“Is your father already in bed?” she asked brightly.
“He's not home.”
Patricia frowned, picked up an old book. “Well, he's out rather late for a Sunday. Probably checking up on some important patient.”
“Probably.”
Her mother set down that book. Picked up another. Her back remained to her daughter. “How is your migraine, honey?”
“Fine.”
“Relaxing day?”
“Sure,” Melanie said quietly. “Sure.”
Patricia turned. She dropped the book she was holding almost forcefully, almost angrily, and the sudden display of emotion sounded Melanie's alarm bells once more.
Patricia's chin was up. Her blue eyes were beginning to glow. She appeared defiant, and that made Melanie's heart sink. Oh, God, so she'd been out after all.
Her mother simply wasn't that strong. Her life had so many demons, so many dark moments . . .
And then Melanie found herself wondering why. It had been twenty-five years and yet she was still so troubled. Just what had she done?
“I'm not drunk,” her mother announced abruptly. “Oh, don't bother to deny it, Melanie. I can see in your eyes that you think I've been drinking. Well, I haven't. It's just been . . . it's just been one of those days.”
“So you had only one drink instead of four?” Melanie's voice came out sharper than she intended. She bit her lip but couldn't call the words back.
“Sweetheart, I'm telling you, I didn't have a drink—”
“Then where have you been all day? It's nearly midnight!”
“I've been out.”
“Out where? Come on, Mom, out to what bar?”
Patricia drew herself up haughtily. “I wasn't aware that I had to explain myself to my own child.”
“That's not what I meant—”
“Yes, it is. You're worried, and when you worry, you mother all of us. And we let you, don't we, Melanie? I've been thinking about that tonight. How much your father and I depend on you to take care of things. How much I depend on you. For God's sake, we let you work yourself to a point of vicious migraines. What kind of parents do that?”
Patricia crossed the room, taking Melanie's hands and looking at her with an urgency that confused Melanie, caught her off guard.
“Oh, God, Melanie,” her mother cried. “If you could've seen yourself last night, having to be carried back into your own home by some stranger. You looked so pale, so fragile, and I realized for the first time what I'd been doing to you. I've been so lost in my own confusion, my own pain over Brian, I'd never thought about yours. You just seem so strong, I take it for granted. So I turn to you, pile it on. And you're such a good girl, you never complain. But it's not fair of me, and at my age I ought to know better. For chrissakes, when am I going to take care of myself?”
Melanie opened her mouth. She had the strange sensation of being in quicksand.
“I . . . I don't mind.”
“Well, you should.”
“Well, I don't. I honestly don't.”
“And I'm telling you that you should! Melanie . . .”
Patricia took a deep breath. For a moment she appeared impatient and almost furious. Then she looked frightened and, at last, fatalistic, as if something else had happened, something she wasn't prepared to share yet but they would all know about in the end.
Jesus Christ, what was this all about?
Patricia said more quietly, “Melanie, have you ever had a turning point in your life? I know you're only twenty-nine, but have you ever felt yourself at a crossroads, when suddenly all of life was murky, and even though you can't see the landscape and you're not sure where you're going, you know you must take a step. And that this will be an important step. This will be The Step.”
Melanie thought of the past twenty-four hours. She said, “Yes.”
“Good.” Her mother clutched her hands more tightly, her eyes beginning to burn again. “I had a turning point today, Melanie. I've had them before—I'm fifty-eight years old after all—and to tell you the truth, I've blown all of them. Stepped the wrong way every single time. Gone back instead of forward. But I think I finally did it right, Melanie. Because I thought of you.”
“Mom?”
“I found myself in a bar tonight.”
“Oh, God, I knew it. Why? What happened?”
“It doesn't matter. I went to a bar. I contemplated ordering a drink. I was so rattled, I was thinking, why not? Once you've fallen off the wagon the first time, it just doesn't seem so far to fall. We all have our patterns, and this one's mine. When I'm frightened, I head for the booze. I'm overwhelmed, sad, depressed, I head for the bottle. But then I thought of you, Melanie. How you looked last night, flattened by a migraine and still not wanting to worry us. How much you take inside yourself when you shouldn't have to. How you love me even when I do all the silly things I do. How much you love all of us when I know there are times we are far from lovable.
“And I thought . . . I thought I couldn't have a drink and still face you. I just couldn't.” Patricia's voice grew soft. “Melanie, do you even know how much I love you? How you are such a godsend to me? The last six months, you have held me together. I don't think I could've made it without you. I want you to know that. I want you to know, to really know, how much I care.”
Melanie couldn't speak. She held her mother's hand, feeling touched, but, heaven help her, also suspicious. Her mother never spoke like this. None of them did.
She was thinking of Larry Digger again, wondering if he had gone back on his word and approached her mother, if that was what had rattled Patricia Stokes. And then she was thinking how odd it was that they were having a conversation about how much they cared while both of them were purposefully keeping huge chunks of their day to themselves. It was like exchanging compliments on hairdos while wearing hats.
And then she wondered how much of the Stokes family was based upon that, lies of omission carrying back to the sunny days of Texas.
