Prospect Street (38 page)

And her reaction to seeing Pavel still unsettled her.

She was on her second cup of Earl Grey, staring at the same scratch on the oak table, when the lights went off in the upstairs hallway. The music pouring from Remy's room—that had been yet another fight—stopped midphrase and the house fell silent.

She was about to give up and go to bed herself when she heard a car door slam in front of her house. She wandered into the living room and realized Pavel was standing on her stoop. She let him in, closing and latching the door behind him.

“If you want me to go, I will. No struggle.” He didn't smile.

She had told him not to come around anymore, yet here he was, and she didn't want him to leave. She started back toward the kitchen. “I was just having tea. Would you like something?”

He followed. “Just a chance to talk.”

Tea she could have handled, but conversation was a step toward intimacy. When she didn't respond, he went on. “I have something to offer you. If you send me away, you'll never know what it is.”

“You're appealing to my curiosity?”

“
I
wouldn't be able to resist.”

She was reminded of what Alex had said tonight.
Pavel knows the way I think.
For the past month Pavel had probably twisted and pulled apart every detail of their last meeting to see what he could mine from it, just the way Alex would have.

“Are you curious about the kidnapping?” he said.

She motioned him to a chair. Once he was seated at the kitchen table, she pulled the pocket doors shut for privacy. She stood with her back to the old wooden panels. “Why? Do you know something I don't?”

“That's why I came. We both want to know what happened the day your sister disappeared. We can work on it separately, or we can work together. Personally, I think we'll move faster and further together.”

She wasn't sure she wanted to work on it at all. What had she learned so far? That almost from the start her parents weren't happy together? That her mother, her prim, proper mother, might possibly have had an affair? She had no idea how or even
if
any of this related to her sister, and she was afraid that the more she probed, the more the gap between her parents would widen.

“Let me make you an offer,” Pavel said, when she didn't answer. “I didn't tell you everything I know. The last time we spoke, you were too angry.”

“Betrayed.”

“I didn't betray you. I just didn't know how to tell you about my father. You had become too important to me.”

It sounded too much like what David had said earlier that day. But these circumstances were vastly different. How would it feel to believe Pavel? Would she feel like a fool or a saint? Or just a woman giving a man she cared about the benefit of the doubt?

She went to the stove again, got the teakettle and filled it, then set it back on the burner to boil, although she had no plans to drink more tea. Finally she faced him. “How can we work on the kidnapping? It happened so many years ago. There are no clues, no witnesses.”

“By comparing what we know. By taking it one step at a time from there. By asking the right questions of the right people.”

“Dottie Lee?”

“For one, yes.”

“My mother?”

“That's up to you. I didn't come here tonight to pressure you.”

She could see the future clearly. If she chose to go along with him, they would be thrown together frequently. If she chose not
to, some part of who she was would remain a mystery. No, two parts. The part that needed to find out the truth about her sister's kidnapping, and the part that needed to find out the truth about Pavel.

“Tell me what you know,” she said.

“I will, whatever you say next. But will you work with me afterward? Will you help me piece together what we can?”

“I reserve the right to step back or out if someone else is about to be hurt.”

The kettle whistled. She turned off the burner. “Last chance for tea.”

“Come sit with me.”

Warily she joined him, sitting stiffly across the table, hands folded. “What didn't you tell me?”

“Do you remember how I said I didn't know anything about my father until the weekend my mother went on a drinking binge?”

She did remember, because, despite everything else, that gloomy glimpse into Pavel's childhood had tugged at her. “Did she tell you something else?”

“She poured out her heart. I don't know why. She'd kept so many secrets. I grew up believing my father had deserted us. Suddenly I discovered he had hung himself from a rafter.”

“Why did he kill himself? Did she say?”

“Because he lost the two people he loved.”

“Your mother and you?”

“No.
Your
mother. And me.”

She didn't know what to say. He nodded to confirm it. “Faith, your mother had an affair with my father. That's a large part of what drove my mother to California. Not just the kidnapping, but the fact that he was unfaithful.”

“And you believe this?”

“She wouldn't have left him otherwise.”

“Maybe she left because he really
did
kidnap Hope.”

“She swore on her deathbed he didn't. She had nothing good to say about him, but she insisted that much was true. She
passed out of this world claiming he was innocent of that crime and guilty only of adultery.”

“With my mother.”

“Right after the kidnapping my mother found out about the affair—she didn't say how—but she confronted my father, and he admitted the truth. He said the relationship with Lydia had been over with since the day she learned she was pregnant. With a baby on the way, Lydia was determined to make her marriage work, and my father recommitted himself to his own. He asked my mother to stay with him for my sake, but she was too disillusioned. She was a strict Catholic, so divorce was out of the question. Instead, she hocked her wedding ring and bought bus tickets to California. Neither of us ever saw him again.”

