most especially her heart.
Images of Jack kept rising before her mind's eye, and her besieged brain struggled to rationalize in the name of self-preservation. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of hurting her. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of being hurt. But nothing she came up with could refute the evidence she had held in her hands.
God, he'd been studying her, jotting down notes, formulating theories as if she were nothing more than a fictitious character. The pain of that was incredible.
And still she wanted him to love her. The shame of that was absolute. She wanted him to come to her and tell her it was all a mistake, that he loved her, that he would be there for her as she struggled with the grief of loss. What a fool she was. She'd known from the start he wasn't the kind of man to depend on.
She sucked in a jerky breath, fighting the tears. She would get through this. She would get over it. She would get over him. She would find some way to be strong for Savannah.
Olive answered the door, looking appropriately dolorous, her skin as gray as her uniform, her eyes bleak. The maid led the way up the grand staircase and down the hall, and Laurel followed automatically, her mind on other times spent here.
Like ghosts, she heard the voices of her childhood—Savannah's wild laugh, her own shy giggle, Daddy promising he would come find them and tickle them silly. The memories bombarded her—good and bad. She remembered walking down this same hall to her mother's room the day of Daddy's funeral, and watching while Vivian applied her makeup artfully around her puffy red eyes.
You must endeavor to be a little lady, Laurel. You're a Chandler, and that's what's expected.
Then Vivian had loaded up on Valium and sat through the funeral in a daze, while her daughters struggled to weep gracefully into their handkerchiefs.
Vivian's spell of depression after Jefferson's death had lasted two months. Then Ross Leighton had begun worming his way into their lives.
Vivian's rooms comprised a spacious suite that saw a decorator from Lafayette once a year. The latest incarnation was a festival of floral chintz in shades of teal and peach. Olive escorted Laurel through the sitting room with its clutter of English antiques, knocked on the door to the bedroom, and opened it an inch when the muffled invitation came from within. Eyes downcast like a whipped dog, the maid slunk away as Laurel went in.
Her mother stood by the French doors, wrapped in teal silk, one arm banded across her middle, the other hand rubbing absently at the base of her throat. Opals glowed warmly on her earlobes. A ring with a stone the size of a sparrow's egg drew the eye to the hand pressed against her chest. She turned as Laurel entered the room, her features drawn tight, eyes looking dramatically sunken beneath the camouflage of dark eye shadow.
“Oh, Laurel, thank God you've come,” she said, her voice reedy and strained. “I had to see you for myself.”
“I'm here, Mama.”
Vivian shook her head in disbelief and paced listlessly. “Savannah. I just can't accept what the sheriff had to say. That she was murdered. Like those other women, she was murdered. Strangled.” She whispered the word as if it were profane, her right hand still rubbing at her throat. “Right here in our own backyard, practically. I swear, I can't bear the thought of it. The instant he told us, I nearly fainted. My throat constricted so, I could barely breathe. Ross had to bring my medication to the parlor, and I could hardly swallow it. He brought me straight to bed, but I couldn't rest until I'd seen you.”
“I was on my way to the funeral home,” Laurel said, toying with an arrangement of tiger lilies that filled a Dresden pitcher. “Would you like to come?”
Vivian gasped and sank down on the edge of the bed, careful to keep her knees together and tilted properly, one hand expertly seeing that her robe was tucked just so. “Heavens, no! I just couldn't bear it. Not now. I'm simply not up to it. I—I'm just weak with shock from it all, and filled with such emotions—”
She broke off as her beautiful aquamarine eyes filled, plucked a lace-edged hankie out of her breast pocket, and blotted at the moisture.
Anger built inside Laurel as she watched from beneath her lashes. Her sister was dead, and their mother sat here doing a one-woman show for sympathy. Poor Vivian lost the daughter she never loved. Poor Vivian, so fragile, so sensitive, like something out of Tennessee Williams.
“I haven't had a spell in so long,” she went on, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. “But I can feel it coming on, stealing over me like a shadow of doom. You can't know how I dread it. It's a terrible thing.”
“So is your daughter's murder,” Laurel said t
ightly.
Her mother's eyes went wide. Her hands stilled in her lap. “Well, of course it is. It's horrible!”
Laurel turned and gave her a hard look of accusation. “But the most important thing is how it affects you. Right?”
