Between Sisters (5 page)

C
HAPTER
FIVE

J
OE STOOD AT THE CORNER OF FIRST AND MAIN, LOOKING
down the street at a town whose name he couldn't remember. He shifted his backpack around, resettled it on his other shoulder. Beneath the strap, his shirt was soaked with sweat and his skin was clammy. In the windless, baking air, he could smell himself. It wasn't good. This morning he'd walked at least seven miles. No one had offered him a ride. No surprise there. The longer—and grayer—his hair got, the fewer rides he was offered. Only the long-haul truckers could be counted on anymore, and they'd been few and far between on this hot Sunday morning.

Up ahead, he saw a hand-painted sign for the Wake Up Café.

He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, a soft, smooth, lambskin artifact from his previous life. Flipping it open, he barely looked at the single photograph in the plastic square as he opened the side slit.

Twelve dollars and seventy-two cents. He'd need to find work today. The money he'd earned in Yakima was almost gone.

He turned into the café. At his entrance, a bell tinkled overhead.

Every head turned to look at him.

The clattering din of conversation died abruptly. The only sounds came from the kitchen, clanging, scraping.

He knew how he looked to them: an unkempt vagrant with shoulder-length silver hair and clothes that needed a heavy wash cycle. His Levi's had faded to a pale, pale blue, and his T-shirt was stained with perspiration. Though his forty-third birthday was next week, he looked sixty. And there was the smell. . . .

He snagged a laminated menu from the slot beside the cash register and walked through the diner, head down, to the last bar stool on the left. He'd learned not to sit too close to the “good people” in any of the towns in which he stopped. Sometimes the presence of a man who'd fallen on hard times was offensive. In those towns it was too damn easy to find your ass on a jail-cell cot. He'd spent enough time in jail already.

The waitress stood back by the grill, dressed in a splotchy, stained pink polyester uniform. Like everyone else in the place, she was staring at him.

He sat quietly, his body tensed.

Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the noise returned.

The waitress pulled a pen out from above her ear and came toward him. When she got closer, he noticed that she was younger than he'd thought. Maybe still in high school, even. Her long brown hair, drawn back in a haphazard ponytail, was streaked with purple, and a small gold hoop clung precariously to her overly plucked eyebrow. She wore more makeup than Boy George.

“What can I getcha?” She wrinkled her nose and stepped backward.

“I guess I need a shower, huh?”

“You could use one.” She smiled, then leaned a fraction of an inch closer. “The KOA campground is your best bet. They have a killer bathroom. 'Course it's for guests only, but nobody much watches.” She popped her gum and whispered, “The door code is twenty-one hundred. All the locals know it.”

“Thank you.” He looked at her name tag. “Brandy.”

She poised a pen at the small notepad. “Now, whaddaya want?”

He didn't bother looking at the menu. “I'll have a bran muffin, fresh fruit—whatever you have—and a bowl of oatmeal. Oh. And a glass of orange juice.”

“No bacon or eggs?”

“Nope.”

She shrugged and started to turn away. He stopped her by saying, “Brandy?”

“Yeah?”

“Where could a guy like me find some work?”

She looked at him. “A guy like you?” The tone was obvious. She'd figured he didn't work, just begged and drifted. “I'd try the Tip Top Apple Farm. They always need people. And Yardbirds—they mow lawns for the vacation rentals.”

“Thanks.”

Joe sat there, on that surprisingly comfortable bar stool, long after he should have gone. He ate his breakfast as slowly as possible, chewing every bite forever, but finally his bowl and plate were empty.

He knew it was time to move on, but he couldn't make himself get up. Last night he'd slept tucked along a fallen log in some farmer's back pasture. Between the howling wind and a sudden rainstorm, it had been an uncomfortable night. His whole body ached today. Now, for once, he was warm but not hot, and his stomach was full, and he was sitting comfortably. It was a moment of Heaven.

“You gotta go,” Brandy whispered as she swept past him. “My boss says he's gonna call the cops if you keep hanging around.”

Joe could have argued, could have pointed out that he'd paid for breakfast and could legally sit here. An ordinary person certainly had that right.

Instead, he said, “Okay,” and put six bucks on the pink Formica counter.

He slowly got to his feet. For a second, he felt dizzy. When the bout passed, he grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

Outside, the heat hit him hard, knocking him back. It took a supreme act of will to start walking.

