Not Your Everyday Housewife (17 page)

She was home, where she belonged.

They were starting over. He closed his eyes and breathed in the lilac scent of her. He loved his wife, and she loved him.

Nothing else mattered.

Derry barely had time to pull the Navigator into the driveway when the front door flew open and Charlie came running out, his little legs moving like a tiny windmill.

“Mom! Mom!” He jumped up and down beside the SUV, a huge smile plastered over his tanned face.

He looked so much like his father. Derry smiled and climbed out of the Navigator. “Hey, big guy! I missed you.”

Charlie flung himself at her, his arms clutching her waist. “I missed you more!”

“I don’t know about that.” She buried her face in his hair, inhaling the green-apple scent. No matter what happened between her and Alec, Charlie would always be part of her. “I’ve got two bags of presents for you.”

His dark head popped up. “Can I have them now?”

“As soon as we unload the car.” She looked toward the house. “Where’s Grandma?”

“Inside, fixing lunch. Black beans and brown rice.” He stuck out his tongue. “She said I have to get more fiber.”

Derry laughed. “Maybe you can have a ‘no thank you’ helping with your peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Charlie grinned. “I’m glad you got home
before
lunch.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“At work. Why?”

She shrugged, fighting the disappointment that curdled in her stomach. “No reason.”

“Sheila’s inside though.” His face lit up. “She’s really cool.”

“Sheila?”

“Yeah, Dad said she’s some kind of relative.” His freckled nose scrunched up in thought. “I think she’s one of yours, but I can’t remember what Dad said.”

“She’s inside?”

“Uh-huh.” He pulled her toward the back of the Navigator and peeked through the window. “She’s been staying in your room so you might have to sleep in Dad’s room tonight.”

Alec hadn’t said a word about inviting a stranger to stay at their home. So what if she
claimed
to be Derry’s sister? So what if she ended up
being
Derry’s sister? She was still a stranger and he shouldn’t have involved Charlie.

“Her kids are older,” Charlie said. “Two boys and a girl.” Derry pressed the trunk release and he reached his scrawny arms inside to grab at a bag. “Is this bag mine?”

“Out of there, right now.” She snatched the shopping bag from him. “Not until we get the truck unloaded, young man.”

“I was only gonna take a quick look.”

“No, or I’ll make you eat a full serving of Grandma’s black beans and rice.”

“Gross.”

“Okay then. Crawl in there and push the bags to me.”

Charlie scrambled inside the SUV and scooted three more shopping bags and Derry’s suitcase to the edge. “You know what else I like about Sheila?” His blue eyes flashed with emotion. “She doesn’t treat me like a little kid like Grandma does.”

Derry hefted the suitcase off the Navigator and set it on the ground. “Oh?”

“Nope. She doesn’t try to part my hair when I wash it like Grandma does, and I got to pick the vegetables for dinner last night. Grandma always matches colors. Sheila didn’t care if there were two yellows on the plate. Corn and yellow rice,” he said grinning.

“Two of your favorites.”

“Sheila says they’re her favorites, too.”

I’ll bet.
Derry lifted the suitcase and two bags. “You grab the other two, Charlie boy.”

“Okay. Hey, is that a soccer ball in there?”

“Out, do not peek or you know what you’ll be eating.”

He laughed and ran ahead of her, shopping bags banging against his skinny legs. “Wait until Sheila sees what you got me! She loves soccer!”

“Charlie, wait!”

But he’d already bounded up the stairs and into the house, yelling, “Sheila, I got a new soccer ball!”

Vivien appeared at the door, tight-lipped and agitated. “Thank God you’re home.”

***

Sheila Regati sat cross-legged on the floor, her long silver-black hair curling around her hips. She wore a chartreuse mosaic skirt with two metal belts crisscrossed over slim hips and a black gauzy blouse with Stevie Nicks’ sleeves flowing six inches from her wrists. Her body jangled from the spray of silver jewelry adorning her ears, neck, wrists, and ankles. Her feet were bare, and an indigo butterfly stamped the outside of her ankle.

Her face shone clean and her skin bore the dark, leathery quality of ten years too long in the sun. There was something about the shape of her nose and the high cheekbones that might mark her as Derry’s blood but really little else.

The woman fascinated Derry, even as she feigned indifference. When Sheila spoke, her green eyes glittered with passion, and remnants of another unidentifiable emotion. Pain?

“I know this must all seem so absolutely bizarre to you,” she said in a soft, husky voice that belied years of smoke and drink. “I’m sorry if I upset your—” she swept heavily ringed hands in the air— “very organized, suburban life, but I really had no choice.” There was that emotion fluttering across her face again as she said,
“I had to find you.”

“Why?”

Sheila’s laugh rolled over Derry like a long sip of Southern Comfort. “Why would I want to find my sister?” She leaned against the back of the sofa and stretched a bare foot. “I think the better question is why wouldn’t I?”