“Laurel! How can you say such a thing to me?”
She shouldn't have. She knew she shouldn't have. Good girls didn't sass back. Ladies kept their opinions to themselves. But all the dictates from her upbringing couldn't hold back the rage she had stored inside her all these years. In her mind she could see Savannah lying dead, could hardly allow herself to imagine the way her sister had suffered. And here was Vivian, playing Blanche DuBois. Always the center of attention. Never mind who else might be in pain.
“It was just the same when Daddy was killed,” she said, her voice trembling with the power of her emotions. “It wasn't a matter of all of us losing him. You had to turn it around so the focus was on you, so people flocked out here to check on you, so they all went around town saying ‘Poor Vivian. She's in such a state.' ”
“I was in such a state!” Vivian exclaimed, pushing to her feet. “I had lost my husband!”
“Well, it didn't take you long to find another one, did it?” Laurel snapped, the pains of childhood flowing through her like fresh, hot blood.
Her mother's eyes narrowed. “You still resent my marrying Ross. All the sacrifices I made for you and your sister, and all I get in return is bitterness and criticism.”
“Daddy was barely cold in the ground!”
“He was dead,” she said harshly. “He was gone and never coming back. I had to do something.”
“You didn't have to bring him into this house, into Daddy's room, into our lives.”
Into Savannah's bed. God, if it hadn't been for Ross Leighton, Savannah might still be alive. She might have grown up to fulfill all the potential he had crushed out from inside her.
“Ross was a fine catch,” Vivian said defensively, fussing with the lace at the throat of her nightgown. “From a good family. Respected. Handsome. Wealthy in his own right. And willing to take on the children of another man. Not every man is willing to do that, you know. I can tell you, I was very grateful to have him come calling. I couldn't manage the plantation by myself. I was in such a weakened state after Jefferson died, I just didn't know if I'd ever function again.”
And along came Ross Leighton. Like a vulture. Like a wolf scenting lambs. Willing to take on another man's children? Willing to take their innocence. Vivian had no idea just how willing Ross had been.
Because Laurel had never told her.
“Don't tell Mama. . . . No one will ever believe you. . . .”
She wheeled toward her mother to let the terrible secret loose at long last, but the words turned to concrete in her mouth. What good would it do now? Would it bring Savannah back? Would it give them back their childhood? Or would it only prolong the pain and mire them all more deeply in the muck of the past?
“I did what was best for all of us,” Vivian said imperiously. “Not that you or your sister ever showed a moment's appreciation. Your father spoiled you both so.
“And Savannah was always jealous of any attention I might have garnered for myself from Jefferson. She was no different with Ross. I swear, I don't know where that girl got her wildness, her stubbornness. I'd say from Jefferson's side; Caroline is just that way, you know. But Caroline never had an interest in men—”
“Stop it!” Laurel shouted, her voice ripping across the quiet, elegant room. Her mother gaped at her, mouth working soundlessly, like a bass out of water. “It's none of your business who Aunt Caroline sleeps with. At least she's happy. At least she's not deluding herself into believing she needs to have a relationship with a man no matter what kind of slime he is.”
“No, she's not like Savannah that way, is she?” Vivian said archly.
Her own anger simmering, she resumed her pacing along the length of the half-tester bed. “I don't know how many times I told her to be a lady. All the hours of training, of showing by example how a lady should comport herself, and none of it doing any good at all. She lived like a tramp—dressing like a slut, going off to bed with any man who crooked his finger. God, the shame of it was almost too much to bear!” she said bitterly. “And now she's killed because of it.”
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself as if trying to physically hold herself together. A fresh sheen of tears glistened in her eyes as she resumed her pacing. “I don't know how I'll be able to hold my head up in town.”
“That's all you care about?” Laurel demanded, stunned. “You think Savannah embarrassed you by falling prey to a psychopath?”
Vivian wheeled on her, eyes flashing. “That's not what I said!”
“Yes, it is! That's exactly what you said. Christ, she was your daughter!”
“Yes, she was my daughter,” Vivian snapped, her face turning a mottled red as long-held feelings surfaced inside her. “And I will never understand how that could be, how God could give me a child like her—so beautiful on the outside and rotten to the core. I will never understand—”
“Because we kept it from you!” Laurel cried.
