It was her own fault, she knew. No one had held a gun to her head. And in some ways hadn’t she
conspired
with Robert to create the passive creature that had so foolishly walked into his trap?
Maybe so, but I won’t let him get away with it this time.
Striding up the path, she felt suddenly weightless, as if too forceful a step would send her bounding upward. She scanned the windows along the top floor, hoping for a glimpse of her daughter. But they glowered back at her, yielding nothing. From the Pattersons’ backyard came the sound of children splashing in the pool. Was Emma among them? Her heart soared at the thought. Noelle imagined plucking her small daughter from the water, bare-limbed and gleaming, like the very first time she’d held her, moments after her birth.
Robert must have heard her pull up, for no sooner had she set foot on the porch than the front door swung open. A tall, well-built man in tan slacks and yellow polo shirt, regarding her with irritation, as he might have a salesperson or uninvited guest, stood framed in the doorway.
‘What are
you
doing here?’ he asked coldly.
‘I should think that’s fairly obvious.’ Noelle was mildly astonished to hear her grandmother’s tart voice coming from her mouth. She peered around him into the house. ‘I’m here to see Emma.’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘There’s no need for that. She’s fine.’
‘I’d like to see for myself, if you don’t mind.’
‘As a matter of fact, I
do
mind.’ In her husband’s handsome patrician face a storm was brewing. Looking into his pale Siberian eyes, she felt the temperature, hovering near ninety, drop suddenly and drastically. She shivered in the sultry July heat as though standing before an open meat locker.
In her head a voice urged,
Be strong … for Emma.
She didn’t have the luxury of backing down. Not this time.
‘How dare you.’ Her voice trembled with the effort to keep from shouting. ‘How dare you keep me from my own child.’
‘Someone
has to take responsibility.’ Robert’s cruel gaze raked over her, his mouth twisting in disgust. ‘Christ, Noelle, when was the last time you looked in the mirror? You’re off the deep end, and you don’t even know it.’
She flinched but didn’t back down. ‘You can have it all. This house and everything in it.’ She threw out her arm in a wide sweeping gesture. ‘Just let me have Emma.’
He gave a short, dry laugh. ‘I have it all anyway. You don’t see me begging on anyone’s doorstep, do you?’
‘What I
see
is a man who thinks he can get away with murder,’ she hurled back. ‘But you won’t, Robert
…
not this time.’
He smiled coldly, but she could see that her words had found their mark. His right eyelid began to twitch. ‘Look, I don’t have time for this. If you have anything more to say, tell it to my lawyer.’ He started to close the door.
‘No
!
’ Noelle’s shrill cry rang out obscenely in the stillness of the suburban cul-de-sac where voices were seldom raised and car horns rarely honked, where the last hint of scandal had been the parcel wrapped in plain brown paper, addressed to the Whitleys’ teenage son, that had found its way instead into the hands of eight-year-old Lindsey Amberson next door. When Robert hesitated, she seized the opportunity to leap forward and wedge her foot between the door and the jamb. ‘I’m not leaving until I’ve seen Emma.’
‘You’re drunk,’ he said, louder this time.
Noelle reeled, and with her foot still rammed firmly in the doorway nearly lost her balance. She hadn’t expected this. Was he trying to convince her she was crazy? Or was
he
the one who’d lost his mind?
He’s crazy, all right. Crazy like a fox.
Noelle glanced over just in time to see Judy Patterson step out onto her porch. Across the manicured swath of lawn separating their houses, she caught the wary expression on her neighbor’s face. At first it didn’t occur to her that
she
might be the one Judy was eyeing with mistrust. They were friends, weren’t they? Okay, not
close
friends
…
but still. When Judy’s mother died last winter, who had spent the better part of an afternoon consoling her, not to mention caring for her boys the four days she and her husband were in Boston for the funeral? It wasn’t until Robert lifted an arm in Judy’s direction, as if to signal her—
don’t worry, she’s basically harmless—
that brutal realization kicked in.
‘It would suit you if I
were
drunk, wouldn’t it?’ she said in a low voice, too low for Judy to hear. ‘The other night you slipped something into my soda, didn’t you? You wanted everyone to think I was plastered out of my mind. But it won’t work, Robert. Even
you
aren’t above the law.’
