Passing Through Paradise Page 32

  She focused on the suncatcher again, letting time fall away, taking herself back to summer days of innocence, of ignorance. From the start, from the first turn of that Ferris wheel, she’d believed Victor loved her as much as she loved him. Until that final argument, she never knew that making love to her was a form of penance for him. She was the scourge with which Victor flayed himself every day of their marriage.

  She glanced away from the glittering, translucent ornament and shuddered. “You know what his family is like—the pride, the expectations. He struggled all his life to live up to that. He gave everything he had to being someone he could never be. He knew that if this came to light, he’d have to give up the love and esteem of his parents, his community and his career in politics, everything he’d worked for all his life. I believe he thought he was prepared to make the sacrifice.”

  She pressed her hands together in her lap, trying as she had so many times in the past year to imagine the things that went on inside him. All his shining achievements had not been able to compensate for surrendering the defining element of who he was. “But as time went on, he became increasingly distracted, unhappy and . . . lost, I guess. He claimed he was physically faithful to me, but now I realize he was becoming consumed by frustration. And fear, too,” she added, thinking of that last night, the last terrible words they’d spoken. “I unknowingly made matters worse by pressuring him to have a child. I wanted kids so badly, sometimes I ached with it.”

  She shut her eyes, fighting for control, then made herself look at Mike again. “I used to wonder why I’m not angrier at Victor, why I don’t feel more betrayed. The fact is, maybe he wasn’t my dream lover, but he was someone special and rare—he was my friend. That’s pretty hard to come by.”

  He shot to his feet so fast that she flinched. “Quit being so fucking understanding,” he said. “Don’t you see what he did to you?”

  “He was good to me—”

  “Oh, yeah? How was your sex life, Sandy? Answer me that.” He grabbed her aggressively, pulling her to her feet, putting his mouth very close to hers. “Was it like ours?”

  She said nothing; he knew the answer to that. He’d been a revelation to her. She’d never known passion until him. But Mike was wrong about one thing—she was angry, sometimes so angry she couldn’t see straight. All during her marriage she’d felt inadequate, unattractive, thinking she was at fault. And Victor had let her believe that, let her suffer. What she’d found in Mike’s arms —Victor had deprived her of those things. She didn’t think she could ever forgive him, and that was a problem, because now he was dead and she could never confront him.

  “There’s simply no point in being bitter now,” she said.

  “I don’t get it, Sandy. What holds you so tight that you’d go through a lawsuit, ruination, maybe bankruptcy when you hold the truth in your hands?”

  “What, you think telling the world my husband was gay is going to exonerate me?” She shook her head. “Don’t be naive. What good would it do to tell people now? In the first place, no one would believe me, and in the second place, they’d say that finding out his sexual preference gave me a stronger motive to do him in. They’ll call me a liar, an opportunist, smearing the reputation of a good man to save my skin.”

  “You’re still hiding behind Victor.”

  She stood and began putting books up in the newly re-finished shelves, aligning the spines with obsessive precision. “How can I hide behind a ghost?”

  “You’re some piece of work, you know that? You pretend it’s noble to hide the truth, but in fact, you don’t want to save yourself. You’d rather keep yourself in seclusion, hiding from the world. You’d rather play the martyr, letting the town force you to leave. If you had to stay, you’d actually have to live a life outside your books. You’d have to give yourself over to loving a man in a way you’ve never dared. You’re afraid of taking a risk. And you’re probably afraid of looking stupid, too—isn’t that right? Married to a man you didn’t know was gay?”

  She felt as though he’d slapped her. Worse, he held up a mirror, showing her the selfishness in her anguish over Victor. Malloy was forcing her to face the fact that she’d never had a successful romantic relationship in her life. She thought she had that with Victor, but on the last day of his life, she discovered that she was wrong. Now she felt safer alone, cocooned by her own fictional world, apart from those who found love and meaning with their families and friends. She didn’t want anyone to reach her, to touch her, to make her feel again. And here was Mike, forcing her out of her numb state, making her feel the fire and tingle and searing agony of yearning.

