Keepsake (45 page)

"Ah, we're back to the old suicide theory," Quinn said with a sigh.

"No. Alison died accidentally."

Quinn snorted and said, "I wonder why the police didn't think of that. She was just playing around with a rope, practicing how to tie her bowlines, when something went terribly wrong?"

"She fell," said Teresa, unimpressed by Quinn's dry wit.

"She came to the house in the afternoon; no one was home except me. She told me that
... that
Rand
was in love with her," she explained, faltering for the first time. "And that she was pregnant. I was horrified, outraged; I went for her, I admit. I was going to, I guess, shove her or something. Maybe slap her. I don't know. She was quick, she jumped out of my reach. But she caught her foot on a table leg and fell backward. She hit her head on the marble hearth. I think she died instantly—certainly within seconds."

She paused. No one moved or spoke. Quinn felt instinctively that he was in the presence of a truth teller. Her gaze, dark and beautiful still, swept over each one of them, compelling them to continue with her on her melancholy journey
into the past. Quinn knew then
what a powerful presence she had once been, would always be, among those of the opposite sex. The atmosphere in the small room was electric, rolling from one to the other and leaving the hairs on the back of Quinn's neck standing on end.

All of the men believed her, of that there was no doubt.

She wasn't looking at any of them now, but seemed to be peering into some dark and forgotten corner of her mind. Peering so hard that she squinted, as if there were no hope of getting any real light there,
and
she was just going to have to do the best that she could.

"I didn't know what to do. She had no pulse, she wasn't breathing. I ran to the phone to call an ambulance, but I knew she was dead. What could they do? They would ask questions. There would be an inquest, an autopsy perhaps. My mind went completely blank. I hung up."

She sighed and said, "And then I ran to the gardener's cottage."

It was a megawatt jolt to Quinn's system. His head snapped back and his knees went limp. It was all he could do to keep standing.

"I knew that Francis Leary had
... feelings for me. I'm sorry, Quinn, this will be hard for you, but you wanted the truth. He had spoken of how he felt—obliquely, of course—one afternoon when we had been working a long day in the garden and I invited him in for iced tea. He was so sweet," she added with a smile that wasn't at all self-conscious. "Another day, he reciprocated with tea in the cottage, and I could see that he had made an effort to lay out a pretty table. But he never hinted at those feelings again. I think
... well, I think he understood that I loved my husband. But he wanted me to know, that's all."

She seemed embarrassed by the recollection. Holding herself close, she walked away from them all and up to the window that overlooked the parking lot, the same window that Quinn had stared through as he and Olivia had waited for news about Mrs. Dewsbury.

"I knew, in any case, that I could trust him completely. So I ran straight to him and told him what had happened, why Alison had come to see me. I told him that she had said she was pregnant, but—and this is the truth—that I thought the baby might be Rupert's. Rupert was always so possessive about her
.
.. jealous,
really
. And Rand and Alison were always such good friends;
Rand
would
do something silly and chivalrous like offer to marry her," she said, throwing a mournful smile over her shoulder at her son.

"And who could believe Alison? She was always such a hard girl to know. I would have confronted you about it,
Rand
, but I never got the chance.

"Anyway, I told Francis everything. I told him that the scandal would destroy our family. That it would make it impossible for us to stay in Keepsake and for Owen to keep the mill
... everything that was in my heart, I told him."

She turned around and said with a painful laugh, "I wasn't so composed in the cottage as I am now. The truth was, I was hysterical. But Francis managed to calm me down, and then he came up with a plan. He would stage it to look as if Alison had committed suicide. The blow to the back of her head, that would be from hitting the quarry wall when she threw herself over the edge with... with the rope around her neck. He—"

She turned slowly away from them again.

"He took care of everything."

She sighed, and except for the vague hum of hospital machinery
somewhere
, there was no other sound. Three men, none of them shy, and there was no other sound.

Quinn was reeling. In a daze, he said, "My father? He took care of everything?"

Teresa Bennett turned back to face him. "He did it for me, Quinn. And when the police began to close in on him, he ran. Not because he was afraid for himself, but because he thought they might figure out what really happened. By running, he was drawing suspicion away from me, from my family. I'm sure that's why he did it."

"For you. For your family," Quinn repeated, trying to get it into his
head. All he could think was: o
nce again, aced by the Bennetts. Two lives, shot to hell, all for the Bennetts.

Almost automatically, he reached back for his single b
est defense against self-pity: t
welve lives were saved because of his father's misbegotten chivalry. Children's lives and mothers' lives. In the great, twisted revolution of force and matter that made up the cosmos, everything had somehow worked out.

He had labored through that reasoning so often before, but now, with a creation of his own struggling to survive, he understood it in a profound and almost religious way.
It all works out. Somehow, some way, it all works out. Believe that.

He bowed his head, humbled at last into acceptance.

After a long eternity Teresa Bennett said to her son, "Quinn is right,
Rand
. You will have to tell Eileen. She loves you so much. I think you'll be all right
... but give her time."

To her husband she turned and said, "I'm sorry, dear. I know you were afraid that it was Rand who killed her, all these years. I should have told you, but I couldn't bear to see the look in your eyes that I'm seeing now," she whispered.

She reached up to touch his cheek where a tear had rolled down. "I'm sorry."

