“I wasn't going to tell my mother about the Grand Plan,” she said,
mother
sounding only a little like
mubber.
“Why did you tell her?”
“It was the only way I could think of to convince you that I'm telling the truth.” He tugged another folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and tossed it on the table in front of her. “I never throw anything away. I found some carbon paper and made a copy for you.”
“I never want to see that again.” Cydney pushed the paper back at him. “Once was enough.”
“Just look at it, will you?” Dipstick pushed it back to her. “It took me an hour to write it longhand with no mistakes.”
Cydney eyed the folded sheet of paper. It would make good kindling for the Angus Munroe barbecue she planned to have when she got home. Burn a few pictures, grill a couple hot dogs.
“If I read it will you go away and let me do the dishes?”
“If you read it, I'll help you do the dishes.”
Cydney sighed and unfolded the paper. His handwriting wasn't bad for a man, a little cramped and slanted to the right. She read the whole carbon-copied page and frowned at him.
“You changed it.”
“Not much. I just left out what you said to me last night.” He smiled and leaned toward her over the corner of the table, his hair dry enough to fall over his forehead. “That was private. Just between us.”
He drew the s out suggestively, his gray eyes soft in the candlelight. Cydney's heart kicked over.
“Us? What us? We are
not
an us.”
“I think we could be.” He feathered a circle on her wrist with his fingertip that made Cydney's stomach flutter. “If you'd give us a chance.”
“Like you gave Bebe and Aldo?”
He slumped back in his chair and scowled. “Why do you bring those two into every conversation we have?”
“I don't
bring
them. They're the only topic of conversation we have in common.”
“We could talk about writing,” Dipstick suggested. “'Course, you'd have to sit down and actually write something first.”
“I've written plenty, bub. Two hundred pages of my mystery!”
“In five years. Wow. Burnin' up the keys.”
“You're trying to make me angry, aren't you?”
“I'm trying to talk to you about something besides Aldo and Bebe.”
“We don't have anything else
to
talk about.”
“We could find something. Or we could go upstairs, lock my bedroom door and make love. I'd carry you, but with this bum foot I'm afraid I'd drop you.”
In her hottest fantasies, Angus Munroe had carried her up stairs to make love to her. And always, in every single fantasy, he said, “I love you,” before he swung her into his arms like Rhett sweeping Scarlett up the stairs at Tara.
“You're twenty-four hours too late,” Cydney said, her throat aching. “Last night I would've carried you upstairs.”
“I said I'm sorry. I erased the Grand Plan. I gave you the power to take Aldo away from me. What else do I have to do for you to forgive me?”
“I don't know,” Cydney lied. “I'm not sure I can forgive you.”
Not until she heard the “I love you” she'd spent ten years of her life dreaming she'd hear Angus Munroe whisper in her ear. Cydney felt dazed and faint. How had this happened? How could she have fallen in love with a man she'd never met?
“I'm not going to beg. I might cry but I won't beg.” He gave her a rueful smile, got to his feet and stacked their pie plates and cups and saucers together. “C'mon, Uncle Cyd. Let's get these dishes done.”
It didn't take long. There were only four place settings of Aunt Phoebe's china to wash and dry and put away in the breakfront. Gus blew out the candles. Cydney extinguished the cranberry lamps and turned away from the sideboard. Only the brass sconces glowed on the walls, soft as stars on a warm summer night. Gus stood behind the chair she'd sat in, his hands resting on the back.
“I can't interest you in hot, wild sex, but how 'bout a couple games of Ping-Pong?”
“No, thanks. I've got a book to write.”
“Ah. Your mystery,” he said, and nodded. Boy, you don't know the half of it, Cydney thought. “Feel free to use the R & R room. Lots of reference books in there.”
“Thank you. I will. Good night.”
At the top of the back stairs Cydney stopped, turned around and saw Gus standing at the bottom, his right foot raised on the first step, his left hand on the banister.
“I'm really not a recluse,” he said. “It's nice to have people in the house again.”
“Is this another apology? 'Cause if it is—”
“No more apologies. I just wanted you to know that. And I want you to know I was only trying to save my family.”
