A Tangled Web (53 page)

“He can't do anything,” Garth said again to Penny. “It's over.”

“But the gun went off.”

“We'll look for the bullet later; it's probably in some furniture. The most important thing is that we're all right.”

Sabrina knelt beside the chair where Penny still huddled.
“It's over, sweetheart. Lu did a terrible thing, but he's sorry and no one was hurt. All of us who love each other are still here; we have each other and we're fine.”

“I was so scared . . .”

“We all were. It was very scary. But now we don't have to be because everything is all right. Penny, listen, now we can say it's over, and feel safe again.”

Penny's eyes were still wide with apprehension. “I thought our house was always safe.”

“Well, it is, isn't it? Here we are; we're all fine, thanks to your dad and Cliff's amazing flying tackle. We'll talk about it at dinner, all right? But first we have to take care of Lu Zhen, and maybe you'd like to go upstairs while we do that. Okay?”

“Is Cliff coming up, too?”

“Why don't you ask him? I have a feeling he's in the library, thinking about everything that's happened.”

“If he's not there, can I come back?”

“Of course.”

She went off, and Sabrina sighed. There were tears in her eyes. “It isn't safe. We pretend it is, but the world is full of dangers and they can invade our most private places, the ones we trust to protect us. How can we tell Penny that?”

Garth held her close again. “We tell her we'll do our best to protect each other, wherever we are. That has to be good enough for all of us. I suppose the only true sanctuary is in love and responsibility, but even they go only so far. After that, we have to rely on caution and luck. My love, you were wonderful.”

“I was terrified.”

“So was I.”

They held each other quietly, their heads bowed. Thank you, Sabrina said in a silent prayer. Thank you for this gift of time, more time for us to love each other and help our children grow up.

“I suppose I should call the police,” Garth said at last, “but I don't really want to. What do you think?”

“I don't know. He's so unstable I don't think we can just let him go. What he ought to do is go home right away and let his parents take care of him until he can sort out everything that's happened and make a fresh start. But someone should be with him until he leaves; do you know of anyone?”

“I don't know of any friends . . . Oh, there's a chemistry professor from Hong Kong, unmarried, young; Lu's spent some time with him. I'll call him. He's completely reliable; I can tell him the whole story.”

“No!” Lu jumped up. “Don't tell anyone. Please. Especially Professor Shao Meng; he . . . he thinks highly of me.”

“You can't be alone,” Garth said flatly. “Shao Meng is a good man and he could have been your friend if you'd gone to him. He may keep this to himself; it will be up to him how many other people know about it. You have no choice in this; you've forfeited the choices you once had.”

“He won't like me anymore.”

“You'll have to deal with that. Sit down while I call him. Sit down! And stay there.”

Lu slumped onto the edge of a chair, his hands dangling between his knees. When Garth went to the telephone in the hall, Lu shot a glance at Sabrina. “You don't care that he's destroying me.”

“Oh, what a fool you are. He's saving you. What future would you have had as a scientist after your fraud was discovered? This way, you'll go home with your Ph.D. and a clean slate.”

Lu muttered something.

“What did you say?”

“There are lots of Ph.D.'s. I wanted to be famous.”

“Maybe you still will be. But not if you keep on lying to yourself.”

“I didn't lie. The others did. Professor Andersen was wrong to listen to them.”

Sabrina gazed at him in amazement. Still clinging to it,
after all that's happened. There is no limit to
people's
capacity for deceiving themselves. And perhaps that is the most devastating deception of all.

“And now you don't like me anymore,” Lu said.

“Of course I don't. You almost ruined my husband and then you came here threatening to shoot me and my whole family. Why should I like you?”

“I didn't almost ruin him.”

“Lu, stop lying to yourself! My God, can't you face the world as it is and stop retreating into fantasy?” She looked closely at his bleak face. “I'll bet you can. Late at night when no one is around and there's nothing in the silence but your thoughts, I'll bet you admit to yourself that your research was no good. You may push it away in the daytime, but I'll bet you tell yourself the truth late at night, when there's no one to face but yourself.”

He glared at her. “What I tell myself late at night is my own business.”

“Yes,” Sabrina said quietly. “We both know it is.”

In a few minutes Garth returned. “Shao Meng is on his way. Tomorrow he'll put you on a plane for China,” he said to Lu. “As soon as you get to his house, you'll call your parents and tell them. If you give him any trouble, we'll call the police.”

They all waited together, without speaking, until they heard a car turn into the driveway. Sabrina and Garth flanked Lu and walked him to the front door, then watched Shao Meng's car disappear down the street.

“God, what a waste, what an unbelievably self-destructive waste,” Garth murmured. “So much promise, so much hope . . .”

“There's still promise, and hope, too,” Sabrina said, and took his hand as they walked back to the living room. “It could be that he'll grow up after this.”

“It takes a long stretch to believe that.”

“I don't mind stretching. Right now I feel rather optimistic.”

“An amazing feat.”

“Oh, it's not so hard. Look what we've come through.
Leglind, Penny's and Cliff's crises, and now Lu. I think we've done pretty well. Especially in this Wild West scene; no one got hurt and there's only one small scar on the ceiling. We have a lot to be grateful for.”

He smiled. “Yes, we do.” He sat in an armchair and brought Sabrina to sit in his lap. “I think of that a lot. How much we have, and how we should always be aware of that, never let it fade into the background.”

