Prospect Street (29 page)

“Down to the canal to meet some people.”

“Colin home?” She didn't want to sound like she was only there to see Enzio.

“Somewhere.”

“Enzio?”

“Yeah.” Selim nodded goodbye as Bear yanked him toward freedom.

“Remy!” Colin wandered in from the kitchen and flashed a huge grin. He was the warmest of the roommates, a big-brotherly guy who liked everyone and managed to make everyone like him, too. “What'd you do to your hair?”

“Chopped it all off. Do you like it?”

He came over and placed a palm against each of her cheeks, squinting studiously. “Cute,” he pronounced.

“I don't want to be cute. Short people are automatically cute to start with.”

“What do you want to be?”

“Gorgeous.”

He stepped back. “That, too. Are you just stopping by?”

“I can't stay long. I just wanted to say hello.”

“Your mother keeps you on a tight leash, huh?”

“She wants me to get into a good school next year.”

“Where have you applied?”

“University of Virginia. William and Mary.” Remy shrugged, as if college was no big deal.

“Not Georgetown?”

“Who wants to live at home?” Remy wondered what she would do next year when she started high school and the guys in this house thought she was supposed to be in college. It was probably too early to worry about it.

“I'm off to the library,” Colin said. “I think Enzio's around someplace.”

“I'll find him and say hi.”

Colin grabbed a pile of books off the water-stained coffee table, pushing aside a pizza carton and two half-finished glasses of milk to search for a notebook. He found it and added it to his pile. Then, with another dazzling grin, he sprinted for the front door and slammed it behind him.

Remy wondered if Paul, the fourth roommate, who practi
cally lived at his girlfriend's house, was home, too, or if she and Enzio were alone.

“What's all the noise?” Enzio, bare-chested, stretching as if he'd just woken up, came halfway down the stairs.

“Colin doesn't know how to close a door quietly.”

“Where're Selim and the mutt?”

“They left before Colin.”

Enzio sank to the landing, as if he was too tired to make it all the way downstairs. “So what are you doing?”

“I just stopped by. I can't stay long. My mother would have a cow if she knew I was here.”

“Why do you let her push you around?”

“She feeds me. Besides, next year I'll be out of there.”

“I got you something.”

Remy had moved to the bottom of the stairs. She leaned against the newel post, looking up at him. “Yeah?”

“I'll get it.” He stretched again, the muscles in his chest flexing. “Be right back.”

Her curiosity built as she waited. If Enzio really had gotten her something, that meant he thought about her when she wasn't with him. That felt big. That felt huge, like her life had suddenly made a sharp turn for the better.

“Here.” He took the steps two at a time and thrust a shocking-pink Lawford's shopping bag into her arms. Remy caught it and peeked inside. The lime-green skirt and jacket with the rhinestone zipper tab were stuffed under a wad of tissue paper.

“Enzio!” She pulled out the jacket, a little wrinkled now, but still an awesome piece of clothing. She held it to her chest. “This cost a lot, didn't it?”

He shrugged. “No big deal.”

“But it is a big deal. I remember what this cost.”

“Some chick bought it and decided she didn't want it. When she returned it, I just forgot to put it on the rack. Okay?”

“You mean you didn't pay for it?”

“Looked to me like maybe she wore it before she brought it back.”

She didn't know how these things worked, but she guessed Enzio knew what he was talking about. “Well, thanks a lot.”

“Put it on.”

She looked up at him. “Now?”

“Yeah. I want to see you in it again.”

Remy looked down at her jeans and T-shirt. “I don't know.”

“Go in the bathroom and change. It will only take a minute.”

“Yeah, sure.” She took off for the bathroom beside the kitchen. “I'll be right back.”

A few minutes later she stood in the tiny room tugging on the skirt—which barely covered her rump. She felt strange in the outfit, like somebody she didn't know very well.

When she came out, Enzio was in the kitchen making coffee. He lived on coffee and always smelled like it. She thought of him whenever her mother brewed a pot for herself. She thought of him a lot.

