In a spiraling delirium, she had walked away, leaving her earliest and closest fellow traveler to come to the end of her journey. She’d lost child, sister, hero, lover; she’d nearly lost her life. For God’s sake, stop crying! I have to think what to do…. She’s bleeding so badly. Old remembrance, barely dreamed, barely known, and the hysterical cry: Oh, what have I done, what have I done…. Later, the blood she found on her sweater, blood mingled with her own, but not her own.
“So,” said Diana softly, “you killed Francie too.”
And looked Laura straight in the eye, and never blinked.
She’d never heard the words before, but once spoken, they became true. She felt tears falling on her hands, and she looked at them in surprise, astonished that she noticed them in the rapier pain of her heart.
Diana said coolly, “So you saw her and you left and you blacked out. Not surprising. You were in shock. Forget it, I’d have done it too. Did anyone else know?”
Her heart threatened to stop. “What?”
“Think.” Diana prosecuted her case with a cold verve that Lucy might envy. “Someone helped Francie. She couldn’t plan her way out of a paper sack. She simply wasn’t that organized.” She bent her head over the keyboard. “Plus, if you two had a car, someone gave you the keys to the bridge. You couldn’t have gotten to Ash Marine without them.”
She marveled through her grief. She’d never doubt Diana’s intelligence again. In all these years, she had never once thought of the bridge keys that Francie had magically produced, not even when she herself had stolen them from Dominic’s desk the week before. She reached into her pocket slowly and pulled out the keys. “These?”
Diana’s mouth curled. “Nice try, Laurie. When did you get those?”
“Last week. I found them in Daddy’s desk.”
Diana held out her hand. “As far as I know,” musing lazily, as though she were discussing something inconsequential, something that she really didn’t care about, “only three people had keys. I always had to borrow Daddy’s.”
She spoke slowly, trying to fit the pieces together, “Then how were you planning to get in to meet Francie?”
“I stopped by Ashmore Park when I was looking for Richard, and I took his.”
“But Philip had keys too—”
And Laura stopped. There’s no help in truth. If Diana were telling the truth – and was she? could she trust that Diana wasn’t lying, hadn’t gone mad? – she certainly was not going to tell her that the keys filched from Ashmore Park all those years ago must have belonged to Philip Ashmore. Richard had taken his keys with him. She remembered – oh, the little things she remembered – the clink of his watch and keys on the old piano bench there in the cottage.
And she completed, because she had to, “But Philip would never give his keys to Francie. He’d have told Daddy she was there—”
She stopped, because she saw it too.
Richard. Francie. Philip now, a new wild card. And—
“Exactly.” The first crack in Diana’s composure appeared, the first fissure in her glacial calm. Her hands, still clenched around the keys, were shaking. “And Philip probably did want me dead – he and Peggy wanted me out of Richard’s life—” More cracks now. Francie’s death had started to touch Diana; her eyes were dark now, dark with pain and terror eleven years after the fact. “But Philip was getting rid of me. Richard and I were through – I was giving up, so, oh God, oh God, Daddy had keys! Francie had Daddy’s keys! It was Daddy, wasn’t it, it was, he knew I’d told Richard, he knew Richard wouldn’t protect him—”
“Di, oh, Christ, Di, no, listen – Francie said—”
“Daddy,” sobbed Diana. “Oh, God, Daddy—”
He’d come back now, filling the room, Dominic Abbott, failed composer, master conductor, deserted lover, acquitted killer, son-of-a-bitch father, with his narrow face and his quiet, icy rage. She saw him there, his long, thin fingers touching Diana’s shining hair, caressing Francie’s uplifted cheek, beating out the time like a metronome while Laura struggled to reach that high E.
“My God,” and Laura heard him break the heart of his most trusting victim, “he hated me that much – I gave up Richard for him, and he still hated me—”
“Di—”
Diana jumped up then, and the keyboard cover smashed down, a loud blasphemy against her sobbing as she shoved Laura back from her. Laura stumbled and lost precious seconds as she fell against Dominic’s desk, seconds long enough for Diana to elude her. Seconds behind her sister up the stairs; seconds late before the door to Diana’s bedroom slammed in her face.
