Maggy's Child (4 page)

And she was unhappy to the point of despair. How the fates must be laughing.

Nick’s coming had changed nothing. Nothing at all. For her own sake, and for David’s, Maggy told herself she had to remember that.

T
he doorknob rattled.

Maggy jumped, startled, and stared at the door. For one hideous moment she was paralyzed, sure that Lyle had returned.

“Mom, are you in there?”

David. Maggy let out a silent sigh of relief. Thank God. Whatever happened, she musn’t let David know that she was upset. Smoothing her hair and her robe, striving to present an appearance of normalcy, she crossed to the door and admitted her son.

“What are you doing up so late?” Maggy asked, closing the door behind him and turning to lean back against it as she smiled at him with aching tenderness. He was so handsome, with his tousled hair and creamy clear skin and tall, straight body, that she took pleasure in just gazing at him. With a peculiar combination of shock and delight and regret, she realized that she was beginning to be able to see the man he would be already present in the boy.

David wore childish Batman pajamas, but the top of his head now reached her chin, though she was tall herself, and his feet and hands were as big as hers. The thick-lashed brown eyes, so like her own that sometimes she felt, when she looked into them, that she was looking into a mirror, held secrets that she could only speculate about. She loved him so much, this child of her flesh and blood and bone, that it almost hurt her to look at him. Yet she hesitated to hug him as she once would have done
without thought. Of late he was Lyle’s son more than hers in his own heart and mind, slavishly admiring of and devoted to his father. His attitude toward her was more and more a watered-down reflection of Lyle’s contemptuous hostility.

She contented herself with touching his hair.

“Don’t,” he said, as she had known he would, jerking his head out of reach and scowling at her. “What was Dad doing in here? Were you fighting with him again?”

“No, we weren’t fighting. We were—discussing something.”

It was an odd feeling, being called to account by her own child. But Maggy answered without anger because she didn’t know quite how else to deal with the prickly stranger her son was increasingly becoming.

“The man who was here today?”

“What man?” Maggy was startled, and it showed in her voice. But she knew who it had been, who it had to have been, instantly: Nick.

“Some man stopped by to see you. He told me his name, but I forgot. He said he was an old friend of yours. Dad says he’s your boyfriend.”

“Your dad means he’s my
old
boyfriend, David. You know, someone I used to date before I married Dad.”

“Did you used to date a lot?” The notion of his mother as a young girl with dates was obviously foreign to David. He looked at her curiously.

“Not very much. I was pretty young when your dad and I got married. Just eighteen.”

“But you dated this guy.” A hint of jealousy, on his own behalf and that of his father, was there in his voice.

“Yes,” Maggy admitted, taking a deep breath. “I dated him.”

“I bet Dad thinks you still do.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“I bet he does. I bet he thinks that’s where you run off to at night.”

“David, I don’t run off anywhere at night. I’m almost always home, and you know it.”

“Dad says you sneak out after I’m in bed. He doesn’t like you going out at night. He says it’s trashy, the way you’re always running off to bars and parties and things and leaving me here alone.”

“David, none of that is true!” Maggy had to force herself to take a deep, calming breath before she said anything more. For all his life she had sheltered David, doing her best to insure that he would not be injured in the crossfire of her and Lyle’s private war. Lyle, on the other hand, used David shamelessly as a weapon against her. He always had, because David was both the chain that bound her to Lyle and the one thing that could pierce her to the heart.

“You went out tonight!” There was accusation in his voice.

“You were hardly alone, sweetheart. Dad was here, and Gran, and Louella, and Herd.”

“But you did go to a bar.” His tone wouldn’t have been out of place in a prosecutor.

Maggy strove for patience. “David, I went out with Sarah and one of her friends to try to cheer her up. You know how sad she’s been since she and Tony split up.”

“Are you and Dad going to get a divorce, too? He says you might, if you keep running around at night. He says he doesn’t know how much more of your shenanigans he can take.”

At the fear in his voice that his truculence could not quite hide, Maggy felt a slow anger start to burn in her belly. If there was any justice in the universe, Lyle Forrest would one day suffer the tortures of the damned for what he was doing to David.

“Dad didn’t mean it, David. We won’t get a divorce. I promise you. Now, you need to go back to bed, darling. You have to get up early in the morning.”

“Why? It’s Saturday.”

“You have a golf tournament tomorrow. Did you forget?”

David groaned. “I wish I could. I hate golf! I don’t see why I have to play in that stupid tournament. Anyway, I’m no damn good.”

“You watch your language, young man.” Maggy frowned, and pointed an admonishing forefinger at him to underscore her words. David shrugged in silent, sulky apology. “And you are too good.”

David shook his head gloomily. “Dad says that if I just keep at it I’ll improve. He says that every Forrest is just about pro material on a golf course. But I’m not. He should say every Forrest but me.”

The hurt in his eyes banished her annoyance. Maggy sighed, crossing her arms over her chest to keep from reaching out and drawing him to her, which she knew he’d resist.

“You don’t have to be like Dad, or any other Forrest, David. You’re you. A unique individual. Who doesn’t have to be almost pro material at golf. Maybe you can be just kind of good, and play because you enjoy the game.”

“Yeah, right. Tell that to Dad.” Looking dejected, David reached around her for the knob.

