After Caroline (18 page)

“I come out to watch the sunset sometimes. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Joanna turned her head to look at the reddening western horizon and nodded. “Very. And the water looks like lass.”

“I know. Mama said—”

“Regan.”

They both started, and Joanna turned her head back
swiftly to see a tall, darkly handsome man approaching the gazebo. He was virtually expressionless, only a slight frown drawing his brows together. He gave Joanna one very long, direct look, and if her resemblance to Caroline disturbed him in any way, it wasn’t apparent. His gaze went to Regan, and he spoke in a measured tone.

“Mrs. Ames has your supper ready now, Regan. It’s time to go home.”

There was no fear in Regan when she looked at the man who could only be her father, which rather relieved Joanna. In fact, there was a feminine version of his own measuring consideration in her darker eyes, and her more delicate brows had something of the level command of his.

She looks more like him than Caroline, even if it’s more expression than features
.

Regan turned her gaze to Joanna and smiled unexpectedly. “I have to go now, Joanna.”

“I’ll see you later then, Regan.”

“Okay. Bye.” Solemn once more, Regan left the gazebo and walked past her father without looking at him. She disappeared into the woods between the little clearing and the McKenna house.

“The resemblance,” Scott McKenna said, “is remarkable.”

Fairly or unfairly, Joanna had formed an opinion of this man, and it wasn’t a positive one. So when she met his intent gaze now, it was with the first feeling of real hostility she had known since arriving in Cliffside. “I’m more different from Caroline than like her,” she said flatly.

Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I see that.”

“Do you?”

He nodded. “Caroline was almost always reserved and seldom showed her emotions. Somehow, I doubt the same could be said of you. What you feel shows plainly in your eyes.”

Deciding not to question him on that point, Joanna leaned an elbow on the carousel horse with the air of someone
making herself comfortable. “I met Regan here the other day. I hope you don’t mind my trespassing.”

“And if I do mind?”

“I’ll remember that. The next time I walk over here.”

“I could call the sheriff,” he said.

“Yes, you could. He warned me himself, as a matter of fact, that trespassing was discouraged.”

“Well,” Scott said, “just as long as you know that.”

“I do. I don’t care, mind you, but I know.”

As with Regan, his smile was unexpected. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Joanna? I wonder why—since you’ve known me a grand total of about four minutes.”

“I have such a character flaw, I’m afraid. I make snap judgments.”

“And I’ve been found wanting?” Still smiling very slightly, he said, “Things always appear distorted when outsiders try to look in—especially into a marriage.”

Since she had said something very similar to someone recently, Joanna could hardly disagree with that. But she could question. “Is that what I’m looking into?”

“Oh, I think so. You hear from people around here that Caroline was unhappy and I was … distant. You see Regan look at me with no feeling. And you assume I’m at fault. That I’m the ogre, the villain of the piece.”

“And are you?” she asked.

Scott McKenna’s smile deepened for a moment. “Why, yes, Joanna. I am. Just because everybody says I’m a cold bastard doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

For one of the very few times in her life, Joanna couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Scott glanced toward the setting sun, and said, “It’ll be dark soon. The cliffs are more than usually dangerous after dark. You’d better go back to The Inn, Joanna. It was a pleasure meeting you.” He turned around and walked away.

Joanna stared after him.

Sunday was a rainy, intermittently stormy day, which did nothing to allay Joanna’s uneasy restlessness. She couldn’t go outside for more than ten minutes at a time, and her room had begun to feel very small and unbearably close to her. It was as if the walls were closing in on her, adding their pressure to the tension already stretching her nerves taut. And there was something else.

Tick. Tick. Tick
. Just as in the dream, there was a clock ticking in her head now, a constant reminder of time passing. And she had the unnerving idea that it was ticking faster today than it had yesterday and the day before that. Urging her on, compelling her to do …
something
.

And not knowing what the something
was
was driving her crazy.

When she did finally escape her room, it was to find a few townspeople along with hotel guests in the game room playing poker, apparently a frequent event. It gave her an opportunity to talk to some new faces, to try to get more information about Caroline; more than anything else, it gave her
something
to do.

Not that she was very successful—at gathering more facts, that is. She won huge imaginary stakes in several games, but the perfectly pleasant people she talked to had nothing to say about Caroline. And they had nothing to say in a rather pointed fashion, deflecting the subject neatly when Joanna managed to raise it. They offered her friendly smiles and guarded eyes and asked if she wanted another card.

Joanna realized she was biting her nails again.

Amber had never been so bored in her entire life. There was nothing to do in this godforsaken place, absolutely nothing. She shifted in her chair for the third time and sighed heavily.

