But she had mourned, and now she lost her temper.
“How dare you! Why do you think she ran away? You caught her with Richard that day, you screamed at her like a fishwife, you damn near gave her a concussion, and all this when he’d already broken it off, so you had what you wanted anyway! You tell me, Di, why do you think she ran away?”
Impossible to catch those words back, impossible not to see the horror and pain draining her older sister, impossible not to realize, too late, the slamming impact of her anger in the pallor that spread across Diana.
“At long last,” Lucy murmured, almost to herself, but Laura could not turn to her.
“Di?”
She moved towards Diana, but it was Diana’s turn now to retreat, to avoid her touch. She would have given anything at that moment, anything, to draw the pain from her sister’s eyes. Diana said nothing. She only backed up, and backed up, until she stumbled. Then, with what might have been a sob, she turned and ran back into the club.
“Oh, my God.” Laura sagged against the car. “What did I say?”
Lucy said slowly, “Only what no one else has.”
“I don’t understand.” She was shaking in reaction. Somewhere in Diana’s shock and Lucy’s calm acceptance lay some key whose existence she hadn’t suspected.
Lucy drummed her fingers against the wheel. The sound, slight as it was, slivered Laura’s already fragmenting nerves.
“Francie slept with Richard the spring before you ran away, right?”
She hadn’t thought that anyone would doubt that. But the last few seconds had taught her a tardy caution. “I can’t say—”
“Oh, yes, you can,” Lucy interrupted. “You knew if anyone did, and I don’t think they were particularly discreet. Francie wanted Di to find out, and Richard no longer cared. Oh, he was a damn fool, he never could see that Francie meant trouble, but I will give him credit. He kept his mouth shut. We’ve all suspected, and Di’s asked, and I’ve asked, but Richard has never said anything. Not a word. Ever.”
“No. No—”
“That’s right.” Lucy let her absorb the impact. “Di’s never known for sure.”
“Until now.” The thought made her ill.
“Until now,” Lucy agreed.
~•~
The sun set as Laura walked along the far side of the ornamental lake towards Ashmore Magna, out of sight of the Folly. This time, she did not worry that he might catch sight of the silver car from the glints of the dying sun; she had parked the Jaguar out on the public road half a mile down and hacked her way through the gate passwords with only two tries. Why she was behaving like a lovesick girl, she did not begin to justify to herself.
She just wanted to be near him.
This is called stalking, my girl.
The binocular bag bumped along her hip as she skirted the north end of the lake and briefly came into view of the Folly. His car was parked in the front circular drive, and windows shone on the first story, so she had to be careful that he didn’t look out and catch sight of her. She walked rapidly through the front gardens – hard to tell, in the gathering shadows, if Richard was keeping up his mother’s pride and joy – and mounted the steps to the front portico of Ashmore Magna.
The front door was locked, and she had long since lost the key Peggy had once given her. Take this, Laurie. If you ever need to come over here – for any reason at all – you come. If we’re not home, wait for us. Peggy putting the key into her palm, and closing her hand around it. There’s no need to tell your da about this, do you agree?
She wondered where the key had gone. She’d worn it on a chain around her neck, hidden beneath her blouse, for several years.
She did not spare any time for the famous pillar tonight. Instead, she walked to the end of the portico, then walked down two steps and up three to the southern Venetian porch at the side of the house. At some time – probably during the reign of the Great Lakes shipping heiress, the Edwardian trophy wife whose fortune had kept Ashmore Park going for the last century – the Ashmore family had added an enclosed piazza off the master suite, and that she remembered how to get into. Richard had showed her one day when it was pouring down rain.
She lifted the handle to the French doors and carefully shifted it slightly to the right, and success! The door swung open. She stepped inside.
Breaking and entering. How many more crimes are you going to commit tonight?
She sat down on a cushioned bench beneath one of Peggy’s hanging baskets and drew a deep breath.