“The end doesn't justify the means with me.” “Too bad.” He smiled at her. “Good night, Cydney.” She wheeled around the corner into her room, shut the door and leaned her forehead against it, her heart thumping. Only trying to save his family. What family? He didn't have one. All he had was Aldo.
She turned away from the door, toed off her Keds and sat down at the laptop. She had to figure this out, had to know how this had happened—how she'd fallen in love with a fantasy. At least now she knew why Dipstick's betrayal hurt so deeply. In her dreams he wasn't sleazy and self-absorbed. In her dreams, he was perfect. In real life, he wasn't.
Neither was she. She was confused and heartsore and still feeling dazed. She sat straight in her chair and put her fingers on the keypad, moved the cursor down a double-spaced line from “CHAPTER ONE,” indented for the paragraph, drew a deep breath and started to type.
The worst day of my life was the last Monday in October. It started when I woke up at 7:12
A.M.
My clock radio should have wakened me at six, but the alarm was set on
P.M.
instead of A.M. I'd forgotten to check it at 2
A.M.
Sunday when I turned the clocks back from daylight savings time.
First-person point of view wasn't commercially popular, but she could change that later. She was following the Fletcher Par-rish Credo of Writing—puke it up, then clean it up.
Cydney typed four pages and read what she'd written. She was standing in the middle of the dozen eggs she'd dropped when Bebe came pelting into the kitchen wrapped in the bed-sheet, staring with dismay at the huge diamond flashing on her niece's finger. Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her trousers and plunged on.
She barfed up the story—her father would be so proud— through Dipstick finding her in her writing room talking to his picture. Her heart was thudding in her throat and her fingers were so damp they kept slipping off the keys. Her wrists
ached and her fanny was numb. Her back screeched like a rusty gate when she tried to stand up. She grabbed the back of the chair and managed not to fall on her face.
No wonder. Her travel alarm on the bedside chest said 2:20 A.M.
“War isn't hell,” Cydney moaned, limping on dead, leaden feet into the bathroom. “Writing is hell.”
She took a hot, half-hour-long shower, washed and dried her hair, brushed her teeth—being careful of her lip—and creamed her face. Every muscle in her body creaked when she put on her pj's, green-striped seersucker with long pants and long sleeves, but her brain was wide-awake, humming and hot-wired into her story. She'd write a bit more, she decided, but not in the straight-backed chair she was sure Torquemada had used for the Inquisition.
Cydney shut down the laptop and dug for the spare adapter she always kept in her suitcase. She left the desk lamp on and headed for the R&R room down the back stairs and through the dining room.
The moonlight pouring through the living room glass wall helped her find the handles on the pocket doors. She slid them open and inhaled the scent of books. Ahh. Dipstick had turned the lights on behind the bar, but Cydney felt more switches on the wall above the chair inside the doors. The first three worked the chandeliers, the fourth one the spotlights. She flipped it and soft pools of light came on, gleaming on the book spines lining the shelves built into the paneled walls.
Cydney tried out the couches, like Goldilocks, too hard, too soft, settled on an overstuffed chair with a big ottoman for her feet and a floor outlet for the adapter. She hooked up the laptop, brought up the chapter she'd just finished and read the last paragraph.
I heard the floor creak as if someone were walking across it. Then I felt it and my heart seized. I shot up on my knees, whirled around and saw Angus Munroe
—
tall, dark and drop-dead handsome in indigo jeans, hiking boots and
a navy suede bomber jacket
—
jam a pair of wire-framed half glasses over a nose shaped just like Aldo's. He grasped the back of my old desk chair and leaned over it to take a closer look at the photos on my corkboard. That's when I wished I were dead.
No punch, her father would say. No hook. Hmmm. She'd make a cup of tea and think about it.
While the water boiled, Cydney ate a chicken leg left over from last night. It was almost 3:30 in the morning and she was starving. While her tea steeped, she ate a piece of blueberry pie. Then she rinsed the plate, poured her tea and went back to the R&R room, sat on the ottoman with the laptop on her knees, deleted
That's when I wished I were dead
and typed what Dipstick had said to her.
“My God. They are pictures of me. They're all pictures of me.” Angus Munroe, my idol, the man of my dreams, yanked off his glasses and whipped his head toward me. “What kind of a nut are you?”
