All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (80 page)

Her daughter’s silence, heavy and hostile, was having the desired effect. She heard herself babbling into the void.

“You can decorate your room any way you like. We’ll get your furniture shipped up here from Plano, but if you want new stuff, that’s fine. I’m making an offer on the contents of the house too, but the owners may want their furniture back, so we can get our stuff shipped from London or maybe we’ll feel like going out and getting everything all new.”

Meg just gave her the look.

“And I’ll talk to Richard about getting you into my old school. He’s on the board of governors. He’s bound to have some pull.”

She saw Meg’s eyes close and her jaw set.
I’ve heard enough.

“And there’s a ballet theater in Williamsburg. I looked it up on the Internet. We’ll see about getting you in as soon as—”

“I get it! I get it, I get it, I get it!”

“Meg—”

“Stop it, Mom. We’re moving. I get to leave all my friends and my ballet and everything so that we can move up here because you’re in love and you gotta be with him and if we don’t move, Mark will make me live with him and Emma. I don’t get a choice. I get it, okay?
I get it
.”

No one could doubt her desperation. Laura bit her lip.

“I figured it all out yesterday. Mark wants to take me away from you because you’re hooked up with Richard and he’s not divorced yet and you’re a bad influence on me and I shouldn’t live with you or I’ll turn into a slut. It doesn’t take a genius, you know.
I get it
.”

Tears – genuine this time, not the crocodile variety – glistened at the sides of her eyes.

“I know you get it.” Laura reminded herself to remain calm. Meg had suffered two huge shocks in less than a day. “And I know I’m asking you to give up a lot, Meg.”

“Damn straight you are.”

She chose to overlook the language. “I promise you it will work out. This is a really nice place to live. There’s snow in the winter, and the leaves are gorgeous in the fall—”

“Oh,
puh-leeze
.” Through the tears, Meg telegraphed scorn. “You thought it was so great you ran away.”

“I ran away from my father, not Williamsburg.”

“I thought you ran away to be with Dad ’cause you got pregnant with me.”

Blast. She needed to keep her stories straight. “Well, mostly that, but also to get away from Daddy. I never minded living here. I lived in Williamsburg since I was two years old.”

“Well, I lived in Plano since I was one, and
I don’t want to move
.”

Not another word fell between them all the way to the West Virginia border. At the small church where they stopped for Mass, Meg made a big production of shaking everyone’s hand but hers during the sign of peace. In the fast-food lane, Meg leaned across her to deliver her lunch order directly. At the gas station, Meg hopped out to pump as her father had shown her, holding up a warning hand – in uncanny imitation of Richard the day before – when Laura started to speak, and then got into the back seat, slamming the door for good measure.

Laura glanced in the rear view mirror and saw her daughter lying down, arm ostentatiously shielding her eyes from the sun. This seemed to be her weekend to get it from all sides. Mark, Meg, Richard – by now he had certainly seen her note. She didn’t doubt that he was none too happy with her for leaving without telling him first.

The idea had come to her in the middle of a sleepless night. He had walked her back to the Folly, but he had not touched her, he had not kissed her, he had not suggested that they ignore Lucy’s directive about the staircase leading into the master suite. Without a word, he had understood that, for now, she had to be Cameron St. Bride’s widow.

He had left her at the door and stepped back, waiting until she was inside before cutting through the forest to Ashmore Minor.

Around three in the morning, she had sat up in his big bed with one thought: she had to leave. She owed it to Cam, and she owed it to Richard. Cam deserved grieving that did not take place in another man’s bed, with another man’s arms offering her comfort. Richard deserved not to have his life and home invaded ever again on her account.

And she owed it to herself, never again to be in the position where a bitter, disgruntled man could denigrate and humiliate her. It had taken only a few minutes on her new laptop to find the Greenbrier, and another few minutes to make a phone call. She’d spent the rest of the night packing up, sending emails, and making her bulleted lists.

She took care of one bullet point at a store near the border. Meg was still playing possum, so she left her in the car. She scooped up bottles of spring water and Meg’s favorite snacks and was taking out her credit card when she saw the calling cards in a display on the counter.

“If you use these with a cell phone, can you tell what number is calling?”

The clerk shrugged in profound indifference. “Don’t think so.”

“Great.” She bought fifty hours’ worth – no telling how many she might need – and threw most of them into her shoulder bag. Out in the car, she tossed one into the back seat.

“Here. If you call Cindy, use this.”

Meg opened one eye and picked up the card. She looked at it back and front, stuck it in her pocket, and went back to pretending she was an orphan.

Laura gave up. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. She concentrated on her driving – the hills had given way to the Endless Mountains of the early colonial period – and let Meg work out her demons in the back seat.

By the time they drove between the white pillars of the greenbrier’s entrance, she was ready to do nothing more than fall into a soft, warm bed. The ancient white oak trees and the famous spring house had to wait for another time; she gratefully handed off her rental car to the valet and let the bellman take their bags. Meg emerged from the back seat.

“What is this place?” she said grumpily.

“It’s a very famous hotel.” Laura tipped the valet and accepted her claim ticket. “Lots of famous people have stayed here. Hold it.” She caught her daughter’s shoulder as Meg pushed past her. “Before we go in, we need to talk.”

She ignored the eye-rolling and waited for Meg to look at her.

“I know you are upset about your father’s remains being found.” She couldn’t bring herself to say
body
; in the dark of night, she had realized that more grim discoveries might lie ahead. “I am too. I didn’t expect – well, neither of us expected that.”

A glimmer in Meg’s eyes.

“But I knew him very well, and I can tell you this. He’d want us to go on. He wasn’t one to stand still; he was always moving and thinking and doing – you know how he was. The other thing I know is that he wanted you to stay with me.”

