Proud? She wouldn’t have used that word to describe the remembered awe on his face, the look of a young man violently in love.
“So,” fished Julie, “I guess they were mad for each other.”
By now, she ought to be getting used to Julie’s hidden agenda. “Yes,” she said to nothing in particular, and waited for the next bombshell.
Silence for a few minutes. The Virginia countryside flew past them, the highway lined with the sentinel trees blending into the lush greenness of summer. Julie accelerated slightly over the speed limit, with another sidelong glance, and Laura dug in her mental heels and refused the admonition that the girl obviously wanted.
All those remarks about Richard and Diana…. She surveyed Julie from the corner of her eye. Maybe the girl really didn’t know anything. As close-mouthed and private as Richard had proved to be, maybe his daughter had no idea why the marriage had broken up. Maybe he had never told her about the springs of their courtship, the night he had brought over her engagement ring, the day he had danced with his bride in his arms.
Meg had often begged for details of her parents’ courtship. Had Julie shown the same curiosity and met Richard’s stonewall?
“Did my mother date much when she was my age?” Julie’s question, when it finally came, cemented Laura’s suspicion. “I mean, besides my father? I’ve heard how they met in grade school and hardly had eyes for anyone else, but – I mean, what if he hadn’t been around? Did other guys ask her out?”
Laura took a minute to sort out her thoughts. She didn’t doubt that an entire history lay behind the question, but what it might contain, she couldn’t hazard a guess. Unless Julie had somehow heard about Diana’s men – but surely that wouldn’t shock the girl. She knew her father dated. Wouldn’t she expect her mother to enjoy the same liberties?
“I don’t remember,” Laura said. “Your mom and dad were always together. I don’t remember her dating anyone else.”
“Are you sure?” Julie sounded intense. “Didn’t anyone else ever ask her out?”
Laura shot her a quick look and registered it all at once: the tension of Julie’s hand on the steering wheel, the quick rise and fall of her young breasts, the rapid blinking of her eyes. Now what was Julie up to?
But wait…. Lucy had said something…. And Richard: Julie doesn’t have much of a social life… Julie doesn’t date much yet. Julie, with that incredible face, ought to be beating the boys off with a stick.
Laura took a breath and gambled. “Do you have a boyfriend, Julie?”
Bingo! The girl’s eyes widened, and her hands trembled. Laura leaned over and steadied the wheel, thankful that the roads were free of traffic.
“Pull off on the access road ahead.”
Without a word, the girl obeyed. She regained control of herself quickly; she must have the iron will of the Abbotts. She slowed the car down on the shoulder, staring straight ahead, and if her chin quivered, it was only for a second.
“Cut the motor,” Laura said.
Julie did as she was told.
“Now,” said Laura, “look at me.”
The girl hesitated, grasping for that last one second of independence, but a lifetime of obedience forced her to turn slowly in her seat. Laura stared deep into mirror-green eyes fighting back the threat of tears and reminded herself that, for all that crafty intelligence, behind those eyes lived a daughter sheltered and protected from the adult realities of her world.
Still, she couldn’t allow Julie to run circles around her anymore.
“You don’t date very much, do you?”
“No, ma’am,” Julie whispered, and a stray tear – Laura would swear it was genuine – slipped out of one eye.
“Why?”
She could barely hear her niece. “No one asks me.”
Oh, Lord! Why was written all over Julie’s face. No teenage boy was going to risk rejection by asking the most beautiful girl in the class for a date. She felt a spurt of irritation for Richard; he should have dealt with this, not left his daughter to wonder if she was her mother reborn. “Have you talked to your dad about this?”
Julie’s answer surprised her. “Yes. We – he wanted to know how come I didn’t go to the prom a few weeks ago. I guess I must have talked about it some, that I wanted to go. Anyway,” she swallowed, “he asked if I needed money for a dress, and I had to tell him that I wasn’t going. He asked how come.”
Score one for Richard. At least, his daughter felt that she could confide in him. “What did you say?”
“The truth.” Julie’s hand lifted to the tear. “No one asked me. Not even one of the geeks. There’s a guy I like, he’s sort of quiet—” she looked defiantly at her aunt, as though Laura might despise such a choice— “he studies a lot, he’s real smart, and I thought he might ask me because we worked together on a history project and we got along real well. But he didn’t.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Laura said gently. She touched her niece’s hair experimentally, wondering if the girl would accept her comfort. “He’s got an ego as fragile as glass, and he wasn’t about to ask you out and have you turn him down.”
“That’s what Dad said.” Laura gave Richard points. “He said maybe Mike figured I’d already been asked. He said the guys in my class are too young to appreciate me, but in a few years it’ll get better.” Julie wiped her hand across her eyes. “But what am I supposed to do until then? A guy at church asked me out, and he’s in college, and—”
She fell silent. Laura prompted, “And?”
Julie said reluctantly, “And Dad said no, he’s too old for me. He’s twenty.”
Laura rolled her eyes and then hoped that Julie hadn’t seen. Too bad she couldn’t tell Julie the reason for Richard’s fear, that at seventeen he’d been climbing a tree into Diana’s bedroom. “Fathers are like that, Julie. Your dad’s no different. Meg’s dad worried just as much about her. His greatest fear was that she might get pregnant before she got out of school.”