  “I really need you to leave.” Her quiet plea struck the silence from the room. “Please, just. . . just leave.”

  “I can’t do that, Sandy.” He walked over to the desk, pulled open the top drawer and grabbed a handful of letters. A labeled computer disk dropped from the pile. “Do you recognize any of this?”

  At first glance, it resembled anyone’s old mail. But every single letter was addressed to Victor.

  Her throat tightened. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Wh . . .” The failed word aspirated from her as the crippling strangulation seized her vocal cords again. Everything she felt stayed locked inside, burning to escape. Yet the harder she tried to speak, the tighter her muscles grew.

  Mike waited, calm and patient. Most people took pity on her when she struggled with her stutter; some tried to finish her thoughts for her. He merely stood by the desk. Deadly serious. Waiting.

  She willed the words to emerge. Summoning all her strength, she pushed out a question. “Wh-where did you get that?”

  “It was in the attic, hidden in a box. An old suitcase, actually. I came across it by accident.”

  A slow burn of anger curled through every fiber of her body, all the way to the bone. Suddenly the man to whom she’d given her heart, her body, had become a stranger. The stutter melted away. “And you’ve made it your business to read private letters? Hidden letters?” Her voice was low and husky, wavering over the words.

  “No,” he said. “Not when I first came across them. But the more I thought about the accident, the more I realized I couldn’t leave it alone.”

  “You can now,” she said. “You can leave me alone— my life, my house, everything.”

  “These letters, the data on this disk—they could explain so much. But they pose a lot of new questions, too.”

  “Damn it, Malloy.” She shot to her feet. “It’s not your place to ask anything.”

  “Somebody has to. God knows, the investigators wrote him off fast enough.”

  “They didn’t write him off. There was a ruling of death.”

  “Don’t you think that was a bit premature?”

  A wave of nausea swept through her. She glared at Malloy as though he were a stranger. Her resentment curled in on itself like a withered autumn leaf. “Oh, for God’s sake, are you working for the tabloids now? I’m supposed to be the one with the wild imagination. Every expert in the state worked on this. They didn’t overlook anything.”

  “But they didn’t know Victor the way I did. Or the way you did.”

  Against all good sense, she felt a leap of hope in her chest. Alive. Victor, alive after all. Then cold reality crushed down as she pictured the mangled, muddy car, the hopeless faces of the recovery crew.

  Roused by Mike’s shocking suggestion, nightmare memories swept over her, and once again, she was in the driver’s seat, racing through the icy winter night. Disjointed impressions bombarded her. The car racing up behind them. Victor’s voice rising in hysteria. Her own panicked pleas. The feeling that someone had ripped away the steering wheel, a carnival-ride sensation as the car spun out of control. The stunning impact of the car striking the rail. The explosive hiss of the airbag, and then . . . nothing. Until the glare of the ER, and the devastating report that Victor was missing, presumed dead.

  After the accident, everyone had prayed he’d some-how survived.
His mother clung to her wild hopes for an unhealthy length of time. Winifred fled to the hospital chapel, beseeching God on her knees until she fainted from exhaustion. She refused to believe her son was dead. Even when her husband had explained that a person couldn’t have survived the frigid waters for more than a few minutes. Even when the police reported evidence of gunshot. It was only when the bizarre twist of the investigation pointed suspicion at Sandra that Winifred finally understood that her son was dead.

  “I’m begging you, Malloy,” Sandra said, dragging the words from an icy hollow of terror and grief, “don’t bring this all up again.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m right.”

  “So are Elvis’s fans,” she said. “And Jimmy Hoffa’s family.”

  “The investigation didn’t go far enough.” He picked up the framed photograph of her and Victor, standing in front of the white-domed State House. They smiled with a unity of purpose that had held their marriage together far longer than it should have. “I’ve been doing some checking.”

