Once More With Feeling (41 page)

She didn't want to be here anymore. She
couldn't bear to be here. She wanted to see Owen, to somehow
explain to him all the things she had learned. She didn't know how
such a thing could be accomplished. Owen was a man with a fertile
imagination, but he would not believe her if she explained what had
happened on the day of the accident. He had abandoned his religious
roots long before she met him, and he cherished no hope of an
afterlife. He did not believe in wandering spirits; he'd had no
Spiritualist relatives, no childhood encounters with unseen
dimensions. No matter how many details of their mutual past she
recounted, he would believe it was a trick.

She had to talk to him anyway.

The unseen pianist took up a different
prelude, one that was simpler but even sadder. Owen had played this
one often. He was not technically skilled at the keyboard. His
lessons had come late in life, when his fingers were stiff and
clumsy. But what he hadn't mastered in agility he had made up for
in emotion. She had shed unshared tears over Owen's preludes and
polonaises. So many tears and so much laughter had been
unshared.

She picked up the telephone, but she
couldn't dial his number. Her number. Elisabeth's number.
Everything was so mixed up in her head that she could hardly keep
any of it straight. The only thing she knew for certain was that
she couldn't talk about any of this on the telephone.

She dialed Billy instead. He wasn't asleep;
he answered on the second ring and there was music playing in the
background. She thought she heard a woman's sultry laughter.

"Billy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She blessed his Southern Mama and the
manners she'd drilled into him. "Billy, I'm sorry, but I need to go
somewhere. Will you be able to take me?"

"Right now? Exactly right now?"

"I'm afraid so."

He groaned in distress.

"Maybe not right now," she said. "Maybe in a
few minutes?"

"Well, ma'am, I'll be on my way
directly."

"I'll be waiting."

She hung up and stared at the telephone.
What would she say to Owen? How could she tell him the things that
she needed to without telling him who she was?

And who was she, after all? The woman he'd
been married to? Not entirely. Not anymore. Gypsy Dugan? Not that
either. She was someone else, but so was he. They had both moved
through time to meet again at this moment. She felt as drawn to him
and to a mutual shared destiny as Elisabeth had on their wedding
day.

The prelude finished with three somber minor
chords. "I'm on my way, Owen," she whispered. "And for once, I'm
going to make certain that we understand each other before this
night is over."

Elisabeth had never really loved the house
Owen had built for her. In reality, no matter what he'd said, she
had never really believed he had built it for her at all. It was a
showcase for his vast abilities, the grand prize winner of an
architectural talent show. She had viewed the plans with quiet good
grace and the finished product with wifely pride, but she had never
endeavored to add her signature to any of it. She had let Owen and
the house itself dictate the choice of furnishings and decor.

Now, shivering in the moonlight and gazing
over the wide terraced gardens that bordered the front walk, Gypsy
was silent with awe at the spectacle before her. The house rose
from the ground like a ghostly apparition. Fog from the Sound
danced in luminous wisps around the foundation and crept and
twisted up pillars and doorframes.

She had never seen anything so
magnificent--or perhaps she had, but not with these eyes. The house
was simple, as only the very best things are. Her gaze was directed
to a window, a portico, a discreetly arching roof, but nothing
called out for attention. In its silent elegance, its classic form,
the house made no demands.

Just as Elisabeth, for whom it had been
built, had never made them.

It was clear to her now that Owen had been
thinking of Elisabeth when preparing this design. He had built a
temple for his own resident goddess, a woman who could be placed on
a pedestal and worshiped from afar. And he had worshiped her until
the needs of mortal man had intervened.

"Miss Dugan?" Billy's voice sounded behind
her.

She held up one gloved hand without turning.
"It's all right. I'm going up to the house."

"I can't just leave you here. The
temperature's dropping."

"Please. Go find a bar. You'll have your
choice in Bayville. I'll call you when I need you."

"I'll feel better when you're inside."