Her mother looked up from the book she was reading and, patiently, said, “Honey, why don’t you go and find something to do?”

“Like what? Drown? In case you hadn’t noticed, only the ducks are happy out there.”

“I didn’t say go outside, Amber. It’s after eight o’clock anyway, too late to go outside. But the game room is still open, and the gym. They’re having those card games still. Or you could go swimming. You’re always wanting to go swimming at home.”

“Because of the lifeguards,” her father said without taking his gaze from the television. “None here to watch her model that almost bathing suit of hers.”

Amber felt her face flame, hating him because he was right. The indoor pool here had no lifeguard, just a middle-aged security guard keeping an eye on things from behind the glass of his office. It was disgusting. And not at all like home, where the local pool had college boys for lifeguards.

A bit plaintively, her mother said, “Well, then, why not the game room? They have lots of stuff in there, Amber. Jigsaw puzzles. Video games. Table tennis. You could—”

Amber lurched to her feet, the picture of a teenager willing to go anywhere if she could only escape from that pathetic note in her mother’s voice. “Oh, all
right
. I’ll go.”

She thought it was an excellent performance.

“Be back by eleven,” her mother reminded her.

Amber left the living room of the two-bedroom suite and went into her room, shutting the connecting door behind her. She picked up her keycard from the dresser and slipped it into her pocket, wondering if either parent would bother to look into her bedroom before they went to bed as usual at eleven.

Yes, of course her mother would.

Amber smiled as she left her bedroom. Okay, then, she’d
be
in her bedroom, as ordered, by eleven. Innocent as the driven snow. She’d be freshly showered and sweetly perfumed, smelling good in all the right places. And when her parents went to bed, she’d put on that lovely dress she’d bought yesterday in town, the filmy one with the short skirt, and then she’d slip out the terrace door, so nobody in this nosy hotel would see her. And she’d leave.

And with any luck at all, she’d never come back. Never.

She went down the carpeted hallway toward the lobby and the game room, feeling so restless and edgy that she didn’t know if it was laughter or tears simmering beneath the surface. But definitely excitement. The whole world looked different to her tonight, and she said hello brightly to a few fellow guests as she made her way to the game room, amused when they were surprised by her friendliness.

They don’t know. Nobody knows
.

How wonderful to have such a delicious secret! She looked with pity and triumph at the ordinary people in the game room, vaguely sorry that they had not—surely had not—felt what she felt now. They couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t understand.

It was thundering. She loved the sound. But the storm would be over long before midnight, of course. It had to be. This was her night, and her night would be perfect.

Cheerful, she accepted a challenge from a middle-aged woman to play Ping-Pong, and even let the older woman win. Feeling generous, she even played a second game, and lost that one as well. Then she spent a few minutes working on a jigsaw puzzle someone had left uncompleted on the puzzle table. She played a video game for half an hour or so but was unable to sit still for long.

Restless, she wandered around, watching the poker players for a while and going often to the terrace doors to look out at the darkness where the storm wailed and grumbled. She got a Coke for herself and continued to wander around as she sipped it.

It was after ten when she finally headed toward the lobby and the hallway that would take her back to her room. Because her mother would have to find her innocently in her room at eleven, of course.

She giggled to herself, pausing in the lobby to glance back once more at the ordinary people, pathetically content with their ordinary lives. But what she saw was something else. She probably wouldn’t have noticed anything
odd about it if she hadn’t been so edgy and excited, but she was and so she noticed.

“Wonder what he’s doing with that,” she mused under her breath. Then she shrugged, her interest fleeting, and continued on toward her room. She was already trying to decide which of her three favorite perfumes she should wear tonight.

By late that evening, with rain blowing against the windows and thunder rolling almost continuously, and her thumbnail gnawed down to the quick, Joanna was more than ready for bed.

That night, the dream was a bit different. All the symbols were there, looming and contorting like objects in a funhouse mirror. Ocean waves crashed, the big house overlooked the sea, rose petals drifted downward. The colorful painting, now clearly the little-girl-with-flowers done by Cain, sat on its easel. The clock ticked loudly, a child sobbed miserably. The colorful carousel horse bobbed and spun on its striped pole, and a paper airplane soared and swooped as if on manic air currents.

But this time, a gull was screeching loudly, angrily, the sound violent and repeating over and over, like an echo ….

Joanna woke with a start to see the gray light of an overcast morning outside her window, and even though it was only a little after seven, she didn’t try to go back to sleep. She was wide awake and already so tense that she caught herself chewing on the other thumbnail. Swearing, she threw back the covers and got up. Anything was better than lying in bed feeling overwhelmed.

Even being on her feet feeling overwhelmed.