“Di! Don’t shut—”
The crash a brutal slash across her words. She threw the door open, and before her lay all that she’d feared.
The mirror smashed to pieces. Diana weeping, tears, blood, every breath a sob. The light carpet beneath already a splotched painting. She stopped Diana before she could rip her other wrist apart.
~•~
Laura’s mind shut down.
She reached for the mirror shard, tried to force it from Diana’s hand. Diana resisted, backing off, and the jagged edge slipped across her hand and ripped into Laura’s palm and fingers.
Their blood mingled, spilled, streaking the gold silk of the ball gown swept to the floor by their struggle. The history of their parents’ love affair lay there, a canvas for a bloody battleground.
Laura couldn’t think; the agony of the slash on her hand drove all consideration from her mind. Diana hung on to her bloody dagger, fighting, sobbing, maniacal in her grief, unreasonable in her pain.
She raised it above her other wrist, and Laura screamed.
“Di! No!”
Diana, distracted, stopped and stared at her.
“Di?” She had to make her voice steady. “Put it down.”
Diana stared at her blankly, then looked at her bloody wrist, then looked at her again, and then looked at the shard.
“Di?”
No reaction. Not a flicker of recognition where they were, what she held in her hand.
Laura had never seen eyes so empty – so crazy.
She had to act. She didn’t stop to think; she went on instinct. She clenched her bloody fist, hauled back, and threw all her strength into a punch that landed squarely on Diana’s jaw.
Diana went down immediately, falling limp and docile against the footboard of the bed, her legs bending askew, a puppet whose strings had been brutally cut. The shard fell aside, now harmless.
“Keep your hand up!”
“I can’t – let me just go—”
“Squeeze! Damn it, squeeze!”
The first aid training necessary to raise a rambunctious child hadn’t allowed for a suicide attempt. She forced herself into calm. If she let herself react, she’d yield to hysteria or – at the very least – to the stinging burn on her palm. She swallowed her panic and ran into the bathroom for a towel.
Diana pre-empted her and proceeded to have the hysterics for both of them.
“How could you say that, Daddy loved me best—”
“He did, Di, he did. Hold still, okay?”
“Not Daddy, he wouldn’t have done that to me—”
“Keep your arm up, Di, I don’t want this to fall off.”
“Why didn’t Francie just leave me alone, stupid bitch, Daddy knew I wasn’t coming back, she should have gone after you—”
“Because Daddy loved you best and she couldn’t deal with it.”
“And Richard threw me out, that can’t be it, but he didn’t want her, not really, he only used her to get back at me because of Julie—”
“Hold your arm up, and squeeze! Can you get your other arm around my neck?”
The room looked like the scene of a massacre. Diana had already lost a lot of blood, and the first towel soaked through in seconds. Laura swallowed hard at the sight. She needed help. She needed Cat Courtney’s cool, Lucy’s unflinching balance, Richard’s quiet strength, but she was only Laura Abbott, tryi
ng to deal with the worst emergency of her life, terrified that her sister would bleed to death on her before help could arrive.
If help could get there in time.
“Come on! Now!” And she yanked Diana to her feet and pushed her into the hall and to the top of the stairs.
Diana didn’t move.
“Go! Go!” And she pressed against her sister’s back.
Diana stirred, and went, slowly. Blood tracked them all the way down the stairs; the carpet would never be the same again.
Her bloody wrist dripped a trail out onto the veranda.
The Jaguar was piled high with clothes. Laura ran back in the house and scooped up her purse and Diana’s car keys.
The sight of the keys woke Diana up. “Not my car! I don’t want blood on the seats.”
Laura stared at her in disbelief. “It’s your blood.”
“No—”
“Oh, my God.” She shoved Diana into the front seat, ruined her blouse as she buckled Diana in, and ground the gears as she roared the Mercedes out of the driveway.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” she asked, and ground the gears again as she attempted in vain to obey a stop sign.
