Sins of Innocence (39 page)

Jess stood alone, a tiny woman in mauve silk and diamonds, with dark circles under her eyes and a wrenching in her heart such as she had never known. Suicide. Her daughter had tried to commit suicide. Her thoughts jumped back to the orchid-draped coffin at her mother’s funeral. Her mother hadn’t slashed her wrists. She’d done it with pills. Pills and booze. She never would have slashed her wrists—too dramatic … too messy. Jess tried to force the image of her mother from her mind. What had
she looked like in death? Had she been lying on her white satin sheets, her eyes closed in peace, her head cushioned by the thick down pillows? Or had she fallen to the floor, a look of anguish and horror permanently etched on her delicate face?

A bolt of pain shot through Jess. She grabbed her chest. “Oh, God,” she cried out. This wasn’t her mother. It was her daughter. Her daughter. Trying to end her own precious life.

“What’s going on?” It was Charles, standing behind her. “Are they releasing her?”

She snapped around. “Get out of here,” she said. “Get out of here. You’ve done enough.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Come into the lobby and sit, Jess. You’re overwrought.”

She squirmed from his touch. “Overwrought? I’ll say I’m overwrought! You son of a bitch! This is all your fault.…”

“Hey, keep it down.”

“Keep it down? Why? Are you afraid someone will hear? Someone will hear that the wonderful, perfect Randall household is actually a living hell?”

“One more word and I’m leaving.”

“Good. Get out.”

A nurse appeared. “Excuse me. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in the lobby. We can’t have you disturbing the other patients.”

Jess nodded and held her tears in check. “I’m sorry,” she said, and walked toward the lobby. Charles followed her.

She sat on the blue vinyl couch and stared up at the small television. The volume was too low to hear: It didn’t matter; Jess wasn’t interested in what was on.

“We’re not through with our discussion,” Charles said as he sat beside her.

“Yes, we are.”

“No, we’re not.” His voice had grown quiet. “No matter what kind of ogre you think I am, I do not want to see my daughter die.”

“She’s not going to die, Charles. She only cut one wrist, and it didn’t work. Maybe the fucked-up gene isn’t as strong as you’d thought.”

“Jess, please …”

“Charles, we’ve been married twenty years. Do you realize that all you’ve ever done is criticize me? Have you once tried to understand me? Have you ever once thought of me as a person, as an equal? It seems to me you’ve only wanted me around when you needed to look good. When you wanted to show what a wonderful family man you are. Well, part of being a family man is sticking by your family when they need you. When they need a husband. When they need a father. You’re a phony, Charles Randall. And I’m ashamed to call you my husband.” The tone of her voice was so controlled, Jess hardly recognized it.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’ve always been there for you and the kids.”

“ ‘There’? What do you mean? That your physical presence has always been there?” Jess gave a small laugh. “It’s not enough, Charles. It’s never been enough. You never wanted to know about the bad things. You turned your head and let me deal with them. Like the time your oldest son punched out that little boy in the first grade who was half the size of him. Or the time Travis was caught stealing the quarters from Maura’s coin collection. Or,” she added slowly, “like the fact that you never once asked about my baby How it might have affected me to have given up a child.”

“This is still what it’s all about, isn’t it? That damn baby.”

“Not ‘that damn baby,’ Charles, a living, breathing human being. One whom I brought into this world, the same way as I did your children. I loved that baby, Charles, and I loved her father. You never cared about that. You never cared about the pain I held inside.”

“I knew all about your pain.”

An orderly breezed into the lobby and turned up the volume of the television. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup a moment, then went back into the hall.

“You don’t know anything about my pain. You don’t know everything that happened at Larchwood Hall.”

Charles turned from her face and looked blankly at the television. “Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.” She followed his gaze to the small, square screen as it flickered with the evening news. “I killed a man,” she said.

Charles dropped his head. “I know.”

Jess blinked. “What?”

“I know you killed the man,” he said evenly. “With a pair of sewing shears, wasn’t it? He was trying to kill one of the girls. Am I right?”

Jess felt her mouth drop open a little. “You knew? How did you know?”

Charles shrugged. “Your father told me.”

“Father told you? When?”

“Before we were married. He thought I should know.”

Heat rose in her cheeks. “And you never told me you knew? Why? Did he pay you off?” The sight of Father’s checkbook with the neat handwriting of
Bryant
flashed into her mind. She felt as though she was going to be sick. “How much did he pay you to marry me, anyway? How much did Father pay you to marry his daughter, the
whore
and the murderess?”

Charles folded his hands. “He didn’t pay me anything,” he said. “I cared about you.”

More than anything, Jess wished she could believe him.

“Do you think it’s been easy for me?” His voice was hushed in a hopefully-no-one-will-hear-this tone. “All these years? Fighting to live up to your standards?”

“
My
standards? All I ever wanted was a home. A family.”

He snorted. “Give me a break, Jess. All you ever wanted was someone to make you look good. To look ‘normal.’ ”

Jess couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No, Charles,” she said. “You’re wrong. You’re the one who needed to impress everyone. Not me. You’re the one who’s
needed the constant reassurance from outsiders—people who really couldn’t care less about you.”