Ashmore Magna. Sanctuary. House of light and laughter and love and safety.
A home built on Philip’s quiet strength and Peggy’s warm Irish lilt and open arms.
She had so many memories here, and across the years, they still warmed her.
When she was ten, Peggy had brought her out here one afternoon and explained to her the changes that would soon happen to her body. Always the nurse, she had taken a down-to-earth approach that Laura had tried to emulate when it came time to tell Meg. A year later, Peggy had judged it time to tell her about sex before she heard the wrong thing from her classmates, and Laura had listened with eagerness and horror – surely no one really liked doing that? It was, said Peggy reassuringly, the grandest thing in the world when you were in love beyond all thought. It had occurred to her later, going home, that Richard and Diana must be having sex when he climbed the tree to her bedroom at night.
No doubt that Richard and Diana were in love beyond all thought. But she knew better than to ask Peggy, who would not, Laura thought, have liked hearing that her son was engaging in behavior so risky to his future.
In that master bedroom on the other side of the inner French doors, Diana had dressed for her wedding, her sisters fluttering around her. With the mother of the bride dead, the mother of the groom had drawn double duty, and Peggy had done her part, even though, in retrospect, Laura remembered, her lips had been uncharacteristically tight. That hadn’t kept her from crying when her son walked her to her seat in the front row and then took his place to wait for his bride.
Laura crossed her arms on the window rail and looked out towards Richard’s house.
A few years later, in front of the same mirror, Peggy had hemmed one of Diana’s dance dresses for her so that she had something to wear to her junior prom. She hadn’t planned to go – she had been so shy that boys tended to overlook her – but at the last moment, the equally shy Neil Redmond had asked her out. His mother was one of Peggy’s garden club friends, and the moms had cooked it up between them. Peggy had helped her get ready, showing her how to put her hair up in a French twist, and Philip had taken her picture, knowing that Dominic would never think to do so.
When she and Neil had continued to date that summer, Peggy had taken her aside to remind her that premarital sex was a sin and she should wait for her husband on her wedding night when it would be right in the eyes of God. Oh, Peggy, what a total hash I made of that. She had been mortified; the weekend before, she had let Neil slip his hand inside her bra. And she had felt put upon. Her sisters hadn’t obeyed the rules, so why should she?
Two days before she left home, she had come to see Peggy for the last time. Philip had been on rounds at the hospital, so she had missed him, but at least she and Peggy had shared one last cup of tea.
She wished – oh, how she wished – that her last words to Peggy had not been a lie. I’ll be over next week to help you plant the hyacinths. Knowing that, by that time, she would be a continent away.
I miss you, Peggy. I wish – I wish you could know your granddaughter.
Richard ran across her line of sight, about fifty feet away.
She pulled back into the shadows, although of course he couldn’t see her. It was too dark in the piazza, and he wasn’t paying attention anyway. She trained the binoculars on him. He was jogging, judging from the running shoes and headphones, following the drive around the lake. And, the wicked part of her couldn’t help noticing, he looked just as good from
the back as he did from the front.
So he still ran. He had run track in high school. The basketball team had tried to recruit him, but Richard had preferred a more solitary sport that did not interfere with his studies.
He disappeared around the curve of the lake.
The stars began to appear in the indigo of the twilight.
She still remembered all the constellations. Long ago midnights, she and Richard had accompanied Philip down to the James for stargazing; Diana, refusing to face the mosquitoes, had gladly ceded her place to Laura, and Francie had not been invited. Through the lens of the telescope he and his father had built, Richard had shown her worlds – lunar craters, rings of Saturn, sister stars of the Pleiades, galaxies pin wheeling through space….
Such a rich texture he had, even as a boy. Whether it came from a youth steeped in the history of a family living on the same land for three hundred years, or from the books that he read so passionately, he had grown up like no other young man she had ever known. The social recognition his looks and intelligence might have won for him from his peers, he had shrugged away; he had devoted himself to Diana early on, and the time he spared from her and his studies, he spent in developing a rich inner life. He’d bypassed normal teenage activities to build his telescope, learn to fly, sketch the old houses to determine the secrets of their structures.
