Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (22 page)

“Suppertime?” asked Nancy. “Don’t be such an old stick in the mud, Gerry. We can eat anytime.”

“What are you up to?”

She could barely suppress her grin. “The sooner you close your eyes, the sooner you’ll find out.”

Five minutes later she maneuvered the station wagon to a stop by a field south of the Sunrise Highway. The sun had set and a glittering field of stars twinkled in the sky. Their headlights provided the only other light.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Gerry, grumbling but good-natured, did as she ordered. “What the he—” He stopped. “I know, I know. Little pitchers have big ears.”

A surge of hope leaped to life inside her breast. There was still a chance. There had to be.

“Prime location,” she said. “Forty-five acres. Zoned for commercial property. Great spot for the right business.”

He stared at her. “You read the brochure.”

“I read the brochure.”

He gestured toward the untouched land beyond the car. “And this is—”

“The site you picked.” Swallowing hard against her nerves, she pointed off toward the right. “I think the movie screen would look swell over there, don’t you?”

He gathered her hands in his, forcing her to meet his eyes in the darkened car. “It’s risky,” he said, voice filled with hope. “The drive-in is a great idea, but it doesn’t come with any guarantees.”

“Life doesn’t come with any guarantees,” she said, feeling happier than she had in a very long time. “I think it’s time we took a chance.”

“I can’t do it alone, Nance. I’m gonna need your help.”

“Oh, Gerry,” she said, as tears filled her eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that.” They moved closer, words of love soft and quick between them as they went to kiss.

“I’m hungry,” Linda piped up from the back seat. “I want my hamburger.”

Nancy and Gerry broke apart like two guilty teenagers. “Later,” said Gerry with a smile meant for her alone.

She would be counting the minutes.

* * *

The first snow of the year came in mid-December.

“Be careful,” Mac had warned as he kissed her goodbye at the Wantagh railroad station. “That’s a snow sky if I ever saw one.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jane said, sliding over into the driver’s seat and adjusting the mirrors.

He started to say something, then apparently thought better of it. “I’ll call you at lunch. I might get out early.”

She nodded. “Don’t work too hard.”

“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.” He turned and disappeared up the stairs to the platform.

A few months ago Jane would have sat there until the train had come and gone, feeling a tug at her heart when the last car had vanished down the tracks. Now she welcomed the distance that separated Mac and her, because each time she looked at his beloved face she was reminded of all they had lost.

The house was quiet and still. She tossed her car keys down on the hall table then shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of an easy chair. The christening present for Cathy and Johnny’s new baby daughter, Christine, rested atop the coffee table, a lacy white receiving blanket with satin trim. It made her heart ache to look at it. She wondered if the pain of her loss would ever lessen or whether she would go through life feeling as if her heart had been pierced through.

The blare of the telephone was a welcome interruption.

“Did you see the sky?” Nancy demanded. “A blizzard’s on its way, you mark my words.”

Jane smiled at the glee in her friend’s voice. It was so wonderful to have Nancy to talk to again. Nancy was so happy these days she was a pleasure to be around. “I thought you hated shoveling snow.”

“First snow’s different,” said Nancy with a laugh. “It’s special.”

Jane had little experience with snow of any kind. She’d imagined walking down snowy lanes hand in hand with her husband, planning their baby’s future, while carolers sang Christmas songs and sleigh bells jingled.

“I’m zipping over to Billy Blake’s Discount store in a little while. Want to come along?”

“Not today, Nancy. I’m going to the office.”

The statement surprised Jane as much as it did her friend.

Luke Fenelli had tendered an invitation for lunch. “We don’t see enough of you around here,” he’d said, voice booming as he tried to hide his uneasiness over the loss of her baby. “Might as well come in for our big Christmas lunch—it’s about as close to a bonus as we’re ever gonna get.”

She dressed with care, trying not to notice the way the waistband of her navy blue skirt had room to spare. The phone rang as she was heading out the door, but it stopped by the time she reached the kitchen. Mac, she thought, hand lingering on the receiver. She wished she could call him, but he said they were moving his office and he wouldn’t have his own number until after the first of the year.

Luke and the others greeted her warmly. She could see the sympathy on their faces, but they quickly gauged her mood and kept the conversation light and breezy. How wonderful it felt to put aside the jumble her life had become and laugh and joke with Luke and the others at the
Daily
.

“The Big Man’s showin’ up for dessert,” said Luke as they polished off salad and lasagna and an unconscionable amount of Italian bread.

Jane looked up from her vanilla cola. “The Big Man?”