Faith could imagine how Pavel's mother had felt, and how she must have felt later when she learned her husband had killed himself.

Pavel locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Faith thought the casual posture was a defense, the antithesis of what he really felt.

“You're surprisingly calm,” he said. “I expected an angry denial. At the least, reminders of the differences in their status and the fact that your mother would never have dallied with the handyman.”

“You can be wrong.”

“And have been.”

She shrugged.

He dropped his hands and sat forward. “Your mother stared at me when we were introduced. I only have a few pictures of my father. I don't think I resemble him, but maybe there was something about me that was familiar.”

“When I told her who you were, she seemed stunned.” She owed him the remainder of what Lydia had said. “Mother said she was never able to imagine your father as the kidnapper. He was a gentle man. Honorable. She wanted you to know that.”

“And you didn't tell me?”

“It was an opinion, not proof.”

“It would have meant something to me, coming from Hope's own mother.”

“I didn't expect to see you again.”

“Did you really think I would let this drop?”

She was growing angry again. “I should have known better, right? I saw firsthand what you do to get answers.”

“I'm not talking about the kidnapping. I'm talking about
us.
Faith, I made one mistake, and yes, it was no small thing. But I never set out to hurt you. And nothing else that happened between us was part of a conspiracy to get information. Right from the beginning, it was clear you were more in the dark than I was. So why did I keep hanging around?”

“I don't know, Pavel. You tell me.”

“Because this was where I wanted to be.”

She was a woman who accepted responsibility for every mistake, even if she wasn't in the room when it happened. But she had learned a lot in a year, and she was wary now of being hurt again. “I'm not ready to pick up where we left off.” That much she was sure of.

“I understand.”

“Let me think about this. All of it.”

“What are you going to do with what I've told you?”

She refused to be pushed. “I just need to think.”

He got to his feet. For that moment he towered over her. “Well, thanks for listening.” Clearly he had hoped for more, perhaps even a return to their easy give-and-take.

Maybe she missed him just as much, the anticipation of hours in bed together, the knowledge that there was one person in her life who saw her as something more than a problem solver and caregiver, a man who saw her as a woman. But for too long she had trusted her heart. Nowadays she only trusted it to keep beating.

She got to her feet, slid open the door and stood back to let him pass. “You can count on one thing. I'll let you know if I learn anything else.”

“I appreciate it.”

Outside, he hesitated on the stoop, examining the pine wreath wrapped with plaid taffeta ribbon she had hung to celebrate the holiday. “Good night.”

“Good night, Pavel.” She softened a little. “Pasha. It suits you, you know. Your father must have loved you very much.”

“He died at Christmas. It's not a holiday with much meaning for me.”

It was the most personal thing he had ever said to her. His father's suicide must have haunted him for years.

“He must have felt a lot of pain,” she said.

“I visit his grave, and I tell him I understand, but I don't know if I really do.” He straightened his shoulders a fraction of an inch. “Tell Alex I'll be in touch.”

F
or Lydia, Christmas was a series of tasks to check off until the holiday season was blessedly over. A week before the big day, the worst was finally behind her. Her personal gifts were chosen and wrapped. The house was resplendent with traditional arrangements of evergreens, citrus fruits and magnolia leaves. White candles glowed in every window, and cinnamon and pine boughs scented the air.

Last night she and Joe had given their traditional party for his D.C. staff and their families, an elaborate buffet that culminated in the singing of Christmas carols and a visit from Santa Claus, who gave a different keepsake ornament each year. This year Santa presented silver-plated cutouts of the White House, as close to laying claim to that particular residence as Joe was likely to get. Through it all, she hadn't squeezed out a drop of Christmas spirit.

Today she was feeling marginally merrier as she parked her car outside the row house. She had presents to put under Faith's tree. In the past months she had spent so much time with her daughter and grandchildren that she'd had no trouble knowing exactly what they wanted. Alex talked of nothing except up
grading his computer, so she'd bought him a gift certificate to a computer store. She'd bought his ridiculous rat a gift, as well, a cage with mazes and tunnels and platforms that was as much like the Hilton as a rat could expect. An impulse buy, but she was looking forward to seeing Alex's face.

Remy hadn't been hard, either. At the horse show she had expressed an interest in learning to ride, so Lydia was giving her granddaughter ten lessons at a Great Falls riding stable. In the spring Lydia would pick Remy up after school and take her there every Wednesday afternoon. It would give them a chance to get to know each other better.

And since she was at the pet store anyway, she had bought those attic strays a padded scratching post.

Faith had been harder. Her life was in flux and her future uncertain. She had no time for hobbies, and soon enough she would be looking for a job. A business suit seemed a practical solution, but a cold-blooded one. Instead, Lydia had sorted through boxes and memories and chosen photographs of her family, the women who had lived and loved on Prospect Street. She'd had them restored and beautifully framed. They would look lovely in the stairwell.

