Embers (62 page)

Her face became pale. "I guess not. My recollection and reality don't seem to match. What did Mrs. Camplin say?"

"Never mind her," Wyler answered. "Tell me, from start to finish, what you think happened. Every little thing."

She was reluctant to live through it again, but with some coaxing, she obliged him. He was hard pressed to keep a calm demeanor when she described the little red bottle, even harder pressed when she described the onset of symptoms shortly afterward. He wanted to jump up and get a search warrant going, but he had to hear her through. It was worth the wait.

"You
saw
her throw the bucket of water on you?"

"Yes. No. No, that part I dreamed. I think I was delirious. I felt so thirsty, I wanted a drink
...
I think she was like a mirage, you know? Everything was so blurry, almost hallucinatory. No. I must've dreamed that part. I must've staggered, and pulled the bucket over me, and that's what you found. I mean, what else?"

"All right," he said calmly. "I want you to think about it some more. Someone will be by later to take a statement from you, Meg. Tell them what you remember as accurately as you can. Don't try to make sense of it. Just tell him what you remember."

He leaned over and kissed her on her lips, which brought more delicious color to her cheeks. He backed out of the room nonchalantly, then raced like hell to the nearest phone and dialed the
Bar Harbor
police. The red bottle was great news, the so-called hallucinatory recollection not so great news. But all the little pieces fit. What pleased Wyler particularly was Meg's recollection that she'd got tired of waiting for her tea.

Because he remembered, in his slow-motion replay of the event, that no steam was coming out of the little yellow teapot that Mrs. Camplin had decided, finally and suddenly, to haul out to the garden.

****

Meg had just completed her statement to the police when Allie knocked on the open door and came in. She was dressed in a white sleeveless sundress and a big white baseball cap that she was wearing backward over her shaved head, an odd but whimsical combination th
at made her look like a street-
fighting angel.

"I like the look," Meg said when her sister sat down silently next to her. She thumped lightly on Allie's cast. "You always did know how to accessorize."

Meg was being as light and flippant as she knew how, to make her sister feel at ease. But there was a hard lump in her throat, and when Allie didn't say anything, the lump got harder.

"You could have died," Allie whispered reproachfully, a tear rolling down her cheek.

"You
could have died," Meg shot back, unable to keep the reproach out of her voice, either.

Allie shook her head in warning. "Don't start, Meg. I know it was a stupid, dumb slip. Do you think I don't regret it? But it forced me to lie still for a while and
...
reconsider."

Reconsider.
The word had a joyous ring to it. Meg had hoped for nothing else since Allie's accident: that she would reconsider, and forgive, and someday forget.

Allie took a deep breath and went on. "This sounds so selfish, but
—
for the first time in my life, I had to ask myself, what would I do without you? Who would I go to for advice? Who would approve my decisions, or even make them outright for me?"

"I don't do that anymore," Meg said lamely. But it was a lie, and both of them knew it.

Allie said, "You've been the mother I got cheated out of, and I've been the daughter you never had. And it worked out well, for a pretty long time. But you have other
...
needs, and I have other wants."

Meg winced. Eventually it had to come around to this, to Tom; it was bound to. "Everybody makes mistakes," she said. "You have to be able to let
me
make them too." She added wryly, "God knows I'm good at it."

"I'm not talking about the cabin," Allie said impatiently. She jumped up and began to pace, the way she always did when she was working something through. "I
have
to come out from behind your skirts, Meg. It's way past the time for it. There are kids out there half my age with twice my experience
—"

"But you don't
live
in the
Bronx
," Meg argued. "You live in a nice, old-fashioned town." And yet she knew that Allie was right: she was amazingly innocent. To Meg, it was part of her great charm, to be twenty-five and naïve.

"I don't want to live in a nice, old-fashioned town, Meg. I don't want to go into the hospitality industry. I've been saying that for a long time; you just haven't wanted to hear it."

"We don't have to talk about that now
—
do we?" Meg pleaded. The subject was pure, dry tinder. Anything Meg said would put a torch to it.

"We do, because I want you to know that what happened between you and Tom has nothing to do with the decision I've made."

"What happened between Tom and me will never happen again!" Meg said, interrupting her. "I've wanted to tell you that ever since
...
that day."

"'That day'? You make it sound like it'll live on in infamy, like the
Salem
witch trials or something. Meg, you're in love with him
—
and he's definitely in love with you. He's not married, you're not married. You
get
to make love with one another; it's one of the perks of being born after the Inquisition."

"Right," Meg said dully, letting her head fall back on the pillow.

Allie sighed and came back to her seat. "Look. That whole triangle was my fault. There shouldn't have
been
a triangle; Tom was sending me steady signals to butt out all along. I just didn't want to recognize them. He was my first love, Meg," she said in poignant apology. "First loves are pure magic
—
because we have no idea that they'll ever end."

It was such a sad, disillusioned thing for Allie to say. Meg couldn't agree less; she herself would never stop loving Tom. "Sometimes they
don't
end," she confessed.

Allie leaned over and kissed her sister on the forehead. "All the more reason not to be a jerk."