“But how did you find me? My adoptive parents refused to tell me anything about my past.”

Her gaze drifted to the mosaic pattern in her skirt. “Patience is the great survivor. If you want the answer to a question bad enough and you wait long enough, the answer will come to you.” She lifted her green eyes to Derry. “Do you know my real name is Beatrice?” She laughed and threw her arms in the air. “Beatrice, for Christ’s sake.”

“So, how’d you come up with Sheila?”

“I was dating an Australian soccer player and Sheila means girl in that country. It seemed funny at the time and it really pissed off my father. Ah, I used to love to piss him off.” She sucked in a huge breath and shook her head so a mane of silver feathered her shoulders. “But that is indeed another story. What would you say, Derry Amelia Rohan, half sister of mine, younger by eleven years, if I told you that
you
were the one our mother wanted to keep, not her other two children?”

That made no sense at all. “I…don’t know what I’d say.”

Sheila shrugged. “It’s a bitch, but it’s true. She had an affair with a musician, a violinist from Austria who stayed with us one summer. He was seven years younger than she, and brilliant with blue eyes just like yours. His name was Gustaf. He stayed three months and when he returned to his home, she was heartbroken, and pregnant. She took to her bed and became so depressed the doctor worried she’d lose you.” Sheila sighed and plucked tiny peaks into her skirt. “She tried to leave us. I was ten at the time, my sister six. All she wanted was to be with Gustaf. When she told my father the baby wasn’t his, he slammed her into a wall, and punched her in the stomach.” She let out a small, choked laugh. “We were Catholic, so abortion was out of the question. I guess beating the kid to death wasn’t though. Imagine that.”

“I can’t.”

“You were born January 13
^th
, close to midnight. She almost bled to death, but the nuns of St. Cecily cared for her and twelve days later she came home.”

“And that’s when she gave me up for adoption?”

Sheila’s green eyes pierced her as though she’d committed a sacrilege. “She didn’t give you up,
he
did. He forbade any of us to look for you, said if we did, he’d kill you, even if he burned in hell.”

“But he couldn’t do that.” This story had the makings of a Stephen King novel.

“Our mother tried once. She called the nuns and begged them to tell her where you were. He found out of course, and burned a cross on her stomach with a cigarette.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus wasn’t around when all of this was going on. And He sure as hell wasn’t around when the old man threw her into a wall for trying to find you. She lost the vision in her left eye from that. Eventually, the doctor put her on enough valium so she just sat around all day, staring at the television. When a girl came on television who might be the same age as you, our mother’s eyes kind of glazed, and she’d get this silly little smile on her lips. It was damn pathetic.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died four years ago. I was in New Mexico and couldn’t get back for the funeral.”

“And your father?”

“Lung cancer two months ago, thank God.”

“Oh.”

“She looked a lot like you, you know? The hair, the mouth, the tiny nostrils. You look more like her than I do. I, unfortunately, bear an uncanny resemblance to my asshole father. She wanted you so bad.” Her voice dipped, filled with undisguised pain, “And she got stuck with us. Shit, I need a cigarette.”

Derry pulled a pack of Kools out of the desk drawer and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” Sheila fished in her pocket for matches. “I’m trying to quit.”

Derry found a seashell ashtray buried in the bottom drawer and handed it to her. “What was her name?” she asked quietly. All these years of self destruction, all because she’d been given away, and now, it turned out
she
was wanted. She’d been loved.

“Mary Elizabeth.”

“Mary,” Derry repeated.

“You’ve got another half sister, too. Rachel. She’s a big wig in Baltimore. Pediatric Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. Divorced twice, no kids.”

“And what about you?”

Sheila blew out a fine line of smoke. “No husband, two kids floating around somewhere between Los Angeles and St. Louis. I see them on the holidays.”

Derry, who lived by a tough guy attitude, felt an overwhelming surge of sympathy for this woman next to her. There was something sad and hollow about a person who could only give an approximation of her children’s whereabouts.

“Where do you live?”

Sheila’s thin lips pulled into a slow smile. “Here and there.”

“More here or more there?”

She laughed and said, “Do you think I’m crazy? I’ve got a Ph.D. in Abnormal Psychology from Berkeley and I taught there for ten years. I’ve published sixty papers and next year there’s a book coming out that I co-authored.” Sheila stubbed out her cigarette and tossed it in the ashtray. She reached for another and said, matter-of-factly, “I’m also schizophrenic and if I don’t take my medications it’s not a pretty sight.”

She didn’t look crazy. A 60’s flower child maybe, but a schizophrenic? And Alec had let her alone with Charlie.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Everyone gets that look when I tell them. I know how to control myself, and I do because I have no desire to end up in a straightjacket in some mental ward for five months again.”