Julie’s eyes widened at that. “No one has to worry about me.”
“I’m sure they don’t.”
A few seconds of silence. Then Julie said unexpectedly, “How about you? Did you date much when you were young?”
Leave it to the truly young to wound with a mere word; she didn’t think Julie even realized what she had said. “No, I didn’t. Not much, anyway. I only had one boyfriend.”
“Why? Were guys scared of you?”
She hadn’t the faintest idea what to answer. “I don’t think so. I was pretty shy. Besides, my father didn’t allow me to date until I was almost seventeen, and I went and got a job in a bookstore after school at the start of my senior year, so I really didn’t have the time.”
“You had a job? Really?” Julie’s interest perked. “I’m going to work for Lucy this summer when I get back from music camp. I want to buy a car. I don’t like driving Grandma’s car.”
“I had a car.” Laura pondered briefly the wisdom of telling the truth. “I needed the money.”
Maybe her tone warned Julie. She saw a curious light come into her niece’s eyes. “You did? Why? Were you saving for college?”
“No. I was saving up to run away.”
Her words hit Julie hard. The girl’s eyes snapped open abruptly; the lock of hair she had twisted around a finger jerked taut. The silence of a few seconds stretched out into a long string, vibrating with Julie’s shock.
“But you were still seventeen when you left.”
Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this non sequitur. She gave Julie a quick glance and saw the wheels turning in that active mind. “Right. I left in June, right after I graduated—”
“But,” said Julie slowly, “you got a job a – a whole year before then—” She turned and faced Laura. “You planned it,” she whispered. “You planned it. You knew for a whole year ahead of time that you were going to run away.”
For all the questions her sisters had asked, for that terrible scene ringing with accusat
ions her first evening back, no one had fingered the core of her disappearance. Lucy had asked; Richard had assumed he knew; Diana had only wanted to know about Francie. No one had realized the true architect of the day she and Francie had walked out the door forever.
Until now. Julie, a toddler at the time, whose memories of her must have come from hearing the rest of the family talk – Julie had looked straight into the heart of the past and seen the truth.
It should not come as such a shock that Julie read her so well. Hadn’t she looked at Julie earlier today, in that first moment of meeting, and recognized herself?
She met Julie’s eyes. “You’re right. I planned it.”
“For a year,” Julie whispered. “Why?”
“I needed the time. I had to graduate from high school.”
“But I don’t understand. Why? What was so terrible that you knew for a year—”
She had never told anyone, not Francie, not Cam. Perhaps here, in this car, on this morning, it was time to finally admit what Dominic Abbott had done to her.
She had to go easy. She reminded herself that Julie was a child, and then just as quickly rejected that thought forever. She had been Julie’s age when she had made an adult decision to grab the reins of her life.
If Julie wanted to know, then she could deal with the truth.
“The summer after my junior year, I dated a boy named Neil Redmond. He was cute, just a really nice guy. Very shy, like me—”
“I’ve heard of him,” Julie broke in. “My dad knows him, I think.”
“I’m not surprised,” Laura said. “Neil’s mother was a friend of your grandmother – they fixed us up. Anyway, Neil and I dated all summer – we went to movies, and he took me to the July 4th celebration down near the old city, and we just hung out together – he was a very restful person for me, and I think I was the same for him.”
She stopped. Just how much could she tell Julie? But, even if Richard was bent on keeping his daughter pure and unsullied, surely Lucy had clued her in. Surely Julie knew something.
“I don’t think we were in love – he was seventeen, and I was still sixteen, but—”
Julie solved her dilemma. “You had sex?”
Richard’s little girl was a lot savvier than he thought she was.
“No,” Laura said definitely. She could do her auntly duty and deliver a little morality lesson. “I never had sex until I met my husband, and that’s really a good life plan to follow, Julie.” Even if he picked me up in a night club and I went with him because he had a lot of money in his wallet. “But we were teenagers, so we fooled around some. And then my father found out.”
“Really?” The girl sounded startled and a little worried. “You can tell by just looking?”
Interesting. So Julie had done some experimenting of her own. “No. He found out because Neil wanted to discern if he had a vocation to the priesthood and he went to talk to my father because Daddy had been a priest, and Daddy asked him about his experience, and I guess Neil didn’t deny it fast enough. Daddy told him to stay away from me, and then he ordered me not to see Neil again because—” Dominic’s order still rankled after all these years. She said flatly, “Because he was concerned that I would divert Neil from God. That’s what my mother had done to him.”
Julie stared at her.
“Something else happened – oh, I think it was a few months earlier, maybe in late spring. My father was pretty tough on me during voice lessons. He did train me – in fact, he spent quite a lot of time working with me, but I’m a mezzo soprano, and I guess I wasn’t enough of a challenge for him.” She was surprised when Julie nodded – had she already heard this? “We were listening to the opera – the Met used to broadcast on Sunday afternoon – and I was notating the music because I liked the arrangement, and Daddy looked at my music notebook and realized I was notating everything perfectly.”
