Embers (53 page)

"She's not here."

Meg's spirits sank at the bald-faced contradiction. Now, surely, they were doomed.

"Oh," said Allie, blithely accepting the turnaround. "So how'd it go with Peterson? Did he like it?"

"All too well," said Tom.

Meg heard the irony in his voice. In the course of the night she had described everything
—
everything
—
that she'd felt when Peterson examined the dolls. And Tom had held her close and told her how bad he felt about her grandmother, and then they'd spent some time whimsically planning the perfect murder of Gordon Camplin, because fair was fair.

"Did Peterson make an offer? I'll feel so bad for Meg if he does. She truly doesn't want to sell. I don't think she should be forced to do it. I hope Uncle Billy doesn't beat her up too much about that. He can be such a nag."

"Peterson said he'd recommend that his client make an offer," Tom said.

"Well, what's Meg doing now?" fretted Allie, obviously not listening to Tom's last answer. "Where is she?"

"She found a pair of binoculars in the cabin and went out to track down some bird or other she heard. You know Meg. I can show you which way she headed."

Meg heard the agony in his voice. He didn't want to lie to Allie; he was doing it for Meg. And Meg was doing it for Allie.

"Oh, I don't know; it's so buggy out there. Things hop on you. And I've seen snakeskins."

This is insane.
Meg combed her fingers through her hair, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She opened the door of the bedroom and stood face-to-face with her sister.

"There are no binoculars, Allie."

"Meg
...?"

Allie, dressed in white and with her hair pulled back, stared at her sister. Her beautiful violet eyes were absolutely blank. She began turning to Tom for enlightenment, then swung back to Meg. "Binoculars?" she said, uncomprehending.

Meg had seen the look before: twenty-two years before, when Allie had toddled out to her while she was hanging laundry on a line, and yanked at her skirt and said, "Mommy's sick. She keeps sleeping and sleeping."

And now this. It didn't seem possible. Meg said in a low, broken voice, "I'm sorry, Allie."

But Allie only stared.

"What happened to your mouth?" she asked Meg with the same blank look. "It's all swollen." She took a few steps toward her sister, then stopped. "Did he
hit
you?"

Meg hung her head. "No. He didn't hit me," she whispered.

"Well, then, I don't
—"

Meg waited
—
without breath, without a heartbeat
—
for the blow to fall on Allie.

When she looked up again, her sister looked even more blank than before. It was sinking in at last.

Allie let out a half sigh, a kind of soft "Huh!" She shook  her head. "No. Uh-uh. Nooo. This isn't happening." She glanced at Tom, didn't seem to see him, looked back at Meg. Her eyes were wide-open now, starting to show panic.

But Meg was seized by panic and denial of her own. "No, Allie, wait! Nothing happened!" she said in a last-ditch effort to fend off catastrophe.

"Nothing?" Allie asked in a childlike voice. "Really?" She went up to Meg and said, "Then what's
this?"
in a poisonous hiss as she grabbed at Meg's T-shirt.

"I
...
I don't know," Meg said, bewildered. She looked down at her shirt and saw seams
and a label
. It was inside out. She closed her eyes, aware that her free fall from the night before had hit rock bottom.

She tried to claw her way out of the abyss. "Allie, it didn't mean anything!"

Allie was so surprised by that answer that she smiled, as if a butterfly had landed on her arm. "It didn't? You did this to me for nothing?"

"No
—
that's not what I meant. It
did
mean something! It meant everything! That's why I did it."

"Why are you
telling
me this?" Allie cried,
suddenly
stamping her foot. "How can you stand there, inside out, and
tell
me this?" she asked as tears streamed down her face. "How
could
you? How
could
you?"

Overwhelmed by her sister's reactions, Meg said humbly, "I couldn't help it, Allie. I can't not love him. Even for you."

Allie's face contorted with pain. She closed her eyes and bit her lip so hard that Meg saw blood. "Oh, how I wish you hadn't said that," she whispered.

Meg looked straight at Tom, who was standing behind the couch, leaning his hands on the back of it, watching them with a wary intensity. In some tiny part of her soul, she was wishing that he'd drop dead, or that she herself would. It would make things so much simpler.

"I'm sorry, Allie," she said without taking her eyes away from Tom. "I'd do anything to change places with you. Believe me."

She wanted Tom to know that. He looked away.

Allie's answer to that was a bitter, despairing laugh. "I
really
don't think so."

She hesitated for a moment, as if she didn't know which of them to turn to first, and then, obviously, it hit her again: her sister and the man she loved were in cahoots. She had no one. She turned and fled from the cabin, a terrified child who'd strayed too deep into the woods.

Meg ran after her and got as far as the door. Tom grabbed her in mid-pursuit and said, "Let her go! There's nothing you can do. She doesn't want you now."

"Are you
crazy?"
Meg cried, wrenching her arm free. "Who else is there?"

Allie's little Escort was already out of sight on the winding drive; Meg rushed to her own car through the cloud of dust that her sister had left behind, determined to force Allie off the road if she had to
—
whatever it took to make her stop and lis
ten and understand.

****

Wyler stood on the porch of the cabin, wondering how it was that the house was still standing. He felt as if he'd been to heaven and back with a quick drop to hell and had reentered life through the eye of a hurricane.

Jesus.