“I don’t…know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.” Sheila blew out another line of smoke. “I’ve waited forty years to see you, and you know what, it’s been worth the wait. You’re everything she could’ve hoped for. Maybe she knew you’d be the best of all of us.” She waved a thin hand and the air jangled with metal. “Look at you. The house, the husband, the kid. Charlie’s great by the way. And Alec, I don’t have to tell you what a fine specimen
he
is. You’ve got it all together, don’t you? You’re brilliant, and beautiful, too. When your mother-in-law heard I held a Ph.D. she made sure I heard about all of your successes.” She laughed. “It’s touching really, to have such champs in your corner.”

Derry opened her mouth to tell her sister the truth.
I feel as screwed up as you, my husband is divorcing me, Charlie isn’t my real child, and I’ve spent almost forty years running from the pain of being abandoned as a baby.

But she said none of this, because Sheila needed something to believe in, and for once, Derry was the one who could give somebody that hope.

“I’m glad you came,” was all she said.

“I had to,” Sheila murmured. “Can I just stay a little while? Maybe a few more days?”

“You can stay as long as you like.” Derry moved toward her sister, who sat like a fragile bird fighting descent. She pulled her into her arms and inhaled the sunflower scent on Sheila’s skin. “As long as you like.”

“Thank you for agreeing to let me stay here.” Derry sat on the edge of the bed with her back to Alec.

“It’s only a few days.” He shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it on the bed.

“I know, but thank you.”

Alec stared at the back of her head, surprised at her diffidence, a term he’d never associated with his wife. “You’re welcome.” Then, because he didn’t want to deal with the actual sharing of the bed part yet, he said, “How’s your sister doing? She seemed pretty mellowed-out.”

Derry let out a small laugh and turned toward him. “You should’ve seen her at dinner. She had Charlie practically spitting milk through his nose with her stories. I think she wore herself out.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.” He’d planned it that way, of course. Anything to prolong seeing his wife again. So, he’d wandered to La Trattoria and suffered through a tedious dinner with his investment advisor about the next Amazon stock, most of which he tuned out. All he could think of was Derry in their house again, touching the same things he’d touched that morning, moving through the same rooms, breathing the same air.

Alec plodded through half his Veal Piccata, forcing his jaw to move with slow, mechanical precision. His senses were so full of Derry that he tasted nothing, and when the waiter brought a dessert tray lined with his favorite pastries, he declined.

Filing divorce papers against a woman who was five hundred plus miles away was one thing, but when she was sitting on the other side of the bed, wearing boxer shorts and a tank top, with no bra, well, dammit, that muddled a man’s senses. Images of Derry sexing it up with Steve Miller exploded in his brain. He wanted to grab the photos from his study drawer, throw them on the bed and force her to explain.

But part of him did not want to see those lips admitting her betrayal. Not yet.

“Sheila told me I was the one our mother wanted.” Her blue eyes glittered. “All these years I thought I was the cast-off, but she had it so much worse. It must have been hell to live with a mother who didn’t want her.”

Alec sank onto his side of the bed, thankful it was a king size. Seeing her so vulnerable made him want to touch her, take her in his arms and comfort her.

And that would be a big mistake.

He propped a pillow behind his head and stuck his arms under it to prevent himself from doing something stupid. It was hard to think with her so close, looking so needy.

“Maybe that explains why she’s so out there,” he said, determined to talk his way out of his growing desire for his adulterous wife.

“She taught at Berkeley,” Derry said, “and she holds a Ph.D. in Abnormal Psychology. But she can’t seem to conquer the demons inside. I know what that’s like,” she murmured.

Skip that subject.
“How long do you think she’ll be staying?”

She shrugged and the cotton tank pulled against her left breast. Alec pictured himself sliding the tank over her head, pictured the perfect, pale breasts filling his hands.

“A few days, maybe a week.”

He nodded, his eyes on the slim column of her neck. He’d had many women before Derry, but none since her and none like her. She rendered him powerful and weak, zealous and humble. If only they’d been able to get past the truth about Charlie.

“Did she tell you she’s a schizophrenic?”

That snapped him back to the conversation quick. “What?”

Derry worked her lower lip through her teeth, something she did when she was nervous. “A schizophrenic. She said she’s fine as long as she takes her medication.”

“Great.” He ran a hand over his face and rubbed his jaw. “Just what I need in the house, another Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“Implying I’m the
first
Jekyll and Hyde?”

His face turned hot and he mumbled, “You’ve had your moments lately.”

“I guess I have.” She sighed. “I need her to stay, Alec. It’s the least I can do.”

“I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I should’ve had her investigated.”

“For God’s sake, she’s not a criminal.”

“No, but you’d be surprised what you can discover when you start looking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He didn’t miss the edge in her voice that said,
don’t engage
, but he plowed forward. “Sometimes people say one thing and do another. Or”—he forced her to meet his gaze—“sometimes they do whatever they want because they don’t think anyone will ever find out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, you should know, shouldn’t you?”

