The police! I grabbed the phone from Richard.
Six days before, Laurie had told Daddy that she was driving up to help us pack. Francie had decided to visit some friends in Baltimore. They had left on what should have been, at most, a two-hour drive up to UVA to drop Laurie off, and they had disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then, earlier that day, the Baltimore police had called Daddy. They had found the abandoned car, stripped, in a parking lot. Daddy called Francie’s friends and discovered that they knew nothing about the proposed visit. Then he called us.
Then, at Richard’s insistence, he finally called the police. And he called Lucy.
Lucy came slamming into our duplex within ten minutes, and that’s when I discovered that the one person on earth I still trusted had betrayed me too.
She stormed in, went straight over to him, and smacked him full in the face. “This is your fault, you son of a bitch! What were you thinking?” And then she turned on me. “What’s the matter with you? Either sleep with your husband, or get a divorce!” And then she broke down. “They’re so young – my sisters—”
Richard, ashen-faced, picked up his keys and walked out.
Where he went, I can only guess. But he and Francie must have been meeting somewhere all those months, and I think he went there to look for her, hoping against hope that she had gone to earth after that fight in Richmond, taking Laurie with her to mop up her tears. I think – I think – he flew to Ash Marine, to the cottage. He called several hours later from Ashmore Park, where he had flown after his search, and Laurie and Francie were still missing.
After he left, I was left with Lucy.
“You knew,” I said without preamble.
Lucy was crying, great, huge tears running down her face. “Of course I knew,” she managed between sobs, and she didn’t look at me. “God, Di, how could you be so blind?”
I didn’t care about her tears. I’d had enough of all the subterfuge. All I knew was that Lucy, the one person I’d thought I could still trust, had known that my husband was having sex with our sister, and she hadn’t told me. She’d let me skate along in innocence. She’d set me up for that terrible day in Richmond. I grabbed her arm and held it tightly until she glared up at me in pain. “You knew,” I repeated through my teeth, “how did you know? Did you see them together? Was he touching her?”
“Oh, shut up!” Lucy wrenched her arm away. “Is this all you can think about? I saw them. I saw them at Easter dinner. They weren’t touching, they weren’t even looking at each other. But I could tell. The air was practically vibrating between them.”
I was so angry with her, I could have spit nails. “You should have told me,” and I’m sure I was shouting. “What kind of sister are you, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you what kind,” said Lucy, and I remember her shoulders shuddering with her sobs. “You’re my sister, Di, but I’m his, too. I grew up with him. And I’ve seen how miserable he is.” Her voice rose. “You think I don’t know what goes on in this house? How you never speak to each other? How you never sleep together? Are you crazy, Di, did you think he was going to live that way forever?” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He’s so damn lonely, and the only time he’s even looked alive was in the past few months.”
That flicked me right across the heart, and I reacted in the worst way possible. “Get out,” I said, “get out of here right now.”
“Di—”
“Get out!” I couldn’t bear her in my sight one second longer. She’d known. The only time he’s looked alive….
Lucy studied me for a long, cool moment, a harbinger of many to come. I swear, that girl was born a lawyer. “Fine,” she said, and her voice was cold. “In case you’ve forgotten, Di, our sisters have disappeared into thin air. You might try thinking where they could be. And I,” she paused at the door, “I’m going home. Maybe Dad has some ideas.”
She slammed out.
I was left there, alone, no husband, no sisters.
The fear that they had fallen into the hands of some psychopath hovered throughout that day. Richard, when he called, said that the police were proceeding on the theory that the girls had been abducted, because of the state of their car. “Do you think that’s what happened?” I asked, because in the back of my mind, I still saw that strange determination in Laurie all those months.
He said wearily, “I don’t know, Di, I hope not. But—” only the slightest pause in his voice, “this isn’t like Francie. She wouldn’t leave without a word.”
Daddy said the same thing.
So did Philip and Peggy, who were even more upset than Daddy.