He kept his thumb out, but no one picked him up. Slowly, his strength sapped by the hundred-degree heat, he walked in the direction Brandy had given him. By the time he reached the KOA Campground, he had a pounding headache and his throat hurt.

There was nothing he wanted to do more than walk down that gravel road, duck into the bathroom for a long hot shower, and then rent a cabin for a much-needed rest.

“Impossible,” he said aloud, thinking of the six bucks in his wallet. It was a habit he'd acquired lately: talking to himself. Otherwise, he sometimes went days without hearing another human voice.

He'd have to sneak into the bathroom, and he couldn't do it when people were everywhere.

He crept into a thicket of pine trees behind the lodge. The shade felt good. He eased deep into the woods until he couldn't be seen; then he sat down with his back rested against a pine tree. His head pounded at the movement, small as it was, and he closed his eyes.

He was awakened hours later by the sound of laughter. There were several children running through the campsites, shrieking. The smell of smoke—campfires—was heavy in the air.

Dinnertime.

He blinked awake, surprised that he'd slept so long. He waited until the sun set and the campground was quiet, then he got to his feet. Holding his backpack close, he crept cautiously toward the log structure that housed the campground's rest room and laundry facilities.

He was reaching out to punch in the code when a woman appeared beside him. Just . . . appeared.

He froze, turning slowly.

She stood there, wearing a bright blue bathing suit top and a pair of cutoff shorts, holding a stack of pink towels. Her sandy blond hair was a mass of drying curls. She'd been laughing as she approached the bathrooms, but when she saw him her smile faded.

Damn.
He'd been close to a hot shower—his first in weeks. Now, any minute, this beautiful woman would scream for the manager.

Very softly, she said, “The code is twenty-one hundred. Here.” She handed him a towel, then went into the women's bathroom and closed the door.

It took him a moment to move, that was how deeply her kindness had affected him. Finally, holding the towel close, he punched in the code and hurried into the men's bathroom. It was empty.

He took a long, hot shower, then dressed in the cleanest clothes he had, and washed his dirty clothes in the sink. As he brushed his teeth, he stared at himself in the mirror. His hair was too long and shaggy, and he'd gone almost completely gray. He hadn't been able to shave this morning, so his sunken cheeks were shadowed by a thick stubble. The bags beneath his eyes were carry-on size. He was like a piece of fruit, slowly going bad from the inside out.

He finger-combed the hair back from his face and turned away from the mirror. Really, it was better not to look. All it did was remind him of the old days, when he'd been young and vain, when he'd been careful to keep up appearances. Then, he'd thought a lot of unimportant things mattered.

He went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out. There was no one nearby, so he slipped into the darkness.

It was completely dark now. A full moon hung over the lake, casting a rippled glow across the waves and illuminating the cabins along the shore. Three of them were brightly lit from within. In one of them, he could see people moving around inside; it looked as if they were dancing. And suddenly, he wanted to be in that cabin, to be part of that circle of people who cared about one another.

“You're losing it, Joe,” he said, wishing he could laugh about it the way he once would have. But there was a lump in his throat that made smiling impossible.

He slipped into the cover of the trees and kept moving. As he passed behind one of the cabins, he heard music. “Stayin' Alive” by the Bee Gees. Then he heard the sound of childish laughter. “Dance with me, Daddy,” a little girl said loudly.

He forced himself to keep moving. With each step taken, the sound of laughter diminished until, by the time he reached the edge of the woods, he had to strain to hear it at all. He found a soft bed of pine needles and sat down. Moonlight glowed around him, turning the world into a smear of blue-white and black.

He unzipped his backpack and burrowed through the damp, wadded-up clothes, looking for the two items that mattered.

Three years ago, when he'd first run away, he'd carried an expensive suitcase. He still remembered standing in his bedroom, packing for a trip without destination or duration, wondering what a man in exile would need. He'd packed khaki slacks and merino wool sweaters and even a black Joseph Abboud suit.

By the end of his first winter alone, he'd understood that those clothes were the archaeological remains of a forgotten life. Useless. All he needed in his new life were two pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a rain slicker. Everything else he'd given to charity.

The only expensive garment he'd kept was a pink cashmere sweater with tiny shell buttons. On a good night, he could still smell her perfume in the soft fabric.

He withdrew a small, leatherbound photo album from the backpack. With shaking fingers, he opened the front cover.

The first picture was one of his favorites.

