Ivy Secrets (49 page)

Charlie let Peter usher her from the house. She clung to his arm and took a deep breath as they stepped out the door, filling her lungs with relief at escaping the confusion inside, and gratitude that for once Peter had taken charge.

    Tess lifted the rod to her lips and tapped in her breath. A small clear bubble appeared at the other end.

“Oh,” Tess said aloud. “That’s so pretty.” She tapped in her breath again. The small globe slowly swelled. “You’re going to be a very pretty ornament,” she said. “A very pretty ornament for someone’s very pretty Christmas tree.” Then she scowled at the glass. “I wonder whose tree you’ll end up on? I wonder if the people will deserve to have such a beautiful ornament on their tree.” She studied the bulb a moment. “You would have been prettier as a vase. You would have had a better life if you were my Fabergé. My beautiful vase like the beautiful egg that belonged to the beautiful child.” She put one hand on her hip. The rod tipped down. “But you know what? Nobody wants you. They only want
you to be a dumb ornament … like everybody else.” She lifted the rod again and tapped in her breath. But the glass had cooled and would not expand.

“Cocksucker!” Tess screamed and threw the rod against the wall, its glass tip shattering on impact. “Ungrateful cocksucker!”

“Tess?”

She squinted toward the light that spilled through the door.

“What the fuck do you want, Lyons?”

“Tess, are you all right? We didn’t know where you were.”

“What do you care? Are you going to arrest me now?”

Joe walked closer toward her. “There was a call.”

Tess looked at him but didn’t understand what he meant.

“From the kidnapper.”

“Oh,” was all she could seem to say.

“He’s going to call back tomorrow.”

“He? You mean, it wasn’t me?” She laughed a shrill laugh. “Imagine. And all this time you thought it was me.”

“Tess, I didn’t …”

“Bullshit.” She stood and retrieved the glass rod. She raised the rod over her head. “You’re a bastard, you know that, Joe Lyons? The only thing you wanted me for I wouldn’t give you. All these years. You’ve been waiting a long time to pay me back, haven’t you?” She raised the rod higher, as if to strike out. “Well, you’ll never have me, because you’re a prick. A filthy, smelly, peeing prick. I hate pricks, you know. If you don’t believe me, ask your aunt. I used to sleep with her, you know.”

Joe stepped back. “If you’re trying to shock me, Tess, it won’t work. I’ve known for years that Dell is a lesbian.”

Tess gripped the rod more tightly. Then she spit. He dodged the slimy ball. It landed on his foot. “Bastard,” she said and brandished the rod near his face.

Joe reached over and grabbed the rod. The heat from the end burned his palm. He screamed and jumped back.

“Dirty bastard!” Tess screamed, coming closer, faster, closer, aiming the rod at him.

He backed up again and fell against a metal cabinet. The door popped open.

“Dirty cocksucking bastard!” Tess ranted, waving the rod.

As Joe struggled to get to this feet, he knocked the side of the open cabinet. The boxes inside cascaded to the floor.

Tess’s chest heaved and gasped. “Filthy bastard. Now look at the mess you’ve made.” She threw down the rod and stopped to pick up the boxes.

Joe put his arm on her back. “Tess,” he said calmly, hardly out of breath. “What are those?”

“What do you care?”

His voice grew cold. “I said, what are those?”

“Empty boxes.” She picked one up and waved it in front of him. “Empty fucking boxes.”

“What do you use them for?”

Tess held a box in her hand. “They’re gift boxes, asshole. For my ornaments. They make them look more expensive.” She snorted and restacked the boxes. “Not that you care,” she muttered, “Not that you give a shit.”

“Tess,” Joe said again, “I think I’d better have a closer look at those.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She grabbed a silver-colored gift box and hurled it at him. Then she yanked the rest of the boxes from the cabinet, plunked cross-legged on the floor, and began to sob.

“Are you aware?” Joe asked, “that the remains of the Fabergé were delivered in a box just like this?”

Tess stared at him. “You bastard. You planned this, didn’t you?”

Joe didn’t answer.

She wiped a trickle of snot from her nose. She sniffed. She tried to unfold her legs, but suddenly she was weak, sapped, as though the energy—and life—had been sucked from her soul.

“Where’s Jenny?” Joe asked.