‘The law will decide what’s in Emma’s best interests. And from what I’ve heard, Judge Ripley takes a dim view of negligent mothers.’
‘Negligent?’ Noelle nearly choked on the word. ‘Robert, this is crazy. You
know
it’s crazy. Stop this. For Emma’s sake, please.’
Robert’s expression softened slightly, and Noelle wondered if she was at last getting through to him
…
until she saw him glance out of the corner of his eye.
He’s putting on a show,
she realized to her horror. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise her if this whole scene had been staged. Why else would he have stayed home in the middle of a busy workweek? He’d known it was only a matter of time before she showed up.
‘Go home, Noelle. Sleep it off. You don’t want Emma to see you like this.’ His voice, deep and authoritative, carried above the lilac bushes over which Judy Patterson peered.
Noelle wanted to hit him. Yet despite the rage that roared through her, she might have heeded his advice, turned away before it got ugly. If it hadn’t been for the cry that pierced the air just then.
‘Mommy!’
Though the partially open doorway she could see into the living room, where she was afforded a glimpse of dark pigtails, a small face alight with surprise. Her heart swooped up into her throat. ‘Emma! Oh, sweetie. Are you all r—’
Her foot slipped. The door slammed shut.
Noelle began to hammer at it with both fists. In its polished brass knocker she caught the distorted reflection of a mouth stretched in outrage. Like a madwoman’s.
‘Let me in! Dammit, Robert, open this door! Open it … or I’ll—’ She broke off.
What? Call the police?
The irony of her predicament brought the frenzied hammering to a halt.
Then she remembered her keys. She fished them from her purse and tried the lock. Unbelievably the knob turned. The door was halfway open when she was abruptly shoved backward and the dead bolt rammed home. Noelle stumbled and fell onto her side, scraping her elbow against the rough concrete porch. Inside, she could hear Emma begin to wail and the muffled sound of Robert trying to quiet her. Through the bushes alongside the house Noelle caught a flash of movement.
For a wild instant she thought,
Judy. She’s coming to help me.
But her neighbor was only retreating into her house.
Noelle pulled herself to her feet, sagging against the door. Tears streamed down her face. ‘Emma? Sweetie? It’s Mommy. I’ll come get you as soon as I can, I promise.’
There was no sound on the other side except the faint tread of retreating footsteps. Noelle was engulfed by a wave of despair. She imagined Robert secretly smirking in triumph even as he wiped away their daughter’s tears. How many lies had he told? How much more damage would he cause before this was over?
A savage fury overtook her.
‘You won’t get away with this!’ she shrieked, beyond caring what the neighbors would see or think. Beyond all reason. ‘Robert, do you hear me? You can’t do this! I won’t let you!’
She threw herself against the door, pummeling it until her knuckles were scraped raw, kicking it so hard she felt something—
a bone?—
give way in her foot with a painful wrench. Flecks of saliva flew from her bared teeth. Her voice, barely recognizable, skirled up into the hot blue sky. ‘You
bastard!
Let me in.
Let me in!’
You’re playing right into his hands. You know that, don’t you?
A voice in her head, eerily akin to Lacey’s, brought a cold slap of reality. Abruptly the fight went out of her. Noelle tottered backward, suddenly aware of her painfully throbbing foot. Her knees buckled, and she sank onto the grass, shivering uncontrollably.
What have I done?
she groaned inwardly.
Oh, God, what have I done?
‘You’d best have Dr Reynolds take a look at that ankle.’ Nana peered down at her as she lay stretched out on the sofa.
Noelle put on a brave face for her grandmother. ‘I will, as soon as I can hobble back out to the car and drive us over there.’ She shifted her foot, propped on a plump throw pillow, wincing at the pain. Her sandal had cut deep grooves in the swollen pink flesh around her ankle, but she didn’t dare slip it off. She’d never be able to get it back on.
‘Nonsense,’ Nana clucked. ‘You’re in no shape to drive anywhere.’
It wasn’t just her foot. Noelle didn’t have to look in the mirror to know she was a wreck. It was a miracle she’d made it home in one piece. ‘Well, one thing’s for sure, I’m not walking.’