Perhaps she felt a drop of Christmas spirit after all.

She made two trips to the car before she rang the doorbell. Faith answered, and her eyes widened. “I didn't know Santa was on the way. The kids are at rehearsals. Christmas program coming up.”

“I have to put in an appearance at the farewell party at the vice president's residence. I thought I'd drop by on my way.”

Faith took an armload of packages, and Lydia stooped to retrieve the others. “You look lovely,” Faith said. “Is that a new dress?”

Lydia's personal shopper had picked out the dark red sheath. “Just for the occasion.”

They deposited the gifts under the Christmas tree, a Scotch pine festooned with ornaments the children had collected each year since they were old enough to point.
Southern Living
would never feature Faith's Christmas decorations as they had Lydia's, but the house fairly reeked of Christmas spirit.

“Do you have time for some wassail?” Faith asked.

“Real wassail? Or a teetotaler David Bronson variation?”

“I can spike it with Dottie Lee's Scotch. It's not authentic, but that's all I have.”

“I could use it.”

“Seasonal Christmas blues?”

“Am I that obvious?”

In the kitchen, Faith removed a pitcher from the refrigerator and poured some of the contents into a saucepan, while Lydia settled at the table.

Faith faced her mother. “You know what? I'm going to give you a Christmas present now.”

“There's still a week to go.”

“It's just us, and I want you to have time to savor this one. I'll get it.”

Faith had always loved surprises. As a child, she had worked for hours in her room on homemade cards or scarfs woven on a childish loom. Her daughter's enthusiasm was the bright spot in a grim holiday, and Lydia had tried not to quench it.

Faith returned with a box and presented it to her mother. “Here you go.”

“Is this something you made?”

“Have I taken up quilting or knitting? No.”

“I still have the scarf you made me when you were seven.”

“Now that surprises me.”

Lydia looked up. “Why?”

“Well, it's very sentimental, that's all. It wasn't much of a fashion statement.”

“You mean purple and orange weren't featured in Milan that year? Of course I kept it. Some year I might go to Mardi Gras. Practical, not sentimental.”

“You'll like this better.”

Lydia untied the ribbon and slipped the paper off carefully. Then she lifted the top off the box. Inside, a slim leather-bound
volume nestled on sheets of tissue paper. On the front was a watercolor of the row house, with the address printed in gold below.

“Faith, what on earth?” Lydia flipped the cover and began to read. “What have you done?”

“It's a history of the house, Mother. I've been working on it for months. It's my thank-you for letting us live here, for handing the house over to me when I needed it most.”

“You did this?” Lydia was amazed. She turned page after page, admiring the beautifully printed text, the photographs, the maps and copies of deeds and documents. A chapter was devoted to each of the women who had owned the house, anecdotes from their personal histories, even copies of newspaper articles that related to them or to the area at the time.

When she looked up at last, she saw that Faith was watching her. “It's wonderful.” Lydia clasped it to her chest. “I had no idea. How on earth did you find all this?”

“I've become quite the expert on researching architecture. In fact, I'm starting my own business. I've already done another history, and after the holidays I'll start on a third. All that and I haven't even advertised. It's just word of mouth so far.”

“You won't need another job, too?”

“The more histories I do, the less time I'll have to spend figuring out logistics. I'll have a backlog of information, more contacts, better skills. Who knows, eventually I may have to hire an assistant.”

“You amaze me. This is the best gift I've ever been given.”

“I didn't want you to associate it with Christmas. But this seemed like the right moment.”

Lydia put down the history to savor at length when she was alone. “Am I that obvious?”

“You mean have I always known how much you hate the holiday?”

Lydia started to protest, but Faith lifted a hand to stop her. “I know why Christmas has always been a bad time for you.”

Lydia was surprised this particular conversational thread
hadn't already unraveled. “It's a lot of work, that's all. More appearances to keep up than usual.”

“Then it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Dominik Dubrov killed himself over the Christmas holidays?”

Lydia was caught off guard. For a moment she forgot to breathe. Then anger ballooned inside her. “Faith, this isn't a subject I want to discuss.”

“Mother, I know Dominik was your lover. You don't have to hide it from me anymore. You've been hiding it for years, and you've never had anyone you could talk to about it. Maybe I'm not the best person, but I'm the one who knows.”

“I think you've spent too much time looking into the past. Now you're seeing things that aren't there.”

“It's the truth.”

“That woman made this up, didn't she? She's lying.”

“Dottie Lee prepared me, but Pavel told me. His mother left his father because of your affair. She refused to stay with him, even when he told her the affair had ended months before.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I'm tired of secrets. Don't you think I wondered why Christmas at our house was so cold and gloomy? Why you had to bite your lip to get through it? I always thought it was
my
fault, that I wasn't lovable enough or good enough to make it worth the effort. Even after Pavel told me about the affair, it took me a while to work that part out.”