Jenny. Jenny. Jenny.
The name flashed in her mind, a neon sign of the beautiful child. The child that should have been hers.

She sprang to her feet and raced to the oven. Three rods were heating inside, waiting for the glass to be applied, waiting to produce works of art. She ripped one from the oven. The tip blazed red. She jerked around and pointed the fiery end at Joe. “Bastard,” she repeated. “Filthy bastard.”

He backed up and held up his hand. “Tess. Wait.”

“Filthy bastard!” She lunged forward and aimed the rod at his face.

Joe darted out of the way. “Jesus, Tess!’

“Jesus nothing.” She poked the rod at the air, aiming for him. He put up his arms and blocked his face. She leaped forward. “Go ahead … hide. I’ll burn your bloody balls off first!” She thrust the rod at his crotch. Joe reached for it. He grabbed the hot end and shoved it aside. It tumbled from her hands. He held up his palms and howled in pain.

“Fucking bitch!”

Tess looked at the white channels on his left palm. The odor of burned flesh sizzled in the room. Tess had burned herself often; she knew the white would soon turn to red, then black. It would swell and fester and ooze. And it would hurt. God, it would hurt. She remembered those hands on her breasts.

She dropped to her knees. “I didn’t do it,” she sobbed. “Why does everyone think I did it? I wouldn’t hurt Jenny. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I never meant to hurt Charlie … I never meant to hurt you … I want you … I’ve-wanted-you-so-badly … but-you-never-came-back …” Her words strung together like popcorn on thread, garlands of popcorn to adorn the homes of the people with families and Christmas trees and hand-blown glass ornaments hanging from the boughs.

Suddenly, there was only one thing Tess wanted to do. One thing. More than anything in the world.

She bolted to the oven. She pulled out another rod, ripped open her shirt, and aimed the rod at herself. But Joe was on her. He yanked the rod from her hand, just as it wavered and fell, landing on the top of her breast, burning into her heart, as everyone and everything in her life always had.

    When Marina returned from seeing Edward, the FBI men told her what had happened.

“They’re keeping Tess in the psych unit for observation,” the agent named Connors said. “Both she and Joe have third-degree burns, but I think Joe will heal a lot faster than Tess.”

“She needs help,” Marina said. “She has needed help for years. Help. And understanding.”

Connors nodded. “They have an excellent outpatient program here. And Joe said he’s not going to press charges.”

Marina dropped onto the lumpy sofa in Tess’s living room. This was all such a mess. Everyone was falling apart, and it was all because of her. All because of her selfishness, so long ago. She should have had the abortion … or she should have owned up to what she had done. She should have taken the responsibility for being pregnant. Instead, she’d playacted the role of the martyr, the humble princess pretending only to give her baby freedom. But Marina knew now that all she’d really cared about was her own freedom, her own selfish need to have whatever she wanted: the spoiled princess, just as Viktor had once said, as she had proved over and over all these past years of jumping in and out of meaningless marriages, of creating scandal upon scandal that outranked her sister’s egotistical agenda, and of now trying to atone for her wrongs by escaping into her work and saying it was for the good of the people. Marina now knew she was no better than self-serving Alexis. In fact, Marina was even worse, for at least Alexis had hurt no one.

“Tess didn’t do it,” she said calmly.

“The studio was filled with silver gift boxes exactly like the one the egg was delivered in,” Connors reminded her. “And there is a separate phone line in there. She was in the studio when the call came through.”

“Tess didn’t do it,” Marina said again. “And neither did Willie Benson.”

The FBI agent leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Do you know something, Ms. Marchant?”

Marina spied the phone in the hallway. “I must make a call. I would appreciate being left alone.”

Greenberg leaned forward on his chair. “There is a stiff penalty for withholding information.”

Marina tossed back her hair. “You seem to forget. I am the princess of Novokia. I believe that entitles me to diplomatic immunity.”

The FBI men looked at one another, frowning.

“Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to tell you who’s done this,” Marina said.

Connors scowled. “A lot can happen between now and then.”

“Tomorrow,” Marina repeated.

    It was the most difficult call Marina had ever made. When her father answered the phone, she almost hung up; she almost ran again. But Marina knew there could be no more running: for no matter how hard she tried to make amends for her past, her past was alive—hopefully, still alive—in Jenny Hobart.