He’d developed ideas that did not always sit well with his elders. Early in his teens, the erstwhile altar boy had stopped accompanying his parents to church, declaring that God had walked away from the universe. Peggy had been horrified for fear that her boy was going to hell; Philip, amused, said it was mild for teenage rebellion; Dominic had said darkly that godlessness was no more than he had expected of that boy. Later, a brief infatuation with the philosophies of Ayn Rand had provoked outright laughter from Philip. His plan to take Diana backpacking in the Smokies before he left for college had caused such uproar from all the parents, who were afraid that they would run off and get married, that Diana, no athlete, had happily waved her boyfriend off on his adventure and stayed home.
An explorer of worlds, of the inner universe. Once, fresh from reading The Fountainhead, she’d told Richard that she fancied him as Roark. Richard, always the straight arrow, had laughed and said that he hoped she didn’t think he had a superman complex. Of course, she never told him that she saw herself as Dominique. What if he’d laughed? Worse, what if he’d remembered the famous bedroom scene that had so thrilled her that she could practically recite it word for word?
She would have been humiliated beyond salvage.
She waited a long time before he ran by again.
By the time he emerged from the trees and paused on the steps to the Folly, fingers against his jaw to measure his heartbeat, it was completely dark. She saw light when the front door opened briefly, and knew that there was little chance he would see her the rest of the evening. It was safe to go closer.
Stalking, Laura. Stalking. How would you like it if someone did this to you?
She ignored her inner voice.
She followed his path around the lake, walked through the grove lining the road to the Folly, and settled down against a tree at the end of the drive. From here, she could see two sides of the house – the front and the western side, dominated by an enormous bank of windows that took up most of the surface of the wall. She trained the binoculars on the window, lit by a diffuse light from somewhere beyond her sight in the house, but nothing happened for a long time. He was probably showering after his run.
She would not think about Richard in the shower.
Determined to discipline her mind, she made it a game to name the stars showing up in the June evening sky. She had just found brilliant Vega in the Summer Triangle when a movement at the window caught her attention.
She saw him pass by, turn on a desk lamp, lean over a computer screen that instantly flashed up colored graphics. A slanting board – a drafting table? – cut off part of her view. He appeared over the board, his shoulders moving; he must be working on a design.
And, oh, he looked so good, looking down intently at his work, reaching up to adjust his glasses, taking a sip from a mug. She shouldn’t be thinking that. She shouldn’t be thinking how her heart had tripped at the sight of him jogging by. She should be thinking of the pain in Diana’s eyes, her utter hopelessness as she had run back into the club. She should be thinking of Francie sleeping forever in the depths of the Chesapeake. But here, now, watching him, seeing his concentration, watching him lift his head and stare off in thought, seeing the satisfaction of a solution flash across his face, she could only think how much she had loved him.
Remember Francie, remember Di, remember….
I must be the wickedest, most perverse woman in the world.
His concentration broke at one point. He turned his head and said something, and Laura leaned sideways to see if she could catch sight of Julie. But Julie, just out of sight, frustrated her; Laura glimpsed only the hint of a radiant ponytail and the blue-jeaned curve of a pretty teenage figure.
Reward! Richard laughed, and all stress fled his face. He reached out. Julie moved in towards him, into the curve of his waiting arm, and he hugged her in close.
She barely saw his loving, teasing smile, for the tears misting her eyes.
He’s a good father.
Dominic had never smiled at her with such love.
Julie said something and motioned towards the desk. He turned then, and his back masked his movements from Laura, until he lifted something to his ear and she saw that he was using the telephone. After a minute, he shook his head and replaced the receiver. She wasn’t home, Laura surmised, and did not want to face her jealousy.
