Michael’s Wife (11 page)

There was a glass in his hand and his coat was unbuttoned. He pretended to study the flagstone of the courtyard. For all she'd learned of his boyhood she couldn't picture him as anything but a grown and bitter man. What would he have been like if he'd never met Laurel? If he'd married some safe and responsible woman like Claire Bently? He didn't bother to look up as she came to stand beside him.

“I see you can't sleep either.”

“I'm working on it.” He drained half the glass with one swallow.

“Michael, we're going to have to talk sometime.” She felt small standing next to him.

“All right. Janet tells me you've taken to sneaking out at night,” he said with that menacing softness. “Let's talk about that.”

“I went out once, only once. I followed Consuela. Did you know she's been taking Jimmy to the Wishing Shrine? To wish … to wish that his mother would come back to him?”

“Poor Consuela. She has delusions about motherhood. Why did you come back anyway?” There were dark hollows around those unnerving eyes.

“That's what I wanted to talk about.”

He finished his drink with a second swallow and faced her. “So talk.” His voice was almost a whisper.

She was filled with the same breathless sensation, a mixture of fear and fluster she had whenever he looked at her directly. She wanted to run. “I don't know why I came back.”

“You're just full of answers tonight.” The smell of whiskey was strong on his breath.

“I can't remember why. Michael, I don't remember anything—you—Jimmy—anything. I didn't know my name till I called you from the motel that night. I had your name on a piece of paper and nothing else but the clothes on my back. I can't tell you where I've been because I don't know. Please believe me.”

“Oh, yes, I've heard you suffer from amnesia. That explains everything and so conveniently. Christ!” The glass shattered into tinkling fragments on the flagstone and he had her by the arm. “Where'd you get that one, off the TV screen? Well, I'm not the damn fool you married, Laurel.”

“Michael!” A voice in her head screamed to her to get away, but he grabbed her other arm and held her against him, his breath hot on her forehead, the buttons of his coat cold through her nightgown.

“Let me tell you why you came back. Things didn't go well with whoever you were living with, did they? Short on money maybe? So you decided a little luxury would be a nice change of pace. Thought you'd look up old Michael and maybe for laughs see what the baby looked like? Or you're in some kind of trouble and you had to get away. Now
that
I could accept, but don't expect me to swallow amnesia.”

He let go of her and sat on a stone couch, rubbing his forehead. For just a moment he looked defeated, this man who a second before was in a rage. His bursts of anger seemed to end as abruptly as they began. Everything about him was abrupt, startling.

“This … this luxury, as you call it, couldn't have been what I came back for. I don't even like it here.”

“Then why the hell don't you go? Leave us in peace. As soon as this mess in Denver is cleared up, you're free as the wind. If it's money you want, I'll give you money. Just get out of my life and Jimmy's.”

When he raised his voice, she felt safer with him. It was when he grew so still and tense that she feared him most. “I can't.”

“Why? Because of Jimmy?” He was mocking her now.

“Yes. He needs a mother, Michael. Can't you see it?” She sat next to him.

“And just what do you suppose he needed two years ago? You walk out on a newborn baby and now he needs a mother!”

“It was an awful thing to do. I don't know how I could have … how anybody could. If you weren't all so sure I'm Laurel, I'd swear it was someone else who deserted Jimmy. I don't remember it … I don't feel capable of such a thing. There must have been a reason. I'm sure I'll remember everything soon. Maybe there was a good reason.”

“Like what?” He was growing still again, the handsome profile set in concrete.

“I … I can't think of any. It was inexcusable, I guess. Whatever the reason it wouldn't excuse what … what you say I did.”

“No, it wouldn't. So get out now before you do any more damage.”

Somewhere in the desert night a bird screeched and fell silent. A breeze rippled the surface of the pool and the water lapped gently against its tile prison.

“I can't do that. I have to make it up to him.”

“What is it going to do to him when he starts thinking of you as his mother and you get the wanderlust? You're good at walking in and out of people's lives, not caring what you leave behind. If you've got any soul left in you, Laurel, you won't stay and put him through that.”