She clamped her hands on top of her head and turned around, everything within her in turmoil. She had tried to tamp the truth down inside her again, to bury it for all time, but it ripped loose and clawed its way free. Savannah was dead indirectly because of what Ross had made her into. And because I kept the silence.
The guilt was like a vise, twisting and twisting, crushing her. She couldn't change the past, but someone had to pay. Vivian couldn't go on living in her watercolor fantasies. Ross couldn't be allowed to escape the consequences of his actions. Justice had to be served somehow, some way.
Vivian watched her with wary eyes. She swiped a strand of ash blond hair back behind her ear in an impatient gesture. “What do you mean, ‘kept it from me'? Kept what from me?”
“That Ross, the wonderful, well-bred, charitable knight in shining armor who swept in and rescued you, molested your daughter.” She met her mother's shocked stare evenly, unblinking. “He used her, in the carnal sense, night after night, week after week, year after year.”
“You're lying!” Vivian said on a gasp. She clutched a hand to her throat and swallowed twice, as if the words Laurel had spoken were gagging her. “That's a horrid lie! Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because it's the truth and because I'm sick to death of keeping it a secret!” Laurel advanced on her mother, her hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at her side. “Everything Savannah became is because of Ross Leighton. Now she's dead, and the one person who should be inconsolable is more concerned about her own image than her daughter's murder. I can't stand it!”
The slap connected solidly with her cheek and snapped her head to the side. She didn't try to block it or the second blow Vivian glanced off her shoulder. She deserved worse—not for what she had said to her mother, but for what she hadn't said all those years ago. Vivian shoved her, then backed away, her eyes wild, her lips twitching and trembling.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” she spat, her silky hair falling across her forehead and into her eyes. “Lies. That's all you have in you is lies! You lied to those people in Georgia, now you're lying to me! You hated Ross from day one. You'd do anything to hurt him!”
“Yes, I hate him. I hate him for taking my father's place, but I hate him more for taking my sister.” The incredulity she had known during those years came back in a violent rush. How could their mother not have realized? How could that have gone on in her house without her suspecting? “Didn't you ever wonder where he was all those nights, Mama? Or were you just thankful he wasn't coming to your bed?”
Vivian's face washed white, and she brought a trembling hand up to press against her mouth, to press back the cry, to hold back the bile that rose in her throat. She'd never cared for sex. It was messy and revolting, all that grunting and sweating. She'd never questioned Ross's
calm acceptance of her disinclination to share her bed. She'd never thought once of where he might be relieving his manly urges—as long as he was discreet, she didn't care. But with her own daughter?
No. It couldn't be. Things like that didn't happen in good families.
“No,” she said softly, rejecting the possibility with her mind, with her body. She flung her hands out as if to push the idea away.
“Yes,” Laurel insisted. “He came to her room two or three nights a week and had his way with her, whatever way he happened to be in a mood for—intercourse, oral sex—”
“Shut up! Shut up! I won't listen to this!” Vivian planted her hands over her ears to try to block out the ugly accusations. Laurel grabbed her wrists and jerked them down, shouting in her face.
“You will listen! You should have listened twenty years ago! If you had given a damn about anyone but yourself, you would have seen, you would have known,” she said, the realization bringing tears of bitterness to cloud her vision. “I wouldn't have been afraid to tell you. I wouldn't have been afraid of losing your love. I was too young to know you weren't capable of giving any.”
Her mother pulled back from her, reeling as if she had been struck full in the face. “I always loved you!”
“When it was convenient. When we were good little girls and no trouble. That's not love, Mama,” Laurel murmured, despair choking her. “If you had loved us, you would have seen that Savannah needed help, that something was wrong, that Ross was a child molester.”
“He wasn't!” He couldn't be. She couldn't bear the thought of it.
“Ross Leighton treated your daughter like a whore until she believed that was all she could ever be.”
The red had crept back into Vivian's face, and her eyes bulged out like T-Grace Delahoussaye's. “I don't believe you. You're a vicious little liar. Get out. Get out of my house!” she screamed. “You're not my daughter! I don't have any daughters!”
Laurel gave her a long, hard stare. The hurt was sharp and deep, the disillusionment absolute. “You know something,” she said quietly, the fury spent. “I wish to God that were true.”