In it, Diana sat on a patch of grass, wearing a pair of white shorts and a Yale T-shirt. There was a stack of books open beside her, and a mound of pink cherry blossoms covered the pages. She was smiling so brightly he had to blink back tears. “Hey, baby,” he whispered, touching the glossy covering. “I had a hot shower tonight.”

He closed his eyes. In the darkness, she came to him. It was happening more and more often lately, this sensation that she hadn't left him, that she was still here. He knew it was a crack in his mind, a mental defect. He didn't care.

“I'm tired,” he said to her, breathing in deeply, savoring the scent of her perfume. Red by Giorgio. He wondered if they made it anymore.

It's no good, what you're doing.

“I don't know what else to do.”

Go home.

“I can't.”

You break my heart, Joey.

And she was gone.

With a sigh, he leaned back against a big tree stump.

Go home
, she'd said. It was what she always said to him.

What he said to himself.

Maybe tomorrow, he thought, reaching for the kind of courage that would make it possible. God knew after three years on the road, he was tired of being this alone.

Maybe tomorrow he would finally—finally—allow himself to start walking west.

Diana would like that.

C
HAPTER
SIX

L
IKE SUNSHINE, NIGHT BROUGHT OUT THE BEST IN SEATTLE
. The highway—a bumper-to-bumper nightmare at morning rush hour—became, at night, a glittering red-and-gold Chinese dragon that curled along the blackened banks of Lake Union. The cluster of high-rises in the city's midtown heart, so ordinary in the gray haze on a June day, was a kaleidoscope of sculpted color when night fell.

Meghann stood at her office window. She never failed to be mesmerized by this view. The water was a black stain that consumed nearby Bainbridge Island. Though she couldn't see the streets below, she knew they were clogged. Traffic was the curse Seattle had carried into the new millennium. Millions of people had moved into the once-sleepy town, drawn by the quality of life and the variety of outdoor activities. Unfortunately, after they built expensive cul-de-sac homes in the suburbs, they took jobs in the city. Roads designed for an out-of-the-way port town couldn't possibly keep up.

Progress.

Meghann glanced down at her watch. It was 8:30. Time to head home. She'd bring the Wanamaker file with her. Get a jump on tomorrow.

Behind her, the door opened. Ana, the cleaning woman, pushed her supply cart into the room, dragging a vacuum cleaner alongside. “Hello, Miss Dontess.”

Meghann smiled. No matter how often she told Ana to call her Meghann, the woman never did. “Good evening, Ana. How's Raul?”

“Tomorrow we find out if he get stationed at McChord. We keep our fingers crossed, ¿sí?”

“It would be great to have your son so close,” Meghann said as she gathered up her files.

Ana mumbled something. It sounded a lot like, “You should have a son nearby, too. Instead of all that work, work, work.”

“Are you chastising me again, Ana?”

“I don't know chastising. But you work too hard. Every night you're here. When you gonna meet Mr. Right if you always at work?”

It was an old debate, one that had started almost ten years ago, when Meghann had handled Ana's INS hearing pro bono. Her last moment of peace had ended when she handed Ana a green card and hired her. Ever since, Ana had done her best to “repay” Meghann. That repayment seemed to be an endless stream of casseroles and a constant harangue about the evils of too much hard work.

“You're right, Ana. I think I'll have a drink and unwind.”

“Drink isn't what I'm thinking,” Ana muttered, bending down to plug in the vacuum.

“Bye, Ana.”

Meghann was almost to the elevator when her cell phone rang. She rifled through her black Kate Spade bag and pulled out the phone. “Meghann Dontess,” she said.

“Meghann?” The voice was high-pitched and panicky. “It's May Monroe.”

Meghann was instantly alert. A divorce could go bad faster than an open cut in the tropics. “What's going on?”

“It's Dale. He came by tonight.”

Meghann made a mental note to get a TRO first thing tomorrow. “Uh-huh. What happened?”

“He said something about the papers he got today. He was crazy. What did you send him?”

“We talked about this, May. On the phone, last week, remember? I notified Dale's lawyer and the court that we'd be contesting the fraudulent transfer of his business and demanding an accounting of the Cayman Island accounts. I also told his attorney that we were aware of the affair with the child's piano instructor and that such behavior might threaten his suitability as a parent.”

“We never discussed that. You threatened to take away his children?”

“Believe me, May, the temper tantrum is about money. It always is. The kids are a shill game with guys like your husband. Pretend to want custody and you'll get more money. It's a common tactic.”

“You think you know my husband better than I do.”