She knew he wouldn't leave until she was
safe, yet she couldn't make herself take the final steps. She moved
a little farther up the walkway. The annuals Elisabeth had planted
in the spring were shivering in the cool mist. Silver dusty miller
hovered over frost-tinged petunias, as if to protect them from the
final destruction of winter.

She bent and plucked a thistle growing under
the low spreading branches of an azalea. The gardens had been
Elisabeth's domain and joy, but she had never allowed herself to
plant the vivid, erotic splash of flowers she craved. She had
permitted Owen's vision to dominate here, too. The gardens she had
yearned for, wildflowers and exotic creeping trumpet vine, tangles
of wisteria and shrub roses so heavy with bloom they sagged in
picturesque abandon, had seemed out of place against the austerity
of the house.

"What was I thinking?" She spoke the
question as if the thistle might answer. It had grown where it
wasn't wanted, grown against the odds in darkness among a thick mat
of shallow roots. And still it had survived to destroy the garden's
perfection. There were others. She could see them now. Weeds she
would never have tolerated. Wildflowers in training. On an impulse
she squatted and scooped out a hole in the cold earth without
removing her gloves. She dropped the thistle in and patted dirt
carefully around it.

"Miss Dugan?"

She got to her feet and headed to the front
door without a word. Door chimes sounded inside, hollow echoes in a
house that seemed abandoned.

She didn't have to wait long. When he
answered the door Owen had a drink in his hand. From the way he
gazed at her she knew it wasn't his first.

He didn't say a word. He stepped aside and
opened the door wider.

The white granite floor felt familiar under
feet that had never stood there. She faced him without speaking. He
was wearing gray flannel slacks, scuffed loafers, and a white shirt
rolled at the wrists and unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He
worked on his drink, measuring her with his eyes as he did. He
looked exhausted or tipsy. Possibly both. He was definitely a man
stretched to the limit, a man whose world had crashed around him.
The aftershocks were threatening to destroy him.

"How did you know where I lived?" he asked
at last.

She lied without blinking. "I did a story
out here last year, and someone gave me a tour. Your house was on
it."

"You have a remarkable memory."

"How I got here seems unimportant."

"Was that Billy at the end of the walk?"

"Yes. He'll come back for me when I call
him."

She almost expected him to tell her that the
time had come. Instead he turned away and started toward the
library. She followed, but not on his heels. She stripped off her
coat and gloves and surveyed the house as they moved through it.
The dogs were probably shut up somewhere in the back or in their
kennels behind the garage. She had missed their hulking golden
bodies, their lolling pink tongues and generous affection. She
wondered if they might have recognized her tonight.

The house was tidy and unchanged. Owen
hadn't taken this opportunity to live out new interior fantasies,
to banish whatever small personal touches had been solely
Elisabeth's. Instead it was as if the house and all its contents
had stood motionless in time.

Waiting for what? For whom?

There was a small fire in the fireplace and
a stack of open books on the table in front of the leather sofa. An
uncapped bottle of Stolichnaya Cristall stood watch on the
mantel.

She was the first to speak. "The house is
brilliant, but it's almost hard to believe anyone really lives
here."

"No one does."

"Then you're spending your nights in the
city?"

"I sleep here. I haven't lived anywhere
since the accident."

"Would she want that?"

"I can't very well ask her, can I?"

"Are you going to ask me why I'm here?"

"I assume you'll tell me when you're ready.
I haven't failed to notice that you speak your mind."

"I'm not even sure I remember why I came. It
had something to do with straightening out what happened
tonight."

"What did you mean when you said that you
were the woman who could have made me happy forever?"

"We're caught in some godforsaken time warp,
you and I. You feel it, too, don't you? Our destinies are
intertwined."

"In some terrible destructive way." He
reached in front of her to pour himself another inch of vodka, and
he tossed it down as if it was the water it appeared to be.

"Perhaps," she said.

"I have a wife."

"And yet, you don't."

"I wake up most mornings and I fully expect
to see her face beside mine. Though God knows why. We were only
rarely sleeping together. Hope springs eternal, I suppose."

"Why weren't you sleeping together?"

