All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (77 page)

“Tough,” said Lucy. “She can go to a later session. She’s your best armor right now. Everyone knows Richard Ashmore is not going to carry on with a woman in front of his daughter.”

Silence in the face of that logic. Richard said, “I’ll give her the bad news.”

Laura whispered, “She’ll be so upset.”

He said only, “She’ll live.”

What a day from hell this had turned into – her words from the past, Mark trashing them both, that confession still to come. She still had to find the strength to talk to him.

Laura felt the first flickering of pain behind her eyes.

“Laura?” He had learned to read her. “Are you in pain?”

She nodded. Lucy said, “I’ll get some aspirin for you. You two can use a few moments alone.” She paused. “Did he leave that? What is it, another report?”

“What?” Laura glanced up and saw the manila envelope tucked under Richard’s arm, and the rage flooded back. “Oh, now what? Did he take telephoto pictures of us at Monticello?”

She wouldn’t put it beyond Mark. He’d used that GPS signal to find her here. She had to assume that he had tracked her all along.

Richard shrugged and opened the envelope. A single page this time, not a photo. She watched him as he read, wondering what dirt Mark had dug up this time. She couldn’t imagine what else he could have found on a man whose
modus operandi
was discretion. But what was Richard thinking, seeing his life laid open on paper like this? Was he wishing for the peace and quiet of his life before she had come back? Was he remembering when a weekend away with a woman didn’t turn into a
cause célèbre?
Was he thinking that she was more trouble than she was worth?

But, no, he’d seen something else. His fingers tightened; his eyes changed.

Slowly, she reached for the report. Slowly, he put the paper on her upturned palm.

Not a private eye’s report this time. A faxed document from the medical examiner in New York City. Phrases swam before her eyes:
north quadrant – fourth finger of left hand – extensive charring – blunt force trauma – Fresh Kills – DNA
.

The room swayed around her.

Over the high pitch in her ears, she heard Lucy say, “Laurie? What is it? Richard?”

His quiet reply. “They’ve found him.”

Chapter 19: Breaking the Rules

THAT NIGHT, TOM MAITLAND LISTENED TO HIS WIFE as she recounted the scene at Ashmore Park, her voice rising in indignation, her hands flying to make her point. While he was inclined to take phrases like
dangerous enemy
and
insane with jealousy
with a grain of salt, he knew his duty. He made comforting husbandly noises and decided, privately, to err on the side of caution. When the courts opened on Monday morning, along with that TRO, he’d move to seal the papers of the Ashmores’ divorce.

Just in case.

~•~

That night, Mark St. Bride broke the rules.

No sooner did he board the Gulfstream than he headed towards the galley and flung open the compartments, looking for alcohol. Not for St. Bride Data execs the typical airline-size bottles; the company maintained the equivalent of a full bar aboard. He didn’t care what he drank; he wanted only to dull the memory of the last few hours.

He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and headed to his seat.

For every thought of his brother’s widow, blazing back at him, tearing up that report, making it clear with every word and look and gesture that she preferred a moral degenerate to a man who had loved her respectfully for many years, he took a huge gulp, the whiskey burning its way down his throat.

For every thought of that bastard Ashmore, towering over him, flaunting his height and his good looks and his prowess in bed, dismissing him with the contempt due a bug, he took two.

By the time the plane landed in Addison, Texas, he had finished off a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of tequila and had thrown up a great deal of both. Still, he was drunk enough that the corporate pilot radioed ahead to have a town car meet the plane. Between the pilot and the steward, they managed to pour Mark into the Lincoln, with instructions to the driver to deliver him to his sister in Plano. Mark was in no position to argue – he had passed out after falling face down into the leather seat.

The pilot then headed home, thinking that Cameron St. Bride would never have behaved so disgracefully in front of his employees.

No one answered the door at the Plano mansion. Thus, the driver found himself in the unenviable position of having to fish through his unconscious passenger’s pockets for his keys. He managed to get his charge into the house and up the stairs to the master bedroom where he deposited Mark unceremoniously on the bed. On his way out, he looked around the mansion and wondered what on earth a man who owned all this had to drink about.

A woman, most likely. Wasn’t it always a woman?

~•~

That night, as he ran to burn off the stress of the day, Richard saw Laura walking ahead of him towards Ashmore Magna.

She wasn’t taking in the sight of the setting sun, or lifting her face to the evening breezes blowing away the humidity of the day. She seemed oblivious to the beauty around her, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around herself.

She was far ahead of him, and she didn’t indicate that she heard the slap of his feet against the road. He did not disturb her, but he observed, as he came around the lake, that she had reached the mansion and was walking around the side towards the gardens in the back.

She had a lot to think about. She needed to be alone.

Later, after an hour working on the library design at his desk, he stopped and listened. The house was unusually silent. Julie had spent the evening banging around in her room, furious about the change to her camp plans; he made a mental note to sit down with her to discuss her behavior. The sulkiness, the acting out – none of this was normal, and he intended to nip it in the bud before it got any worse. He wanted his daughter back, the one who thought of others besides herself, who rose to the occasion as she had today.

Laura had not returned from her evening walk. And, he realized, he hadn’t heard a peep out of Meg all evening. He looked up at the second story and saw her bedroom door half open, muted light spilling out onto the landing.

He mounted the stairs to check on her.

She sat hunched over at the writing desk in the bedroom, the ubiquitous laptop open before her, her head cradled on her arms, tear tracks drying on her face. She had cried herself to sleep.

He stood for a moment, watching her, willing her to sense his presence and wake up. She drew a deep, shuddering breath and uttered a little sniff, but she did not awaken.