“What do you think?” She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, one behind her ear.

“Sweet baby.” He cocked a brow. “Pull that zipper down a little and let me see some skin.”

Her hand flew to the rhinestones. “It's fine just like it is.”

He laughed and started toward her. “We're shy today, huh? Here I bought you a big present, and you won't even show me your collarbone?”

She laughed nervously, feeling like an infant. “Stay there and I will.”

“Sure. I can see just fine.”

She inched the zipper down until it nestled between her small breasts. She had shirts that exposed more skin, but she felt funny unzipping the jacket with Enzio's gaze on her.

“What are you so afraid of? Nobody ever seen you naked before?”

“Nobody's about to, either.”

He smiled without showing any teeth. “You made it through high school a virgin? Isn't that some kind of world record?”

“Well, I'm not through yet.”

“That's right.” The smile broadened. “C'mere, little girl. Show Enzio how grateful you are.”

Remy knew that the moment had come to put a stop to this. A stop to something that was whirling out of control. A stop to the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.

Instead she took one step, then another. He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her the rest of the way, leaning down to nibble at the top of her ear. “Why'd you cut your hair?”

“I don't know.” Her knees felt like rubber.

“So I could do this?” He grazed her ear with his lips and tongue, tracing the curve, nipping at the lobe. “And this?”

“May…be…”

He kissed her throat, lingering at the hollow. One hand slid under the jacket and inched up as he continued to kiss her. At first he simply stroked her back; then two fingers slipped under her bra, and before she knew what he'd done, the clasp was free and as fast as lightning he was pressing his palm against one breast.

“Mmmm… Nice.”

Remy was so shocked she didn't know what to do. It had all happened so fast. She had been thinking about what his lips were doing, and now his fingers were plucking and pinching her nipple.

“I don't think—”

“Don't think, baby.” Enzio turned her head with his free hand and covered her lips with his, pushing her against the refrigerator. His hand was still between them, inching the zipper down from inside the jacket. In a moment the jacket hung open and both hands were kneading her breasts.

She was dizzy with sensation, pinned lightly against the cold metal by the warmest hands imaginable. His tongue thrust between her lips, and his hips began to dance against hers. She wanted to squirm away; she wanted to push her body harder against his.

She didn't know which to do, and suddenly she knew she couldn't do either. Because the front door slammed.

“Fuck!” Enzio stepped back.

Remy grabbed the zipper with both hands, trying to fasten it. She barely had it zipped before Colin sprinted into the kitchen. “I forgot a book. Enz, have you seen that book on the Korean War I've been reading?” He stopped and looked at Remy. “Is that what you were wearing before? How'd I miss it?”

Remy was sure her cheeks were bright red and that the trail Enzio's lips and hands had made was blinking neon.

“I gave it to her,” Enzio said. “What do you think?”

Colin looked surprised. He frowned at Remy, then at Enzio. “You gave it to her?”

“No big deal. Just something we were getting rid of at the store. I thought Remy would look good in it.”

Colin still looked a little worried. “Sure. You look good, Remy. Great.”

“I've got to get home.” She had never felt so flustered. “I'd better change. My mother has a thing about short skirts.”

“Maybe your mother knows what she's talking about,” Colin said.

Enzio reached in his pocket for a cigarette. “Butt out.”

Colin shrugged.

Remy made her escape. In the bathroom, she tugged on her jeans before she removed the skirt. Her fingers were trembling so hard she had to remove her bra and turn it in front of her to fasten it again. By the time she emerged, Colin was gone and Enzio was standing at the sink, smoking.

“Wish I didn't have to run.” She wasn't sure that was true, but it sounded like the right thing to say.

“Next time we'll make sure he's really gone for good.”

Next time. That possibility warmed all the places he had touched and simultaneously sent a chill through her heart.

“Thanks for the outfit,” she said.

“Save it and wear it for me next time we're alone.”

She smiled, or hoped she did.