She saw a boy standing in the wrecked nursery, rage giving way to tears. Michael knew what it was to lose a mother. “I won't let it happen again. Somehow I'll keep it from happening.” Laurel realized she was crying. Would she forget again and just wander off? Should she see a doctor?

“You won't go?” He stood up as if to get away from her.

“I can't. Unless they send me to prison.” She was looking up at him through tears, as she had that first night in the motel.

“All right, stay. Rot here. But if you hurt my son in any way I'll wrap that hair of yours around your neck and choke you with it.”

“I don't want to hurt anyone. I want to make up for what I did.” But Michael was gone and she sobbed to an empty courtyard.

8

The next time Laurel prowled late at night around the shadowed arcades of the Devereaux mansion was the last time.

A warm night, in the middle of the week, so she needn't worry about meeting Michael. She left her coat in her room and walked briskly, purposely trying to tire herself. Tonight the moonlight lent a fairy tale softness to the still courtyard. No shadows moved against the walls. Even the leaves on the odd crooked trees seemed to sleep. Blooming flowers in hanging baskets accented the air, their colors dimmed by the strange light of night.

Unable to ignore the beauty around her, she slowed and finally stopped to lean against a column and look down upon the courtyard below.

Moments like this should be enjoyed and remembered. How many such moments had she forgotten? Had there been times in her childhood when something unexpected and beautiful had come to her this way? What were her parents like? Her father must be a cruel tyrant to have turned away a grandson and disowned a daughter. But how could her mother have gone along with it?
How could I have abandoned Jimmy?
Her arguments with herself always ended with this last question.

These thoughts were spoiling the loveliness of the night, and she began pacing back and forth along the balcony. Her parents could not be pleasant people and she wouldn't call them until she'd sorted herself out. Her life needed no more unpleasantness.

Laurel found herself at the top of the stone stairs and stepped down them to the courtyard. Stopping beside a basket of purple petunias, she sniffed their spiciness.
When I do remember, I hope it will be in a peaceful moment like this
. A doctor might help her remember sooner. Would the Devereaux let her molder in an institution as Evan had implied? She didn't think much of Evan's mentality, but this family clearly did not want her.

“Dear Michael will leave his little problems on our doorstep.”

“Take Jimmy and move to Phoenix with Michael.”

“I could damn you to hell for coming back.”

She stepped quickly onto the flagstone. The problem with not remembering the past was that one remembered the present all too vividly. Perhaps if she jogged, instead of walked. Laurel smiled at the thought of herself doing a clumsy jogging step in a yellow nightgown around a moonlit courtyard fit for a Romeo and Juliet scene.

Directly in front of her, on the wall outside of Paul's study, a shadow moved. Only this shadow moved. The others were still. Her smile went empty.

Moonlight penetrated only the lower half of the arcade and she watched the shadow rise, swing upward in a long … slow … threatening arch, like an arm rising to strike … it disappeared into the solid shadow of the balcony above.

Laurel stood very still and tried to reason with herself. Anyone in her condition could imagine anything. Adrenaline set fire to every nerve ending in her body. It had been too long for an arm.
Get away from here
! Where the shadow had been before moving upward, there was a dark silhouette of what could be a shoe with a leg cut off by some sort of a long coat … if someone stood behind that column watching her … he might not be aware of his own shadow behind him …

Laurel couldn't remember getting to the stone stairs. She was just there, taking two at a time … all the other shadows had been still … too long for an arm … she raced along the balcony.…

… The moonlight was dimming. Vivid lights shimmered in front of her … she fumbled with the knob of the door to her room … red and purple lights and green … heavenly lightness to her body … quieting her nerves … slowing her breathing … she relaxed against the door.…

What … what was she doing out here?

A soft padding sounded behind her and she shook the lights away, almost falling into the room as the door opened. She slammed it closed, shot the bolt and listened.

Nothing.

Nothing but her own fear ringing in her ears.