“I was talking about you.”

“Me?” If he thought Derry had a new subdued persona, he was wrong. This casual, veiled accusation had her furious. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

God, she was a good liar.
“As a matter of fact, I do. Would you care to compare notes?”

Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “No, I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction. Just don’t think I didn’t figure out why you were never here every time I called. I know what you were doing, Alec.” She leaned forward and spat out in a low voice, “I know.”

Right.
Let her think he was screwing somebody, at least she wouldn’t know the hold she had on him.

“And I know what you’ve been doing, so we’re even. It’ll all come out soon enough.”

“Sending me divorce papers through the mail was really cheap.”

He shrugged. “I wanted to give you plenty of time to adjust to the idea.”

“I’m fine.” Her chest heaved with an effort to control her temper. “I just don’t want to deal with this right now, not until Sheila leaves. Can you do that for me?”

“Oh.” He let out a harsh laugh. “You want me to play the loving husband for your new-found sister.”

“I have to give her something to believe in.”

“Even if it’s a lie.”

She looked away. “It wasn’t always a lie,” she said in a quiet voice.

“No, it wasn’t.” In that moment, Alec loved and hated her with an equal fierceness that scared him. He wanted to make love to her as much as he wanted to choke the life from her beautiful body. He was the one who’d become Jekyll and Hyde.

“What do you want, Alec? Tell me what it will take to get you to agree.”

Now, there was the fifty million dollar proposition.
What did he want?
The answer spewed from his lips before he could pull it back. “You. Willingly, openly, every night until she leaves.”

***

“Oh, baby, I missed you.” Richard trailed a tan finger along Shea’s leg. “You have no idea how much.”

Shea shifted on the couch and fixed her gaze on the television. He’d been touching her for the last forty minutes. Mini massages to the neck and shoulders, strokes to the arms, butterfly caresses on her belly and legs. And she felt nothing but growing irritation.

“Do you hear me, baby?” His husky voice slid over her. “Do you hear the want in my voice?”

“Is that the same want you used for Tanya?” She kept her eyes on the television screen.

“Aw, Christ, baby, I made a mistake. I’ve been apologizing for the last two hours. Don’t make me pay for it for the rest of my life.”

“You moved in with her, Richard,” Shea said, wondering why she didn’t feel outrage at the words. “You got her pregnant.” Even those words didn’t spark the angry despair she’d suffered six weeks ago.

“It might not even be my kid. I wasn’t the only one she was screw—I mean, involved with.”

“Tanya’s been a busy girl.”

“She’s a slut.”

“And you just realized that?”

The caressing stopped. Thank God. “Look at me, baby. Don’t turn away.” And then, from the depths of a place she didn’t know existed in him, he said, “Please?”

Curiosity made her shift toward him. He looked the same. Still handsome in a George Hamilton way, with a deep, rich voice that made women
want
to please him.

“We can start over, do it right this time.” His silver eyes shimmered. “I was thinking we could fly to Vegas and renew our marriage vows, stay at the Bellagio. What do you think?”

What did she think?
That the delivery was perfect, the inflection precise, the tone superb. Even the suggestion proved commendable. Only one area suffered—that innate trait that couldn’t be cultivated or captured, and which Richard sadly lacked, had always lacked but hidden so well. Sincerity. Marcus Orelean had possessed an abundance of sincerity. Shea forced him from her thoughts and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” His expression darkened but he persisted. “You were always the one who said you wanted a romantic wedding. Well, I’m offering it to you. I can schedule a flight for Thursday.”

“I think we should wait.”

“I’m trying here, Shea, I just need a little help.”

“Why don’t we see whose baby Tanya’s carrying before we think about renewing any vows?” The absurdity of discussing her husband’s paternity woes made her want to burst out laughing.

Maybe she was going to be okay after all.

Richard was another story.

“It’s about the kid, isn’t it?” He flashed her one of his ultra-white smiles and said, “If you really want a kid, we’ll have one. Okay?”

Shea scooted out of his lap and plunked herself next to him. “Richard, this is not about the baby I lost.” Finally, there was a trickle of pain oozing out.

He had the honesty to look confused. “What then?”

“This marriage.” She spread her hands wide, palms up. “It isn’t working; it hasn’t worked in a long time. Maybe it never worked.”

“I’ll start being around more, okay?”

“It’s not just that—”

“And I won’t look at any more women, ever.”

“Richard, stop.”

“I need this, Shea.” Just the slightest touch of desperation skittered across his handsome face. “You can’t give up on me, I need you.”

She didn’t want to be needed. She hated it. Why couldn’t she ever be the one to need someone?

“Tell me what you want. Anything. Just don’t leave me.”