Her mother let go of Melanie's hands. She picked up a pile of books and set them on the floor. Now that she'd said what she wanted to say, the intensity had drained out of her face. She looked more settled. Whatever need she'd had, she'd fulfilled it, at least for then.
“Here,” she said firmly. “Now that I've filled your head with too much stuff, let me help you. Your father's right—you're working too hard.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, darling?”
“I love you too.”
“Thank you,” Patricia whispered softly, and smiled back, looking happy. She picked up a book and got to work.
Thirty minutes later the front door banged open. The alarm chirped. Both women jumped, then flushed self-consciously, sharing a nervous laugh neither cared to explain. Harper came striding into his study in green hospital scrubs, one hand tucked behind his back, the second hiding a yawn. He halted and regarded them both curiously, clearly not expecting to find either awake.
“I thought I saw the light on. What are you two ladies still doing up?” He gave his wife a kiss on the cheek, then hugged his daughter. “Sweetheart, feeling better?”
“Right as rain,” Melanie said. He checked her forehead and pulse anyway. After migraines, he always tended to her as if she were a patient.
“Better,” he finally declared, “but you still need to take it easy. Here, maybe this will help. I was going to give these to you and your mom in the morning, but as my two favorite women are still up . . .”
Harper pulled out his hidden hand and produced a small bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. Four sunflowers, treated with purple dye until they were a rich magenta color. Very striking, and offered at only one of the more tony florists on Newbury Street. He handed them to Patricia and she flushed, giving her husband almost a shy glance.
Her father was definitely working hard at making up for past mistakes, Melanie thought approvingly. Not bad at all. She got a small box of champagne truffles. Teuscher. Flown in from Switzerland twice a
week. She approved of that peace offering as well and promptly helped herself.
Her father pretended to check the pulse on her wrist again, then swiped a chocolate. She had to laugh. On impulse, she hugged her father again, and even more unexpectedly, he held the embrace.
“You should get upstairs,” he said after a minute, his voice a little gruff. “You need rest, young lady.”
“Why don't we finish up tomorrow,” her mother said lightly. “I can help you out in the evening, and we'll get through them in no time.”
Melanie was tired. But then she found herself thinking of her room again. Her room and the altar. Her room that had been entered in the dead of night while the rest of the house slept.
Melanie gazed longingly back at the books.
Her father would have none of it. Ever the fix-it man, he took her arm and led her and her mother upstairs.
Nighttime rituals came smoothly. Her father set the alarm from the second-floor landing. Her mother kissed her cheek. Her father gave her a hug. Melanie murmured good night. Her father told her to sleep in. She said she had a meeting at ten. Her father said he had surgery at eleven, her mother commented she was due at the children's hospital to read at eleven as well. The beginning of a new week at the Stokes household.
Her parents disappeared inside their bedroom. Melanie just caught her father asking her mother how her day was. Patricia did not say anything about turning points. She simply said, Fine. And yours? Fine. She imagined them climbing into their separate sides of the bed, continuing the same polite conversation until both fell asleep.
Then she thought of David Reese and wondered if he would stick to his side of the bed. She doubted it. He struck her as the intense, silent type. Sex would be hot, slick, and fierce. Few words before and after, but what a ride in between. Something twisted low in her stomach, made her sigh. Yearning. Hunger. Pure sexual frustration.
She was lonely these days, she thought, and smiled wryly. Why else would she spend so much time trying to convince herself she had the perfect life?
Melanie reached the third floor. She inspected Brian's empty bedroom from the door. Tonight, no intruders lingered. Only then did she finally, reluctantly, go to bed.
Her dreams were the standard anxiety dreams. She was in her first year at Wellesley, sitting down to take a final exam and realizing at the last minute she'd forgotten to study. She didn't understand the questions. Oh, God, she couldn't even fill in her name.
Then she was in an elevator shaft plummeting down.
Then she was suddenly in the hospice where she'd stayed when she was nine years old, eagerly waiting for the Stokeses to take her away. Except this time they walked right past her. This time they picked up a new girl with perfect sausage curls and walked out the door.
No! No! she cried in her dream. You're my family. My family!
At the last minute, fourteen-year-old Brian Stokes looked at her. “Did you honestly think you couldn't be replaced? Just ask Meagan.”
The hospice spiraled away. She ran through black voids, utterly lost, calling and calling for someone to see her, to tell her her name. She couldn't bear not to know her own name. And the blackness went on and on and on . . .
Suddenly she was cocooned in a warm embrace. Solid arms, low, gentle voice. Shh, it's okay, love, it's okay. I'm here for you. I will always be here for you. Even if you never remember . . .
Melanie stirred. In her sleep she whispered a name.
It was the closest to the truth she ever came until it was too late.
ELEVEN
M ONDAY MORNING PATRICIA watched her husband read the Boston Globe. After all these years, she knew exactly how Harper would read the paper—starting with the business section, where he would check his stocks and on a good day smile and on a bad day frown but never actually announce anything because he always kept the financials to himself. Then he would move on to the local section, first skimming it for any articles pertaining to himself or City General, then reading the articles in depth. After Boston news, he moved to national, then international, slowly expanding his circle of interest to include the things not immediately relevant to himself.