Meg looked down at the ground.

“Here’s the deal, Meg. I can’t go back to Texas. Even if I wanted to, and I don’t, I can’t. You saw what happened yesterday. And you can’t go back because, if you do, Mark can get a judge to prevent me from taking you out of state. I’ve got that tour this fall. I
have
to go back to London. If you go back, I think,” she swallowed, “Mark will try to split us up to punish me.”

Shifting from one foot to the other.

“You can stay with me. Or – because you do get some say – you can go live with Mark and Emma in Plano until you are 18. I don’t like that, I don’t want you to, but it is your option.”

Meg gnawed at her lip.

“I want you to live with me, but we’ll have to live here. Not only because of Richard, although, I won’t kid you, he’s a huge factor. It’s Lucy too. She’s my sister. She’s going to have a baby – your cousin. I don’t want to miss out with that baby the way I’ve missed out with Julie, who, like it or not, is my niece. I want my family around me, Meg. I haven’t been with them for a long time. I want to be with them now.”

Meg nodded and managed not to look at her.

“If you choose to live with me, then where I go, you go. The bottom line is, I’m your mother and I get to make those decisions. I’ll try my best to make it a smooth transition for you, but this is how it’s going to be, so make your choice and live with it. You can move easy, or you can move hard, but one way or the other, if you choose to live with me, you’re moving.”

Another nod.

“You can have Cindy up here to stay with you, and you’ll make new friends. I know you, Meg, if you put your mind to it, you’ll be the most popular girl in your class in no time at all.”

“I got a question.” Hallelujah. Her daughter still had a voice.

“What?”

“If I can’t go home, then what are we gonna do—” Meg pressed her lips together hard. “How can we bury Dad?”

Laura met her daughter’s eyes, holding back the tears. “I don’t know,” she said. “Your father did not name me executor, so I don’t know what rights I have. I have to find out. Mark will probably play hardball on this, so I have to warn you – we may not get to go to your father’s funeral.”

“You know,” said Meg, “that’s gonna make Mark look real bad. If it gets out, I mean.”

Laura picked up her laptop bag and swung it over her shoulder. “How would it get out?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Cameron St. Bride’s daughter. “Stuff happens.”

~•~

It was Sunday morning, and so it took a few hours for the spark to catch. Only a few readers at first, who read, shrugged, and moved on. In mid-afternoon, the gossip columnist for a Boston daily read it and thought it was juicy enough to quote on her paper’s web site.

On that Sunday afternoon, people who normally surfed the web out of sheer boredom were returning home from the long holiday weekend. They had other things to do – unpacking, cleaning up, fixing dinner, watching TV, returning phone calls. Not until the news ended at 11:30 on the Eastern Seaboard would the usual surge of late-night web surfers commence.

~•~

“Does the name Windy Gomerberg mean anything to you?” Lucy asked.

“What?” On the other end of the line, Richard seemed distracted. She heard Laura’s cat meowing at him. “Who’s that? A cartoon character?”

Lucy leaned back on the sofa in her sitting room. Finally, after spending the afternoon digging around in her files, searching the Internet, and making numerous calls, she had a chance to relax. “In 1997, she rated a mention in a story about celebrity look-alikes in a weekly newspaper in Tacoma. You know, the guys who show up as Elvis at bar mitzvahs. I talked to the reporter, and she remembers Windy very well – not Wendy, either.”

“People name their kids anything.” She heard a cabinet close. “Go on.”

“This woman says Windy Gomerberg was the spitting image of Miss Cat Courtney. She says the likeness was uncanny – not just the usual surface resemblance. And she was also,” Lucy paused dramatically, “a fraud.”

“Why so?” Was he running a can opener? He added, “Other than the name?”

“This woman met her in a downtown club. There’s a big music scene in Seattle, and our girl Windy seems to be a devotee of alternative music. She went to some pains to convince the reporter she was just off the truck from the country – used lots of ‘aint’s’ and pretended not to know what a Long Island tea was. But Windy made a strange remark about the lead singer – said he was singing out of a head register instead of a chest register – not something most people would even know. She was also wearing Jimmy Choos.”

Silence, or at least, no reaction. She heard strange sounds in the background. “What are you doing? Are you listening?”

“I’m feeding Max. Hold on.” A few seconds, and then he came back on the phone. “All finished. I’ve got temporary custody of this cat.”

“You? Where’s Laurie?”

“West Virginia.”

“
What?
I told her to stay put.”

“Long story. I’ll send you her new number.” His voice signaled that he did not want to talk about it, and Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. “Continue. I take it Jimmy Choos are something no fresh young thing from the country would normally wear?”

“They’re extremely expensive shoes. So the reporter figured she was being had. She even thought maybe this was Cat Courtney trying to throw her off the track. But then something convinced her Windy and Cat were not one and the same.” She hesitated.

“Luce, cut to the chase.” He sounded tired. “I’ve been gone all day, and I need to get some work done. I don’t have time for games.”

Oh, she would have given a great deal not to tell him this. He had been dead on in his assessment of Francie. “While they were talking, Windy moved her hands. She was wearing a shiny new wedding ring. She was also wearing a loose bracelet, and when it moved, the woman saw cut marks on her left wrist. They were faded, maybe a year old.”

His shock emanated across the line. She wished – how she wished! – that the reporter had kept that detail to herself.

“I know, Richard, I know.”

He said slowly, “For once I would prefer not to be right.”

She hurried on. “She also figured Miss Windy was trying a little too hard with the corn-pone for someone caught up in a coincidence. She asked for a picture, and Windy walked off. And that was the last anyone ever heard of Windy Gomerberg.”