  Her gut twisted as she pictured him pawing through the evidence file—reports, statements, photographs, sealed bags containing the flotsam and jetsam of their last moments together. Everyone’s pain and confusion had been reduced to bald statements on public documents. “You’re a carpenter, Malloy,” she snapped, “not an investigator. They did their job.”

  “But they didn’t remove every shadow of doubt. That’s why the Winslows are suing you.”

  “That’s my problem.”

  “It’s mine, too, now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I care, God damn it.” In two strides he crossed the room, gripped her upper arms and drew her to him. “Look, I studied all the conclusions, all the different theories. But I have one advantage over the medical exam iner’s staff. I know you. And I know Victor. He didn’t die, Sandy. He wouldn’t. He rescued you from the car. Then he disappeared.”

  “That’s insane.” She drew back, but he kept a firm hold on her. Despite her denial, her heart sped up. “They searched every rock on the shore, every square inch of the marsh, every blade of grass on both sides of the bridge.”

  “He took off.”

  “Just walked away.”

  “Or ran. Took a bus, a train. Caught a ride with a stranger.”

  “So he walked away from his home, his family, his flourishing political career.”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “So where did he go?”

  He searched her eyes, and she forced her gaze not to waver. She didn’t want him to know how much he was scaring her. Finally he broke away and stood. He scooped the letters from the desk drawer and dropped them on the table next to her. “Maybe this will explain it.”

  Her heart lurched to her throat. “Your job is to renovate my house, not pry into personal affairs.”

  “It is personal.” He reached for her, and just for a moment, for a heartbeat, she wanted his touch so badly it created a physical ache.

  She stepped back toward the door, eluding him. “I hired you to fix things, not foul things up. God, don’t you think I wanted to find him? Don’t you think we considered the possibility that he was disoriented or had amnesia after the crash? The best investigators in the state found no trace of him. What makes you think you can?”

  He gestured at the letters. “I can read between the lines.”

  “Don’t you think if Victor were alive, he would have contacted me? He wouldn’t do this to me.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “He did it to you all through your marriage.”

  She stared back. “You know, in a way, it’s a good thing we’re having this conversation now. Otherwise, I might have gone on indefinitely, not knowing what a son of a bitch you are.” She slammed her hand on the door frame so hard that her fingers went numb. “I want you out of here, Malloy. Now. Out of my house, out of my life. Let your crew stay and finish, send me a bill for the final payment, but I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

  She tried not to glimpse in his face all the things she had come to love—the passion, the tenderness, the strength. She didn’t want to see those things now, because she couldn’t trust them. She wondered if he knew that until this moment, she had thought of him as her refuge, her one safe place in a world where she didn’t belong.

  That was over. Their time together had the phantom allure of cotton candy from an itinerant carnival. Unbelievably sweet at first taste, but ultimately it disappeared, insubstantial as mist.

  “Get out,” she said, forcing herself to let go of all the foolish things she’d wanted—for herself, for Mike, for them. “Or I swear I’ll call the police.” She waited for him to call her bluff, to see what the local police would do for the Black Widow of Blue Moon Beach.

  Instead, he studied her a moment longer, then went to the door. “To hell with it.” His anger was new and startling to her. “I’m out of here. When you’re ready to listen to reason, call me.”

  She bit her lip to keep from calling him back, begging him to stay. In fact, she ought to feel relieved. She’d fretted all day about how to break it off with Mike, to give him back to his kids and to the new life he was building for them. He just handed her the perfect excuse.

  Chapter 34

  Dorrie Babcock drummed her fingers on the armrest of the car door. She wanted a cigarette in the worst way, and alone in the back of the taxi, there was no one to stop her. The taxi driver was obviously a kindred spirit, with a brown-tipped Camel tucked between his nicotine-stained fingers. The acrid odor of stale cigarettes haunted the interior of the car, tantalizing and mocking her.