Last of all, she turned to Quinn. "Your father was the kindest man I've ever met, and the truest gentleman. I didn't know that men like him existed outside of women's imaginations. I can't ask you to forgive me," she said softly. "And it's too late to ask him."

She sighed and looked longingly at the door, contemplating flight herself, Quinn supposed. Or maybe she was simply willing someone to come through it and give her, just once, some good news.

In any case, that's what happened. Dr. Jack Whiteman, the physician in attendance, had a cautious smile on his face as he said, "The news is encouraging. There was no bleeding, the membranes are intact, the cervix hasn't dilated. She's stronger than she looks. We're going to keep her here for a bit, and after that, she'll need to limit her activities and get plenty of bed rest. If Miss Bennett is conscientious about restricting herself, then the chances are very good that she'll carry to term."

Teresa Bennett said calmly, "Thank you so much, Doctor," and burst into tears.

Her husband rushed to her side. She threw herself into his arms, and between heartrending, uncontrollable sobs, Quinn heard her say over and over, "Oh, thank you, thank you, God
... oh, thank you, God."

Quinn had trouble speaking with the hard knot in his throat, but he said to the physician as he was about to leave, "Can I see her?"

"You're—?"

"The baby's father."

"Two minutes."

"You bet."

Pale and shaken,
Rand
said, "Mom
... Dad
... I'm going home. I, ah
..." His sigh was a long, shuddering effort to get his own emotions under control. "I'm going home."

He and Quinn exchanged one brief glance, and then Rand walked quickly out of the visitors' room ahead of him, perhaps in a hurry to make up for lost time.

Quinn never could recall how he got himself from the visitors' room to the side of Olivia's bed. Possibly with wings, maybe on a magic carpet—but there he was, still knocking back that lump in his throat and wishing he could will away the tubes and the black-and-blue marks and the cast on her leg.

Olivia gave him a trembly smile. "We made it
... she and I made it, Quinn
... thanks to you." Her smile firmed up as she said, "I'm glad you had experience saving people from fires."

She was so beautiful, an angel booted down to earth expressly to dazzle him through the remaining years he had to live there. Pray God they were many.

He brushed aside a curl that had flopped over a bandage on her forehead. "I love you," he said.

He was surprised to see a flush in her cheeks. "And I love you, but you'd never know it the way I acted today. Oh, Quinn, I'm sorry," she said in a soft wail. "This whole thing wouldn't have happened if I hadn't sent you away."

Quinn shook his head and said, "We're not going down that road—ever again. We're not going to look back anymore, Liv; too much wonder lies ahead."

But Olivia wasn't quite ready to turn around and face happiness square in the eye.

Plucking nervously at the sheet, she said, "I have to keep looking over my shoulder, Quinn. My family's past is like some big, horrible crow, flying low behind me and waiting to peck me to pieces if I trip and fall."

"Not anymore," he told her.

Perhaps it was her mother's place to explain—Quinn had no doubt that she would be doing that—but he wasn't willing to let this one, this great love of his life suffer a single new moment of anxiety over someone else's mistakes.

"It was an accident," he said, and he went on to explain how good people with good intentions had ended up doing a horrible deed.

When he was done, she murmured,' "Will you ever forgive him, do you think?"

"I already have." He couldn't help adding, "What about you, Liv? Can you forgive your mother?"

"I don't
... know." She frowned in confusion, and yawned, and then closed her eyes. "They've given me
... just a little something
... for the pain," she explained with a sigh. "I wonder
... what my mother can take
... for
her own
..."

She was gone. Asleep, whether she wanted to be or not.

Quinn got up quietly and turned off the light above her bed. In the dim glow of the nightlight, he studied her bruised and scraped face, aching to make it all better.

Almost without an effort, he was able to picture her in the same bed with color in her cheeks and their daughter in her arms.

I wonder how she feels about the name Jessica
.

Smiling, he stepped quietly from the room. He would ask her first thing in the morning.

"
No
, no, no,
Jessie! No, no, sweetie. Come here. Sit by me. Sit by Mommy."

Olivia held out her arms over her impossibly bulging stomach, but Jessie had other ideas. Off she ran,
charging out of the conference
room and down the halls of Sayles & McCromber, fully prepared to be chased, caught, and swung in the air. Wasn't that Daddy's favorite game?

"Quinn—!"

"Say no more—I'm on the case," said her husband ahead of her. "That's a little lawyer humor, get it?" he said with a wink on his way out.

Eyeing the sticky handprints on his glass-doored bookcases, Albert Sayles sighed and said, "Children rarely manage to sit through real-estate closings."

He was kind enough not to mention that this one hadn't started yet.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Sayles," Olivia said for the fourteenth time since their arrival fourteen minutes earlier. "The sitter didn't show, and I couldn't reach my sister-in-law. Maybe if I hold Jessie
..."

She began the massive effort of lifting her unwieldy body out of the wooden-armed chair, but that sent the elderly bachelor into total panic. "Please, Olivia, it's no trouble," he hastened to say, gesturing her to keep her seat. "I'm sure Quinn has the tot in hand."

The joyful shrieks of the tot in question bounced loudly
down the hall and into the conference room, causing Mr. Sayles to suck much air through his nose.

"Oh, dear," said Olivia,
trying to look dismayed. "I hope no one's reading a will just now."

"She seems a handful," he said on the exhale.

"My mother says she's just like me."

"I don't recall that they e
ver brought you into the offices
."