Together Alone (40 page)

“Want me to try this number?” Brian asked.

She nodded and moved aside. She wrapped one arm around her waist, propped an elbow on it, and chewed her thumbnail.

After a minute, Brian hung up the phone. “No answer.”

She felt a wave of relief, but it was shortlived. Little things were nudging her, little details she didn’t know, details that hadn’t mattered because Carter had made her feel so good. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said to Brian. “You met him. Okay, you weren’t wild about him, but did he strike you as a phony?”

“No, but that’s the skill of a con man.”

“Why would he do it? Not that I believe he did, mind you. Mix-ups happen. Just because I can’t reach him doesn’t mean anything. But for the sake of the argument, if he isn’t what he said he was, why would he have
said
it? I don’t have money. It’s not like he could bilk me out of much.”

“How often does he stay here?”

“Several days a week. More over the holiday.”

“Who bought groceries?”

She hesitated for just a minute. “Me.”

“Did you ever eat out?”

“Here? No. He said he loved having me all to himself.” She had loved hearing that. Now the words were dirtied.

Brian touched her arm in a way that was meant to be reassuring. “It could have been a game, nothing more.”

She wasn’t feeling reassured. “For sex.”

“Possibly.”

She wrapped a second arm around her middle. “I don’t want to think this, really I don’t. He was so much better than the others.” She thought of Michael, the widower with the smiley face, who was so sweet and even-keeled and unromantic. Carter was made to order.

“What about Dawn?” Jackson asked.

Her head swung around. She had forgotten he was there. Her hackles went up. “Dawn is fine. Carter wouldn’t hurt her.” She had to believe that. The alternatives were unthinkable. “Say what else you want about him, but he isn’t cruel. I’m not stupid,
or
unobservant. In all the time I spent with him, I never once saw him lift a hand in anger or raise his voice. I never saw him grit his teeth. I never saw his muscles clench, or his knuckles go white, or the little vein throb at his temple the way yours does when something ticks you off.” She pointed. “There it is.”

“I’m worried about Dawn.”

“Carter is kind and considerate. He was
wonderful
with Dawn. She had the best time with him. He wouldn’t hurt her. Just the opposite. He bent over backwards to include her in things. He gave her nearly as much attention as he gave me. He
adored
her.”

A thought intruded, taking those words that had been offered in praise and casting them, too, in a different light. Her gaze flew to Brian’s. Her head moved from side to side in denial. “He wouldn’t touch her,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t. She’s my
daughter
, for God’s sake.”

“I think,” he said, “that we have to find her before we jump to any other conclusions. Do you have the address of the place in Cambridge that you thought was his?”

Celeste gave it to him.

“The car he was driving on Thanksgiving Day—his, too?”

“I thought so.”

“White BMW. License plate?”

“I have no idea.”

Brian picked up the phone. “Let me get this out on the wire.”

“She’s over eighteen,” Jackson said. “What can you charge him with?”

“Nothing at all, assuming she’s with him willingly.”

“We don’t know she
is
with him,” Celeste felt called upon to insist. She didn’t want Dawn to be with Carter. Not that way. But now that the bug had been put in her ear, more than mere words were taking on a new light. Looking back over the holiday weekend, she saw things differently. She saw Dawn flirting and Carter encouraging it. She saw casual touches that possibly weren’t so casual. She saw hugs. She saw a playfulness between them that might have been either innocent or naughty. “I trusted him,” she said to no one in particular. “I trusted
her
.”

At the same time that Brian spoke into the phone, he held up a hand that told her not to assume the worst, but, once planted, she couldn’t shake the idea that her lover might have become her daughter’s lover. It made her feel old, blinded by desperation, and very foolish.

It was Jackson who took her hand, led her to the kitchen table, and gently pushed her into a seat.

• • •

It didn’t take long to find them. They were thirty miles south, in an even smaller town than Grannick, in a motel that rarely saw BMWs, much less looked at the same one for three straight days. The local police, who had eyed the car with longing for as many days, called Grannick the instant the APB came over the line.