Meghann had heard this sentence more times than she could count. It always amazed her. Women who were blindsided by their husband's affairs, lies, and financial gymnastics continually believed that they “knew” their men. Yet another reason not to get married. It wasn't masturbation that made you go blind; it was love. “I don't have to know him,” Meghann answered, using the canned speech she'd perfected long ago. “Protecting you is my job. If I upset your”—
no good, lying
—“husband in the process, that's an unfortunate necessity. He'll calm down. They always do.”

“You don't know Dale,” she said again.

Meghann's senses pounced on some nuance. Something wasn't right. “Are you scared of him, May?” This was a whole new wrinkle.

“Scared?” May tried to sound surprised by the question, but Meghann knew.
Damn.
She was always surprised by spousal abuse; it was never the families you expected.

“Does he hit you, May?”

“Sometimes when he's drinking, I can say just the wrong thing.”

Oh, yeah. It's May's fault.
It was terrifying how often women believed that. “Are you okay now?”

“He didn't hit me. And he never hits the children.”

Meghann didn't say what came to mind. Instead, she said, “That's good.” If she'd been with May, she would have been able to look in her client's eyes and take a measure of the woman's fragility. If it seemed possible, she would have given her statistics—horror stories designed to drive home the ugly truth. Often, if a man would hit his wife, he'd get around to hitting his children. Bullies were bullies; their defining characteristic was the need to exert power over the powerless. Who was more powerless than a child?

But none of that could be done over the phone. Sometimes a client sounded strong and in control while they were falling apart. Meghann had visited too many of her clients in psych wards and hospitals. She'd grown careful over the years.

“We need to make sure he understands that I'm not going to take his children from him. Otherwise he'll go crazy,” May said. There was the barest crack in her voice.

“Let me ask you this, May. Say it's three months from now. You're divorced, and Dale has lost half of everything he owns. He's living with Dance Hall Barbie and they come home drunk one night. Barbie's driving because she only had three margaritas. When they get home, the baby-sitter has let the kids demolish the house and little Billy has accidentally broken the window in Dale's office. Are your children safe?”

“That's a lot of things going wrong.”

“Things go wrong, May. You know that. I'm guessing that you've always been a buffer between your husband and kids. A human shock absorber. You probably learned how to calm him down and deflect his attention away from the children. Will Barbie know how to protect them?”

“Am I so ordinary?”

“Sadly, the situation is. The good news is, you're giving yourself—and your children—a new start. Don't weaken now, May. Don't let him bully you.”

“So, what do I do?”

“Lock the doors and turn off the phone. Don't talk to him. If you don't feel safe, go to a relative's or friend's house. Or to a motel for one night. Tomorrow we'll get together and come up with a new game plan. I'll file some restraining orders.”

“You can keep us safe?”

“You'll be fine, May. Trust me. Bullies are cowards. Once he sees how strong you can be, he'll back down.”

“Okay. When can we meet?”

Meghann dug through her bag for her PalmPilot, then checked her schedule. “How about a late lunch—say two o'clock—at the Judicial Annex Café by the courthouse? I'll schedule a meeting with Dale's lawyer for later that afternoon.”

“Okay.”

“May, I know this is a sensitive question, but do you by any chance have a photograph of yourself . . . you know . . . when he hit you?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then May said, “I'll check my photo albums.”

“It's simply evidence,” Meg said.

“To you, maybe.”

“I'm sorry, May. I wish I didn't have to ask questions like that.”

“No.
I'm
sorry,” May said.

That surprised Meg. “What for?”

“That no man has ever shown you the other side. My father would have killed Dale for all of this.”

Before she could stop it, Meghann felt a sharp jab of longing. It was her Achilles' heel. She was sure she didn't believe in love, but still, she dreamed of it. Maybe May was right. Maybe if Meg had had a father who'd loved her, everything would be different. As it was, she knew that love was a rope bridge made of the thinnest strands. It might hold your weight for a while, but sooner or later, it would break.

Oh, there were happy marriages. Her best friend, Elizabeth, had proven that.

There were also forty-eight-million-dollar-lottery winners, five-leaf clovers, Siamese twins, and full eclipses of the sun.

“So, we'll meet at the Annex tomorrow at two?”

“I'll see you there.”

“Good.” Meghann flipped the phone shut and dropped it in her purse, then pushed the elevator button. When the door opened, she stepped inside. As always, the mirrored walls made it feel as if she were stumbling into herself. She leaned forward, unable to stop herself; when a mirror was near, she had to look into it. In the past few years, she'd begun to search obsessively for signs of aging. Lines, wrinkles, sags.