Her skin felt horribly sticky. She'd imagined the shadow and the padding sound. Laurel was breathing too deeply, making herself dizzy.

But the shadow had moved … hadn't it? No, it hadn't and that's why they locked people like her away.

She crossed the room and bolted the door to the hallway. It could have been an arm if the hand at the end of the arm held something long and straight … like a club … or a stick. “Michael learned to kill at an early age,” Paul had said. But Michael wasn't home and she was running scared at imagined shadows and losing control of herself and someone stood at one of the long narrow windows to the balcony. A dark figure wearing a loose-fitting coat of some kind, holding a.…

Noise, piercing and dreadful, all around her and Laurel put her hands over her ears to shut it away.

“My God, what's happening!”

“Is she hurt?”

“She must have been dreaming.”

“Why's she sitting on the floor?”

“What time is it anyway?”

“Mommy?”

Legs, slippers, robes, the lights were on … her eyes, stinging.…

“Claire, get Jimmy back to bed, he shouldn't see this. Laurel, can you stand up?”

“Michael, she hasn't blinked since I came in here.”

“Here, see if you can stand up.” Michael's voice. Warm hands on each side of her pulled her to her feet. Michael and Paul.

Michael! Laurel drew away from them and sat on the bed.

“Now, why all the hysterics?” Michael put her robe over her shoulders.

“Someone … chased me in the courtyard.”

“But you were sitting on the floor with all the doors locked, screaming. We had to come through Jimmy's room. Are you sure you didn't dream it?”

“I ran in here and locked the doors and … he looked in the window. He carried something … something long.”

“Who carried something?” Claire came from Jimmy's room.

“I couldn't see … someone.…” The look of doubt on their faces silenced her.

“Rot! You don't really think there's someone in the house?” Janet, in her grisly night attire was like a butterfly that could continually reenter its cocoon and return as something different.

. “I doubt it, but I'll check the locks. Michael, you have a look through the house. You ladies can go back to bed. Lock your doors just in case.” There were two Paul's, one fussed about like a little old lady organizing a church bazaar, the other watched from behind his glasses, detached and what … reproachful?

Everyone but Janet wore loose-fitting robes resembling what she thought she saw on the silhouette at the window.

Claire rolled her eyes, gave Michael a sympathetic look, and left the room. Paul took Janet's arm and guided her to the door. She could hear them whispering in the hall.

Laurel was left staring back at Michael on the big bed. “I didn't know you were home.”

“I work this weekend so I have tomorrow and the next day off. I came in late after you'd gone upstairs and … I did
not
chase you around the courtyard.” His lips smiled; his eyes looked bored and unamused. “Get under the covers, you're shaking.”

“Aren't you supposed to be looking through the house?”

“For what? A phantom carrying something long? Long like what?”

“Like a mallet or … an ax.” She backed away from him and crawled beneath the covers, putting most of the bed between them.

“First you have amnesia and now someone's chasing you with an ax. Laurel, you used to have a better imagination. You're slipping badly.” He moved about the room, turning off lights. He left the one on the bedside table next to her until last. His long graceful fingers coiled around its switch, fine black hairs gleaming in the lamplight. Laurel found she couldn't swallow.

“And believe me, dear wife, if I wanted to do away with you, I wouldn't use anything as messy as an ax.”

Michael's low chuckle had barely faded outside on the balcony when she was out of bed and bolting both doors … into Jimmy's room and bolting his door … back to turn on every light in the enormous bedroom. Laurel came close to not making it into the bathroom in time to vomit again and again.

Clutching her middle, where sore muscles pulled and burned at every movement, she crawled back into bed and waited for the accompanying chills to subside. Michael
wouldn't
use an ax. If he wanted to kill … if he were angry enough to kill … and he could be … Michael would use his bare hands. He'd probably strangle a woman or beat a man to a pulp. He'd taken an ax to the nursery, but that Michael had been only ten. This man Michael just wouldn't. Would he? Unless he … or someone wanted to frighten her away … had used the ax or whatever it was as a threat. Almost everyone in this house wanted her gone.