‘Let’s ask him to come here instead.’
‘A doctor who makes house calls? Nana, those days went out with the horse and buggy.’ If she hadn’t been so miserable, Noelle would have smiled at her grandmother’s worldview that had stopped evolving somewhere around the Truman administration.
‘Maybe so. But Hank Reynolds isn’t like other doctors,’ Nana stubbornly insisted.
‘Because he’s not browbeating you into another round of chemo?’
‘Among other things.’
‘Name one.’
‘Well, for one thing, he sure isn’t in it for the money. If he’d wanted to get rich he’d have gone to work in one of those big city clinics where they charge an arm and a leg just to look at you. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t charge one dime extra for coming all the way out here.’
Hank Reynolds had taken over the practice several years ago, when old Dr Matthews retired, but it wasn’t until Noelle began accompanying Nana on her doctor’s appointments that she’d met him. The young internist had impressed her so much she’d even begun thinking about switching over from her doctor in Schenectady.
At the moment, though, all that was a distant concern. She couldn’t think about anything except how stupidly she’d behaved. Ignoring her lawyer’s advice, walking into Robert’s trap—
for the second time.
What in God’s name could she have been thinking?
‘Never mind my foot. It’s my
head
that needs examining.’
She groaned, pulling herself upright. ‘Oh, Nana, I’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t I?’
‘You did what you had to do.’ Her grandmother’s tone was sharp. She wouldn’t tolerate the suggestion, even by Noelle herself, that she was in any way to blame. ‘If there’s a way of fighting that
isn’t
messy, I don’t know it.’
‘Did you ever feel this way about Mom or Aunt Trish? Like you’d sooner cut off your arm than see them suffer?’
‘I never lost a single night’s sleep over Trish. Your mother, though,
she
was a different story … always one step ahead of herself even while tripping over both feet.’ Nana’s mouth pursed in recollection. ‘But, yes, there was a time when it just about did me in, knowing what she was going through and not being able to do a blessed thing to help.’
‘You mean when she was pregnant with me?’ Noelle perked up. She’d heard only her parents’ version of the story. Nana didn’t like revisiting that particular chapter. The way she talked, anyone would have thought her baby granddaughter had been brought by the stork.
Nana nodded distractedly, her eyes elsewhere. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing, keeping my distance, waiting for her to come ’round on her own. Now I’m not so sure….’
‘In the end, though, she
did
come around.’
Nana absently fingered the top button on her blouse. She’d gotten dressed for her doctor’s appointment, even putting on lipstick. But her powder blue pantsuit hung on her newly shrunken frame, making her look even more frail.
‘It was winter, the winter of ’69, a particularly nasty one, as I recall. Your parents didn’t have two nickels to rub together. What else
could
she do?’ Nana shook her head.
She could have stayed with my father,
Noelle thought. That was the trouble with her mother; the only thing she’d ever fought for was to get away. Maybe she should have tried harder to make a go of things here in Burns Lake, with Dad.
With an effort she hauled herself to her feet and limped to the door. Her swollen foot thumped with dull, hot pain.
Glancing at her watch, she announced, ‘It’s two-fifteen. We’d better hurry if we want to make that appointment. Afterward, if he has time, I’ll have Dr Reynolds take a look at my foot.’
‘I’ll drive.’ Nana wore an expression of feigned innocence.
‘Nothing doing. Remember what the ophthalmologist said.’
‘The cataract’s only in one eye. I can see just fine,’ she insisted.
‘All right then’—Noelle countered with equal stubbornness—’if you can see so well, what does the sign on that truck say?’ She pointed out the window at the van parked in front of the Keenans’ house across the streets, on which was painted in bold letters
FIGUERA POOL MAINTENANCE
.
Nana squinted hard, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘It’s those pest control folks. I remember Betty saying something about having termites.’
‘Get your purse, Nana. I’ll wait outside.’
Her grandmother knew when she’d been outwitted. With a snort of disgust, she clomped off down the hall to retrieve her purse, the same boxy black handbag she’d been using since Noelle was little, a traveling medicine chest from which had issued an endless supply of Kleenex and Band-Aids, nickels and Sen-Sens.