“Dominik's been dead longer than you've been alive. Leave him to rest. Leave
me
to rest!”

“I don't think so.” Faith's voice remained calm. “I considered that. But nobody knows about secrets and the harm they can do better than me. I will not let my life be defined by them any longer. I won't let
your
life be defined that way, either.”

“You have no idea what you're saying.”

“Why? Do you think I'll hold this against you? I've watched you and Dad all these years, and I know what it's like to live with him. You were young. You probably felt lonely and confused. Dominik walked into your life, and the rest is history.
When you found out you were pregnant with Hope, you told Dominik goodbye and recommitted yourself to my father. What else could you have done?”

For once Lydia's anger eclipsed caution. “You think you know so much? Well, here's a little more, Faith. I wasn't committing myself to the baby's father. Hope wasn't your father's child!”

On the stove, the wassail began to scent the room.

“I'm leaving,” Lydia said. She got up and started around the table.

“Oh no, you're not.” Faith blocked the doorway. “Let's finish what we started.”

“What
you
started.”

“Hope was Dominik's baby?”

“Do you feel cleansed?” Lydia grabbed the history from the table and shoved it into Faith's hands. “Why don't you put the truth in here somewhere, so everyone will know?”

Faith set the volume on the counter, took her mother's hands and clasped them between her own. “How do
you
feel?”

Lydia didn't know. She was trembling. She was ashamed. She was furious it had come to this.

She was frightened that now, Faith would never really love her.

“Sit down,” Faith ordered. “I don't want you fainting in my kitchen.”

Lydia didn't move. Faith poured the wassail into a mug and added Scotch. Then she set it on the table. “Drink.”

Lydia was too upset to do anything else. She sat, cupped the mug in her hands and sipped.

“Pavel doesn't know Hope was his father's child,” Faith said, “or he would have told me. I guess his mother didn't know, either. Who
did
know, Mother?”

Lydia began to speak. Slowly at first, then faster as the words tumbled out. She had never planned to share this story with anyone, most particularly not her daughter. But now that she had begun, she couldn't seem to stop or censor herself. The truth was like a prisoner burrowing to freedom.

 

At first Lydia was convinced her obstetrician was wrong. She couldn't be as far along in the pregnancy as he thought. Joe had been away for almost three weeks during the time the doctor swore she had conceived. Dominik had been her only lover.

The facts were so clear. Dominik had religiously used condoms. Joe had not. Joe had wanted her to become pregnant. Dominik had been afraid she might. The baby had to be Joe's.

But when the pregnancy developed according to her doctor's timetable, she faced the awful truth. The child inside her belonged to an immigrant handyman, and her congressman husband was too intelligent to be fooled. Joe wouldn't know
whose
baby this was, but the moment he did the math he would know it wasn't his. Unless a miracle occurred and she carried the baby several extra weeks, Joe Huston would know his wife had been having an affair.

When the worst of the shock was over, Lydia began to consider alternatives. She could have an abortion, go away and find a back-alley practitioner to perform one and tell Joe she had miscarried. She had the means, but she also knew the risk of complications. Abortion was an illegal procedure. Even women who could afford a real doctor were at risk. Women with pregnancies as advanced as hers were playing with fire.

Beyond that, despite her panic, the thought of an abortion upset her. This was Dominik's baby fluttering happily inside her. Hormones surged through her system, put there by Mother Nature to preserve the human species. Perhaps she was the victim of her own biology, but she couldn't bring herself to explore that possibility further.

She was left with three choices. She could hope for the best and pray that the baby came late or that Joe knew too little about timing to be suspicious.

She could tell her husband the truth and hope that Joe, fearing for his career, would pretend the child was his own.

Or she could cash in a little “insurance” she had set aside.

At the beginning of her sixth month the choice was taken
from her. Joe, pleased at her announcement and solicitous of her health, had eased his demands and encouraged her to rest. He stopped complaining about the row house, the traffic on Prospect Street, the Jesuit university hovering at the horizon. He voluntarily moved his home office into the windowless middle bedroom so the baby could have cool summer breezes from the river.

Then, on an unusually warm spring evening, a different Joe confronted her. That morning he had awakened to the butterfly movement of the baby under his palm, and he had been as proud as a sultan at this proof of life. She didn't admit she had been feeling movement for weeks, afraid that might alert him to the truth. Instead she celebrated with him, pasting a happy smile on her face, but the tears in her eyes weren't from joy.

He was pale when he walked through the door that evening, and he waved away the iced tea she had made for him. “Is that what you did today, Lydia? Made tea and prettied up for me?”

The evening might be warm, but the temperature in the room had cooled dangerously. She counseled herself to be calm. Joe was prone to tantrums if things didn't go his way, and as a junior member of Congress, they seldom did.