Keepsake (40 page)

And Eileen—Eileen had love to spare for everyone. She handed it out like candy.
Rand
? No father loved his children more than
Rand
did. That's what was so hard: to reconcile this Rand with
... that
Rand
.

She couldn't destroy her family by turning
Rand
in. She couldn't. She was going to have to live in misery with the secret for the rest of her life.

Which brought her back to Quinn. Everything that he had done, he had done for love. Olivia knew that. It was the most heart-wrenching fact of all. But it didn't change the impossible situation that the two of them were in.

Oddly soothed by the steadily falling rain, she wandered back through the softly lit shop, looking at it with Mrs. Dewsbury's eyes. Did it have any worth? Any meaning at all? Olivia wasn't sure of the answer to that anymore. She paused at a bolt of Ultrasuede and slid her hand over the fabric: soft
... smooth
... like a baby's bottom.

Quinn's baby. Francis Leary's grandchild. She was carrying good and honorable and heroic instincts, passed to yet another generation. She couldn't have Quinn. But she
could
have the best of him to love and to care for.

Poor Mrs. Dewsbury. She had shown up with her black umbrella on Miracourt's doo
rstep like an elderly Mary Pop
pins, convinced that she could make things right between Quinn and Olivia. She hadn't done that; no one could.

But she had made Olivia feel so much better about having the baby alone.

****

After weeks of wet spring weather, the sun rushed in full of apologies and determined to make amends: The day was bright, benign, and deliciously warm, a perfect spring bouquet offered to sullen and sodden
New England
.

Sometime during Saturday's downpour, Olivia had learned that
Rand
would be home with the kids all day on Sunday. She had made up her mind to see him then—but her mission would have been so much more fitting in rain.

She drove with extra care to his house, which was built, like hers, high above the
Connecticut River
, upstream of the mill. That upstream view of the water was all that her house and his had in common, however. Olivia had opted for a place she could afford. Rand's reproduction Colonial was sited on a rolling lawn with mature trees, a guest house, a greenhouse, a chicken coop, a barn, a paddock in the making—and a mortgage that was mind-boggling.

But on a day like today, who cared? Certainly not
Olivia's brother. She found him running around with his children on the flat part of the lawn, engaged in a game of Frisbee made a little more tricky by the fact that Zack couldn't throw a Frisbee and Kristin couldn't catch one.

The real star of the show was Samantha, their golden retriever. Sam caught the plastic disk perfectly in her mouth every time—whether it was whizzed to her or not—and then she ran down to the river with it, and the kids ran after her, and invariably someone slipped and fell and got even more muddy, which apparently was the real point of the game.

It all looked a little too frisky for Olivia, who was still getting used to the idea of being pregnant, so she declined to play. Since she was wearing jeans, she dropped down on the damp ground and watched them go at it. Pretty soon Samantha ran up to her and knocked her over, and Olivia ended up just as muddy as everyone else.

"Sorry about that, sis," her brother said, laughing,
as he stuck out a hand to pull her up. "Sammy can't believe you're not playing. Frankly, neither can I. How're you doing?" he asked her as they walked back to the house over the children's howls of protest. It was obvious that he thought Olivia was still brooding over her breakup with Quinn.

Right now, he couldn't have been further off the mark. "I'm fine, really," she said, rolling up her sleeves above the wet and muddy elbows of her white shirt.

"You
look
good," he said with a quick sideways glance. "I guess your appetite's back, anyway."

Automatically she sucked in her stomach. Not that it did any good.

Rand
kicked off his muddy moccasins in the mudroom and proceeded barefoot to the fridge. "Beer?" he asked her.

"Oh, that sounds—"

Alcoholic. She declined and said she'd rather have water.

"Water? At least have a Coke."

Olivia shrugged and said, "I don't need the caffeine." For whatever reason, she threw up less when she avoided it. The baby knew more about nutrition than she did, it seemed. She poured herself a glass of water and sipped while her brother took a long, satisfying slug of beer and then washed up at the sink, keeping an eye out the window at his kids as they romped in the yard.

He was wiping his hands on a towel. His fair skin had great color from the sun and the exercise. He was smiling, relaxed, in a wonderful mood. He looked as happy as she'd seen him in half a year.

Could she do this?

"You know, it's no accident that I'm here today," she said, mustering every bit of her formidable resolve.

"I figured," he said, cocking his head at her. "Normally I don't rate. What's on your mind, Livvy?"

Most of the smile and all of the ease had gone out of his face. He knew, more than anyone else, when it was serious between them.

Olivia looked away, then made herself look into her brother's eyes. She had rehearsed her opening line so many times, and now she couldn't remember a word of it.

"I have some things of yours," she blurted.

Rand
's laugh was tight as he said, "Oh? You finally gonna return my A
BBA
tapes?"

She said, "These go back to almost as long."

Olivia had tucked the ring in the front pocket of her jeans, the folded letter in the back. She hadn't dared risk being knocked unconscious in a car accident and having some rescuer find them as he went through her handbag looking for names of next of kin.

Fishing the ring out first, she handed it to her brother.

He looked at it and nodded. There was no shock, no dismay, no panic: only the simple, eloquent nod of recognition. She remembered it for the rest of her life.

"You got this from—?"

"Quinn. Who got it from
Myra
."

"And you're wondering how
Myra
came to have it?" There was a glimmer almost of hope in her brother's eyes as he asked her. He so clearly wanted her answer to be yes.