She let herself out. For one brief moment on the sidewalk
she found herself hoping that her mother had already gotten home so she would have to tell Faith where she'd been and what had happened there. But the house was empty.

She sat down at her great-great grandmother's spinet and began to play a song she'd memorized when she was still a little girl.

“I
believe I liked it better when it was covered with weeds. At least it was green.”

Faith and Lydia had just walked down to see Violet's name chiseled in the mill stone. True to his word, the Can Man had finished the ivy removal the day before. The yard looked like a desert.

“I know it looks horrible. But on Monday an arborist is coming to take out all the dead trees. It's expensive, but I figure with all that firewood I won't need to turn on the heat for years.”

“And then?”

“Then Alex and I are going to put in the new trees and shrubs I'm getting from a wholesale nursery. Little ones, but they'll be similar to what Violet had here. I'll refurbish the beds with perennials in the spring, when I can wheedle divisions from you and my friends in McLean, and there's still time to put in discount store bulbs this fall.”

“You'll be busy. Are you sure you want to tackle such a big project?”

“I'm excited about it, and we need a place to retreat. The
biggest news is that Pavel swears he's going to build a gazebo where the greenhouse used to sit. If he does, I thought I'd plant wisteria as an overhead canopy.”

“Mr. Quinn is spending a lot of time here and making rather large commitments for the future.”

“He's not the kind of man who expects anything in return.” Faith wasn't sure who she was defending, Pavel or herself.

“I've never met a man without some sort of expectations.” Lydia took a break from her survey to look at her daughter. “You like him, don't you?”

“What's not to like? He's funny, intelligent, charming. I don't have to be anyone but myself with him.”

“I've heard border collies described the same way.”

Faith's defenses crumbled, and she laughed. “I think if I'd met Pavel when I was married to David, I would have felt guilty. Because the attraction would have been there, wedding ring and all.”

“Then maybe you understand David a little better now. And the entire range of human beings who've slipped away from their wedding vows, even momentarily.”

Faith couldn't believe what she was hearing. “When did you become such a liberal, Mother?”

“You mean when did I begin to have thoughts and opinions of my own? Or when did I realize the world was filled with moral ambiguity?”

“Both.”

Lydia had obviously reached her saturation point. She turned back to the yard and swept her hand to encompass it. “I think my grandmother would be pleased with you and terribly displeased with me. I'm so glad you're making things right.”

“No one would ever blame you for not wanting any part of this house.”

“It's a home again.”

Faith backed into the question that had been nagging at her. “And speaking of home, Remy and I began to strip the wallpaper in her room. I was surprised at the designs we found.”

“There's no accounting for taste.”

“Did you choose any of the wallpaper?”

“I put the house in the hands of rental agents. They made all the decisions.”

Faith tried a different tack. “We found a dark blue paper and a formal green stripe under the surface papers.”

“I'm sure Remy doesn't care for either.”

Faith was stumped. Without asking her mother directly about the absence of baby wallpaper, she wasn't going to get the answers she sought.

Lydia glanced at her watch. “I need to go home. We're having company tonight. A slew of wealthy constituents your father's trying to impress. An intimate little gathering of between sixty and eighty.”

Faith was surprised Lydia wasn't already at home fussing over the preparations. She remembered her mother suffering migraines after smaller parties because she had worked too hard and worried too much.

“You're invited, of course,” Lydia said. “I forgot to tell you.”

“You know I'm not. The senator hasn't spoken to me since the night the lights went out in Georgetown.”

Lydia didn't deny it. “He doesn't like to be reprimanded. He broods.”

“He behaved badly that night.” Faith paused. “But I'll make peace with him. For your sake. And the children's.”

“Are Alex and Remy concerned?”

Faith doubted her kids had noticed. Joe was so remote that he figured only superficially in their lives.

“
I'm
concerned,” Faith said. “Families are supposed to stick together.”

“A platitude that might need to be reexamined, like all the other platitudes we've lived with.”

“Mother?”

“I need to go home and put my seal of approval on the preparations.” Lydia's gaze lifted to the hedge that separated a portion of Dottie Lee's garden from Faith's. Dottie Lee was just
emerging from her house. “There's that woman. Now I really do need to leave.”

“You were friends once upon a time.”

“Stay and talk to her if you like.” Lydia leaned over to kiss Faith's cheek. “I'll look forward to seeing this yard in bloom again.” She started toward the basement stairs.

Faith strolled to the hedge when Dottie Lee beckoned and stepped through into the other woman's garden. The landscaping here was beautifully manicured and spare, with carefully tended evergreens, artistically placed gravel paths, and a narrow, raised rectangular pool adorned by lily pads and a carved stone statue of a little girl squatting to see her reflection in the water.

“That's me, you know,” Dottie Lee said, pointing at the little girl. “My father commissioned it when I was three.”

“I didn't know.” Faith had been in Dottie Lee's garden before, but they had talked of other things.

“What an anachronism I am, living in one house all my life. Letting the world come to me.” Dottie Lee sounded quite pleased with herself.

“Did you ever want to live anywhere else?”

“Oh, once, perhaps. I fancied myself in love, and I thought I might follow him wherever his career took him.”

“But you didn't?”

“There was the small matter of a wife.”

“I never know when you're teasing.”

“I never tease.” Dottie Lee lowered herself to a bench with a view of towering rhododendrons. She motioned Faith to join her. “I saw your mother.”

“She had to leave. I'm sorry.”

“Dear, your mother hasn't spoken to me for years. She's afraid of what I know.”

Faith felt her heart accelerate. “What you know?”

“I've told you this before.”

“Not exactly. What you said was that you knew things that could hurt my father's career, or rather, you implied it.”

“I've lived on Prospect Street all my life. I lived on Prospect before your mother and father moved in. I've heard things and seen things, and, worse, I remember them all. The curse of an active mind.”

Faith felt as if she was being asked to put a puzzle together. Dottie Lee didn't volunteer information. Faith always had to ask, and she had to ask the right questions. She knew from experience that the more general she was, the more general Dottie Lee would be.

She wondered if she could learn from Dottie Lee what she hadn't been able to learn during her brief conversation with Lydia. “I came across something the other day that interested me. Would you like to hear about it?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“Remy and I were stripping the wallpaper in her room. It's the one that was Hope's nursery.”

“Go on.”

Faith wondered if she was just making too much out of this. “There were layers of paper. Just as you'd expect with a house as old as mine.”

“And?”

“And there was no wallpaper fit for a little girl's nursery. It was all very dark and formal, as if no one had prepared for a baby. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Sense? As in what would I have done if I were preparing for a new arrival?”

“No. Sense, as in knowing my mother, doesn't it seem out of character that she didn't prepare? She does her Christmas shopping in July. The gifts are wrapped in August. By September she's made diagrams of what decorations she'll use that year, where they'll go and when each segment will be put up.”

“The woman you know and the one I knew are not the same.”

“You mean she wasn't always compulsive? I can understand that Hope's kidnapping changed her, but I can't believe
she wasn't organized enough to fix a nursery. Was she ill?” Faith hesitated. “Depressed? Did she hate the house even before Hope was taken?”

“Let's take the questions one at a time.”

“All right. Was she ill? Is that why she didn't fix up the nursery?”

“I don't believe it was a difficult pregnancy. Not physically.”

That last part had been added almost as an afterthought. Faith built on it. “Then was she depressed? Was the pregnancy difficult because she was unhappy?”

“Sometimes the truth is best learned from the people most affected by it.”

“Dottie Lee, my sister's kidnapping is an open wound.”

Dottie Lee was silent for a moment. “She wasn't happy, Faith dear. I don't believe the pregnancy was a good time in your mother's life.”

Faith knew if she asked why, Dottie Lee would evade answering. She struggled for something more specific. “Was she unhappy with my father? With all the responsibilities of his office?”

“Why do you suppose his job was the problem?”

Faith thought back to something she'd read in the library scrapbook. In one of the many heavily manufactured stories she'd scanned, a reporter had interviewed family friends, looking for some whiff of scandal. The resulting profile of her parents had seemed odd to Faith. They kept to themselves. Lydia seemed to dislike Washington's social whirl and only participated when required. Joe, who had proudly showed off Lydia at first, had encouraged her to retreat during the pregnancy. At the time, Faith had assumed it was only one reporter's solution for filling a front page column. Now she wondered.

“I know she wasn't very active during the pregnancy. If she wasn't ill, maybe it was simply the nesting instinct. But she doesn't seem to have done the usual nesting.”

“No, she didn't. Before she and Joe brought Hope home, the back room was your father's study. I don't believe they did anything more than move in a crib and a bassinet.”

“Didn't she want the baby? Is that it? Was Hope an accident?”

“I wasn't living in their house. I certainly wasn't sleeping in their bed.”

Faith tried to piece together what she knew for sure and what she could build on. “My father's difficult to live with. I'm sure adjusting to him was hard. And a baby on top of that…But I can't believe Mother didn't care enough to make a nursery.” She looked up, inspired. “Unless my mother and father were having such serious problems that Hope was an unwanted link. Maybe Mother saw Hope as a barrier to divorce.”

“Lydia never mentioned divorce to me.”

“Was she unhappy enough to want one?”

“Your mother liked being the wife of a congressman. She grew up in a political family. She wanted to relive the happy years when her childhood home was filled with interesting and influential people. No, there are other ways to leave a marriage.”

Faith didn't know what to say to that.

Dottie Lee got to her feet. “Have you seen photographs of your mother, dear? When she was newly married?”

Oddly, Faith could remember only a few. The kidnapping photographs, of course. Photographs of her father with important political figures. One with President Kennedy several years before he was assassinated. Another with a youthful Nixon during his unsuccessful campaign for governor of California. Lydia had been in the photographs, too, but very much a bit player.

Dottie Lee didn't wait for an answer. “Lydia was a lovely young woman. I was never quite sure why she chose Joe Huston. She had the looks, the education, the background and contacts to make a better match. I'm sorry for saying so, but it's true. I believe she saw something in your father that wasn't necessarily there. But there were other men who had her in their sights. Some more prominent and more deserving.”

Faith rose from the bench, too. “Are you saying she had an
affair? Or wanted to have one? With a colleague of my father's?”

“I'm merely saying she was an attractive young woman trapped in a marriage that wasn't made in heaven. Certainly a pregnancy could have made that marriage seem even less of a bargain.”

Faith tried to imagine her mother at that age. Lydia seemed almost sexless to her, a woman who didn't like physical affection, a woman who shook hands with her grandson and stood stiffly when she was hugged. Had Lydia looked at her marriage and wished for more? Had she hoped for more in the arms of another man, a hope that was cut short by an unwanted pregnancy?

And what did any of it have to do with Hope's kidnapping?

Dottie Lee picked a dried leaf off a spray of perfectly disciplined holly. “The authorities tried and failed to find your sister's kidnapper. What makes you think you'll uncover the truth?”

Faith wondered if she really wanted to.

Dottie Lee dusted her hands. “You won't like what you find. Secrets are never kept because they're too delicious to share. Secrets are hideous, squirmy little creatures, and once they've been set free, they'll follow you forever.”

“I'm afraid they follow you anyway.”

“You're becoming wiser, Faith. Just watching that makes living in this old body worth the trouble.”

 

The party was a success, but that didn't surprise Lydia. Over the years she had put together a list of professionals who knew what she liked and how to provide it. Caterers, florists and window washers went the extra mile in exchange for generous tips. Marley supervised the cleaning and final preparations, and Lydia waltzed in at the last moment to nod her approval. She no longer rearranged the flowers or agonized over whether to use champagne saucers or flutes. Over the years she had learned the hard way what was important—and how it felt to live without it.