Emily's Ghost (29 page)

"I have no idea," she
answered coolly. "It's only a theory."

"What's he like, this
Fergus of yours?" Lee asked after a moment. "What kind of man is –
was -- he?"

Surprised by the
thoughtfulness of the question, Emily said, "I think he's
hopelessly confused by modern morals --"

"Who isn't?" Lee asked
with a soft laugh.

"But I think at bottom he
was a good man, caring and sensitive. He was a man of his time, of
course; I think he saw women in terms of saints or sinners. But he
was the kind of man who loves women, and that's the kind of man
women love."

Lee ambled toward her,
hands in his pockets. "And what kind of man," he asked, his eyes
lit with quiet curiosity, "am I?"

She knew that it wasn't
arrogance behind the question. He simply wanted to
know
,
the way
he'd want to know the type of sparrow if she pointed one out. She
lifted her canvas bag to her breast like a shield and wrapped her
arms around it.

"You're the kind of man
that women love," she said softly, "and that's the kind of man
women fear."

He smiled in
self-conscious confusion. "Do you have to go to graduate school to
understand this stuff?"

That was the thing about
him, the frosting on his cake; he simply had no idea how
overwhelming he was. Even now, if he took her in his arms, she'd
melt like butter in a microwave. She stiffened her resolve by
taking one step back as he approached her. It was absolutely time
to leave.

Her tiny but determined
retreat did not escape him. The light in his eyes seemed to go out
and he said, "I don't ever want to see fear in your eyes, Emily --
for any reason." She saw the muscles in his jaw working as he said,
"If it's your wish, I'll take you into town." He held out his hand
to take her bag, and she yielded it.

Lee made a quick call, and
they left the house in a whisper and got into a tiny Civic, which
Lee explained was the only car that would fit in the tiny
downtown.

"Please don't apologize
for the car, Lee; I'm very grateful that you're humoring me," Emily
said. All the while she was expecting Fergus, wherever he was, to
burst out in a Honda commercial.

The trip to town was
hideously brief. They said very little, and none of it was about
Fergus. Lee was obviously at a loss over how to deal with the whole
mess. Emily's heart was disintegrating, like a mound of ashes in a
stiff wind.

Here we go again, and it's
Fergus's fault. Again.
She sighed heavily
as Lee pulled up in front of a small guest cottage not far from the
ferry landing where the two had parted that morning.

"There's a side entrance;
at the top of the landing there'll be a small room with the light
on. You'll have to share the bath with two others on the floor, but
at this hour that shouldn't be a problem," Lee said in a voice
drained of emotion.

"Thank you -- for
everything," Emily said, in tones equally exhausted. She had her
hand on the door handle when she remembered: "The
interview!"

"Oh, hell." He snorted
derisively. "Well? It's up to you." He stared straight
ahead.

"I -- I'd like to be
heroic and pass, but I can't afford to, Lee. Can you still make our
original time and place?"

"Sure," he said through
clenched teeth. "No problem."

She swung the door open,
but she could not make herself step out of the car, not without
some explanation. "If I seemed deluded before, I must seem
downright pathetic to you now that I've added a sex angle to this
little 'fantasy' of mine. What can I say? He's real. I'm not making
him up. But you'd have to have the faith of an apostle to believe
me. I know that. Which is why I lied to you on the
ferry."

She saw him nod in the
darkness. This was new, this cold, hard remoteness. It was
understandable; but she was hoping for more. She was hoping for the
blind faith that comes from love.

And it just wasn't there.
"Good night, Lee," she said, disheartened, and left him.

The following morning
Emily took the first ferry out of Vineyard Haven. The short trip
back to Woods Hole was made under leaden skies that did nothing to
dispel her continuing melancholy. It didn't help that Fergus still
was not showing himself.
He's probably
afraid to come out,
she told herself
grimly.

It was almost laughable.
She'd managed to drive a full-fledged ghost into hiding and to turn
a warm, loving family man into a block of ice.
I was right in the first place. I don't
belong in relationships. When and if this comic opera ends, I
shall retire to a mountainside and devote myself to the study of
Zen Buddhism.

She had just enough time
to shower, change into fresh clothes, and hop a train to Lee's
office. At two fifty-nine she found Millie Cusack hard at work at a
computer terminal, the remnants of a McDonald's lunch at her right
elbow. Not surprisingly for a Sunday, the offices were nearly empty
of their dozen or so staffers. From an inner sanctum somewhere she
heard a printer spewing out text.

"The senator called from
the airport," the secretary explained. "He'll be here any minute.
He asked that you kindly wait in his office," she said, holding
open Lee's door.

A nice way of letting you
get on with your work without any pestering from me,
Emily thought, smiling as she was being led
through.

The fact was, Millie
Cusack was perfectly safe from Emily's scrutiny. Jim Whitewood was
safe; their boss was safe; they all were safe. Emily was determined
to walk Lee Alden through the easiest interview he'd ever had
simply because she owed him, and after that it would be good-bye,
Charlie.

She wandered around Lee's
office, pausing for a long time before a gallery of framed and
signed photographs of movers and shakers in government, some of
them taken with Lee aboard a sailboat. A more personal collection
of photos was arranged on his desk. The largest among them was a
silver-framed family photo. Everyone was in it, including the two
traveling husbands, including Nicole. Emily was about to pick it up
for a closer look when she noticed, pressed under a glass
paperweight, a silk turquoise flower petal. A flower petal from a
sham psychic's hat. Jolted, she stared into the paperweight as if
it were a crystal ball.