Olivia dashed that hope when she reached into her hip pocket
and brought out the pale blue sheet with its charred edge. With downcast eyes she handed it to him. "This too."

"Oh, Jesus."

There went her forgery theory. She thought he would read it, or maybe rush to his big Viking stove, turn on a burner, and set it afire. Instead he stuffed the letter in the front pocket of his grass-stained khakis. He looked ashamed and embarrassed, as if it were a note from the principal.

He didn't seem to know what to do about the ring. The ring was different. The ring was okay to have. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, thinking of—what? Alison? The big game? The path not taken? He surprised Olivia by slipping off his wedding band and slipping his class ring on that finger. Making a fist with his left hand, he rubbed the surface of the ring with the palm of his right.

All the while, he was in some other place, during some other time. Olivia had no idea how to get to where he was, so she waited.

After a while, he looked up and said, "Why give these to me?"

She shrugged and said, "Too law-abiding to destroy them myself, I guess."

"Why not give them to Vickers?"

She blinked. "You don't know? You honestly can't figure it out?"

"Zack? Kristin?"

"And Eileen. Mom. Dad. Why do you
think,
you idiot?" She could feel all the horror come rushing up like acid bile. There it was, that sudden urge to be sick. Convinced despite her doctor's assurances that she was harming the baby every time she threw up, she made an intense effort to control the nausea.

"I have to go," she said coldly, and she turned to leave.

"Livvy, wait!"
Rand
called. Now there was anguish in his voice.

She whirled around.
"What?
What can you possibly say in your defense?"

"I didn't kill her. You have to believe me, Liv. I loved her—I thought I loved her, anyway. I was seventeen, for God's sake!" he said, raking both hands through his hair.

Olivia studied him as closely as she ever had in her life. The stakes were high; his answer mattered.

"I don't know how it happened," he said. "One minute I was her cousin, someone for her to vent to, and the next, we were
.
... But I didn't kill her, I'm telling you. I was all set to marry her, to raise the child—well, you saw the letter," he said with a smile that was bitterly wry. "I was just your average teenage doofus. God only knows how I thought I'd support us
o
r where we'd live. Certainly not in Keepsake."

Olivia had only one question: "Does either Mom or Dad know?"

He shook his head. "Eventually reality set in and I started having second thoughts. I wanted Alison to put the baby up for adoption. She got angry; we had a fight over it. But before anything got resolved, she disappeared. Then they found her hanged at the quarry. I was as shocked as anyone. Livvy, I'm telling you the truth," he said with a look of burning desperation. "I've never lied to you—not when it counted."

Olivia had expected her brother to deny murdering Alison, but she hadn't expected to believe him. The emerging agony she felt was because she had absolutely no acceptable fallback scenario to him being the murderer.

Her next question came out in a whisper. "Who do you think killed her, then?"

Grimacing,
Rand
rubbed his brow with his middle finger and said, "Uncle Rupert? I've always assumed that she told him about us. You know how possessive he was—"

"No, no, it wasn't Uncle Rupert," Olivia said, feeling a new wave of nausea kick in. "When Quinn and I went over there, he told us that he had pushed hard for the investigation to go forward back then. With no results. Didn't I tell you that part?"

"No," he said with a blank stare.

"It wasn't Uncle Rupert. Someone else." Her heart was beginning to feel as cold and glassy as an Elsa Peretti paperweight.

Rand
looked frightened now. "Oh, man
..."

Their thoughts were locked on exactly the same plane. Neither spoke. The only sounds were of children screeching and a big dog barking.

And then the deep, resonant chime of the front doorbell.

"Oh, hell,"
Rand
said. "I'm going to have to get that. Your car's out front, the kids are outside."

"I'm going, then," she said. "I've got to get out of here."

That didn't happen. The visitor was their father, and he was in a fury of indignation.

"Those sons of bitches on the council aren't going for the tax break," Owen Bennett said, waving his briefcase at both of his children.

Rand
was stunned. "Dad, no way! The whole point of this last postponement was to get Murphy in line."

"Murphy! Murphy managed to turn everybody
else
around! You know what you can do with Murphy!"

"How'd he do that? It's impossible!"

"Is that so? Tell it to the mayor. I just had lunch with him. He gave me the heads-up: The plan will be shot down five to two at Tuesday's council meeting. All right, let's get to work," he said, heading for
Rand
's study. "I want to have dates, I want to have profit projections, I want to have numbers to rub in their smug, short-sighted faces. I want that mill shut down
mañana
!
"

"Oh, Dad, not that," cried Olivia, following him into the small office. "You're not really going to move the mill to
Mexico
?''

"Oh no?" he said grimly. "Watch me. Three goddamned generations of Bennetts have busted their humps to keep this town afloat. I've watched my profit margin tighten like wool in a hot dryer. No more! Keepsake can go the way of every other mill town in
New England
. See if I give a damn. Run along, Olivia
. Rand and I have work to do."

Brother and sister exchanged one quick glance, and then Olivia walked out in a state of shock.

It wasn't her uncle
.  I
t wasn't her brother.

Who was the adult that Alison would have gone to first? Of course. Who was the one who would have tried hardest to make her pregnancy go away? Of course. Who would have tried, first, to buy Alison's compliance, and failing that, taken more drastic measures? Who had the most to lose in reputation and prestige, and the money and the will to see that that didn't happen?