Sad – that Laurie would leave without a word, everyone took for granted.
But the abduction theory was laid to rest forever the next day. The police learned that, the day before she disappeared, Laurie had withdrawn over four thousand dollars from her bank account. In fact, she had left a total balance of a dollar, just to keep the account open. The bank teller said that Laurie was alone, in good spirits, and not under any duress. Everyone but Lucy and me was stunned to find out that she had that much money.
Daddy, prompted by the police, discovered that Mama’s jewelry was missing.
Francie’s winter coat had been removed from storage.
Laurie’s journal and current piece of needlework were gone from her room, along with every piece of music she had ever written.
A clerk at Williamsburg remembered selling tickets to Francie and Laurie.
A waitress remembered serving them lunch.
By that time, two days passed, and the police told Daddy that they couldn’t put more time into it. Francie was eighteen and a legal adult, and she had the right to go where she wanted. True, Laurie was underage and a technical runaway, but she was with Francie, she obviously had enough money with her, and (no one said, but everyone thought) she appeared to be the brains of the entire escape plan.
They were gone. Four sisters, cut down to two.
And Lucy and I weren’t speaking.
Nor was she speaking to Richard.
However, Philip had plenty to say.
Philip had always intimidated me, mostly because he didn’t like me and he didn’t think I was good enough or smart enough for his precious son. But we all knew that he had genuinely loved Laurie, and it was no secret to me that he and Peggy had been praying that Richard would come to his senses, ditch me, and wait for Laurie to grow up. As soon as the police proved that Laurie and Francie had not fallen prey to a serial killer, Philip drove up to Charlottesville to see us.
He told Richard that he wanted to speak to him privately, and Richard never uttered a word of protest. They went into the back yard and stayed there quite a long time. I peeked out the window a couple of times and saw Philip talking, Richard forcing himself to look at his father. He looked even more taut and drawn than he had before. He had taken the twins’ disappearance hard. I think he blamed himself for not seeing that Laurie had been planning this for a long time.
I didn’t feel sorry for him. Laurie had given him a lifetime of loyalty and devotion, and he had let Francie and lust blind him to the turmoil that had ripped her apart. I truly believe that, if Richard hadn’t been so caught up with Francie that spring, he might have noticed something was wrong, or Laurie might have confided in him, and I’m certain Richard feels that way too.
And he took the estrangement from Lucy hard. They had grown up together, and now his best friend wasn’t speaking to him.
Who knows what Philip said, though. Richard never told me.
Then Philip summoned me. “Diana, I want to talk to you.”
That whole interview with Philip was so terrible, I’ve blocked most of it from my memory. Suffice it to say that Richard came by his self-righteousness and, worse, his bloody awful niceness honestly. Actually, it was worse talking to Philip, because at least I could tell Richard to go to hell.
Philip was older than Daddy. I had to be polite to him.
But Philip made his living as a pediatrician, and so I had to listen to what he said about Julie. He and Peggy were worried sick about her, he said, she seemed timid and subdued these days, and he worried that she was badly affected by the strain between Richard and me. He felt that we needed to make a fresh start in our marriage (so I knew Richard hadn’t told him the truth about Francie, because no one could seriously suggest I forgive him for that), and perhaps we could make that start now that we were both out of school, and “real life” could begin.
He suggested, too, that I not get a job right away, take some time to be a wife and mother. After all, Richard would be making enough; it was no longer up to me to bring home the bacon. It was tough, he said, being in college all those years, with a young child, working hard to make ends meet, and now Richard and I could relax and enjoy our lives and each other and Julie and any other children that came along.
I remember sitting there, listening to Philip’s calm, reasonable voice, looking down at my hands, and wondering how much time I’d do if I pushed his face into concrete and killed him.
But he meant the best, and I knew it. I had to remember that he and Peggy loved Julie and had a right to be concerned about their only grandchild, and I knew that he was right about college being an artificial environment for a marriage. Richard and I had been married for four years, and, after our first summer, we had never lived a normal married life.
