Brass Ring (51 page)

She rolled her head to his shoulder. “Never?”

“Maybe to eat every once in a while. That’s all.”

“Maybe to see a doctor,” Vanessa suggested.

“A doctor?”

“I’m a week and a half late.”

Brian’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “Stress?”

“Could be. I’ve been under a little.”

They were quiet for a moment. She could feel Brian absorbing the news, and she smiled to herself.

“Have you ever been a week and a half late before?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Van.” His voice was thick, and she put her arms around him and held him close to her as their boat drifted gently under a cloudless sky.

WINCHESTER VILLAGE AMUSEMENT PARK,

PENNSYLVANIA

WINCHESTER VILLAGE WAS DESERTED.
Claire and Randy walked between the skeleton of a sprawling roller coaster and an enormous sky-scraping claw that probably held cars full of screaming teenagers in the summer. The amusement park was not due to open until late May, and it had the feel of a ghost town, lifeless and forgotten. It was hard to picture it alive.

She’d had no trouble at all getting permission to enter the village out of season. She’d called the public relations department for the park and spoken to a man named Scott Merrick. She’d told him she was the granddaughter of Vincent Siparo and that she hadn’t seen his carousel since her childhood. She asked if there was a chance she could see it now, and Merrick told her she would be welcome anytime. He was clearly a carousel enthusiast, and they chatted on the phone for several minutes about the Siparo horses of her great-grandfather’s era. Merrick had ridden them as a child, he said. He could barely tell the difference between the horses carved by her grandfather and those carved by her great-grandfather, except for the signature floral decorations that adorned the Joseph Siparo bridles. This man did indeed know his painted ponies.

He wanted to be with her when she saw the carousel. She could tell by the way he was talking. “I’ll show you how we’ve restored the horses,” he said. “True to your grandfather’s colors and designs. We even used the gold leaf like he did.”

“Mr. Merrick,” she began, “would it be too much to ask if I could see the carousel alone? You see, I think it’s going to be a little emotional for me. Would you mind very much?”

Merrick had hesitated, and she could almost hear the disappointment in the silence. “Of course. You stop by the office here, and I’ll give you the key to the carousel house.”

She had intended to make the trip by herself, but Randy asked to join her, and she was glad for his company. Over the past week, she had watched him wrestle with the new boundaries of their relationship as he tried to determine how close to her he could sit, how intimately he could touch her. She appreciated the effort he made to keep their friendship alive despite the limits she had set on it.

They had left Virginia shortly after breakfast that morning and arrived at Scott Merrick’s office close to noon. Merrick had warmly shaken her hand before pressing the key into her palm. She’d brought him a gift from the old photograph album, a picture of her grandfather carving a horse head in the workroom of the barn. Merrick had been ecstatic. He would blow it up, he said, and hang it on the wall of the carousel house.

“If you’d let me come with you, I could turn the carousel on for you,” he negotiated. “Otherwise, you’ll only get to see it standing still.”

“That’s fine.” Claire had smiled at him, the key burning in her palm. “That’s all I need.”

The carousel house was at the opposite end of the park from the office. Claire held tight to the key as she and Randy walked among the hibernating rides and boarded-up concessions. She had to stop herself from running now that she was this close.

“I wonder if I’ll be disappointed,” she said to Randy. Maybe Titan wouldn’t be as beautiful and noble as in her memory. “You know how the things you thought were so wonderful when you were a child turn out to be smaller and less spectacular than you remembered?”

“Right,” Randy said. “I know what you mean.”

They rounded a huge covered platform of some sort, and the white carousel house suddenly sprang up in front of them. The building looked as though it had barely survived the winter. The

white paint had a definite grayish hue. Scott Merrick had said the house was due to be painted in a few weeks.

The building was fronted by three wide garage-type doors. Apparently the rear of the building remained permanently closed, although the hundreds of small windows would let in light. With the key, Claire unlocked the center door, and Randy helped her roll it up. Directly in front of her, as he had always been in the barn, stood Titan, nostrils flaring, gold mane glinting in the spring sunlight.