“I will, if you want me to. Talk to Dad, I mean. About how you feel about golf.” At Maggy’s quiet offer as she stepped out of his path, David glanced sideways at her.

“No, don’t. I don’t want you and Dad to fight anymore. You’re always fighting.”

Anger was there in his glance and his voice. Maggy felt a stab of pain.

“Does it seem that way to you? I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. It’s your fault.”

More pain. Maggy tried not to let her son’s words pierce her so, but she couldn’t help it. As the person she loved most in the world, David possessed the power to wound her as no one else could.

For an instant they were both silent as the aftermath of David’s accusation reverberated in the air between them.

“Mom.” Without looking around, one hand still on the knob, David spoke to the white-painted door in front of him.

“Hmmm?” Maggy looked rather wearily at the back of his head, knowing herself once again defeated. As always, Lyle had won the battle for David’s allegiance. But instead of saying anything David turned suddenly and wrapped his arms tight around her waist, burying his face between her breasts. Surprised, Maggy nevertheless enfolded him against her. With a wordless little murmur she hugged him close, pressing her lips to the tumbled locks atop his head.

“I love you, Mom.” The words were muffled, uttered with a kind of fierce defiance that made Maggy ache. A child shouldn’t have to tell his mother he loved her in that tone. What had she done, to herself and to him, on that miserably humid night twelve years ago when she had forever linked their future with Lyle’s? David was hers,
hers
, and yet Lyle stood forever between them. Lyle, whom she hated and David adored.

“I know, sweetheart. I love you too.” It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. But for David, she managed it. He was just eleven years old, and she would not burden him with the pain that was by rights all hers.

David gave her a quick, hard hug before shoving free. Then, turning to jerk open the door, he almost ran from the room.

The force of his shove caused her to stagger back a pace. After recovering her balance, Maggy stepped out into the hall, watching him as he vanished into his own room two doors down from hers. A smallish bedroom suite that had once belonged to the nanny Lyle had insisted on when David was younger was located between them. Since Miss Hadley’s retirement two years before, it had been converted into a playroom for David.

David had left his door open. He vanished into his room without looking back, and the door slammed behind him. Maggy stood without moving for a moment longer, hands clasped in front of her, eyes unseeing. Then she turned and reentered her room, locking the door behind her in a gesture that had become automatic over the years.

David had said that he loved her. Well, she loved him, too. Enough to do anything for him. To give up anything for him.

Enough to give up everything for him. Which, she sometimes thought, was just what she had done.

T
he next day, Saturday, April 11, was Maggy’s thirtieth birthday. She rose at six
A.M
. as was her habit, did her regular twenty minutes on the LifeCycle in her bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed her face and smeared on a little of the creamy sun-block that she used to protect her fair skin anytime she so much as stuck her nose outside. Later she would shower, wash and style her hair, and dress for the day, but these early-morning hours were hers, and she refused to waste a single minute on something as superfluous as an elaborate toilette. Running a quick brush through the tangled shoulder-blade-length strands of her hair, she secured the heavy mass of it with a tortoiseshell barrette at her nape and moved into her dressing room. Quickly she pulled on jeans so old and well-worn that they were faded almost white on the knees and seat, a man’s small-size T-shirt topped by a baggy white cotton pullover sweater, and an olive-green hooded anorak, and slipped out of the house. Rubberized boots that came halfway up her calves protected her feet from the soaked ground as she headed toward the kennels where her two Irish wolfhounds, Seamus and Bridey, were already barking in anticipation of her arrival.

The time was just a few minutes past six thirty. The sun, barely up, was a chilly-looking ball hanging low in the lightening sky to the east, just above where the thickly treed hills of the Kentucky and Indiana shores were parted
by the Ohio River. The rain had stopped sometime during the night, but the air was cold and Maggy’s breath rose in little frosty puffs as she shoved at the latch on the eight-foot-tall fence that enclosed the dogs. At last it shot free, and the dogs came tumbling out, leaping over each other and her in their frenzy of excitement at being released for their morning walk.

“Cool it, guys,” she said, rubbing first one importunate gray head and then the other before setting off along the driveway with a sharp whistle that brought them to heel. She didn’t really feel like walking this morning, but their early-morning outing was the highlight of the dogs’ day, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to disappoint them, so here she was. She was tired, bone-tired, and not just because she had gotten so little sleep the night before. What she was suffering from was not so much physical as spiritual exhaustion. She was tired of her life. Desperately tired of it, and she could see no way out. She was trapped, a prisoner with no hope of parole. The knowledge sucked the energy from her.

Feathers of fine white mist rose lazily from the ground as she turned off the driveway and headed down toward the woods that covered the hillside that made up the bulk of the property. The woods were thick and overgrown except where paths had been worn or cut through them, and she generally confined her walk to a favorite path that wound down and around to the gatekeeper’s cottage before meandering back up again. As she reached the path and began to follow it downhill, she flipped the hood of her anorak over her head. It was appreciably darker and colder here where the sun didn’t quite reach. But dense as the treetops were, a few stray beams managed to penetrate the gloom with slanting bands of soft yellow light. The effect was eerily beautiful, and it was one of the reasons that Maggy had originally chosen the woods for these early-morning rambles. No matter how bad her life might seem, the sheer beauty of the earth never failed to lighten
her heart. She felt the magic begin to work this morning, too, as some of her sense of hopelessness eased.