“I don’t know,” murmured Diana, and fainted.
Oh, dear Lord, Diana was going to die on her. She swallowed the terror rising in her throat, shifted awkwardly (she should have let Cam teach her to drive a stick shift), and floored the accelerator down the country road back towards Jamestown.
She hadn’t paid any attention to the roadside before. She’d been more intent on her destination, and she paid for it now. She hadn’t a clue where to find help. Oh, she could phone, ask for help, but she was running out of time. Diana was slumped over, her breathing shallow, her face sheet-rock white, the crimson of her wrist a slash against her pale skin.
Damn! Her cell phone battery flickered out.
Salvation, when it came, appeared in the form of the patrolman who flashed her to the side of the road a mile up. His lecture about her erratic driving and the expired license plates died on her lips when he saw her hand and looked at Diana. He knew first aid, thank God. He rewrapped the tourniquet, gave Diana a fresh handkerchief to staunch the bleeding, and gave them an escort to the ER entrance of a small local hospital.
Then he gave her a ticket for the expired license plates.
“Fine,” said Laura, and threw the ticket on the dashboard. Diana could jolly well take care of it later.
Inside, Diana was already sitting in a glassed-in cubicle, offering her bloodied wrist to the nurse. “What happened?” he asked, briskly unwrapping the makeshift tourniquet. “You’ve got quite a scratch there.”
“I broke a mirror,” Diana whispered.
“An accident,” Laura said, and refused to flinch at his knowing expression. “We were moving furniture, and it fell on her.”
“Right,” he said. “Better get those hands looked at.”
She’d forgotten the slashes on her own hands. She stared down at them, and on cue they burned.
Somehow, she and Diana weathered the hospital. The doctor quizzed them about the injuries to Diana’s wrist and didn’t pretend to believe Laura. “Frankly, Ms. St. Bride,” she said finally, “you can lie your way to kingdom come and back again, and I don’t care, but your sister needs to be watched carefully. She didn’t do a particularly skillful job of this, so I don’t think she seriously set out to kill herself, but you know she’s done this before, don’t you? She’s got scars. Don’t leave her alone tonight.”
The admitting nurse proved another stumbling block. “Next of kin, please.”
“Lucy Maitland,” said Diana.
“No.” Laura thought of Lucy, stroking the antique folds of the baby blanket; she and her baby shouldn’t deal with this. “Richard Ashmore.”
Diana showed the first sign of life since she had disappeared upstairs. “No! Don’t tell him, please! I don’t want him to know!”
No doubting her real alarm; no ignoring her real pain. “Laura St. Bride,” said Laura to the nurse. “I’m her next of kin. I’ll take care of the bill.”
Miracle of miracles, no one looked at her – covered with blood, hair wrecked, hands torn up – and recognized Cat Courtney behind Laura St. Bride. Not, she thought wearily, traipsing down to the business office, that she really cared, but she hadn’t the strength left to deal with the inevitable publicity. The doctor and nurses might dubiously accept her stupid cover story. No self-respecting tabloid would make the same mistake.
Diana said nothing until Laura had checked her out and bundled her back into the Mercedes. She sat quietly in the early afternoon sun, holding her wrist stiffly in her lap, her head tilted against the car window, and winced only slightly when Laura again ground the gears trying to shift out of first. The trauma of the last few hours had barely touched her face, Laura thought, stealing a glance from the corner of her eye; Diana looked frail and unearthly and utterly lovely.
She waited until she’d successfully maneuvered the Mercedes onto the interstate to Hampton before she interrupted her sister’s reverie.
“Your prescription, Di.” The doctor had prescribed a tranquilizer and bed rest once she got home. “Does your pharmacy deliver?” No answer. Ahead loomed the exit ramp for the exclusive riverfront community where Diana lived. She remembered just in time to hit the clutch before she attempted to downshift. “Di?”
Diana said in a small voice, “Why’d you lie for me?”