“
Oh
.” She took a step backward to study the horse, and her concern about being disappointed vanished. Titan was magnificent, his windblown mane wilder than in her memory. His huge brown eyes were stormy. His well-shaped head was lined with veins, and his gold-trimmed English saddle had the mellowed gloss of well-worn leather.

“Give me the key,” Randy said. He took the key from her hand and opened the other two doors while Claire simply stared. Before her was an entire collection of crazy-maned, prancing, snorting, pawing, untamed horses. She wondered why as a child she had felt no fear of these frenzied animals. There was no denying that she felt a thread of fear now.

As dingy as the outside of the building was, the inside was spotless and glowing. Once the doors were fully open, shards of sunlight cut across the colors. The glossy paint and gold leaf and the oval mirrors on the inside rounding board made her squint.

The mirrors
.

She looked away from them quickly, and she kept her face lowered as Randy took her hand and they began circling the carousel.

“The side of the horse that faces out is called the romance side.” Claire could barely get the words past the knot of fear in her throat.
The damn mirrors
. She tried to keep her voice even. “That’s where all the decoration is, on the romance side. All the identity that’s shown to the world.” She stepped onto the platform, pulling Randy with her, and walked among the horses to show him their plain sides. “The real horse is back here,” she said.

Randy was clearly enchanted. “It’s incredible to me that one man carved all these horses by hand.” Randy stroked his fingers over the intricate plated armor covering the side of a black stallion. “What skill.”

Ahead of her, Claire caught sight of something nestled among the horses. She let go of Randy’s hand, still keeping her eyes lowered, and walked toward the glossy green shape.

A chariot
. Indeed, there was one. The carved wood of its sides was gently sloping, the shape disturbingly familiar; she had been doodling the curved line of that wood for months. The chariot was short, but wide, with one broad seat upholstered in brown leather. The wood was painted a deep green, and a gold dragon and a woman dressed in white gossamer were carved into its elegant romance side.

Randy had caught up with her, and she gripped his arm.

“What is it?” He followed her eyes to the chariot.

She could almost smell the strong, spicy cologne. She could almost feel the scratch of an unshaven cheek against her face. She could hear the kind words.

You’re a beautiful little girl. I love dark-haired little girls. And you’re smart, aren’t you? Smart and pretty. Easy to love.

One meaty hand held her down—gently, yes, but holding her all the same—while the other touched her where she didn’t want to be touched. She could feel the buttons of his green shirt pressing against her skin.

I won’t hurt you. That doesn’t hurt, does it? It feels sort of good, doesn’t it?

Claire forced herself to look up. Above her, the gridwork of the carousel formed a pattern like the cobweb of a spider. The wavy oval mirrors were filled at first with green, then with her face, a child’s face. He was nuzzling her, his hand tugging down her pants. Her eyes in the mirror were filled with a confused sort of terror.

Claire backed away from the carousel, nausea quickly building inside her.

“Claire.” Randy touched her shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

“Close it up, Randy,” she said, turning away. “Please just close it up.” She crossed the platform and stepped out into the sunlight. A bench was nearby, and she somehow managed to reach it before her vision blurred and blackened. She sat down, lowering her head to her knees. She could hear the doors rolling shut over the carousel, over Titan, over the chariot, and she covered her ears with her hands.

She straightened dizzily as Randy walked toward her. He stood behind the bench, resting his hands on her shoulders.

“You saw a ghost,” he said.

She nodded. “He did it to me, too,” she said softly. “Zed Patterson. I must have known what he wanted with me that morning in the barn, because it wouldn’t have been the first time. I sent Vanessa instead. I was scared. I couldn’t go through it again.” She turned to look up at him. “How could I possibly have forgotten?”

