All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (20 page)

“And maybe,” Laura returned, “
he
can learn to be what
she
likes.”

Julie’s eyes flashed at her, shocked.

“That’s right. Why should any woman convert for a man? Why shouldn’t he convert? Why should she change her vote just because he doesn’t agree with her?” Cam had said ruefully that it was little use voting, since she canceled out every vote he cast. “Why should she watch war movies just because he likes them? Why should she eat Chinese food every blasted weekend just because he doesn’t like Tex-Mex? Being two peas in a pod doesn’t make for a good relationship. A man and a woman who are too much alike won’t challenge each other. They won’t help each other grow into better people.”

Her niece opened her mouth and then closed it again.

“And I’ll tell you, Julie, if you think a girl should pretend to like everything a boy does just to get his attention, you’re wrong. She needs to be her own person.” She stopped. “In fact, if she doesn’t, it can be catastrophic. Want an example?”

Julie didn’t know what to do. Laura felt herself back in control of this situation. But, oh, she was definitely going to have a chat with Julie’s father about his perfect daughter.

“Have you ever wondered why your mother went to UVA?”

Julie said, startled, “No. I just thought she wanted to go.”

“Does that make sense? My father wanted her to study voice, and she wanted to study piano. UVA has a music department, but it’s not known as a music school, is it?”

Julie shook her head.

“She went to UVA because your dad went there. He wanted to be an architect, and UVA has a School of Architecture. But Diana was a musician. She should have gone to Juilliard, where, I can tell you, my father wanted her to go. He was furious when she chose UVA. And you know what? For once, Daddy was
right
. Going to UVA was a disaster for Di. If she and your father had gone to different colleges, they probably wouldn’t have gotten married until they were out of school. But she tried to fit into his world, and it didn’t work because she wasn’t true to herself.”

“Wow.” Julie looked at her with respect. “I never thought of that.”

“Okay.” Laura went to the freezer for more ice cubes. She needed to re-ice the water for the pastry. “Now we’ll get to the flip side. What’s the absolute best marriage you ever saw?”

“That’s easy,” Julie said instantly. “Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Right.” She dropped some ice cubes into the water. “And were they that much alike?”

Julie thought for a moment. “No. They went to different churches. And Grandma liked to garden, and Grandpa liked to fly. And they were – well, Grandma was so lively and fun, and Grandpa was so quiet and serious all the time.” She raised her head and looked at Laura. “But they were great together.”

“They sure were.” She tried the ice water again. This time, it worked.

Julie leaned her elbows on the island, and she still wasn’t reclaiming her hidden agenda. Laura relaxed. This side of Julie she might like, this genuine, confiding girl with her keen insight. Too bad the girl played so many games that she had no sense of her real self; underneath might lie a really great human being. “But they weren’t
that
different, were they? They liked their life together.”

“Sure. They weren’t complete opposites.” Laura threw in the food coloring and hit the button on the food processor again. Terry insisted on a red pastry for the tart. “They had the same values, and even their religions weren’t that different. They wanted the same kind of life. It wouldn’t have worked, for example, if Peggy had wanted to live in the big city. Philip liked living in the country. He was born to Ashmore Park and he saw it as a sacred trust – same as your dad.” She remembered a snippet of Diana’s conversation at Dominic’s house. “That was part of the problem with your parents. Your dad’s roots are here in Virginia. I’m pretty sure that’s not how your mother wants to live her life.”

Julie picked up a cookie and munched it. “Do you think she wanted to be like your father?”

“Probably.” She started to lay out the crust in the glass pie dish. “Musicians live a vagabond life. It’s just part of the package.”

“But you do it.”

“On tour, I do,” Laura acknowledged. “But it’s not that glamorous, Julie. I don’t really like touring that much – this fall will be my third tour in six years, and if it’s my last for a long time, that’s okay with me. I don’t like waking up in a new city every other day, and really, you can get tired of hotel rooms. It’s hard to keep crossing time zones. My body never gets used to it.” She used her thumbs to flute the pastry edges. “And, for a woman, when you have a child – I don’t like to be away from Meg. I try to stay in constant touch with her. We email and talk on the phone, and she faxes me her homework, but it’s not the same. Do you know what I liked most about the play I did in London?”

Julie said, “Sleeping in the same place every night?”

Heavens, her niece was sharp. Ashmore or not, she had a first-class mind. “You bet. It’s the closest to a real job I’ve ever had as Cat Courtney. I had a routine, I went to the same place every day, I saw the same people. I lived in my own home with Meg. Having a routine helped a lot.”

“But my mother wouldn’t like that.”

“No. Diana,” she saw the truth of her words even as she said them, “is a restless spirit. I’m not.”

Julie nodded, and for a few minutes, while Laura slid the pastry into the oven to bake, they said nothing. Maybe Julie was thinking things through; maybe she was seeing her parents in a whole new light. Maybe she was realizing, as she viewed the end of her parents’ marriage, that in many ways it had been doomed from the start.

And maybe, just maybe, she was realizing that she didn’t have to pretend to be her father’s perfect daughter. Did Richard even know who Julie was deep down? A teenage girl with a questing mind who had no idea how to go about relating to him honestly?

She didn’t think he could be that oblivious. He had shown startling insight into her own psyche. He’d correctly identified her jealousy of Francie; he’d seen and admired the fierce lioness at Monticello; he’d delivered that staggering observation about her feelings for Cam. Did he really know so little about Julie? Or did she see in their relationship only what he and Julie wanted her to see?

She needed to talk to him about Julie, share her thoughts and insights. He might tell her it was none of her business, tune her out, raise the barriers all he wanted. She could ignore any frosty exterior he put up against her. Julie needed help, and if Julie’s father didn’t see that, then it was up to Julie’s aunt to tell him.