Why had he saved the
petal? As a keepsake of their time together? As a trophy of her
screwy scheme? On a whim? And did it matter, as long as he saved it
at all? She was sitting on the edge of his desk, hovering over the
photos and the paperweight, when Lee walked in. Naturally she felt
like a spy and began making stupid apologies. But he was the one
who seemed embarrassed, and that amazed and pleased her.
It
was
a
keepsake,
then
,
she thought, her heart lifting.

Or was he just embarrassed
by her pushiness? The women in his set probably sat when they were
told to sit, whereas here she was, stopping just short of reading
his mail. This was hopeless. In matters concerning Lee Alden her
moral system was about as clear as peanut butter.

She sat in one of the wing
chairs, set up her tape recorder with a "You don't mind, do you?,"
and took out her notepad. Lee seemed to take his cue from her and
sat in the opposite chair, with no attempt at chitchat. The tension
between them was thick enough to slice.

It did not look good. This
was about as friendly as an international chess match.
Here goes nothing,
she
thought, pressing the start button on her tape recorder.

"Senator, you've decided
to run for a third term at a time when the public seems inclined to
throw all the rascals out. Would you tell us why?"

"Well, for one thing," he
answered with an utterly charming smile and a disarming shrug, "I
ain't a rascal."

Interesting. From stony
and remote he went to warm and engaging, all at the touch of a
button.
Damn.
How
could you ever trust someone this good?

"At the same time," he
said in a more serious way, "I don't blame Americans for being fed
up. They're not getting their money's worth. Unless we stop
bickering and get moving, we deserve to be kicked out of
government."

His hands came up in an
eloquent stabbing gesture. "There's plenty of good legislation
being proposed -- on overhauling our health care system, our
banking structure, our social services. We just need to pass it.
We've
got
to be
willing to make hard choices."

"Any suggestions on how to
do that?"

"I wish there were a
simple answer. We need to free ourselves from pressure by special
interests. The average incumbent gets almost half his money from
PAC groups. Obviously we need to reform campaign spending. And it's
time to limit our terms. We should give governing our best shot and
then get out and let someone else try. That's for
starters."

Without the benefit of
notes he launched into a clear and concise list of proposals to
streamline and reform government, backed up by so many statistics
that Emily was grateful for the tape recorder winding its accurate
way between them.

Good Lord. The man really
does know his business,
she thought after
a very few minutes. And it had nothing to do with the ridiculous,
undeniable attraction she was feeling for him. It was more to do
with the fact that in an age of bombast and sneering, his was a
voice of clear, sweet reason. Lee Alden was neither a knee-jerk
liberal nor a pigheaded conservative. He was somewhere in between,
and Emily couldn't help thinking that he was exactly what the
Founding Fathers had in mind.

We could use ninety-nine
more of him,
she thought dreamily as he
wrapped up a thoughtful and sympathetic response to her question
about low-income housing.

He was leaning forward in
his chair, driving his point home. "The fact is, residents know and
care about the buildings they live in more than government
officials do. The resident management experiment has been a
success, and it deserves to be expanded."

He waited for the next
query. None came. Emily had worked her way through her list of
questions -- Stan Cooper would've called them soft lobs -- and now
she was done. Unless, of course, she was willing to delve into the
subject of the paranormal. She was not.

She flipped the cover back
over her steno pad and gave him a half-apologetic look. "I'm afraid
this is going to read like a paid political endorsement, Senator.
That's how impressive a performance it was."

He looked surprisingly
confused. "That's it?"

She nodded, but he wasn't
satisfied. "No questions about my family, hobbies, favorite junk
food, last book read?" He gave her a long, level look. "Nothing
about my abiding interest in the otherworldly?"

Remember, keep it light.
Keep it easy.
"No, sir, no way. I don't
even want to know your astrological sign," she said, pressing the
stop button on the recorder. She backed up to his challenge and
erased it. "Besides, I think the local tabloids have pretty much
covered the personal side of your career."

"With a vengeance," he
said ironically. He thought about it for a minute. "Thanks for the
break," he said, standing and easing into one of his catlike
stretches. "Does Stan Cooper know you're waiting in the wings for
his job?"

She assumed he was being
ironic and shook her head noncommittally.

"Stan and I go back to our
childhood together," he added. "Has he ever told you
that?"

"No," Emily said,
surprised. Tight-lipped Stan had never said a word.

Lee walked over to the
gallery of photos. "Yeah. His father was a charter captain on the
Vineyard. Here's a picture of my father, my brother, and me aboard
the
Snapper Blue.
That's Stan's father at the wheel, and there's Stan sitting
on the bait box. We went fishing on the
Blue
every time my dad could get
away from the mainland."

Emily came over for a
closer look. It was an interesting tableau: the Alden clan, proudly
posed with their catches of the day; Captain Cooper, proudly posed
at the wheel of his powerboat; and Stan, a sulky look on his face,
holding himself aloof from the happy group.

"He never did like the
charter business," Lee said thoughtfully. "Too service-oriented,
I'd guess. After his father died he sold the
Snapper Blue,
the house, all of it.
I haven't seen him on the island in years."

It explained a lot. No,
Stan wouldn't have thought much of dispensing bait or serving
sandwiches to a couple of preppy teenagers his own age. Young
Stan's look said it all too clearly: "Why them and not
me?"

Emily shook her head. "I
think he can hurt you politically."

"Stan? Why would he want
to?"