A volunteer in a pink uniform came into the lounge and began straightening the magazines on a small plastic table. Beside Jess, Charles cleared his throat and smoothed down his hair. For the first time Jess realized how right she had been. Charles needed to impress everyone. It didn’t matter if it was a chairman of the board or a hospital volunteer.

The memories of when they met came flooding back. Jess had been eighteen. It was at a coming-out party for the daughter of one of Father’s associates. Charles was the girl’s handsome escort, and his smile had won Jess’s heart. He was a senior at Princeton, and rumors were that his father had lost the family fortune in a bad business deal in Central America. But that hadn’t mattered to Father, for Charles came from the “right stock,” and the Randall name was still respected on Wall Street. They were broke, but respected.

She thought of their courtship. Until then, Jess had never thought herself capable of love again. Not after Richard. But Charles had won her heart with his good looks and his easy charm. And, in her need for someone to love her, Jess believed that he did.

She turned to him now. He was stiff, distant. “You really did marry me for my money, didn’t you?” she asked.

He loosened the black tie of his tuxedo shirt. “It’s finally going to come down to that. Your money. I’ve often wondered how many years it would take before you threw that in my face.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“What it is, is a stupid question. It was a fact that you were rich. It was a fact that I no longer was. How the hell do I know if I’d have married you if you were poor? The issue never came up.”

The numbness that Jess felt crawled across her entire body. She looked at her husband with the sudden realization that she didn’t know him. Hadn’t really known him. All these years.

The doctor stepped into the lobby. “Mrs. Randall?” he asked.

Jess blinked.
Maura
, she thought.
Maura is who is important now
. She quickly stood and twisted the ring on her hand. “Yes?”

“Your daughter will be fine,” he said gently. “But we will have to report this, and you will need to get her into counseling.”

Jess nodded. Counseling. Of course. Something her mother never had. Something Jess had endured for years after … after killing Ginny’s stepfather. Then Jess pictured her thirteen-year-old redheaded son. Travis would need counseling too. And she would see that he got it. There would be no more secrets in this family. There would be no more cover-ups.

“There’s something else,” the doctor said gravely. “I’m afraid she’s lost the baby.”

Jess’s voice came out in a squeak. “Lost the baby?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ve given her a sedative. She’s asleep. We’ll be moving her into a room for the night. You can stay with her if you’d like.”

“She lost the baby?” Jess repeated.

“Yes. From the trauma, I suppose. But she’ll be fine.”

The doctor disappeared down the hall. Jess looked at her husband, searching for compassion. But the look on his face was only one of smug satisfaction.

Susan

Mark, sit down, I’d like to talk to you,” Susan said.

“I’m not hungry. I’ll grab a McMuffin at the mall.”

“This isn’t about food. It’s more important.”

“Are you going to get on me about Dad again?”

“What about your father?”

“That I like him, and it pisses you off.”

“Mark, please don’t use that kind of language. And no, this isn’t about your father.”

He flipped the chair around backward and sat at the table. “So if it’s not about Dad, this must be the annual
‘You’re a smart boy, Mark. I expect you to do well in school this year’ lecture. Don’t worry, Mom. Everything’s cool.” Under his breath he added, “Except for physics. Dr. Johnson’s a jerk.”

Susan shook her head. “This isn’t a lecture.” She knew there was no longer the need to preach about school to her son. He had inherited his father’s keen analytical intelligence, and when he put his mind to it, good grades came easily to him. One point for Lawrence, she thought.

“I want to talk to you about me.”

Mark laughed. “About you? What about you? You going through menopause or something?”

Susan was always surprised at how much the kids today knew. “Not yet.” She smiled and sat down beside him. Since Jess had left less than twenty-four hours ago, Susan had drunk countless mugs of tea and thought of little else but the reunion. But before she could come to any decision, there was one thing she knew she must do: She had to talk to Mark. She had spent all day Friday trying to form the right words to tell him about the baby she’d given up. She’d thought she was prepared. Now the queasiness in her stomach told Susan she wasn’t so sure. The fact that Mark wasn’t too pleased with his mother right now might make her timing all wrong, but it was something she had to do. In fact, it was something she’d meant to do a long time ago.

“Don’t tell me. You’re going to marry Bert Hayden.”

“No. But what I’m about to tell you is pretty serious.”

A somber look swept across his young face. “Are you sick?”

She reached over and touched his hand. “No. Oh, God no, it’s nothing like that.”

He pulled his hand away. “Oh.”

“It’s about something that happened to me a long, long time ago. Long before you were born, long before I met”—she half choked on the word—“your father.”

“Oh, I get it. Some old boyfriend has come out of hiding.”

“No. Not that.”

“Well, what then? And this better be quick. I’ve got to meet the guys.”

Mark spent more time in the video arcade at the mall than he did at home lately. But rather than call him on it, Susan dismissed it. This was no time to provoke her son. She needed his understanding and support.

“I did have a boyfriend before I met your father,” Susan began. “It was when I was in college. His name was David.”

“Was he a hippie too?”

“Yes,” Susan said, setting her lips straight. “I’m sure your father would have called him that.”