He raked his hands through his hair, surprised somehow that he still
had
hair; that it hadn't been singed clean in the heat of their sex.

He felt rotten. How was it possible for him to have experienced so much ecstasy, without chemicals, and still end up feeling rotten?

Because you don
't
know a damn thing about women,
he decided wearily, and turned to go back into the house. He should've known
—should've known, when Meg asked him that trick question about love, that this was going to end badly.
What is love.
How the hell should he know?

What was he feeling now? Exhaustion and regret and dismay and confusion; this was
—
what? It sure couldn't be love. But it sure couldn't be mindless passion. If it were mindless passion, he'd be feeling fantastic right now.

And he felt like shit.

He dropped onto the couch in a sulk, feeling irrelevant and ill-used. First she wanted him, then she didn't; then she did, then she didn't. She'd whipped his desires back and forth like a pony express rider. By the time she leaned over for that kiss he was practically gnawing on the bedpost, trying to keep his hands off her. God, he could taste her right now, taste the melancholy sweetness of her mouth.

She'd been incredible; incredible. He'd never known anything like it. Of course, it had helped that he was going back to
Chicago
soon. He understood that perfectly well. It gave the night a bittersweet drama of its own. It had helped, too
—
why not admit it?
—
that Meg had been holding herself back up until then for her sister's sake. If you pull back the string of a bow the full twenty-eight inches, the arrow will shoot straight and true when it's released.

Straight arrow.
The image fit Meg so well. He'd never known anyone with more integrity, more resolve than Meg Hazard. He closed his eyes to shut out the image of her, but it came back: haunting, lovely, sexy, strong. She was everything a man like him could hope for.

Except that she was too responsible by half. There
was
such a thing as being too responsible. When you tried too hard to be everything to everyone, you ended up being nothing to anyone. Meg couldn't be a lover to him and a mother to Allie, not to mention all the other members of the Atwells family:
that
arrow wouldn't fly.

Meg had told Allie she loved him. He took it with a grain of salt, because women loved everything
—
dresses, recipes, babies, wallpaper patterns. The word had no more value for them than a Russian ruble.

As for Allie, Wyler had no doubt that she was more devastated by Meg's betrayal than by the permanent loss of his company. He wasn't sure Allie knew he was in the damn
cabin,
not once she saw Meg in that bedroom doorway. He'd ended up feeling a little like the ashtray on the kitchen counter: there, but superfluous.

No, this was about being sisters. Those same sisters were at that moment engaged in a car chase all over
Mount Desert Island
, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. And the hollow, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach? He'd better get used to it, because there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that, either.

He dragged himself over to the stove and poured himself a cup of yesterday's cold coffee, aware that if he were still a smoking man he'd have himself a whole
pack
of cigarettes after last night, and tried not to think about it
—
the cigarettes or the sex. He was hot and sticky but too tired to shower. He decided that maybe he hated
Maine
after all, and dozed off, dreaming of owls and ashtrays.

When he woke up it was three hours later and hotter than ever. Wyler cursed the heat wave
—
he could get one of those in
Chicago
, anytime
—
and headed for the shower. He was hosing himself down, wondering whether his equipment would ever work to capacity again, when he heard the distinctive, crackling sounds of a police radio through the high bathroom window. Instantly he snapped out of his sullen lethargy. He grabbed a towel, hardly bothering to use it, and pulled on a pair of khakis, then got the door.

The cop's name was Matt Marsten; Wyler had waved to him a dozen times over the course of the summer as their cars crossed paths.

"Matt. What's up?" he said tersely. He knew what was up; dammit, he
knew.

"There's been an accident, sir. Chief Dobney sent me out to tell you, seem' you don't have a phone."

"Tell me who."

"Allegra Atwells. Her car rolled over out on Route 3, north of town. The victim wahn't wearin' a belt and sustained head injuries and at least a broken arm, maybe more. It's the head injuries may be bad. She's unconscious. The chief knew that you
...
well, he wanted you to be apprised, that's all."

"Was there anyone else in the car?"

"Nosir."

"Any other cars involved?"

"No evidence of it so far, sir."

"Where'd they take her?"

Officer Marsten blinked. "
MDI
Hospital
, sir."

Stupid question; big-city question. "Thanks, Malt" Wyler was out the door and in his car before the squad car had had a chance to negotiate the potholed drive. After that he was forced to drive at a reasonable speed by what seemed like an obscene crush of poky tourists. By the time he pulled into the parking lot of the two-story red-brick hospital, one thought had crowded out all others:
it's over.

He found Meg in the lobby, waiting with her father and Comfort, both of the others looking far more pale and shocked than she did. Meg had her color
—
too much of it, he thought. She was pacing in front of her father and sister-in-law, the classic drill of someone still waiting for word. His hopes that Allie had recovered consciousness were dashed.

If Meg saw him, she pretended not to. It was her father who looked up and said, "Ah, here's Tom. He'll have news."

Wyler hated that, when people looked to him as if he possessed infinite knowledge of the universe. He knew exactly what any other schmuck who walked up to the desk knew: that Allie was in surgery. He apologized for disappointing them.

Comfort said, "Can't you find out?"

Meg looked up mid-pace at her sister-in-law and snapped, "Leave him alone, Comfort. He can't do anything."