The descriptions fit. No question about that, either. The manager of the motel confirmed Dawn’s stats. His wife confirmed Carter’s.

Jackson drove Celeste, following Brian and Emily in the Jeep. Once they had parked beside the BMW, Celeste jumped right out. Clutching her parka closed, she went to the designated door and knocked.

It was an agonizingly long minute before Carter opened it. She barely had time to note that he was wearing nothing but old jeans and a shocked expression, when Brian pushed past her, badge aloft, hauled him outside and pinned him to the wall.

Celeste stepped into the room. Dawn was kneeling on the bed, clutching the blankets to her chest. She looked tousled but intact.

“Mom!”

Celeste was furious, hurt, and sickened, all at the same time. She opened her mouth to yell at Dawn, but her eyes filled with tears instead. So she closed her mouth, pressed her fingers to it, and stood there, unable to say a word.

“We were worried,” Jackson said, coming up behind Celeste.

“Daddy!” This cried in horror.

It struck Celeste that Jackson’s presence carried a weighty message to Dawn, and while that infuriated Celeste, given that she had been the one who had sweated and trembled and fought her way through Dawn’s upbringing, she was grateful enough to have him finally bear some of the weight, to overlook the injustice of Dawn’s response.

“No one knew where you were,” he said. “You could have left a message with someone. They’ve been looking all over campus for you. They’ve been looking all over the state. Why didn’t you let anyone know where you were?”

Dawn was glancing nervously from him, to Celeste, to the door, looking as though she badly wanted Carter to do the talking. But Brian was keeping Carter outside. Celeste blessed him for that. She had plenty to say to her daughter, but not a word to waste on Carter.

Funny, Carter hadn’t looked half as attractive just now. He hadn’t looked sexy in the least.

“Why didn’t you?” Jackson repeated.

“I didn’t know where I was going.”

“You’ve been here for three days. Why didn’t you call?”

“I was busy.”

“It didn’t
occur
to you to call.”

“I didn’t have to,” she said with a defiant tip of her chin. “I’m eighteen. I’m a consenting adult.”

“Didn’t you think your mother would worry?”

Celeste still had her hand pressed to her mouth. She was feeling ill, succeeding more in stemming tears than settling the tipping of her stomach.

“Didn’t you?” Jackson prodded.

“No. I didn’t. She’s been waiting, just waiting to have me gone. She never calls me at school.”

“You told me not to!” Celeste cried.

“Only because I knew you wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to be sitting around expecting it, but you could have, if you missed me.”

“I was following
your
instructions.”

“Which suited you just fine. You were pleasing yourself, like you always do. You couldn’t wait for me to leave, so that you could start living it up. I was a burden, all those years. I held you down.”

Celeste was stricken. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. I felt it. It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Not the way you think.”

“Then what way?”

Celeste swallowed. “I was trying to set a good example.”

“Well, that must have been a strain, because what came across was you wanting your freedom.”

“Not freedom from you. Freedom from the responsibility. It frightened me.”

“Frightened?” Dawn mocked.

“Yes, frightened. The older you got, the less frightening it was in some respects, because you could do things for yourself. But then there were the other problems, parties and drinking and dating, and that’s
terrifying
for a parent. So I argued with you about things, maybe yelled and nagged, because I was afraid that you’d make major mistakes and it would be all my fault.”

“Isn’t it?” Dawn had the gall to ask.

“No,” Jackson answered. “Your mother didn’t tell you to run off with her boyfriend. You did that all on your own.”

Celeste was struck by the enormity of it. “How
could
you? My own daughter! How could you
sleep
with him?”

“He protected me. He wore a condom.”

“That’s not the point, but since you’ve raised it, who was he protecting you from? Me? All the other women who came before? Don’t kid yourself. He wasn’t protecting you. He was protecting himself.”

“He loves me,” Dawn insisted.

“He loves
women
—you, me, someone else next month.”

“You sure liked him enough.”

“Yes, I did, stupid me. I thought he was the answer to my prayers, and you knew I thought that, still you came here with him.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Dawn, didn’t I teach you
any
values? How could you
do
this?”