“Are you going to wear that to the party?”

“What?” Julie glanced down and flushed. “I guess not.”

Here, at least, an aunt could come in handy. “You know, the jeans wouldn’t be so bad with a different top. Or you could keep the top, and wear different jeans.”

Julie bit her lip. “You think I should change.”

“At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, yes.” Laura waited a moment, to bait the hook. “The stores are open today. My offer of birthday and Christmas presents still stands. We can finish up here, if you like, and run out for an hour or so. We have plenty of time.”

She might never be a stepmother, but she could be an aunt. She could keep Julie from being grounded for the rest of her natural life.

“Okay,” said Julie. “That’s very nice of you, and I’m sorry I’ve been so – well, you know, to you. I’m sorry I asked you all those questions. Is it okay if I make the rest of the cookies before we go? Dad says he’s looking forward to them.”

~•~

Lucy Maitland prided herself on being able to coax anything out of anyone. All her life, people with secrets suddenly felt the urge to unburden their hearts to her friendly girl-next-door persona. She could empathize with a new client, and, without knowing quite how it happened, he’d admit that he was setting up a trust to avoid a huge payout for a surprise divorce. She could say, “Tom, what’s this charge on the Visa from the hobby shop?” and he would find himself confessing that, yes, he had splurged on the German-made engine for his newest RC model. She could ask her older sister why she looked so tired, and before she knew it, Diana would shower her with
Sex and the City
details about her latest lover.

But get her foster brother to admit to one single blessed thing, even when that thing was obvious to everyone around – that was like scaling Everest in tennis shoes.

“I know,” said Lucy. “I know about last weekend. I know about the woman in London. I know everything now.”

Richard held out the end of the measuring tape. “Make yourself useful.”

Lucy took the end of the tape and stood at the foot of the staircase while he backed up and measured the distance to the front door of Ashmore Magna. She scowled at him as he entered something on his Blackberry. “Didn’t you hear me? I know.”

Richard glanced at her. “I heard you,” he said. “You see all, you hear all, you know all. Ten feet – that’s cutting it close. Do you know how wide a nine-foot piano is?”

So that was what he was doing, measuring to see if the concert grand on its way from Texas would fit into the house. When she’d invited herself over, he’d told her only to meet him up at Ashmore Magna. “I don’t know, five, six feet. Hey,” she gave him a bright smile, “I have an idea. Why don’t you ask your girlfriend? It’s her piano.”

“I could,” Richard agreed. “However, she and Julie went out shopping, and I’d prefer not to bother her unless I need to. Stand over there at the ballroom entrance and let’s see if we can get nine feet past the staircase to the doors.”

Lucy took her end of the tape measure and stood where he pointed, wondering why even as she did it. She was just as bad as everyone else. She’d spent her girlhood seeing her sisters fall all over themselves to do his bidding and had marveled at their sheer brainlessness in not telling him where he could go and how fast he could get there.

“I know you and Laura went away together last weekend. And she’s got to be the one in London. She’s the only one it could be.”

She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen the truth about London before this – who was the
only
woman Julie said he had seen over there? She should have guessed that something had happened before Laura’s return; they had come together too quickly to have caught fire in just two weeks.

“No problem with the stairs,” said Richard, almost to himself. “It’s just the front doors I’ll have to take off….” He opened the doors, richly paneled in etched glass, that led to the ballroom. “For the last time, Luce, get it through your skull, I did not have an affair in London. I did not do anything with any woman. I never even talked to Laura. Julie and I couldn’t get close enough.”

Lucy followed him into the ballroom. “You didn’t need to talk to her. It was enough to see her, wasn’t it? Then you took off your ring. See, that’s where I made my mistake. I kept thinking it had to be someone you actually hooked up with.”

“You? Make a mistake?”

“Oh, shut up. It happens.”

The ballroom was one of the prettiest rooms at Ashmore Magna, a colonial extravagance restored by the post-Civil War railroad heiress whose son had married the Great Lakes shipping trust. Lucy hadn’t seen the room used for entertaining since her wedding reception eight years before, not counting the reception after they had buried Peggy and Philip. It lay now in chilly gloominess, the paintings and silk furnishings secluded from sunlight by the thick drapes that fell from the twenty-five-foot ceiling to the hardwood floors. She’d forgotten how cold the room could get, even in July.

It had been chilly that April day after the funerals. She’d been tense and stressed, eight weeks pregnant with John, and worried sick about Julie, who had been dealt a body blow by the death of her grandparents. Diana had sat in a corner, pale and humiliated, attempting to drink away her rejection at Richard’s hands and the shock of the DUI arrest. And he had circulated, the grief-stricken son, by sheer force of will making himself perform the duties of the master of Ashmore Park a decade before he had ever thought it possible.

She much preferred remembering her wedding.

“Cold?” Richard hooked the tape measure on his belt and came over to rub her arms. She glanced up at him and noticed in annoyance that he was giving her his most indulgent look.

“Don’t think you can stonewall your way out of this. Whatever this –
thing
is between you and Laura, you need to stop it right away.”

“Lucy,” and his voice was gentle, “has it ever occurred to you to mind your own business?”

She yanked her arms away from him. “This is my business. This is my family, and by
marriage
, it’s yours too. You are—” She couldn’t say it; the idea of Laura and Richard together was too appalling. “You are involved with my sister, your wife’s sister.”

“My soon-to-be ex-wife, who has made it crystal clear over the last eighteen years that she is completely uninterested in being my wife.” Richard walked away and drew open the drapes on one of the northern windows, letting a stream of light into the room. “Lucy – again – it is none of your business. Keep out of this.”