She wasn’t sure why. Maybe the desire to shield Lucy; maybe the fear of telling Richard. She didn’t doubt for an instant that he was going to blame all of this on her. And don’t you deserve it? Didn’t you push her, because you can’t let Francie go?
She said, “You’re my sister. I love you, Di. You may choose not to believe that, but it’s true and I do. Sometimes there are laws about doctors having to report suicide attempts. I don’t know if that’s true here, but I didn’t want to chance it.”
“Oh.” Still the little girl’s voice. A moment of silence, while Diana fiddled with the bandage. “Do you think Daddy wanted to kill me?”
“No, I don’t.” Surely, the most bizarre conversation she could ever remember having. The sun beat down around them; they rode in well-sprung luxury on the Virginia roads, talking of lost blood and ancient rage. “I swear it couldn’t have been Daddy. Francie said—”
Francie had said, unequivocally, that Richard wanted his wife dead.
Not that Francie had ever been noteworthy for telling the truth.
She said carefully, slowing the car down for the turnoff to Diana’s condo, “You don’t mention Richard. They say the husband is always the first one the police look at.”
“Richard? Oh, heavens, no!” And Diana actually laughed. “No one could seriously think Richard would hurt me! He’d never jeopardize Julie. Besides, he loves me.”
She hadn’t a clue what to answer in the face of that confident declaration. And if this wasn’t interfering in their marriage, what was? “But if you were separated, and he wanted a divorce, and you wouldn’t give him one—”
“If he really wanted a divorce, he could get one.” Diana picked again at her bandage, and Laura snapped at her to leave it alone. “I can’t stop him, I don’t have grounds. Unless,” she glanced sidelong, “you’d like to give me an affidavit on Francie?”
“Forget it.”
“Francie doesn’t matter anyway. He’s found someone else.”
Instinctively, Laura resisted. “Di, you don’t have to tell me—”
“Oh, not just a one-night stand,” said Diana, “though I’m sure he’s had plenty of those. I mean, I have, I can hardly get mad at him if he hooks up, can I? But Lucy thinks he’s interested in some woman in London.”
“London!” Her breath caught.
“It’s his ring.” Diana ducked her head. “He went to London last year, and Lucy thinks he met someone there because he stopped wearing his ring. He hasn’t been back, though, so I don’t know if th
ere’s any truth to it, unless,” and she raised her head again, “she’s come here, and I don’t know.”
Laura stared at the unforgiving plain of that bandaged wrist.
Diana whispered, “He doesn’t want me, you know. For a long time, he still loved me, but it’s all different now. It changed after his parents died, and I kept wondering: is this the day? Will he tell me that he wants a divorce? Sometimes he’d call, and I’d be terrified, because I knew the time had come…. But he never did, and it’s been a year now. Maybe Richard still feels that we’re mated for life.”
London. Julie and I saw you in London….
She’d sung to him, part of that great dark, glistening audience, and as he’d listened to her, some other woman had captured his lonely heart. She’d sung to him, and he’d already been lost to her, snatched again out of her reach by the spinning wheels of fortune.
She’d missed him for the third time.
His parents had just died. He’d rejected Diana. For the first time ever, he had stood alone, save for Julie, and he’d been in a mood to fall in love.
And I never saw him.
She stared ahead, she who had never won him, and said soothingly to she who had won and lost, “You have nothing to worry about, Di. No woman will ever take Richard away.”
She coped, as she’d learned the September before that she could. She hustled Diana upstairs and into bed, in a pale blue bedroom fit for a fairy-tale princess. The parade of visitors Richard had described hadn’t left a mark in this room, as they had not on Diana, the Lady of Shallot floating on bluebell gossamer. Diana had no spirit left in her. She lifted her arms docilely so that Laura could remove her ruined blouse; she stepped out of her jeans, one leg at a time, using her hand on Laura’s shoulder for balance; she held her wrist carefully out of the bath in deference to Laura’s reminder. And she nodded as though she agreed when Laura told her not to call Lucy.
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 34