She had been asleep long enough for her screen saver to kick in. He came around behind her and watched as a slide show of the St. Bride family flashed across the screen. St. Bride at a computer, arms extended around a baby sleeping against his chest. St. Bride and Meg opening presents in front of a magnificent Christmas tree, waving in front of the Gulfstream, looking up from a game of chess. Meg
en pointe
, in filmy tulle, performing an arabesque while balancing her hand on her father’s arm, his hand over hers. Happy, relaxed, grinning at someone off camera. Laura, he thought. She had taken most of these pictures.

But someone else had occasionally stepped in as photographer. A shot of Laura against a shore, dressed in a sarong, toddler Meg perched on her hip. A formal portrait of the three St. Brides, Laura and Meg in festive holiday finery; a touching casual shot against a mountain backdrop, Meg leaning against her mother, Laura leaning against her husband. A triumphant, if askew, photo of St. Bride with his arm around his college graduate wife. Laura and St. Bride relaxing in a den, standing in a kitchen talking, looking up in startled sleepiness from a king-size bed in early morning light.

A couple. A family. Meg’s family.

She gave another shuddering sigh.

Carefully, he scooped her up. For all her athleticism, Meg weighed very little. He carried her over to the nearest twin bed, stooped to throw back the comforter with one hand, and laid her down on top of the sheets. She stirred briefly, never opening her eyes, and then turned her face into the cool cotton pillow.

He switched off the light.

He went back to her computer to turn it off, but as his fingers hit keys, the screen saver vanished, and he saw her most recent research on the Internet. The article on the screen – he scanned it quickly – was a technical analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Center. She had made notes on-screen:
Pancake??? Secondary fire??? Richard – architect?

My poor little girl, you’ve lost him again.

But you haven’t lost me. And if all you need from me is architectural analysis, you’ve got it.

He noted the URL of the article, and closed the door quietly.

But, before any research of his own – and a call to Scott McIntire, who had gathered reams of material on the WTC – he needed to know that Laura was all right.

It took him several minutes to walk up the road to Ashmore Magna, time that let his eyes acquire a natural night vision. He took the shorter route to the gardens, unlocking the front door and cutting through the house to the back portico. At the top of the marble steps he paused, scanning across the sections of flowers and shrubbery, searching for a lone figure wandering through the pathways.

Nothing. She must have returned back to the Folly, and he hadn’t heard her. He turned to go, when a small silvery sound reached him through the dark.

Running water.

He threaded through the walkways to Peggy’s grotto.

She had not heard him coming. She sat sideways on the stone bench in front of the Virgin, hugging her knees to her chest, her head buried against her arms. She had found the switch for the waterfall, and the falling water fell into the faint lonely whisper of the breeze.

Not until he stepped closer did he hear the same shuddering breath he had heard from Meg.

He did not want to disturb her, but he was not going to leave her alone. If this was the crash he had predicted to Lucy, he intended to catch her. If she needed time to recover from the shock, he would give her all the time and space she required. But she was not going to be alone.

The man had been her husband. She had lived with him for fifty seasons, slept beside him for twelve years. That sliver of bone recovered from Ground Zero had touched her; she had known it intimately in what, he now saw, had been a real marriage. Maybe not the best, maybe not the happiest, but real nonetheless.

She stayed there for a long time. She did not lift her head or turn around, but eventually her hand lifted back over her shoulder, reaching for him.

He sat down behind her, and covered her hand.

~•~

Mark St. Bride woke up after midnight, sick and disoriented.

Sick, because he had the mother of all hangovers. Disoriented, because he didn’t know how he had ended up in the master bedroom. Normally, they kept the room shut off. He had never acknowledged his reluctance to enter his brother’s room, even as he and Emma had made noises about respecting Cam’s memory and leaving it the way he’d have seen it if he had walked in on the night of September 11, glad to be home.

No, this was the bedroom of the master of the house. He had intended never to enter. But now he lay there, in the bed where his brother had slept with his wife, where they had – if only the thought of what they had done in this bed hadn’t immediately flashed through his aching head.

Same thing she was probably doing with that bastard Ashmore right now.

He bolted upright and nearly threw up from the pain that shot through his forehead.

A hot shower, a change of clothes, and two cups of coffee later, and he began to believe that he might live to see another day. A day in which he existed in his brother’s house, a man without wife or family, a man who had waited and waited for the mysterious, witchy woman who had turned out to be a harlot at heart.

She was gone. Forever. His mind pitilessly replayed his words at Ashmore Park –
whore, slut
– and he knew, heartsick, that no woman would ever forgive a man who had flung such names at her. Especially not a woman like Laura, whose steel core had shown straight through her eyes when she had said, “Goodbye, Mark.”

The steel core his brother had recognized the night he had met her. The steel core Mark had not wanted to admit even existed.

He stumbled down into the study –
his
study, he refused to feel like an interloper in this room. He sat there in the dark stillness of the night – the house seemed abnormally hushed, Emma must not be at home – and watched the day relentlessly play over and over in his mind’s eye. The unexpected elegance of Ashmore Park, and the unpleasant realization that Ashmore was not some lowlife he could buy off with a few hundred thousand dollars. Laura’s shock at seeing him, the fear in her eyes that he would accidentally blurt out her precious secret to that bastard. Her bitchy sister, flaunting her legal knowledge. That cool-as-ice Ashmore girl – that apple hadn’t fallen far – handing Meg the line about her rights, and Meg spouting off like the unruly little brat she was. And, above all, that son of a bitch, with that curled lip and those cold eyes and that contemptuous tone.