Birthday Girls (34 page)

Kris cast a glance at Maddie. “No shit,” she said. And for the first time since Edmund had gone off with the police, a smile stole over her face.

Timmy
had refused to go to the airport with her. “You can’t make me,” he’d barked, and stormed out of the house.

As Maddie stood now looking down the long concourse, she realized this had been brewing since Parker had left them. The tension had escalated over the years, then peaked when Timmy discovered the photos—the photos and the magazines. She doubted that her flimsy explanation had been believed by her too-bright son.

Still, it made her heart ache that Timmy wanted no part of his father, though she often wished she could feel the same. It would be so freeing; it would be so … weightless.

On the monitor that hung from the ceiling, their flight had moved to the top of the screen.

Air France. Arrival 8:45. On Time
.

Her heart fluttered. She checked her watch. Eight forty-two.

Maddie had spent the entire day watching the clock. She should have been answering phone messages, checking the stock of her film and chemicals for the shoot with Howard Stern next week. Instead she’d poured over recent
Our World
issues—stopping, always stopping, at Parker’s picture; flipping pages forward, flipping pages back; always landing on the one-inch square of his image.

When she’d grown tired of that, she turned to the pictures from her telephoto lens.

Still, the seconds of the day had dissolved as slowly as a cube of sugar in a glass of iced tea. No word came from Kris, and Maddie was too preoccupied to try and arrive at a solution for her.

A woman brushed past her now, hurrying toward a
gate. She wore sunglasses and a long wool scarf over her head. Maddie thought of Abigail. Had she done that, too? Had she tried to disguise herself and slipped out of the country? She wondered if the police had checked. If Abigail hadn’t changed her identity, surely the airlines would have a record from her passport …

Kris seemed determined to clear Edmund of suspicion. Yet how could she? And now that she’d slept with him, could Kris really be objective? What if Edmund
had
killed Abigail …

The flurry of airport activity increased. Sounds on the concourse increased another level as footsteps and greetings clamored all around her. Maddie stretched her head in search of Parker and Bobby. As she did, fierce pain erupted at the base of her neck. She drew back and rubbed it. Her vision blurred; pressure in her ears seemed to shut out the sounds. She lowered her eyes and felt as though she were swimming through a tunnel, a very long tunnel … 
Stress can often magnify menopausal symptoms
, she’d read in a book.

“Hey, Mom! There she is, Dad!”

It was Bobby’s voice, somewhere in the tunnel. She raised her head and slowly blinked. Her vision returned into focus as her son approached.

She forced a smile. “Happy New Year,” she exclaimed with as much strength as she could gather, trying to keep her eyes on her son and not have them drift toward his father.

Though he protested with
“Mom!”
Maddie hugged Bobby; then Parker was beside her as well.

“Happy New Year, Maddie,” he said, and kissed her so quickly she wasn’t certain it had happened.

“Happy New Year,” she repeated, stepping between them and mechanically falling into the herd that trudged toward Baggage Claim, still tasting the taste of his lips on hers and wondering why she’d chosen now to get a headache and wishing to hell it would go away.

• • •

“Tired?”
she asked as she turned the car onto the ramp for the Thruway. Bobby was asleep on the backseat, headphones still over his ears. She wondered if Parker was thinking about their trips to Long Island when the boys were young, cuddled against the beach luggage, sleeping on the long drive home, only to rouse when they stopped at McDonald’s, as if Happy Meals had an aroma that triggered their wake-up alarm.

“Not really,” Parker answered. “I slept on the plane.” He’d already suggested that he drive out to Westchester with them, that he’d catch a late train back to the city and save Maddie the trip.

“Care to stop for a Big Mac?”

Parker laughed. “No. But half a bottle of wine would taste really good right about now.”

Maddie wondered if he meant that she could have the other half. Her hopes surged; her headache tingled. “There’s a new place in the village where I’m told they have a nice wine cellar.” She did not mention that Cody had been the one to tell her, one night when they went there before going to his apartment.

He glanced over at her. “I think I’ll take you up on that. But let’s drop off Junior first.”

She nodded and drove the rest of the way without speaking, letting the soothing sounds of the stereo flood through the car, easing her headache and putting Parker into what seemed to her like a comfortable doze, and hoping to God that somewhere between here and there her ex-husband would not change his mind.

It was after
eleven when they all went into the house. Sophie was in her room, asleep. On the television screen an old black-and-white movie flickered. Maddie
turned off the set and returned to the hall. Bobby went quickly to bed; Parker told her that Timmy, too, was asleep.

She stood nervously in the foyer. “Well,” she dared to ask, “how about that wine?”

Parker shook his head. “I’m too tired. I’d rather we just went to bed.”

Kris tossed
and turned on the king-size bed.

Edmund had not returned from the police station until late.

“You’re still here,” he’d said when he walked through the door, his face drawn, his gait slow.

“Of course I’m still here. What happened?”

He hung his head. “I think,” he said quietly, “my worst nightmare is about to come true.”

She massaged his shoulders.

He didn’t want to talk about it further, he said. Maybe in the morning, after he’d slept.

They did not fall asleep right away. Not until Kris had given him a full body massage; not until she had aroused him from his pain and he’d reached a shuddering climax within her.

Now he slept, but she could not.

Watching the dawn ooze into the room, Kris continued to wrestle with her mind, struggling to hit on an answer that would clear Edmund for good. Something to prove that Abigail had not been murdered by him, or by anyone. Something to prove that vanishing—not dying—had been her wish.

Her
wish
.

Suddenly a thought sprang into Kris’s sleepless mind.

By the time I am fifty
, Abigail’s wish had read,
I will be somewhere else. I will be someone else
.