Randy walked around the bench and sat next to her. “You grew up in a family that taught you how to forget anything unpleasant and put a candy-coated lie in its place. They just forgot to tell you what to do when the coating wore off.”

They sat quietly, Claire with her back to the carousel house. They had planned to get a hotel room somewhere nearby and stay the night—in separate beds—before driving back to Virginia, but now she wanted to escape this place. She wanted to leave the carousel and her memories here in this winter-dead park she would never visit again.

And there was something else she wanted. Something Randy knew before she did.

He took her hand and rubbed the back of it. “Do you want to see Jon?” he asked.

She nodded. Yes. She wanted more than anything to see her husband.

VIENNA

FROM THE WINDOW IN
the kitchen, Jon saw Claire’s car pull into the driveway. He was surprised. She’d told him she would be gone this weekend—away with Randy, no doubt. The man with whom she supposedly had no physical relationship.

He was making chili for a potluck at Pat’s that night, and he was stirring the pot when Claire walked through the back door. She gave him a weak smile and burst into tears.

His heart contracted sharply. Had something happened to Susan? He couldn’t bring himself to ask that question.

“What’s wrong?”

She pulled one of the chairs from the kitchen table and sat down, digging a tissue from her purse.

“I went up to Winchester Village to see the carousel,” she said, “and I remembered something.”

Jon lowered the heat under the chili and pushed his chair closer to her. “Go on.”

She twisted the tissue between her fingers. “Zed Patterson did it to me, too,” she said. “I remembered it vividly.”

He listened as she described what she’d remembered. If she wondered why his face registered no shock, she didn’t say. She was too lost in the past to notice. He reached up once to brush away the tears that she’d needed to cry for a very long time. Tears for a little girl who, in many ways, had never been allowed to grow up.

When she was through talking, she blew her nose, swept back her hair, and sat up straight. “I made a decision driving back to Virginia,” she said. “I’m going to go public with this. Vanessa’s getting my support whether she wants it or not.”

She was very close to the truth, he thought. Close enough for him to fill in the gaps without harming her. He touched her knee. “I think that’s fine,” he said slowly. “I think it’s important for you to do that, but…Claire? What more do you remember?”

Her eyes widened in exasperation. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Isn’t that enough?”

“How did your grandfather die?”

She frowned. “You’ve asked me that before, Jon, and I told you, I don’t know. How is that relevant? All I remember is that he sort of…disappeared. No one ever really talked about it. Eventually I realized he was dead.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”

“My
family
was a little strange.”

Jon sighed. He reached his hand toward her. “Come here, Claire.”

She hesitated.

“Please.” He leaned forward to take her hand, and she let herself be pulled onto his lap. She sat woodenly, though. He rested his hand lightly on her back.

“I’m not certain if I’m doing the right thing in telling you this,” he began. “I’m not certain if I’ve done the right thing all along, but I’m not going to play your mother’s game any longer.”

She looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“You remember when Mellie was living here? How I spent a lot of time with her because I was sick and home from work for a while?”

“Yes. I was glad to see you two getting close.”

“We did get close. And Mellie told me a lot, Claire. I guess something happens to people when they know they’re going to die.”

A look of alarm passed over Claire’s face. “What did she tell you?”

“She said how glad she was that you’d found me. That she thought I was a good person and a good husband.”

Claire’s eyes filled again, and she raised her arm to circle his shoulders. “You were,” she said. “You are.”

“She said that she’d been afraid you would never be able to find happiness as an adult because of all the trauma you’d endured as a child. She told me it had taken every ounce of her creativity to prevent you from being permanently scarred.”

“Her creativity?” Claire wrinkled her nose. “What was she talking about?”

“Think about it, Claire. Think of all that happened in your family that you remember so little about. You forgot those things because Mellie made sure you would. She told me she worked hard to twist things around, so you’d forget the bad and remember it as good, or at worst, benign.”

Seems like I was always having to cover things up
, Mellie had said to him.
Claire made it easy, though. She always wanted to believe me.