The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (141 page)

But right now the only one she could concentrate on was Anna. In those first frantic days, Finch had had fantasies of storming the jail, like in old westerns, but she’d since realized that if Anna was to get off, it would only be through sheer persistence. Little by little, others had joined the effort, like Monica’s former publicist, who’d given an interview on CTN revealing what Monica was
really
like. And the reporter who’d had the guts to say that for someone dubbed by one tabloid as the “Sister from Hell,” Anna seemed to have an amazing number of supporters.

Finch was raising the bullhorn to her lips when a sudden commotion drew her attention to the courthouse steps, down which Anna was now barreling. Before she could wonder what it was all about, Anna had snatched the bullhorn from her hand. “Stop that woman!” she bellowed into it, her voice booming out over the sea of bobbing heads and placards.

Finch spun around to see a frizzy-haired blond woman bolting across the lawn. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, or why, she dashed off in pursuit, her friends falling in behind her. Tommy O’Brien joined the chase as did grizzled Doc Henry, loping like an old horse with a stone in one shoe. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Father Reardon, in civilian duds, running full tilt with the petite church organist, Lily Ann Beasley, clinging to his arm as if for dear life.

The blonde was closing in on the parking lot when Finch, in a burst of speed, broke ahead of the pack. She was close enough to see the dark half moons of sweat under her arms and her shoulder blades thrusting beneath her creased denim blouse. The gap closed and Finch caught hold of her elbow. She heard a grunt, then they were both tumbling onto the grass.

“What the f—
Get off me!
” the woman shrieked as she struggled to free herself.

Finch straddled her, holding her pinned in a wrestling move Tommy O’Brien had taught her. When she looked up, it was into a circle of gaping mouths and astonished eyes and Minicams aimed at her like rifles in a firing squad. She spotted Career Barbie and her Ken counterpart. Then Anna, red-faced and panting, pushed through the crowd. Krystal stopped bucking and collapsed in defeat.

Cops hauled them both to their feet, and while Minicams whirred, capturing the sound bite that in the days to come would be aired nearly as often as that of Clinton denying any involvement with Monica Lewinsky, the blonde lifted a contorted face flecked with bits of grass to wail, “I didn’t do it! I swear it wasn’t me!”

S
OON AFTER
K
RYSTAL WAS
taken in for questioning the story came out. She told of scaling the wall at LoreiLinda in the dark of night, and her shock at seeing Monica go into the pool. She hadn’t gone to the police, she said, because they’d have found a way to pin it on her, or at the very least busted her for violating her parole. And what would happen to her kids?

Rhonda stepped in, finding her a lawyer, an old friend and former deputy from the district attorney’s office in Ventura, who went to work hammering out a plea bargain. In the meantime, Krystal was free on bail.

It seemed Anna had dodged a bullet as well. When the preliminary hearing reconvened, Rhonda moved that the case be dismissed. And after hearing Krystal’s testimony, made all the more compelling by her reluctance to come forward, Judge Cartwright ruled that there was “substantial doubt as to whether a crime had indeed been committed.”

Showalter went ballistic, refusing to drop the charges and vowing in a press conference on the courthouse steps to do everything in his power to see that Anna went to trial—a threat Rhonda dismissed, saying he wouldn’t risk egg on his face a second time, not this close to reelection.

Anna knew she ought to be overjoyed, but she was too numb to feel much of anything. In the days that followed, she drifted about in a haze, scarcely aware of the reporters snapping at her heels, begging for a comment. Then, just as quickly as it had descended, the swarm of locusts moved on: The clock had run out on her fifteen minutes of fame. The only ones who would miss them, it seemed, were the shopkeepers whose tills had been ringing steadily for weeks. Myrna McBride reported her highest spring sales ever, and her ex-husband’s rival bookstore across the street had enjoyed a similar bonanza. The Blue Moon Café catty-corner to Delarosa’s installed a new awning and outdoor zinc bar with its earnings, and Higher Ground took over the defunct notions store next door—to the delight of Java junkies who’d been crammed into their narrow space—while Ingersoll’s had been inundated with mail orders from those who’d become addicted to their old-world crullers and strudels.

Anna consented to a single interview, with Emily Frey at CTN; it was the least she could do to repay Wes for all he’d done. She was flown to the studio in Wes’s private helicopter, Marc at her side. As a child, she’d been deathly afraid of heights, but looking down at the sprawl of buildings below, the freeways like long necklaces strung with cars, her only thought was that she’d survived far worse than anything she could have imagined. And wasn’t the better part of fear the uncertainty of not knowing how you would handle a catastrophe? Her ordeal had shown her what she was capable of, and there was comfort in that, at least.

She returned home that evening thoroughly wiped out. Marc was subdued, too, as they drove back to her house. They dined on Chinese takeout in near silence, both reluctant to broach the subject they’d been avoiding. It wasn’t until they were getting ready for bed that Anna forced herself to look it square in the eye: Going on with her life would mean going on without Marc.

Even so a voice whispered in her head,
Maybe there’s a
w
ay.
They’d grown so close these past weeks she couldn’t imagine being without him. She was a different person, too, from the woman who’d once expected so little out of life, grateful for crumbs off the table. She knew now what she hadn’t that day at the lake: that if you want something badly enough you have to go out and get it, or die trying.

Seated on the bed in her nightgown—not the negligee Monica had given her last Christmas, which was tucked in a drawer in anticipation of the honeymoon she’d probably never go on, but her oldest cotton nightie worn sheer by numerous washings, its daisy pattern faded to near invisibility—she waited for Marc to come out of the shower. Her hair was caught up with a butterfly clip, stray wisps trailing down around her neck, her face scrubbed of the heavy makeup she’d worn for the interview. Had she looked in the mirror just then she might have been fooled for an instant into imagining it was her younger self, a teenage girl full of hopes and dreams that hadn’t yet been put on hold.

Where had all those years gone? In some ways it felt as though she’d merely picked up where she’d left off that long ago day, returning home for her father’s funeral. For one thing, she’d moved out of her childhood room into the master bedroom left vacant by her mother. Gone now were the clunky Grand Rapids suite and peeling nosegay wallpaper. In their place were clean white walls and a simple bed covered in an old quilt from the attic. All that was left to remind her of the past were family photos and a pen-and-ink of the old schoolhouse drawn by her grandmother.

She stared at the blank canvas of the freshly painted walls and wondered what the rest of her life would look like. Would she go on to a job as fulfilling as her last one was stifling? Were marriage and motherhood in the cards?

Marc emerged at last, a towel around his waist, his hair standing up in wet spikes. He looked so irresistible she was tempted to postpone any talk of the future. But tomorrow he was going back home, and she couldn’t let him walk away a second time without knowing exactly where they stood.

He caught her looking at him and paused to smile at her, a trail of footprints glistening on the newly refinished floorboards. