Prospect Street (32 page)

She had a moment of sanity when he was naked above her. One moment when she wondered what she was doing and how she had come so quickly and effortlessly to this place. They hadn't spoken. There hadn't been any words of love or even affection. She didn't think love had much part in it yet. She wanted him. She wanted to feel like a woman who wanted a man.

She needed him to make her feel like a woman.

He rummaged in a pocket of his jeans, graceful, capable hands seemingly incapable now. He muttered something, and she heard frustration, not words. Then, still cursing, he finally pulled out a small, familiar-looking plastic bag and from it a foil wrapped package.

She knew why he'd stopped by Granger's Store.

Even with the first blaze of desire melting all her inhibitions and stealing her sanity, she heard herself laughing. “Oh, Pavel, you got that at Granger's, didn't you?”

“Busted.” Poised above her, he hesitated. “You're ready for this? You're sure, Faith?”

“Being sure has nothing to do with it.”

He smoothed on the condom, taking precious seconds away from her; then he covered her with his body and drew her underneath him.

“I'm absolutely sure I want you,” he said.

She stretched out her arms, welcoming his weight and the hard thrust of his hips against hers. She gave herself up to the fierce pleasure and the quick release that came immediately after.

S
he wasn't sorry, although every instinct she possessed told her she ought to be. Not because legally she was still a married woman. Not because she had always followed the rules others laid down for her. Not even because now she would have to cope with the fallout and renegotiate her relationship with Pavel.

She wasn't sorry because she was so very happy. And despite a lifetime of questioning her right to feel this satisfied and secure in her sexuality and feminine powers, now she believed she deserved it.

She had awakened this morning on the farthest edge of Pavel's bed, his hairy arm thrown over her naked breasts and his knee prodding the small of her back, unsurprised to discover that he sprawled outrageously. After the first shock, she knew she would never be sorry for the night they had spent together or for Pavel's foresight in buying an entire package of condoms, and particularly not for the restoration of her confidence.

Because what woman could doubt her own attractions when a man like this one couldn't seem to get enough of her? And when the opposite was every bit as true? She had thought she was attracted to David. She had not understood.

“Faith?”

Faith looked up and realized that Lydia had asked her a question. This afternoon Faith had beaten her mother and the children home from their horse show by a scant half hour, just in time to change her clothes and delete the messages on the answering machine—in case someone noticed she hadn't been home all morning to receive them.

“I'm sorry. I didn't sleep well last night. I guess I'm tired.” She managed not to smile.

“I asked if you had fun last night.”

“Uh-huh. I did.”

“Did you eat somewhere nice?”

“Out in the country. Very casual, but the food was great.” Faith realized she had begun making coffee for her mother but hadn't moved beyond filling the pot with water. Now she rummaged for a filter.

“Well, the children seemed to have fun this morning. Remy especially liked the horse show. She saw some girls from your old neighborhood and went off with them. I didn't see much of her again until it was over.”

Faith was glad her daughter had reconnected with old friends. Right now she and Alex were upstairs getting ready for a shopping trip, but Faith hoped she would hear more about the horse show then.

“Faith, are you ever going to put the coffee in that filter?”

Faith looked down. “Yes, but slowly. Very slowly.”

“You really didn't sleep well, did you? You have circles under your eyes.”

“There's a lot to think about these days.” Faith forced herself to finish the preparations and turn on the coffeemaker.

“Like what?”

Faith scrambled for something to say. “Well, I've got to finish fixing up the house and the garden, and I want to do it right.”

“Right?”

“I have a lot of painting left. I'm trying to pay attention to both history and comfort. I should probably just go next door
and ask Dottie Lee what she remembers about the interior colors so I can stop obsessing. She remembered everything about the garden.”

Faith looked up. “She as much as told me there was nothing about this house that she didn't know. But she's doling the facts out one at a time. She waits for just the right questions. I think she wants insurance I'll keep visiting her.”

“What did she mean, she knows everything?”

“She said she remembers more about this house than anyone else in the world.” Faith searched her memory, then shrugged. “She's older than you are, so she remembers further back. And she lived right next door from the day she was born. Makes sense to me.”

Lydia fell silent. Despite her own preoccupation with the events of last night, Faith noticed her mother was brooding.

“She told me the other day just how beautiful you were.” Faith watched her mother's head snap up. “And I told her how few photographs I've seen of you as a new bride. Wedding photos, yes, but nothing much after that.” She hesitated and decided not to pussyfoot around. “Except newspaper photos after Hope was kidnapped.”

“How did that come up?”

“I was asking her about those early years. Hope's a strong presence in this house. Not a ghost,” she hurried to add. “It's just that there's a strong sense of something not finished.”

“That was almost the worst part of it, you know, waiting for answers that never came. Next to knowing that she might be dead or in pain or crying for me…”

“Oh, Mother.” Faith put her hand on Lydia's. “I'm sorry.”

Lydia shook her off. “You're the one who brought up the past. With that woman.”

“I live here now.”

“There's nothing to be gained from dredging up the kidnapping. Do you think you can have a couple of conversations with Dottie Lee and solve a crime the FBI couldn't?”

“I just wanted to understand a little more. That's all. It's the
great blank in my past, the elephant in the middle of the room. She was my sister. I was affected, too.”

“After it happened, the only way I could survive was to put the kidnapping out of my mind. At first just for minutes, then for hours, and later, much later, for whole days at a time. I couldn't have borne it otherwise.”

“I know how hard it is, even now.”

But Lydia wasn't finished. “I thought having another child would help heal the wound. Then I had you, and every time I looked at you I wondered what Hope would have looked like at your age; or if she would have walked earlier or later or liked the same kind of toys you did. She was dark-haired, like your father. Sometimes when you were little I'd be shopping, and I'd see something that would suit a dark-haired child, and I'd have to fight myself not to buy it for Hope. When you walked down the aisle to marry David, I wondered how she would have looked in her wedding dress.”

Lydia had been staring at the kitchen table. Now she looked up. “I loved you, Faith. Don't make the mistake of thinking I didn't. But so many times I looked at you and thought of your sister. And that was another reason I tried to put the whole thing behind me. Because it wasn't fair.”

“And I'm dredging it up again.”

“Don't. Just don't. For everyone's sake.”

Faith remembered the things Dottie Lee had said and, more importantly, the things she hadn't. The hints. The silences that had led Faith in new directions. She couldn't let it go. “Was Hope the beginning of all the sadness in your life?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I mean I grew up in a house with two unhappy parents. Would things have been different if Hope hadn't been taken?”

“How can I answer that?” Lydia's tone had changed considerably, a cold front moving in after a warm spell.

“Losing a child is the hardest thing parents ever have to deal with. Even in a perfect marriage.”

“There's nothing to be gained from this, Faith. The past is exactly that.”

Faith knew there was nothing to be gained right now by continuing. Her mother had opened up as much as she was going to. “I'm sorry. I'm not trying to pry. Just trying to understand.”

“Why? So you'll understand yourself a little better? Or maybe you're suddenly interested in relationships because you just spent the night with a man and your own life's topsy-turvy?”

Faith realized she wasn't as blase about what had happened with Pavel as she'd thought. Her cheeks were warming like a high school sophomore's. “How did you know?”

“I may be growing old, but I recognize the glow of a satisfied woman.”

 

Lydia hadn't knocked on Dottie Lee's front door in almost forty years. As she made the journey, she noted that the house was less than half a dozen steps away. There were no stairs to climb, since Dottie Lee's entry was at street level, no landscaping to skirt. Twenty seconds from their door—or Faith's, as she needed to think of the row house now—and suddenly she was staring at the deep magenta trim and gray brick that belonged to Dottie Lee.

The doorknocker was a brass dragon's head, a fanciful—and, to Lydia's mind, outrageous—touch.

Dottie Lee herself answered the door dressed in a royal-blue sari and copious gold bangles. She didn't look at all surprised.

“I've been expecting you,” she said.

Lydia glanced down at the yapping, snapping Chihuahua at Dottie Lee's feet, a breed that was nothing more than a neurosis with a tail. “You'll still be expecting me unless you quiet that dog.”

“Titi!”

The dog fell silent.

“Alex adores her,” Dottie Lee said.

“Alex is far too easy to please.”

“Does Faith know you're here?”

“Are you going to invite me inside?”

Dottie Lee stooped—slowly, Lydia saw with a pang—and gathered the tiny dog against her chest. Then she straightened and stepped aside.