“Father,” she said slowly. “There is something I have to tell you.”

She spoke into the receiver as though speaking to no one, as though she were talking out loud, as though her father, King Andrei of Novokia, wasn’t on the other end of the line. She told him of her pregnancy; she told him she had deceived him; she told him Charlie and Peter had adopted her baby.

“And now the girl has been kidnapped,” Marina went on. “I think Viktor must have found out about her. I think it is Viktor who has kidnapped her and is demanding a three-million-dollar ransom.”

She finally stopped, waiting for her father to speak.

“Marina,” he said quietly, “please call her by name. Her name is Jenny. I have always known about your baby.”

Darkness crept in around the edges of Marina’s eyes. She blinked and tried to refocus on the flowered gray wallpaper in the hall. “What are you saying?”

“Nicholas has always been loyal to me. He told me of your baby the same day you called to ask if you could remain at Smith for the summer … something about making up classes, I believe was the excuse.”

Nicholas told him? She turned around, expecting to see Nicholas behind her, expecting him to be shadowing her as he always was. Then Marina remembered she’d come here alone. Alone, and unguarded. She pressed a hand to her temple. Her head was beginning to pound.

“Father …” she began.

“It’s all right, my dear. At the time, we felt it was best to let you do as you wished. I have prayed, however, that this would never come back to haunt us. Or to hurt you.”

Marina twirled the phone cord. “It has, Father. I am afraid that now it has.”

The silence that followed told Marina the king was thinking, pondering a solution to this new problem. But this wasn’t one of Alexis’s embarrassing tirades in the public square, or one of Marina’s sensational divorce headlines being splashed across the tabloid pages of the world. It was different now … so many would be hurt.

“Father?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

He paused, then answered, “I knew how hard your life has been, Marina. Yours, and your sister’s. It was different when I was young. I was raised to be king. And I was a boy. I knew that sounds sexist, but that was the truth. The world was much different then. Being a prince was much easier than being a princess today. The world was more tolerant; the world was not as curious, not as eager to have its idols defaced for their own grim satisfaction.”

Marina felt tears come to her eyes. “Father, what am I going to do? I must tell the police. If they are ever going to find Jenny, they must know where to begin.”

Through the line, she heard her father sigh. Guilt seeped into her. Marina closed her eyes.
Dear God, forgive me
, she said to herself, then gratefully thanked God that at least her mother was in no state of mind to endure this pain. At least her mother was shrouded by the innocent bliss of dementia.

“You are right,” the king said finally. “The police must be told the truth. They must know that Jenny is your daughter.”

Jenny is your daughter.
Even as she heard the words, Marina still couldn’t digest them. “And then?” she asked. “And then, once the girl is safely returned, perhaps we may all want to look at things from a new perspective. The girl is, after all, the rightful heir to the throne.”

“But,” Marina asked carefully, “do we have the right to force her to be?” Even as she said the words, Marina realized that aside from being the heir to Novokia, Jenny was also his grandchild, his blood.

“We will talk about it later, my dear. First, Jenny must be found.”

“I will tell them about Viktor,” Marina said.

“Yes. But wait, Marina, there is something else I must
ask you. There was one thing Nicholas did not tell me, for he claimed he did not know.”

Marina’s heart beat a little faster. She feared what was coming next.

“Who is the father of your baby? Who is my granddaughter’s father?”

Marina squeezed her eyes shut. “He was a commoner, Father. He was a good, decent man. But he was a commoner.”

“An American?”

“Yes. That is all I am going to say.”

She hung up the phone and bent her head. Her father had known all along. Her secret had been safe all these years, safely protected by the one person she had tried so hard to keep it from. The irony of it made her feel sick. Sick, and so very confused.

    “Viktor didn’t kidnap Jenny.”

Dell’s voice startled Marina from her thoughts. She turned quickly and faced the old woman. “What are you talking about? Where did you come from?”

“I was in Tess’s bedroom, getting some things to take to her in the hospital.”

Marina laughed. “And you just conveniently happened to overhear my phone conversation? Why are you really here, Dell? I’m surprised you’re not home harboring that slimeball Willie Benson. I presume that’s why the police haven’t been able to locate him.”