Kris bolted upright in bed.

The bottle
.

The bottle that held the birthday wishes.

Abigail’s wish, in her own handwriting, was the proof that Kris needed, proof that Abigail had intended to disappear. Between that and Kris’s explanation of Abigail’s plan …

Maybe she would only show it to Edmund.

She would risk betraying her friend’s confidence for Edmund’s sake. If Abigail was already dead, it would not matter. If she was still alive, Edmund at least would see how desperately she’d wanted to leave.

Then he could decide about telling—or not telling—the police.

She jumped out of bed, ran from the room, and headed down the hall toward Abigail’s room. She had to find the bottle. And she had to find it before she changed her mind.

She couldn’t
find it. Ripping through the wardrobe room off Abigail’s bedroom Kris purged every storage chest, every shoebox, every sweater bin, upending the stacks of items that she and Louisa had sorted for the secondhand shop. Then she moved to the bureaus, pulled open drawers, and rifled through the remaining contents like a two-bit burglar with a midnight deadline.

The bottle wasn’t there.

But in the armoire she found the photo album. The one Maddie had made for Abigail, identical to the one she had made for Kris. The album of their youth, of the birthday celebrations of another place, another time. The album that only a few short months ago had been painful for Kris to explore, relive the memories, and unearth the past.

Now all that had changed.

Shaking her head, she moved the album aside. Then she was jolted by another thought:
the pictures
.

Maybe Maddie’s photographs held a clue, an answer to where Abigail had hidden the bottle of birthday wishes.
And maybe—just maybe—the once-secret hiding place for the old milk bottle now held the empty champagne bottle.

Kris dropped to the floor and turned back the album’s cover, revealing the first photo of when they were ten.

She scanned the picture; there was no time, this time, for nostalgia.

Nor was there a milk bottle within the ragged, black-and-white frame.

She flipped the page.

Several photos of Arbor Brook followed: the manicured grounds, the awkward, preadolescent girls. Quickly she searched for another birthday picture.

Why hadn’t Maddie—with her quirky habit of snapping shots of every damn thing she saw, every damn thing they did—why hadn’t Maddie taken one lousy photo of the damn bottle that held their damn wishes?

And then it was there. Next to their thirteenth birthday cake stood Louisa, smiling. On the table in front of her, beside the cake, was the bottle.

Kris held her breath.

It was a milk bottle. A glass milk bottle. Inside she could see the papers. She could not remember her wish that year, could not remember anyone’s wish. And she could not remember for the life of her where Abigail had hidden the damn bottle.

Her eyes drifted over the photo. Louisa, the cake, the bottle. Suddenly Kris’s heart began to race.

Louisa
.

Louisa might know where Abigail had hidden the bottle.

Louisa had always known everything.

Thirty
minutes later, showered, dressed, and barely made up, Kris grabbed her overnight bag and burst back into Edmund’s bedroom.

He was awake. “I wondered where you went,” he said. “The bed’s awfully empty without you.”

“I’ve got to go somewhere,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll be back tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.”

He pulled himself up in the bed and snapped on the light. “What the hell are you doing, Kris?”

“I’m going to find the proof you need to get the cops off your back. I can’t explain now. I’ll tell you everything later.” Without hesitating she leaned down and kissed him, full on the lips. For one split second she wanted to crawl beneath the covers with him, wanted to press herself against his warmth and feel him deep inside her again.

But not now.

She stood up. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Trust me.”

On her way
out the door, Kris stopped to make a phone call. But as the other end began to ring, she quickly hung up.
Tapped
, she remembered. The line might be tapped. She dug into her bag, pulled out her cell phone and redialed the number. Sophie answered the phone.

“Mrs. Kavner, this is Kris Kensington. Is Maddie awake yet?”

“Who is it?”

Kris shifted her feet impatiently. “Kris Kensington. Is Maddie there?”

“What time is it?”

“About six.”

“In the morning?”

She breathed quickly. “Yes. I’m sorry I woke you. Please tell Maddie I’ve gone to Phoenix. That I think I have the solution to our problem.”

At first
Maddie didn’t know what the shout was about. At first she didn’t realize that it was morning, or remember
that Parker was snoring softly beside her. Struggling to open her eyes, all she heard was a loud shout.

“Madeline! What is going on?”

It was not as much a question as a declaration, words shot in anger from the doorway of her room.

Maddie rubbed her eyes and focused on her mother. With a flannel robe wrapped around her small body and her ordinarily neat hair askew, Sophie wore a look of disdain that Maddie had never seen before.

She pulled the covers up to her neck. “Mother, what time is it?”

Sophie planted her hands on her hips. “I believe it is time to get that man from your bed, before your children wake up.”

Maddie looked over at Parker. His eyes still closed, he laughed.

Maddie swallowed. “That man,” she whispered, “is my husband.”

“Ex-husband,” Sophie stressed. “As I recall, he is someone else’s husband now.” She remained resolutely in the doorway, a mama chick scolding her young, waiting for them to do as they were told.

Which, of course, was impossible, because underneath the sheets Parker was naked. He had been naked all night. And so had Maddie. Their nakedness had come together in familiar easiness, and she had given him the one thing he loved so much. He had not, like Cody, taken the time to “please her” first; but that was Parker’s way. Besides, it didn’t matter, for he was in her bed now, and Maddie was going to be sure he’d never leave again.

“Sophie,” Parker said, “I think you’re overreacting. Your daughter is almost fifty years old.”

Fifty years old
. His words sliced through Maddie. She was indeed almost fifty years old; not twenty-nine like Sharlene. Nor twenty-eight like Cody. She tried to smile. “Parker will get up, Mother. As soon as you leave.”