He had once told her that it was important to be well read on all subjects so you could make intelligent conversation at work. Though he'd never expanded upon that statement, she'd understood all the things that were left unsaid. Harper came from blue collar stock. People who did not debate national news or attend black-tie parties or hobnob with political movers or shakers. People whose biggest dream was someday landing a government job that would provide enough of a pension to support fishing in their old age.
Harper, of course, had dreamed big. From the very beginning he'd bought the right clothes, trimmed the calluses from his hands, and done his best to appear even more upper class than the people who were born into it. Even though he'd been a struggling med student, no one had questioned his roots.
Patricia suspected that Harper also thought this facade was important to her, because she'd grown up in the lap of Texas oil luxury. He would never have it be said that she married beneath her or that he provided less for her. Love and money were intrinsically tied in his mind.
Patricia respected that. She admired it. Harper fit the model of man she'd come to know so well: conservative, hardheaded, firm. She supposed that's why she loved him so much. No matter what he did, he was familiar to her. His shortcomings were her father's shortcomings, his strengths her father's strengths. His brand of caring, her father's brand of caring. There were never any surprises, and in her later years she appreciated that.
Once, when she'd been just a child, she'd thought marriage would be about roses and candlelight and never-ending romance. Her husband would always be dashing and passionate. She would always be beautiful and sweet sixteen. Life would be taken care of for her; she would never be lonely or frightened.
Of course marriage didn't work that way. Sometimes, on the bad days, when it required effort just to open her eyes and swing her legs out of bed, she wondered what she was still doing with Harper. What kind of woman stayed with a man who first pursued her with obsession and now hadn't touched her in years? What kind of woman stayed with a man who'd looked at her the way Harper had looked at her the day Meagan's body was identified, as if she was the worst form of life on earth, as if she'd done something even crueler than kill her own child?
On her strong days, however, she acknowledged that this was simply what marriage was about—perseverance. She and Harper had survived the grueling demands of a surgeon's career even as Harper's fellow residents divorced in a giant tidal wave. They had endured the loss of their child when the divorce rate for such couples was over seventy percent. Long after their friends had remarried and divorced for the second time, they were making the decision to adopt a little girl. They had raised their children together. Gotten them through college. Seen them ensconced in their chosen careers.
Their marriage may not be a honeymoon anymore. It may even be more about companionship—which she knew her children, even Melanie, didn't understand—but it was also about having a history. Knowing each other so well. Growing together. Accepting each other.
Weathering life together. Simply weathering it.
The past six months had certainly put that to the test. Since the scene with Brian, Patricia had found herself unhinged in ways she couldn't discuss with her husband, or even with Melanie. She would find herself lying in bed, listening to Harper's snores far away, and thinking of the bottles of gin that beckoned in the parlor, the sweet oblivion she often remembered as a lush, ecstatic dream. Other times she would find herself going downstairs and staring at Meagan's painting, beautiful, happy Meagan, who'd trusted her mother to banish the monsters that hid beneath the bed.
Then, in the brief period when she had given in to the lure of gin and tonic, she'd reached some new level of being permanently off-kilter, where she would wake up at four A.M. and race to Brian's room, convinced he must be there though he hadn't lived
at home since he was twenty-four. She would yank out drawers like a woman possessed, searching for old clothes she could hold against her and inhale the scent of her son's skin. And when she failed to find any trace of him still imprinted in the room, when it began to seem that Harper had wiped her firstborn child from the face of the earth, panic would rear its ugly head, and aided by alcohol, devour her alive.
Suddenly she would be desperate to find Meagan. Meagan darling, where are you? Come home to Mommy. Please, come home.
The cop would materialize beside her in Brian's darkened room. “At least she didn't suffer, ma'am.”
Her head was cut off—she suffered!
Next, the blue-suited FBI agent would step through the window. “There was nothing you could do, ma'am.”
I shouldn't have left her with Nana. Why did we hire so much help?
Finally, the burly sheriff would slide from beneath the bed, chewing a big plug of tobacco to cover the fact he'd just been ill. “Well, ma'am, at least now you know. It's better to know.”
My baby is never coming home. My baby has no head. Would you look at what he did to her hands? Oh, God, oh, God, why am I still alive? Why couldn't you just kill me? Please, please just kill me . . .
Curled up on her son's bed twenty-five years later, she would imagine herself sitting on the grass outside the woods where the cops were working. She would hear the buzz of the flies and smell the overripe scent of decay. She would open her mouth to scream and laugh instead. Just laugh, laugh, laugh.
“It will get better, lass. Somehow, it will get better.” Jamie had told her that.
But it had gotten worse. For the next five years her life simply spiraled away.
From pushing a new life from her body to picking out the tiny white coffin for a closed-casket funeral, because there wasn't enough left of her four-year-old daughter for a viewing. From active mom to screaming, raving lunatic, turning away from her son, refusing to acknowledge his existence because children just broke your heart. From dutiful wife to frozen, inconsolable human being, refusing Harper's tentative overtures, knowing he blamed her for what happened to their daughter, knowing that he was despite that making amends. Realizing she no longer cared.