Allie walked over to the window, past the other, empty bed, and stared outside. "I'm going to
Greece
, Meg," she murmured. "Next week."

Crease? Geese? Meg didn't quite catch what her sister said. "What's at the end of the week?" she asked.

Allie turned around. "You remember Dmitri Kronos? He spent a weekend here last summer? His parents have a place on
Crete
. I'm going there to finish out the season, and after that, he and I will go to his parents' winter place in
St. Moritz
."

"Why?"

Allie shrugged. "He asked."

"That's no reason, Allie! Besides, you don't have any money!"

"I won't need it with Dmitri," Allie said dryly. "And I
don't
think you've been listening."

"Oh, no
...
Allie
...
don't," Meg pleaded. "Don't ever put yourself in that position."

"You mean, of a hanger-on with the jet set? Why not? It's a tough job, but
somebody's
got to do it."

"We don't know anything about him! Who are his people?"

Allie burst into a merry, genuinely amused laugh. "His people are filthily rich, is who his people are. Shipping, I think. I expect his mother is asking him the same thing, right about now. Who are her people?"

She added sardonically, "I can just
imagine
what he's telling her: that my family is doubled up with a relative because the roof leaks and the basement stinks and they can't afford to fix any of it. Oh, and we rent rooms
—
on dry,
breezy
days. That ought to impress his mum."

"But it's
our
leaky roof, and it's
our
stinky basement! Don't you see the difference?"

"Meg, you know something? I
don't
. There are so many generations at the Inn Betwee
n that it seems like a commune
anyway, so what's the difference if I'm a non-owner here or a non-owner there? For that matter, what's the difference between being a charming ornament at one of their soir
é
es, or being a charming hostess at a company Christmas party at a Marriott? It's not like I own either the villa or the hotel."

"Oh, excuse me
—
you don't want to work for a living,
ever?"

"Why should I, if I can manage not to? Why would anyone?"

"Because
—
because you have a
degree!"
Meg said, as if the word had magical powers to restore her sister's sanity.

"I got that for
you,
dammit!" Allie cried. "I wish I could give it back to you! I don't want it! I've wasted my life getting it!"

"Stop. Please. Let's both stop," Meg said dizzily. "I can't go around this ride again."

Allie ran back to her sister's side and squeezed her hand. "I didn't mean to say all that, Meggie, really I didn't. All I wanted was to tell you my plans. Not to ask you about them — to tell you."

She glanced at her watch. "Comfort will have a fit. She's waiting outside with Dad to see you. Lloyd's out there, too, waiting to take me back to the Inn Between. He says the smell's not too bad for family, just not good enough for guests."

"You've checked out of here, then?" Meg asked, her spirits sinking steadily.

"Yeah. I guess you get thrown out tomorrow. I'll see you back home." Allie leaned over and kissed Meg on her forehead again, and left.

Three seconds later, she po
pped her head back in the door
way. "By the way, in case Uncle Billy asks? The ninety-minute call to
Greece
that was charged to his phone
—
that was me."

There was no way the story wasn't going to end up on the front pages of the tabloids.

Meg's adventure made its media debut quietly enough, in a no-nonsense piece by the local paper headlined,
Summer Resident Arraigned in Homicide Attempt.
Then the
Portland
paper picked up on the local piece. Then the Associated Press picked up on the
Portland
piece.

And then the tabloids moved in. The family came under siege. The dining room table was turned into Command Central, with Uncle Billy, self-appointed publicist, handling the media. The table began to disappear under a slew of sensationalist coverage.

Every member of the family had his favorite headline.

Allie liked the one that read
Crazed Dowager Breaks Girl's Arm, Forces Her to Swallow Pure Nicotine.

Meg thought
Two Sisters Chained in Greenhouse by Bitter Heiress
had a poetic ring to it.

Comfort was leaning toward
Vacationing
Cop
Saves
Island
Town
from Mad Gardener.
It sounded heroic.

Terry and Timmy, showing a genetic bias, voted hands down for
Woman Dipped in Nicotine Grows Second Head.

"Laugh all you want," said Uncle Billy, punching in a call to a
Boston
television station. "This story is gonna make us rich."

Hard Copy, Current Events, Top Cops,
Geraldo, Larry, Barbara, Oprah—Uncle Billy was going after them all. He had a vested interest in the family now, having agreed to lend Meg the money she needed at a not-very-nice interest rate that, however, he was willing to waive if Allie got to
Europe
and ended up marrying either money or nobility.

"A little incentive, Allie-cat," he told his niece, pinching her cheek. "I want you to go over there and show 'em what yer made of."

Meg watched the whole thing with a sense of bemusement that bordered on despair. Her life had become surreal, and she had little hope that it would ever be normal again. If there were some way to roll back the clock to June, she felt sure she'd never have answered Orel Tremblay's initial summons.

Her father, among others, didn't believe that. "You know you'd do everything the same all over again. Everything," he repeated with a meaningful look. "So don't even try to second-guess yourself, Meggie. Just look to the future."

It was the one direction Meg didn't want to look, because she couldn't see anything beyond a big, black hole where hope and joy should be. So she was taking one bizarre day at a time, crying some days, laughing others, trying hard not to think or plan.