A darn good hook, even if she did say so herself. Cydney smiled, satisfied, and rubbed her arms. She had gooseflesh beneath her pj sleeves and her bare feet felt like ice. She yawned—she shouldn't have eaten—chafed her arms and got up to look at the books.
Dipstick's amazing collection of mysteries didn't surprise her. He had all of Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean—and every one of her father's twenty-six books, in hardcover. She'd brought her camera so she could photograph the wedding. She'd take a picture of the shelf devoted to Fletcher Par-rish in the no-talent pretty boy's library and FedEx it to her father. It would cost her a fortune, but it would be worth every penny. Then she'd call him and give him the raspberry long distance.
She found the slew of research tomes Dipstick had mentioned and a ton of books on sports, mostly baseball, and three
trophies used as bookends. Little golden gloves with grass-stained balls tucked in the metal pockets, dated 1979, 1980 and 19 81, all inscribed to Gus Munroe, second baseman. State tournament wins from high school, but no college trophies. Cydney wondered about that, then remembered what Dipstick had told her. He'd had Aldo since he was nineteen. How sad that he'd had to give up baseball. Cydney wondered what else he'd had to give up and if he'd resented it.
She felt a draft and shivered, heard something rattle and glanced toward the end of the room where Aunt Phoebe's grand piano sat with the lid down in the alcove walled by windows, gleaming in the half dark like a whale breaking the surface in a moonlit ocean. There were no spotlights in the alcove, but there was a floor lamp Cydney switched on.
The piano lid was covered with a paisley shawl and dozens of framed photographs. Baby pictures of Aldo with his palomino hair. Childhood pictures of two skinny, bony-jointed boys with dark hair and eyes, bats and gloves and buzz cuts, fishing poles and Christmas presents, scraped chins and birthday cakes, gaps in their teeth, and later, braces. Gus and his brother Artie, Cydney guessed.
Angus Munroe, the man who scowled most of the time and rarely smiled, who'd taken her breath away when he'd leaned against her Jeep and grinned at her yesterday, mugged and laughed and made faces at the camera. He looped his stick-thin arms around his brother, stood behind him and stuck two fingers up behind his head.
He was a little more subdued, but not much, in snaps with a tall, dark-haired man who looked like he'd spit both boys. Dipstick's father, Cydney guessed. There were pictures of his mother, a classy-looking brunette. With her boys and strings of fish; in a halter-top and shorts, squirting them with a hose and laughing; in a formal pose, wearing a sweater with a fur collar and her sons stair-stepped in front of her in suits and ties.
On the rim above the closed keyboard there were four more frames. Cydney sat down on the bench, turned on the
light clipped to the music stand and felt her heart start to crack.
On Tall Pines' front porch, Munroe and Aldo—with a mouthful of braces—stood with their arms around a small, plump woman with bright red hair, pearls at her ears and her throat and a smile that crinkled her whole face. Aunt Phoebe. In a second photo, she sat at this piano in rolled-up jeans and sneakers, banging on the keys while a seven- or eight-year-old Aldo danced, wearing a white glove, sunglasses and a red jacket with gold-spangled epaulets.
A third photo of a wedding and a sylph-thin bride with a garland of roses in Aldo's white-blond hair. Her groom, Artie grown up and a ringer for Gus, stood behind her with his arms around her waist, his cheek pressed to her temple. Someone had clipped the corner of a napkin and tucked it under the glass. In gold script it read—”Artie and Bethany Munroe, June 10,1975.” At the top in blue crayon, written in a child's block-printed hand, it read—”Mommy and Daddy Getting Married.”
The fourth photo was a snapshot in a small gold frame. Artie and Bethany, smiling and holding their maybe three-year-old son between them. Aldo laughing, his fat little arm outstretched, his stubby fingers reaching for the camera. In red crayon—”I Love You Mommy. I Love You Daddy. Love Aldo.”
Cydney's eyes swam with tears. This was Gus' family— these pictures. This was what he'd tried to save, the plump little toddler with his mother's white-blond hair and blue eyes.
Oh God. And she'd told him the end didn't justify the means.
Cydney bent her arms on the music stand, buried her head in the crook of her elbow and sobbed.
chapter