Faith
didn't
know that Lydia had come. She and the children were shopping, and Lydia had promised she would lock up after she finished another cup of coffee.

“It's changed since you were here last,” Dottie Lee said. “Have a look around.”

“As I recall the interior changed with every new lover. How many were there? Two senators and at least one congressman that I'm aware of.” She paused. “An ambassador.”

“No dear. Two ambassadors. Lovely men, both of them. One from India.” Dottie Lee gathered the sari in one hand as if making a point. “But you've underestimated badly, and I'm quite wounded, because most people give me credit for at least one president. Of course, I never actually counted, although I still could, I suppose. The men went away, but the memories didn't. I remember them all so fondly.”

Lydia stepped farther into the room, examining the exotic rosewood and mahogany antiques. “The last one must have spent a great deal of time in the Orient.”

“He was
from
the Orient. A charming, tawny-skinned Chinaman. Oh, it's probably not politically correct to say it quite that way, but we've never stood on ceremony, you and I.”

“And you never married a one of them. Did they ever ask?”

Dottie Lee laughed, and although the woman was so much older, the laugh was not. “Frequently.”

“But you couldn't leave this house, could you?”

“You know me so well. Even after all these years.”

“Does Faith know you're terrified to go outside?”

“Does she know I try never to venture past my own garden? I doubt it. I've been to your house since she moved in. She hasn't noticed that I don't go farther, or she believes it's simply my preference.”

“You never tried to get help?”

“I never needed it. Yes, it was inconvenient at times, and yes, before you ask, there was a man or two who might have intrigued me enough to make the effort had I given him the encouragement. But I learned so much from living inside these walls.” Dottie Lee gestured to the room. “They came to me, you know. The diplomats and the statesmen. I entertained them in ways that made them come back until I tired of them.”

Lydia wanted to fault her childhood babysitter and friend, as she had for so long. Yet hadn't they both made concessions to their fears? Hadn't they negotiated the hands that had been dealt them to their best advantage? She had continued her marriage to Joe and borne another child. Dottie Lee had found ways to make a prison into a palace.

“This is not a social call,” Lydia said.

“I suspected as much. You haven't wanted to be caught with me since marrying Joe Huston.”

“You have an unsavory reputation.”

“And I am so very proud of it.” Dottie Lee led her toward the sofa. “Shall I ask Mariana to fix tea? Or something stronger?”

“Nothing. I'm not going to stay long.”

“Then sit and have at it, Lyddy. Do you remember visiting here as a child? You were a rascal. Your grandmother paid me to play with you so she could get some rest, and you wore me to a frazzle, too.” She smiled fondly. “Much like your grandson. Full of questions and ideas and vigor.”

Lydia was tired simply thinking about it. She remembered those long-ago days, when her parents had traveled to faraway places and she had stayed with her grandparents until her mother could make a home to receive her. She remembered coming here as she waited, to this very house, and to Dottie Lee's humor and patience.

“I'll get right to the point,” Lydia said.

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“You're filling Faith's head with facts she doesn't need to know.”

“She told you this?”

“She told me that you claim to know everything about our house, and I am certain, knowing you as I do, that you're taking advantage of that to ignite her interest in the past.”

“Not
the
past, dear.
Your
past. Don't generalize.”

“Nothing good can come from this. I want to know what you've told her. And what you're planning.”

“Planning?”

“Faith says you only drop tidbits of information, that you seem to be waiting for her to ask the right questions.”

“Is that what she said?” Dottie Lee smiled. “She's a clever girl. Have I mentioned how much I like her? She reminds me of your mother. She would have made a wonderful ambassador's wife, just like Millicent. So accommodating. So aware of how to make others comfortable. But with enough backbone to survive the petty politics of the State Department.” Dottie Lee paused. “I must be getting old. Faith would make a wonderful ambassador herself. Times have changed, haven't they?”

“Not enough has changed for you to be telling her things best left secret!” Lydia leaned forward. “What have you said?”

“As I told you, she's a clever girl. She figured out that you and Joe weren't happy, not even before the kidnapping.”

Lydia's breath caught, although she wasn't really surprised. She had known from the direction of Faith's questioning that her daughter was moving in that direction. “What did you say to that?”