  Forcing herself to sit up straight, she went through the litany of exercises she had learned in the stop-smoking seminar—self-talk, a visualization exercise, a piece of gum from her pocketbook. If all those failed, she had her prescription tablet.

  The driver flicked his half-smoked Camel through the vent, right past the “Thank You for Not Smoking” sign. Dorrie turned her gaze out the window to watch the landscape swish past. After such a long absence, it felt strange to be back. Strange to be home. She had left in the bitter cold of bleak midwinter; now she was returning to burgeoning spring. The budding lilacs would soon burst into fragrant flowers; a rush of late winter storms had scoured the streets and sidewalks clean. Schoolchildren walked home with their jackets tied around their waists and their faces lifted to the sun.

  Dorrie’s journey had taken her beyond simple time or distance. She had gone back into herself, excavating the person she’d been when she still remembered how to dream. Somewhere along the way, that person had been lost, but in the warm breezes of the tropics, wearing resort clothes and socializing with people she’d never met before, Dorrie had found herself again. To her relief, she discovered that she still liked that person.

  She’d learned to dance, play blackjack and swallow tequila slammers. She’d posed beside a trophy fish, her sunbaked arm raised in victory. Foreign phrases rolled off her tongue. So manyways to say please, thank you, where is the bathroom . . .

  But at night, while lying in her small, nondescript stateroom, she dreaded the deep ache of loneliness; the consequence of her decision to leave her husband.

  True, she had relearned the art of dreaming. But the startling truth was, her dreams had always included Lou.

  She missed him. She missed the crackle of his newspaper as they sat together on quiet evenings, missed his comforting presence in bed beside her at night. She missed his smell, and the way he stared at her, his face a picture of wonder and delight, when she got out of the shower. And not just when she was young and firm, but always.

  She even missed his clumsy, earnest attempts to help with the housework, cringing as she recalled her reaction—he wasn’t doing it “right.”

  As if there was a “right” way to Windex the kitchen.

  Floating upon the turquoise sea had a dramatic effect on her. When she stood at the rail of the Artemisia,
the vastness of the ocean and sky swept over her, putting everything—including household chores—in perspective.

  The craving for a cigarette passed, as she knew it would. Each day was a little easier than the last. How many times had Lou begged her to quit, crazy with worry about her health? She’d clung stubbornly to the habit, even when the rest of the world stopped smoking.

  Now, finally, Dorrie Babcock was a nonsmoker. She applied that obstinate will and used it to stay smoke-free. Did he still want her to quit, or did he no longer care?

  The taxi turned down Sycamore Street and a wave of nostalgia engulfed her. For nearly forty years, this neighborhood had been her whole world—a quiet, unassuming street of bungalows from bygone days, filled with the sound of children’s laughter, the smells of simmering soup or baking bread in the air. She had been one of those slender young mothers strolling along the sidewalk or sitting in a webbed lawn chair watching her little girl play in the yard. She used to sing along with the radio as she fixed dinner, and when she heard Lou’s fin-backed Chrysler pull up, it never failed. Her heart skipped a beat—as it did now.

  Somewhere out there on the endless azure sea, she’d found that youthful, soft-hearted woman again. That woman was still inside her, all but buried in the small, meaningless worries accumulated over the years. It was called living, she had discovered. No one so far had ever escaped it, though plenty—Dorrie included—had tried. During her time away, she managed to excavate a woman who loved her husband and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

  She felt dizzy with apprehension as the taxi drew alongside the curb in front of the house. She paid the driver, and he took her bags to the door. The house looked the same as it did every spring. Half asleep, the hedges and yard still dormant, the bulbs pushing up through the loamy ground.

  Home. Standing in the driveway, she held herself very still, torn between terror and gladness. The voyage had brought her to the last place she expected to wind up, to the only destination her heart desired. Home.