She was forty-two years old, and since it felt as if she'd been thirty a moment ago, she had to assume it would be a blink's worth of time before she was fifty.

That depressed her. She imagined herself at sixty. Alone, working from dawn to dusk, talking to her neighbor's cats, and going on singles' cruises.

She left the elevator and strode through the lobby, nodding at the night doorman as she passed.

Outside, the night was beautiful; an amethyst sky gave everything a pink and pearlized glow. Lit windows in towering skyscrapers proved that Meghann wasn't the only workaholic in the city.

She walked briskly down the street, bypassing people without making eye contact. At her building, she paused and looked up.

There was her deck. The only one in the building without potted trees and outdoor furniture. The windows behind it were black; the rest of the building was a blaze of light. Friends and families were in those lighted spaces, having dinner, watching television, talking, making love. Connecting with one another.

I'm sorry
, May had said,
that no man has ever shown you the other side
.

I'm sorry.

Meghann walked past her building. She didn't want to go up there, put on her old UW sweats, eat Raisin Bran for dinner, and watch a rerun of
Third Watch
.

She went into the Public Market. At this late hour, pretty much everything was closed up. The fish vendors had gone home, and the dewy, beautiful vegetables had been boxed up until tomorrow. The stalls—normally filled with dried flowers, handmade crafts, and homemade food items—were empty.

She turned into the Athenian, the old-fashioned tavern made famous in
Sleepless in Seattle.
It was at this polished wooden bar that Rob Reiner had told Tom Hanks about dating in the nineties.

The smoke in here was so thick you could have played ticktacktoe in it with your finger. There was something comforting in the lack of political correctness in the Athenian. You could order a trendy drink, but their specialty was ice-cold beer.

Meghann had perfected the art of scoping out a bar without being obvious. She did that now.

There were five or six older men at the bar. Fishermen, she'd guess, getting ready to head up to Alaska for the season. A pair of younger Wall Street types were there, too, drinking martinis and no doubt talking shop. She saw enough of that kind in court.

“Hey, Meghann,” yelled Freddie, the bartender. “Your usual?”

“You bet.” Still smiling, she moved past the bar and turned left, where several varnished wooden tables hugged the two walls. Most were full of couples or foursomes; a few were empty.

Meghann found a place in the back. She sidled into the glossy wooden seat and sat down. A big window was to her left. The view was of Elliot Bay and the wharf.

“Here ye be,” Freddie said, setting a martini glass down in front of her. He shook the steel shaker, then poured her a cosmopolitan. “You want an order of oysters and fries?”

“You read my mind.”

Freddie grinned. “Ain't hard to do, counselor.” He leaned down toward her. “The Eagles are coming in tonight. Should be here any minute.”

“The Eagles?”

“The minor league ball team outta Everett.” He winked at her. “Good luck.”

Meghann groaned. It was bad when bartenders started recommending whole ball teams.

I'm sorry.

Meghann began drinking. When the first cosmo was gone, she ordered a second. By the time she saw the bottom of the glass again, she'd almost forgotten her day.

“May I join you?”

Meghann looked up, startled, and found herself staring into a pair of dark eyes.

He stood in front of her, with one foot up on the seat opposite her. She could tell by the look of him—young, blond, sexy as hell—that he was used to getting what he wanted. And what he wanted tonight was her.

The thought was a tonic.

“Of course.” She didn't offer a half smile or bat her eyes. Pretense had never appealed to her. Neither had games. “I'm Meghann Dontess. My friends call me Meg.”

He slid into the seat. His knees brushed hers, and at the contact, he smiled. “I'm Donny MacMillan. You like baseball?”

“I like a lot of things.” She flagged down Freddie, who nodded at her. A moment later, he brought her another cosmopolitan.

“I'll have a Coors Light,” Donny said, leaning back and stretching his arms out along the top of the seat back.

They stared at each other in silence. The noise in the bar grew louder, then seemed to fade away, until all Meghann could hear was the even strains of his breathing and the beating of her heart.

Freddie served a beer and left again.

“I suppose you're a baseball player.”

He grinned, and
damn
, it was sexy. She felt the first twinge of desire. Sex with him would be great; she knew it. And it would make her forget—

I'm sorry.

—about her bad day.

“You know it. I'm gonna make it to the show. You watch. Someday I'll be famous.”