Maybe he was right. I didn’t see that I had a choice. I had to stay with Richard in order to stay with Julie.
Because I knew, I knew even then, that Julie was Richard’s, more than she had ever been mine. I had lost her to him. And the only way to be with her was to stay with that self-righteous, cheating bastard.
If I’d known what hell the next three years would be, I’d have left him on the spot.
Chapter 22: Sex, Lies, and Thomas Jefferson
FROM THE PAST, FRANCIE SAT ON HER BED after her trip to Monticello and made her tape: I can’t believe how passionate you are about Monticello, Richard. It’s like you built it yourself. Do you think you’re Jefferson reincarnated, lover?
“Is everything all right?” said Richard. “You’re very quiet this morning.”
Laura turned her head to look at him as he walked beside her on the roundabout circling the great house. He looked relaxed, hands in his pockets, not at all out of breath from the climb up the mountain. His voice was casual; his gaze upon her was not.
“I’m fine. Just a little winded. I’m not used to climbing a mountain.” She touched his arm; she had discovered that he liked her doing that, touches that told him how much she enjoyed being with him. “I guess we got here just in time. Look at all those people.”
“Well,” said Richard, “we could have come earlier, but—” His grin at her was a shared memory of waking up at dawn together. “We’re not on a schedule. We’ll explore the grounds until the tour.”
She nodded. The silence lay there between them, not yet uncomfortable, but nevertheless a presence that she couldn’t shake. Two nights of failure, two dawns of Cat taking over her mind and body… two mornings of having to regain Laura and act as if she were the same woman he’d made love with, whose bed he had shared.
Two mornings of waking up and finding herself alone. He had gone out again while she slept, leaving only a cryptic note – Back soon, R. He hadn’t gone out running; he’d returned, not dripping from a hard workout, but neatly dressed in polo shirt and jeans. He’d sat casually in the bedroom’s one chair, watching her pack her bag, talking about his occasional lectures in historical preservation at the architectural school. He’d offered no explanation of his absence.
She couldn’t ask, Where did you go this morning? He might have replied, Where did you go last night?
They walked around to the terrace, a long L-wing on the northern end of the house, and mounted the stairs at its midpoint. Richard put his hand on her waist to guide her away from the house into the bend of the wing – how quickly they were becoming used to each other’s touch. “Here.” He halted her at the end of the terrace and turned her away from the house. “See through the trees there?”
The warm wind was gently tossing the tree branches that obscured their view, so it took her a few seconds of peering intently in the direction of his pointing hand before she saw the rotunda of the University of Virginia. “Oh, I see it!” Her cheek brushed the hand resting now on her shoulder as she turned to look at him. “Jefferson really liked domes, didn’t he? Is that the Palladian influence?”
He sounded surprised. “Yes, it is, as a matter of fact, but how do you know about that?”
“I read it in your book.”
“You read the book? Laura, you amaze me. When was this?”
“I found it on the Internet last winter.” She let herself lean back against his shoulder. “In fact, if you saw a spike in your sales in one day – that was me. I bought ten copies.”
“Ten? That was excessive. I would have given you one.”
“I wanted to boost your royalties.”
He laid his hand against her hair, and she thought that nothing in her life had ever felt as warm and secure as Richard resting his hand like that against her. “You probably doubled the sales for the month. Julie’s college fund thanks you.” They heard a group of tourists approaching, and he put his arm loosely around her shoulders and guided her over to the stairs leading down to the dependencies. “So what do you plan to do with all your copies?”
Laura pretended to give it some serious thought. “Hmmm. I don’t know. Give them out as Christmas gifts to my friends.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate that. You’ll probably get them back next year.” A burst of laughter came from above them. Monticello was beginning to fill up. “Sales are going okay. A lot of universities and libraries have picked it up, what we expected when we planned the project. University press books don’t hit the bestseller list.”
