Mary was less than a smile from home when she remembered her cell phone. It rang so often these days she hadn’t dared leave it on while at the Lundquists’. Usually her assistant, calling with updates, occasionally a client to whom she’d given her direct number. No sooner had she switched it on when she heard its familiar trill.
‘Mary, thank God you’re there. Something’s come up.’ Brittany sounded uncharacteristically out of breath. ‘It’s Leo. Apparently he’s having some sort of nervous breakdown.
He’s holed up in his apartment, and his sous chef is on the verge of mutiny.’
Mary felt herself break into a sweat.
Oh, Lord, what next?
Leo LeGras had been hired to cater the Rene’s Room banquet, for which she’d already plunked down a hefty deposit. For a function this size, it wouldn’t be easy finding another caterer of his caliber on such short notice.
‘Can you get him on the phone?’ she asked.
‘I’ve only left about eighty-five messages. No luck getting past the doorman either. Mary, I can’t handle this alone. You’ve got to
do
something.’ Her normally capable assistant was clearly at her wit’s end.
‘I’ll drive down next week,’ Mary told her. ‘I don’t know which day yet. Can you hold it together until then?’
There was a short pause. Then Brittany answered direly, ‘I didn’t tell you the worst of it. Mr Lazarus got wind of your being out of town, and he isn’t too happy about it. When he hears about
this,
I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’
‘Between you and me, Lazarus is a horse’s ass.’ Mary had never liked the man. Rene’s Room aside, he wasn’t shy about capitalizing on his wife’s death.
‘Yeah, but he was married to one of the most beloved stars of all time.’ Brittany didn’t have to tell her it would be bad PR for them to piss off a man with Lazarus’s connections.
‘Anything else I should know?’ Mary asked, more brusquely than usual. Her assistant’s calls never failed to remind her of how far out on the proverbial limb she’d crawled.
‘Just the usual.’ Some of the tension went out of Brittany’s voice. ‘We struck out with
Regis and Kathie Lee
on Merriman’s book, but we’re still working on Oprah. Oh, and Lucianne Penrose’s manager called from Miami to scream bloody murder. Apparently the local TV crew that was supposed to cover her shoot never showed.’
Mary groaned. Whenever Lucianne was shooting an outdoor commercial for her diet centers, she always tried to have it covered by the local press—double the bang for the buck. ‘Whose screwup was it?’
‘No one’s, far as I can tell.’ Brittany’s voice was beginning to break up amid the static. ‘It was all set to go with WPLG. Something more important must’ve come up.’
‘More important than Lucianne? It’d have to be a presidential assassination attempt.’ Mary indulged in a dry laugh, which did nothing to dispel her sinking sense of despair. Or the debt of gratitude she owed her staff. ‘Hey, Brit, in case I don’t tell you enough, thanks for holding the fort down.’
‘My pleasure. Mark sends his love, too.’ Her voice grew even choppier. ‘We’re breaking up. … I’d better sign off.’
Mary thumbed the end button and shoved the phone back in her purse. She couldn’t deal with one more headache right now. Not with everything she’d worked so hard to build going to—
Glancing out the corner of her eye, she was distracted from her thoughts by the sight of Corinne’s diary on the seat beside hers. Did it hold any stunning revelations about her death? Doubtful. If the Lundquists had had reason to suspect foul play, they’d have long since gone to the police. No, if there was anything to be revealed, it was between the lines. And who better to decipher it than the friend Corinne had trusted above anyone else? Mary’s pulse quickened at the prospect.
I should show it to Charlie. For better or for worse, we’re in this together.
She smiled ruefully at the thought even as she turned sharply onto the road leading to town.
‘You didn’t honestly think we’d find anything, did you?’ Charlie spoke softly, gazing out at the lake from his back porch, where he and Mary sat comfortably ensconced in a pair of Adirondack chairs. Hours had passed since they’d arrived at the cabin, driven here by the frenzy of the newsroom. Poring over the diary with Charlie, followed by a surprisingly good supper his daughter had helped prepare, she’d lost all track of time. Now, with dusk falling, Mary was startled to realize how late it had gotten. The lake had darkened to the hue of tarnished silver, and the silhouettes of trees stood out against the purpling sky, where the first stars were faintly sketched.
‘I don’t know what I expected.’ She sighed. ‘Sylvia Plath, I suppose.’ The notion of her friend as a manic-depressive poet brought a faint smile to her lips.