“You don’t know the Big Man?” asked Pamela, the society editor. “Take a look at your next paycheck. You’ll find his name on every one of them.”

Everyone laughed and Jane joined in. “He shows up once a year to play Santa Claus,” Luke explained. “Only nobody told him Santa Claus doesn’t show up empty-handed.”

Franklin Darman and the strawberry cheesecake arrived at the same time. Jane met Luke’s eyes and laughed softly as he whispered, “See what I mean?” Her mind wandered as Darman made a short dull speech about the Christmas spirit and how it applied to newspapers and to reporters. The rousing applause when he finished was more relief than appreciation.

“Come on,” said Luke, taking Jane by the elbow. “Let me do the honors.”

She pulled back. “I don’t think so. I’m only part-time. I can’t imagine he’d want to be bothered.”

“Sure he would,” said Luke in his jovial fashion. “He’s a sucker for an English accent. Give ’im both barrels, Weaver.”

Darman may have been a sucker for an English accent, but he was even more impressed by the name Weaver. “Don’t suppose you’re any relation to a fellow named Mac Weaver?” he asked as Luke stepped away to chat up a pretty blond researcher. “Good reporter,” Darman continued before Jane could answer, “even though he did his best work during the war. Tough luck what they’re doing to him.”

Ice formed in the empty hollow of Jane’s stomach. “What are they doing to him?”

Darman shot her a look, but she remained wide-eyed and innocent. “Guess it’s too soon for it to hit the papers.”

Luke popped back up at her side. “For what to hit the papers?”

“Mac Weaver,” said Darman, oblivious to the tension racing through Jane’s body. “He’s been subpoenaed by the Committee.”

A light snow was falling as Jane left the
Long Island Daily
office, but she scarcely noticed it. She got into the car, turned the ignition key, then drove home, her movements precise and rigid as a robot’s.

Subpoenaed. They’re calling him to Washington to stand before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

She felt as if her whole world had been shattered like a glass bowl dashed against the bricks. What on earth had Mac ever done to deserve this?

“Someone must’ve set him up,” Luke had said as he walked Jane to her car. “The higher you climb, the more enemies you make. I wouldn’t worry about it, Weaver. McCarthy’s days are numbered. It’s gonna be all right.”

But it wasn’t going to be all right. If she knew anything, she knew that. Their wonderful idyll was at an end and she was to blame. The tires crunched through the snow covering the driveway and she applied the emergency brake and got out. It didn’t take second sight to know what had happened. Ginger Higgins, with her suspicions and her mean-spirited accusations, had found her target, and Jane had provided the ammunition. If only she had understood how Uncle Nigel and his book would appear to an outsider. If only she had tucked it away in a drawer or tossed it in the trash.

But not Jane. Jane was proud of her uncle and she’d displayed the bloody thing on her shelf for all the world to see.

And now her husband was paying the price for her stupidity.

Oh, she’d been Miss High-and-Mighty that rainy day in London, so certain that her fortunes had changed at long last. She’d allowed Mac to sweep her up into his strong arms and carry her away across the ocean to a new life, and never once did she stop to think what she would bring to their marriage. She wasn’t the best of cooks and her housekeeping was haphazard, at best. She had a stack of shirts piled up in the laundry basket waiting to be ironed.

She couldn’t even managed to keep their private life private, and—dear God!—she couldn’t give him a child. The hollow in her stomach was a constant reminder of the precious life she’d lost. So many times she replayed the past few months in her mind, seeking desperately to find the clue to the tragedy. Had she eaten too much and slept too little? Was it the day she forgot to take her vitamins? Somewhere there was a clue to the tragedy, and Jane, in her sorrow, was determined to find it.

“Let it go,” said the doctor. “There will be many more babies in your future, Mrs. Weaver.”

Yes, she’d thought, struggling to smile,
but there will never again be this special baby
. And that small fact meant more to her than anyone could ever know. The child she had lost had been real to her; she’d felt it stirring within her womb. She’d awakened in the night to the gentle rolling motion as it shifted position. The baby’s heartbeat had been her own.

Oh, yes. Mac had done wonderfully well for himself when he picked her out of the coronation crowd. She had no family of her own. No father to smile proudly as he gave her hand in marriage. No brother to warn Mac to treat his sister right. No mother to ease her passage from woman to wife. She had no money, no home, so few possessions she could fit them in one trunk and have room to spare. And now she couldn’t even give him the child he deserved.

“If you were any kind of woman, you’d turn and run,” she said out loud. Certainly he deserved better than she.