“Cat Courtney could help boost sales,” said Laura, tongue-in-cheek. “I’m on tour this fall – we could buy up the remainder and give it out at the champagne receptions. Sort of a gift with purchase, like at the cosmetics counter. They can choose between it and the DVD and screen saver.”
Pause. “That’s unusual sarcasm from you, Laura Rose. You are kidding, aren’t you?”
She grinned back at him. “My manager would never allow it. Cat merchandise only. Sorry.”
His voice dropped into a lazy intimate tone. “I’d like a copy of that screen saver.”
“I’ll email you a copy when we get home.”
They had reached the ground floor now, and now they met more people. The mountain that had seemed so empty when they had walked up – but, of course, everyone else had taken the bus ride – seemed to be getting crowded. In unspoken agreement, Richard and Laura turned away from the dependencies and walked out on the roundabout that encircled the great western lawn.
I loved that we were there alone at Monticello, Richard, no one else around. I felt so close to you, as if we had stepped back in time before Diana ever was….
They walked along the herringbone path, close but not touching now. Peggy must have loved the riot of flowers in these gardens; she had taken such pride in restoring the gardens at Ashmore Park to the glory days of the Great Lakes shipping heiress. Laura had planted a flower garden a few years before, but she’d missed the prime planting season when walking pneumonia had felled first Meg and then Cam, and only a few sections had bloomed properly. All for naught, she thought, the garden was Emma’s now. Maybe if she bought a house, she could plant another garden.
“Last time I came up here,” Richard said, “one of those singers was here – I don’t know her name, she’s the one who prances around the stage mostly undressed—”
His out-of-the-blue comment was so welcome that she forgot her depressing lack of a garden and the even more depressing thought of the night before. “Which one? They all prance around undressed.”
He laughed. “You ha
ve a point. She was blonde and built and looked barely out of high school, that’s all I remember. I think Julie listens to her. But the girl had this unbelievable entourage – at least thirty people, and not one of them knew who Jefferson was except the head on the nickel. A sad commentary on modern American education.”
“I can do a little better than that,” said Laura. “He’s the face on the two-dollar bill, right?” She laughed at his expression. “I know who he was. I’m not a complete ignoramus.”
“I would hope not. You had a good education. I’m paying through the nose for Julie to go there.” He leaned to pick a blade of grass and started to bend it around his fingers. “So where’s your entourage, Cat Courtney?”
“No thanks.” She pretended to shudder. “I couldn’t stand to be surrounded night and day.”
He turned to her. “You’ve not very diva-like, are you? No stories of you throwing a fit because someone forgot to get you the right kind of bottled water. You fly under the radar, don’t you?”
She felt on familiar ground now. “When I first signed with the label, Cam hired a manager for me. He knew before I did that Cat Courtney was going to be bigger than – than just me writing songs at night. So I’ve got this manager, Dell Barnes – he’d handled some other singers, and right off the bat Dell told me that I could be a diva or I could be an artist but practically no one gets away with being both.”
“And, being Dominic’s daughter, you’d choose to be an artist.”
“We weren’t brought up to be divas.”
“No.” Richard threw the blade of grass into the breeze. “I’ll give Dominic that. He had enough temperament for all of you, but he didn’t tolerate it in you girls.”
“Yes.” They had reached the apogee of the roundabout, and with a quick touch on her upper arm – that unspoken language of hand caressing her skin! If only it meant that he could love her – he turned her to look back at the great western front. “I’d never seen myself as a star. I always thought I’d just keep on writing songs and poems and stories, put them away, and maybe someday I’d get to make an album to prove that I could sing. Dell and Cam saw much more, and Dell said that I needed a persona to back up my music. No one was going to suspend belief for all that pathos coming from a mom with a grade-schooler. I’d used the name Cat Colby in San Francisco, and Dell took that and helped me create Cat Courtney. She’s as much his creation as mine.”
All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) Page 51