In reality, Corinne’s diary had revealed nothing more than the hopes and dreams of a perfectly average sixteen-year-old girl. The last entry, dated three months before Corinne’s death, was almost heartbreakingly banal.
Went to Laura’s party with R. We fought the whole way there. At the party he didn’t talk to me once. I was so mad! I pretended I didn’t care when he left without me, but it was all I could do to keep from crying. J. gave me a ride home. He’s nice. More about that later.
Whoever ‘J’ was.
‘Maybe you’re thinking of what it was like for us.’
Charlie spoke lightly, but she caught a note of tamped pain in his voice. Mary turned to regard him solemnly. In the amber glow of the porch light, his sharply etched profile made her think of those on ancient Roman coins. Yet he would have laughed at the idea that there was anything noble about him. Here, at his cabin on the lake, he was merely a man in his natural habitat, as relaxed as she’d ever seen him. He’d changed out of his work clothes into faded jeans and a worn chambray shirt. On his sockless feet he wore a pair of ancient, scuffed Dock-Siders.
Mary wondered what he’d have thought if he’d known how often she’d fantasized over the years about summer evenings like this: sitting on a porch with Charlie somewhere, moths flickering overhead, and a whippoorwill calling in the distance.
With an effort she pulled her thoughts back to Corinne.
‘And maybe we’re missing something,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s not about what’s there, but what
isn’t
there. If Corinne had any thoughts of suicide, I see absolutely no indication of it.’
Charlie turned to smile at her. ‘Anyone ever tell you you’d make a good reporter?’
‘Seriously, Charlie. Is it so farfetched to imagine she might have been’—a cool breeze had kicked up. Mary broke off, crossing her arms over her chest—‘murdered?’ she finished softly, almost as if wondering aloud.
‘Anything is possible,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But we have to stick to the facts. Whatever we might suppose, there isn’t a shred of evidence to support that theory.’
‘But if Robert
did
have something to do with it, he’s even more dangerous than we thought.’
Silence fell. She could hear the faint plink of feeding trout and night birds calling to one another from the stands of speckled alder and white birch that grew thick along the shore. Mary listened to the hollow lap of water against the dock, where a small skiff was tied. It did nothing to lull her fears.
She wished Noelle were with them now, but she’d begged off Charlie’s invitation to supper, saying she had a headache. Apparently today’s visit with Emma hadn’t gone well. And Mary had a feeling things were going to get a lot worse. Frustration rose in her. She felt as helpless now as she had all those years ago when Noelle was desperately ill and she hadn’t known what to do.
‘Either way you’re right to worry.’ She saw a muscle flicker in his jaw. ‘You want to know something? When I saw him walk into the courtroom the other day I was a heartbeat away from smashing his face in. If Bron hadn’t been with me, I’m not at all sure I wouldn’t have done just that.’
As if on cue, from inside came the clatter of Charlie’s daughter dropping something in the midst of washing up, a pot or a pan from the sound of it. There was a muffled cry of ‘Shit!’ Through the screen door Mary was afforded a view past the living room into the kitchen beyond, where a shadowy figure bent to retrieve it from the floor.
‘From what I can see, it sounds as if she’d have cheered you on.’
‘Bron acts tough, but she’s a lot more fragile than she seems.’ Charlie shook his head in fond exasperation. ‘With Noelle, it’s the other way around—she’s tougher than she realizes.’
‘Were they close growing up?’
Noelle had been fourteen when Bronwyn was born. Yet Mary knew little about the Christmas and summer vacations she’d spent with Charlie and his second wife and their daughter. At times she’d had the oddest feeling Noelle was hoarding those memories, as if she feared that in sharing them they’d be tainted somehow.
Charlie gave a low chuckle. ‘Thick as thieves. There were times, I swear, I could have walked out the door for good and it would’ve been weeks before they’d have noticed I was gone.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s funny, though, how two sisters can be such complete opposites. Noelle, bless her, never gave me a moment’s worry, but Bron, well, there’s a wild streak in her. Maybe it’s from growing up motherless, I don’t know.’
He looked so bewildered at that moment she longed to reach out and take his hand. The words slipped out before she could stop them. ‘What was your wife like?’