She saw the moment when Julie caught on. “You’re kidding! You have perfect pitch?”
“Yes,” said Laura. “I’m the only one in the family, unless—?” Julie shook her head. “It’s very useful when you write music, believe me. I can hear music and tell you exactly what key it’s in – I can tell you all the chords, I can even hear parts in a choral piece and write them down correctly. I can sight-read anything, and I rarely sing pitchy. I can sing a cappella without hearing a note, and – this is really useful – I can anticipate the next note based on the key and the chords. If I hear a motif I like, I can remember it to write it down later. Of course, Daddy realized right away what I had and that he could use that. So,” she drew a breath, “right after he finished telling me that I couldn’t see Neil anymore, he said that Francie could go ahead with her plans for Juilliard, but he needed me to stay here and go to school at William and Mary so that I could work for him.”
Julie looked bewildered. “So what was so terrible about that? He was a great musician.”
“No.” Laura made her voice forceful. “He wasn’t. He was a good conductor, but his compositions – don’t buy too far into that myth about the misunderstood genius, Julie. There’s a reason his work never caught on. He was – well, he was Salieri, just without the fame.” Julie looked shocked. She probably couldn’t comprehend that a daughter could say such terrible things about her father. “But that’s not why I decided to run away – and that’s when I made the decision. I stood there, listening to him lay out my future, and I knew I had to get away.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I was the sacrificial lamb,” Laura explained. “He was determined to keep one of us by his side – I don’t know why, maybe he was still obsessed with my mother. He needed one of us to be his muse. It was supposed to be your mother, but she escaped when she and your dad got married. He never did get his hooks into Lucy because she didn’t live with us. And Francie—” She hesitated. It still felt disloyal to tell the truth about Francie’s voice. “Francie didn’t have a professional voice, her tone wasn’t quite there, it was a little muddy. That’s why he was willing to let her go away. But I did have a professional voice, and I had the pitch, and that’s why he said I had to stay there with him. He said – he said I owed him.”
Silence. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat.
“So – you decided to run away because your father wanted you to work for him, but you couldn’t leave because of school?”
Laura nodded. “I had to make money so I could leave. It took a long time to build up a nest egg. I figured I needed five thousand dollars, and I didn’t make much working after school and babysitting.”
“Five thousand?” Julie sounded fascinated. “What did you do?”
“I took my mother’s jewelry.” Julie’s eyes flared in acknowledgment, and Laura smiled. So her theft had finally been discovered. How long had it taken Dominic to find out – five years, ten? She held out her hand and twisted the emerald ring on her finger. “See this? It’s the only piece I ever tracked down later. At the time, it brought me okay money. She had an incredible jewelry collection from the earl, and she took it when she left him for good. And Daddy had bought me some savings bonds that I cashed in. I had about four thousand, when I finally left, so that’s what I lived on. The jewelry was for reserve.”
And it would never have been needed, if Francie hadn’t given birth prematurely.
“I don’t know how you did it.” Julie reached out for her hand and angled the ring to catch the sunlight. It glowed, green fire, throwing stars against the leather of the car. “How could you live like that, for a year, for a whole year, knowing you were going to walk out? Didn’t it bother you? Didn’t you feel guilty when someone would talk about the future, or make plans, and you knew you weren’t going to be there?”
She cast back in time to that last year, that last Christmas, when she had celebrated with her father and sisters, and each present opened, each carol sung, each cookie baked, had reminded her that she would never celebrate with them again. Never again, never again, had echoe
d in the Alleluia she had sung at midnight Mass. That last Easter, she had sat at the Ashmores’ kitchen table, listening to Richard explain tangents and cosines, and she had watched the pencil in his hand drawing his incomprehensible axes. The overhead light had glinted off his hair and shadowed his eyes, and a strange despairing relief had spread through her. Despair that she would never see him again, that he would never again say patiently, “Laurie, stop daydreaming, you have to pass this test.” Relief that she was leaving them all. Relief that she would never again suffer the reality of her own flaws, flaws so great that her father wanted only to exploit her and the love of her life preferred her sister.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t feel guilty.”
“But you were lying to them,” and the shocked accusation in Julie’s voice reminded Laura all over again of the duality in the girl. The princess of Ashmore Park hadn’t learned yet that even idols sometimes did what they must to survive. “You didn’t even tell anyone what was wrong. You didn’t give anyone a chance to make it up. You – you—” she hunted for the right word. “You deceived them.”
Ah, the idealism of youth.
Laura said gently, “Do you ever deceive anyone, Julie?”
“Of course not! I would never!”
Then Julie stopped, now beyond that first instinct to deny. Laura watched in interest as Julie’s hot rebuttal failed on her lips and a quick light of knowledge flashed across the girl’s face, and waited, ready to knock her niece swiftly and decisively off her high horse.
But Julie, she saw, Julie with that first-class Ashmore mind, Julie ticked off her options in lightning order and realized that the game was up.
Julie changed then, as the mask shattered and fell away. The too-wide eyes of innocence became older eyes, quick and rich with knowledge; her hands, frozen in flight, relaxed and fell into her lap.
She said directly, “How did you know?”
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 30