He’s not treated like a husband, so why should he act like one?
Julie pointed back at the drafting table, as if to say, Get back to work, Dad, and Laura noticed in amusement that Richard did just that. Julie herself disappeared, then reappeared at the front side of the house, opening double glass doors into an atrium to expose a room with a baby grand in front of a wall of etched glass. For a moment she stood there, not more than a few yards away, and then she turned and sat down at the piano, her back to Laura.
Laura had to strain to hear the music through the open doors of the atrium. Something classical, she thought, and she appreciated the depth of her niece’s skill; Julie’s hands flew over the keyboard surely, knowingly. She switched her binoculars back to Richard and caught him watching Julie, with a look that battered at her defenses.
Later, Richard made another phone call; again, he was out of luck. He shrugged and buckled down to work, and Laura began to hate the woman occupying his thoughts.
But impossible to resent Julie, playing her heart out. She finally heard enough to identify the Pathetique, third movement, and knew that Julie had inherited Diana’s great skill. She wished she dared to move closer, dared to walk through the open doors and request entrance, dared to hear for herself if Julie had inherited Richard’s great passion.
But she had locked herself out fourteen years before.
She brushed at her eyes and lifted the glasses again. She watched as Julie played, as Richard’s pencil stopped moving, as he turned his head to smile at his daughter.
Lucky, lucky Julie. A beloved daughter of a loving father. Like Meg; like Diana and Francie. Only she had known the cold whip of a father’s voice.
She couldn’t stand any more. It hurt too much, reminded her of too many past rejections, too many times when Dominic had given his attention to Francie. She had only been Francie’s shadow, after all.
For Dominic, for Richard, for them all.
As she turned to leave, she saw Richard lifting the phone.
~•~
Later, Laura sat out on the balcony and stared out over the lights on the Atlantic. Rachmaninoff poured through her headphones, shutting out the gaiety of Saturday night. It did not quite shut out the ringing of the telephone behind her.
Mark, she sup
posed. He had told her to check in, and she had forgotten. In the depths and heights of this incredible day, Mark had slipped away from her memory. The life she had built with his brother, and now had to build without him, his own power over her present and his plan for the future he wanted with her, seemed like the remnants of an unremarkable dream.
She thought about Diana.
She wondered where her sad, lost sister was tonight. Still at the club, most likely. She crossed her arms on the balcony railing and wondered how Diana, once-lovely Diana, was coping with the day’s revelations, shut away from that circle of love Richard had built for himself across the river.
He threw her out.
We’re going to kill her.
Lucy, left to deal with the wreckage of Francie’s revenge, unaware of the true demons from which Diana fled…. She thought of Lucy’s careful neutrality about her pregnancy, about John who had died and Meg who had lived, and it came to her then that she would do anything for her sisters.
If it meant giving a concert, so be it.
If it meant not seeing Richard…. She’d told him she didn’t want to see him, and she had meant it for at least ten minutes after she’d stalked away from him in the lobby last night. She thought of Diana’s dazed eyes and Francie’s spilled blood, and she hardened her heart against him. She thought of Julie smiling at him, and she wanted nothing so much as to walk again into his arms.
She sat late into the night, listening to her music, ignoring the telephone that continued to ring until eleven. Only then did she remember that it couldn’t have been Mark; he had taken Meg to a baseball game.
She rang voice mail for her messages, and then she knew who had not answered her phone.
Chapter 9: Diana, Beginning
I STOPPED KEEPING A JOURNAL years ago.
I don’t like to write things down. Once it’s in writing, it’s real somehow; it has an existence that can’t be denied. It becomes truth. And I’m no good with the truth, never have been.
My lawyer gave me a yellow pad last night and told me to start making notes on everything that happened between Richard and me, to help us build our case for getting what I want out of him. I asked why, and Kevin said I was going to need something more than Francie.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 19