His smile of fond remembrance cut deep. ‘Vicky? Funny and bright. A little absentminded. She was always misplacing things, like keys and umbrellas. She’d make shopping lists, then lose them. It became a family joke. But the one who always laughed loudest was Vicky.’ Softly he added, ‘You’d have liked her.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to know her.’ She’d met Vicky only once, at Noelle’s wedding, and had been struck by how nice she was. Pretty, too. But that didn’t stop Mary from withering a little inside at the thought of Charlie and her together. ‘From what you’ve told me, I’m sure she’d be proud of the job you’ve done raising Bronwyn. She’s a good kid, Charlie. Anyway, sometimes one good parent is better than two not so good ones.’
‘You have a point there.’
‘I envy you actually.’
‘How so?’
‘I would have loved another child,’ she confessed, staring down at her hands. Her nail polish had begun to chip, but she hadn’t noticed until now. Little by little her old habits were falling away. ‘I always wondered what it would be like to feel happy about being pregnant or to hold a newborn in my arms without being scared to death.’
When Charlie didn’t respond right away, she felt a moment of panic. Had she revealed too much? Perhaps she’d reminded him of a time he’d just as soon forget.
‘Some things just aren’t in the cards, I guess,’ he remarked mildly. She glanced up at him. His expression was flat, unreadable, and she felt her heart wither a little more. When he reached over to flick something casually from her arm, she flinched. ‘We should go inside. You’ll be eaten alive by the mosquitoes.’
He started to get up, but Mary put out a hand to stop him. ‘I’m fine, really. Would you mind if we took a walk instead?’
Charlie search her face before nodding slowly. When he rose, the creak of his chair was like an exhaled breath. He called, ‘Bron! Mary and I are going down to the lake. We won’t be long.’
A second later Charlie’s teenage daughter materialized as if out of nowhere, silhouetted against the screen like an exclamation point. ‘You don’t have to shout, Dad. I’m not deaf, you know.’ The screen squealed open, and the girl stepped out onto the porch.
Mary, poised on the top step, smiled in an attempt to ease the tension that had been building all evening. ‘Thanks again for dinner, Bronwyn. It was delicious.’
Bronwyn shot her a cool look. ‘All I did was the salad.’
Mary tried not to take the girl’s dislike of her personally. Hadn’t Noelle been prickly at that age? Having her father to herself all these years surely hadn’t helped either. Bronwyn’s jealousy was palpable. Charlie was right about one thing: His younger daughter was a handful.
If she were mine, I’d worry, too,
she thought. But he ought to save his concern for the boys who would fall under the spell of this teenage siren of his. Even in shorts and a rumpled Red Sox T-shirt, she looked the part of a temptress, her long legs brown and supple as a pearl diver’s, her heavy jet black hair swaying at her slender waist.
‘Well, anyway, it’s such a lovely evening, I thought it’d be nice to take a stroll.’ Mary was quick to add, ‘You’re welcome to join us if you like.’
Ignoring her, Bronwyn turned to Charlie. ‘Dad, why don’t you take Rufus? He’s been cooped up in the house all day. He could use the exercise.’
‘Not this time, pumpkin,’ Charlie said. ‘He’ll be chasing after every field mouse, and I don’t feel like plowing through the bushes at night. I’ll take him out when we get back.’
Bronwyn gave him a long, measured look. Mary began to feel uncomfortable, even a tiny bit irritated.
It’s just a
walk,
for heaven’s sake. What on earth does she think is going to happen?
They were strolling along the dirt path that sloped down to the lake when the girl called out plaintively, ‘Okay if I take the car, Dad? I told Maxie I’d come over after dinner.’
Mary glanced back over her shoulder. In the yellow glow of the porch light, Bronwyn suddenly looked awkward and self-conscious, a bundle of emotions she didn’t know what to do with. Unexpectedly Mary’s heart went out to her, this wild, motherless girl who was the spitting image of her father.
Charlie appeared to hesitate. Mary heard the reluctance in his voice when he called back, ‘All right. But I want you home by midnight. And no side trips, okay?’
‘Thanks, Dad!’ Bronwyn sounded lighthearted as she bounded back into the cabin, the screen door smacking shut behind her.
Mary and Charlie walked in silence for the first few minutes. The path was fairly well traveled, and the moon that had risen over the treetops bright enough to see by. Its reflection glided over the tarnished surface of the lake as they strolled along beside it. This was when she liked it best, when it was too dark to see more than the distant lights of the condos that had sprung up like toadstools along the opposite shore; when the limitlessness of the starry sky overhead made her forget the smallness of her home place.