Leo Donnelly had written to her last week, a chatty newsy letter that included his standing invitation to rejoin the staff of the Liverpool paper she’d abandoned so blithely in the name of love.

Why not leave? she thought, pacing the length of the living room. Why not end this marriage as quickly as it had started, with one swift stroke of the blade? Mac’s only crime had been marrying her; by leaving him, she could wipe the slate clean.

Surely she was the reason he’d been ordered to appear before McCarthy’s dreaded Committee. All these years and no one had ever bothered him and then what do you know? He married Jane and he found himself facing a hostile senator and this lackeys, hell-bent on making life miserable for Americans whose main concern was freedom.

If she went away, Mac could pick up where he’d left off before Jane entered his life and find the happiness he deserved.

Her passport was in order. She’d emptied her Christmas Club account so she could go shopping for gifts; the money was now in her wallet. She glanced at the clock, then squared her shoulders. If she moved quickly, she could be on her way to England before Mac got home tonight.

* * *

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way...”

“Mom-my!” Linda clapped her hands over her ears and made a face. “Do you have to sing?”

Nancy met her daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.” The first snow of the season was falling. Christmas was just two weeks away. She’d managed to find a Tiny Tears doll for Kathy at the discount store and a Betsy-Wetsy was on order for Linda. The baby was sleeping through the night and her husband wasn’t.

Frank Capra was right: it truly was a wonderful life.

As bad as things had been before, that’s how wonderful they were now. Who would have imagined that something as simple as conversation, plain ordinary talking together, could have changed things the way it had?

She’d opened her heart to Gerry.

Gerry had shared his dreams with her.

They’d taken a first tiny step toward an exciting future and, for the first time in years, Nancy felt as if the sky was the limit.

And to her delight, the same formula had worked for her and Jane.

If only she could bottle this wonderful secret and give it to all the sad and lonely souls. Why, she’d be a greater humanitarian than Albert Schweitzer.

She eased the car onto Robin Hood Lane, following the tire tracks grooved into the inch of snow already on the ground.

“Look, Mommy!” Linda pointed out the window. “There’s Aunt Jane getting into a taxicab.”

What an imagination her daughter had. Nancy glanced out the window and to her amazement, saw that Linda was right. “What on earth—?” She beeped her horn twice. Jane turned her head in Nancy’s direction and waved as the driver moved away from the curb.

“She had a suitcase,” said Linda. “Is she running away from home?”

Nancy laughed out loud. Art Linkletter was right; kids really
did
say the darnedest things sometimes. “Grown-ups don’t run away from home, honey.” She thought for a moment, then a big smile spread across her face. “I’ll bet Uncle Mac is taking her on a second honeymoon.”

“What’s a honeymoon?” asked Linda.

“Like a vacation.” She turned into her driveway and turned off the engine. A vacation for grown-ups.

“This isn’t vacation time,” said Linda, ever practical. “Vacations are in the summertime.”

“Well, some people like to take their vacations in the winter.”

Linda wrinkled her nose. “That’s silly.”

“No, honey, that’s romantic.”

“What’s romantic?”

Nancy thought about moonlit skies and moon-swept oceans; she thought about palm trees swaying in the breeze and silken sand against her skin. “Ask me again in ten years, honey, and I’ll tell you.”

* * *

Well, he’d done about everything there was to do except say goodbye and, as it turned out, that didn’t take long at all.

There was something about a subpoena from the McCarthy Committee that marked “finished” to a man’s day. People looked the other way, they wiped their eyes, they acted as if he’d come out of the doctor’s office with six months to live.

Who knows? Maybe he had.

Mac was still numb from the turn of events. All the signs had been there and yet knowing the subpoena was coming and actually having it served on you were two totally different things. “They’re gonna hit you hard,” McTiernan had said. “I’ve got the name of a great lawyer. You’d better call him before you say a word to anyone.”

His whole life was crashing down around him and threatening to take Janie with it.

McTiernan, to his credit, hadn’t taken the opportunity to give Mac his walking papers. “We’re here for you,” the man said, shaking Mac’s hand. “Remember, all you’ve gotta do is give ’em a name and you’re free and clear. One name. That’s all they need.”

“I don’t have a name to give them,” Mac said, “and if I did, wouldn’t I be playing into their hands?”

“You’re not going to beat ’em, so you might as well join ’em.” He wrote a name on a piece of paper, folded it, then handed the paper to Mac. “Give ’em this.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said McTiernan. “The guy’s dead. He’ll never know.”