"Do you always take what you want, Gypsy? Do
you zero in on a target and go after it, no matter who it
hurts?"

"Which Gypsy are we talking about?" She set
down her coat and reached for the bottle, carrying it to a side
table where gold-rimmed tumblers surrounded an ice bucket sporting
romantic renditions of moose and mountains. She poured a healthy
portion and fished for the last of several melting ice cubes.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"The pre-or-post accident Gypsy? I can't
tell you much about that other woman. I think she was confused
about what she wanted. And I don't think she ever understood how to
reach for what she really needed."

"And now?"

"She still finds it hard."

"What do you want?"

She wanted peace. She understood that much.
She wanted an end to the turmoil, the cliff-walking, the sky-diving
without a parachute. Elisabeth had yearned for excitement and
challenge. She had needed those things, had deserved them, in fact.
But she had deserved them as Elisabeth. Gypsy deserved peace.

"I want to know that whatever I am is
enough." She straightened and faced him. "I don't need more or
less. Just what I have, what I am."

"I don't understand."

She didn't understand completely, either.
She tried to put her feelings into words. "We spend our whole lives
wishing for the things we don't possess. Now I know that the things
we really need are right in front of us, and most of the time we're
just too scared to reach for them."

She doubted he understood or approved of
those sentiments, and she couldn't blame him. Her explanation
sounded like something from a New Age bestseller, facile and, at
heart, just so many words. He set down his glass at the edge of the
mantel. For a moment she thought it would crash to the floor as he
crossed the room.

"I think you'd better call Billy now." He
stopped right in front of her.

She leaned toward him. Inches separated
them. Gypsy's voice emerged, low, sultry. But the words were
Elisabeth's. "Do you really want me to go?"

He closed his eyes. He looked older and
supremely tired. "Don't do this to me."

She touched his cheek with her fingertips.
He needed a shave. Stubble rasped against her tender skin. "I've
wanted you since the day I met you." It wasn't a lie.

He squeezed his eyelids tighter, as if
looking at her would seal their fate. "I'm a married man."

"It doesn't matter tonight. Let me make up
for what I've taken from you."

She didn't know where those words had come
from, or which woman had spoken them. She only knew they were true.
She hadn't come here to seduce Owen. At least she hadn't admitted
it to herself, not even in the throes of revelations about honesty
and reaching for happiness. But she had come to settle things with
him, to somehow tie up the thousand threads of commitment, of
caring and misunderstanding that were between them.

And this was the only way she knew.

She rested her forearms on his shoulders and
buried her fingertips in his hair. Desire was like the fog outside,
a twisting, rising wraith diffusing and filling the space inside
her. Her skin tingled, her body temperature seemed to soar, to warm
the space that was still between them. Her throat swelled, as if
with tears, but none rose to her eyes. "Owen," she whispered. "Look
at me. Please?"

He opened his eyes. They shone with
resignation. "You're the picture of life. Of everything that's
pulsing and moving and changing. . ."

She understood what he wasn't saying. That
Elisabeth was none of those things.

She slanted her lips over his, kissing him
softly, gently, turning her head to kiss him again. She stroked his
hair as she kissed him and moved closer until her breasts were
grazing his shirt.

He sighed, a defeated yet hungry sigh that
filled her with sadness. "Oh, Owen."

"What do you want from me?"

His voice was barely audible. She wasn't
certain he knew he had spoken out loud. "Just this. Just tonight,"
she said.

He rested his hands at her waist.
Reluctantly. They were feather-light, as if he couldn't force them
to bear the weight of his arms. When she kissed him again, his lips
moved under hers.

She remembered a long-ago night when he had
first begun his courtship of Elisabeth. He had not taken her to bed
immediately, sensing, perhaps, her peculiar innocence. He had
kissed her this way, hesitantly, as if he was waiting for something
or someone to intervene, to snatch away a lifetime of potential
happiness. Between each kiss he had given Elisabeth time to change
her mind. She hadn't wanted time. She had known the moment his lips
touched hers that this would be the man to take her virginity and
her heart.