“You were the one who took me for birth control.”

“That’s not the
point!
” she cried, and when tears started again, she let them flow. “Okay. You didn’t do this alone. Carter is ten times more wrong than you are, because he knew what he was doing, but you—you—you’re my
daughter,
flesh of my flesh. How could you hurt me this way? You knew I was crazy about him. Whether it was stupid of me or not, I was.” She sobbed out a sigh. “Damn it, I really
was
good while you were growing up. Did I subject you to a string of ‘uncles’? Did I force any male friends on you? No. I always put you first. So how could you do this to me now? Was I
that awful
to you that I deserve this kind of betrayal?”

To her credit, Dawn didn’t answer.

Celeste fished a Kleenex from her pocket and pressed it to one eye, then the other. She was feeling battered, suddenly tired, without energy, still nauseous. To Jackson, in a faint voice, she said, “I’m going to the car. I don’t feel very well.”

Without another look at Dawn, crouched there with the bedclothes crushed to her throat and Carter’s scent permeating the room, Celeste left. She walked across the motel porch, went down the steps, keeping her back to Brian and the filth he was with, and leaned against the trunk of Jackson’s car.

Emily joined her there. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Contrite?”

“Fat chance.”

“She’s probably feeling ashamed, but she’s been pushed in a corner, so she’ll stand by what she did for a little longer.”

“And then what?” Celeste asked, looking blindly off. For the life of her, she didn’t know what to do. “She thinks he loves her.”

“He may tell her differently once Brian’s done.”

“What can Brian say? Dawn was a willing accomplice.”

“To whom? Who
is
Carter? He sure isn’t who he told you. Think of all the things that didn’t add up. When people hide their identities that way, they’re usually hiding something more. If Carter is, Brian will find it.”

That was small solace to Celeste. Pressing the balled Kleenex to her nose, she started crying again. “Oh, Emily, I’m so embarrassed. I believed everything he said. He fed me a line of bull, and I ate it right up, because I wanted to believe, so badly.”

Emily slipped an arm around her. “I know.”

“I may have acted like it didn’t matter all those years, like I was doing just fine, like I didn’t want to have to bother with any man, but the act was as much for me as it was for everyone else. It’s not like I
need
a man—”

“Celeste,” Emily interrupted, “anyone who knows you knows that. Whether or not it was an act, you did it. You raised Dawn on your own. You made a life for yourself, on your own.”

“But I missed having more. I missed the fun. I missed the company. There were times when I was so lonely I nearly died of it.”

“You could have called me,” Jackson said.

Celeste put the Kleenex to her eye. She took a minute to compose herself before drawing away from Emily. “We’re divorced, Jackson. We didn’t get along. I couldn’t call you.”

“We could have been friends. Hell, I could have fixed you up.”

She laughed in spite of herself. When she looked at him, she saw an endearingly self-conscious smile. She draped her wrist over his shoulder. “Now, would I have been able to communicate with your friends, any more than I could with you?”

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “Some of them aren’t too bad.”

“So why aren’t they married?”

“Probably for the same reason I’m not. Because we’re not social beings. It takes a saint to stay married to the likes of us.”

“Either a saint or nerd.” Her smile waned. “What’s Dawn doing?”

“I don’t know. There wasn’t much more I could say.”

“Is Brian still with that scum?”

“He’s talking with him.”

“I feel like an imbecile.”

Jackson settled beside her against the trunk. “Tell me one thing,” he said in an indulgent tone. “Was it fun, at least, while it lasted?”

Celeste sighed. “Yes. It was fun.”

“Then it was worth it.”

“Was it? It destroyed my relationship with my daughter.”

“Destroyed?”

“Well, maybe not destroyed. Eroded, certainly.”

“For good?”

Celeste wasn’t sure she could see beyond the hurt and fury she felt. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you have to look at her differently from now on.”

She wasn’t sure she liked Jackson giving her advice, not after he had opted out for so long. But there was the matter of sharing the responsibility, and, besides, she was curious. “Like how?”