Mac stared after his boss as the older man walked away. The paper burned a hole in his palm and he stuffed it into his jacket pocket and out of his mind. What a hell of a world this was. He looked up at the wall clock over the door. A little after two. There wasn’t much point in hanging around. He’d give Janie a call, then catch the next train out of Penn. He had to break the news to her sometime. Better she heard it from him than in the next edition of the paper.

Janie, you deserve a hell of a lot better than this
, he thought as he headed toward a bank of phones at the railroad station.
I should’ve left you right there in England where you belong. Let some nice, understanding Oxford type give you the life you deserve
.

Their future seemed as dark as the thoughts tumbling through his head. As bleak as his soul.
You never were one for the long haul, were you, Weaver? When push comes to shove, you’re always the first one looking for a way out
.

Well, this time the joke was on him. There was no way out. He’d have to face Janie and watch as her pride in him crumpled like a house of cards.

He let the phone at home ring ten times, but there was no answer.

He tried a second time. Still no answer.

He dialed Nancy’s number.

“I thought she was with you,” said Nancy, sounding surprised. “When I saw her getting into a cab with her luggage, I just assumed she was meeting you.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About half an hour. DeeDee across the street said she thought she heard Jane say she was going to Idlewild Airport. I just assumed she was meeting you—”

He hung up the receiver and stood there in the middle of the bustling Penn Station and looked himself square in the eye for the first time in his life. It’s up to you this time, Weaver. You can let her go or you can fight for her. It was no contest.

* * *

“You okay, lady?” The taxi driver’s voice seemed to reach her from a great distance.

She cleared her throat. “I—I’m fine. Thank you.”

He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Heck of a day to be going to the airport, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, even though she did. “There’s a family emergency. I must return home,”
Home is the little house on Robin Hood Lane, Janie. Not London. Not Liverpool. Home is with Mac
.

“Well, don’t be surprised if they close down the airport. Can’t imagine they’re having any more luck keepin’ the runways clear than they’re havin’ keeping the highway clear. This snow ain’t gonna stop just because we want it to.”

The snow
must
stop, even if only long enough for her plane to take off. She didn’t want time to think, time to reconsider, for if she did she would surely turn around and run back to Mac’s arms, the only place on earth where she’d ever felt she truly belonged.

* * *

Mac felt as though he was racing through a nightmare. No matter how fast he ran, pushing his way through crowds of travelers, he didn’t run fast enough. Jane was somewhere in that airport, somewhere close, and still he couldn’t seem to find her.

Gate eleven, the skycap had said. Who in hell would’ve expected gate eleven to be on the other side of the planet?

Don’t leave me, Janie
, his heart cried.
You’re everything I’ve ever wanted from life
. He grieved for their baby, too, but his grief had been a silent thing, trapped behind years of conditioning. Hidden away behind his easy ability to leapfrog over troubles the way another man might leapfrog over a puddle.

But he’d never told her. All the things he’d never told her echoed inside his brain like a Greek chorus gone mad.

He had to find her. He knew now that he’d used her as a dodge against reality, a barrier between his old life and the uncertainty of his new one. Jane was his anchor, his bridge. Now he realized she was much more than that.

She was his life.

He prayed it wasn’t too late to let her know.

* * *

“Miss, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.” The airline clerk looked genuinely distressed as he gestured toward the enormous plate-glass window overlooking the runways. “The airport is shut down by the storm. We have to wait it out.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t wait it out. I
must
get back to England now.”

“Miss, I’d love to help you, but the weather is beyond my power.”

“Another airline,” she said, leaning across the desk. “An ocean liner. There must be something.”

“Don’t go, Janie.”

I’m going mad
, she thought, starting at the sound of her name.
Totally mad
. Mac couldn’t possibly be there. He was faraway, back in Levittown in their little house.

The clerk was looking over her left shoulder. Jane turned to see Mac standing behind her, dripping snow onto the shiny tiled floor.

“Don’t go, Janie,” he repeated, his vivid green eyes meeting hers.

“No!” The word escaped her lips against her will. She pushed past him, not knowing where she was headed, just knowing she had to get away from him as quickly as she could. “Leave me alone.”

“Talk to me, Janie.” His long legs ate up the distance between them. “We can work this out.”

She shook her head, tears welling up. “It’s over, Mac. It’s better this way.”

He grabbed her by the arm, forcing her to stop. “For who?” he demanded. “For you?” His laugh was brittle, out of control. “It sure as hell isn’t better for me.”

“Let me go. We’re not good for each other. I’m not—”