They kissed, and then Sabrina sat straight, her hands on his shoulders. “I have something to tell you. I probably should have earlier, but I was waiting to be sure everything would go through. I'm selling Ambassadors, Garth. Alexandra is buying it, and Blackford's, too, as a matter of fact; we'll sign the papers in a couple of weeks. And some friends of hers are buying the Cadogan Square house. We'll close on that in December.”

Garth studied her face. “The shop and the house. A clean sweep. You're sure this is what you want?”

“Very sure. I've thought about it for a long time. I don't want two lives, my darling; I can barely keep up with all the drama in this one.”

He chuckled and they were kissing again when Penny and Cliff ran down the stairs. “Oh, sorry,” Cliff said, and took an awkward step back.

“For what? You're not bothering us; we're having a good time.” Garth smiled at his children, their faces flushed, their eyes bright with that strange combination of pleasure and embarrassment that children feel when they see their parents embrace. His gaze took in the quiet living room and he saw in his mind the other rooms of his house and he knew that for most of the time they were indeed a haven against most of the winds of chance. Then he turned to his wife, who had just chosen their life as the only one she wanted. He held her close again until she lay against his chest. “A man's castle,” he murmured.

Sabrina smiled. “A family's,” she said.

I
t was early September, two weeks after Max's trip to Marseilles, when Stephanie walked into the living room and saw that three paintings, among them Léon Dumas's painting of the Alpilles, had disappeared. Max was talking on the telephone in his office and she stood in the doorway, waiting until he hung up. “Max, what happened to the paintings?”

He looked surprised, as if whatever he did should be obvious to everyone. “I sent them away.”

“What for?”

There was a pause. “To be cleaned.”

“
Cleaned!
”

“Well, stored.” He shoved back his chair. “Sit down, Sabrina; I want to talk to you.”

“Oh, not here.” Instinctively she had tightened inside, fending off something that sounded unpleasant. “Why don't we take a walk? We never do, and it's such a beautiful morning, I hate to stay inside.”

He shrugged. “If you like.” He put his arm around her and they walked outside, along the terrace to the flagstone
walk that led to the front gate. The sun was burning off an early morning haze, and as they walked at the side of the road, the air was soft and warm and scented with lavender and thyme and late summer roses. “I've left you alone too much lately; I apologize for that.”

“You've been so busy.” Stephanie had been grateful for his late nights; they had freed her from refusing to make love to him. But now, glancing at him, she saw new lines in his face, accentuated by the sun's glare, and she felt a rush of concern. “You're worried about something. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes, but not walking; I can't talk to you this way.”

“Oh, Max, of course you can. You just prefer to do it the way you planned, in your office. You always have to be in control.” She waited, but he made no response. “Where did you send the paintings?”

He took her hand, surprised once again by her quick perception. Somehow he had assumed that a woman with no memory would be slow to understand hidden meanings and the trail of clues that devious behavior left behind, but instead, he was always dodging her instinctive understanding.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I've been making plans that include you, but I didn't want to tell you about them all at once. I thought you'd be uncomfortable with change.”

“Sometimes I am. What change?”

“My business. And our home.”

They reached the end of the road and turned to walk along the edge of the plateau. Beside them the cliff fell steeply away, studded with low bushes, stunted trees, and pocked gray boulders deeply embedded in the earth. After a few minutes they came to an ancient church, straight-sided and windowless in gray stone with a small steeple and bell tower. A wooden gate was at one side; Max pushed it open and they walked into a tiny courtyard dominated by a wide spreading tree. A row of tombstones worn smooth by the centuries stretched along the stone wall. They sat on a small bench beneath the tree and Max
put his arm around Stephanie. He kissed the top of her head, and they sat quietly for a moment, but he was too restless to stay still; he moved back so he could look at her. “You've been here before.”

“Yes. Robert told me about it. It's a good place to think. Max, tell me what this is all about.”

“I never knew it was here. Is the church locked?”

“Yes.”

Beneath the tree the air was cool and still; not a sound broke the silence. “A hideaway,” he murmured. “Except, of course, that it's a dead end.”

“Do we need a hideaway?” In the silence, Stephanie sighed with impatience. “Where did you send the paintings?”

“To a warehouse in Marseilles.”

“Why?”

He looked around as a man came into the courtyard wearing a leather vest, black work pants and a slouch-brimmed black hat. He nodded when he met Max's eye, and ambled over to the stone wall, looking over it at the roofs of Cavaillon.

“We'll go back.” Holding her hand, Max led her to the wooden gate and back to the road, and looked over his shoulder as they walked toward their house. They walked between stone walls and high wrought-iron gates that allowed glimpses of stone houses set amid broad gardens, fountains, statues and towering trees. The sun-washed stones seemed luminous beneath the deepening blue sky; the roses were gold and pink, the leaves of the plane trees dark green, almost black. Max was touched by the purity and soft harmony of the scene. He looked back again and saw that the road behind them remained empty, but still he could not relax; he hurried on toward their gate. “I'm putting a number of things in storage to be sent to us wherever we are.”

“You're planning to leave? Why? You'd leave Cavaillon?”

“Sabrina, we talked about this: all the places you haven't
seen, places far more wonderful than this. We should start thinking about them, about other countries, other cities . . . Why would you want to stay cooped up in this little corner of the world?”

“I'm not cooped up. I like Cavaillon; it's my home. It's the only home I know.”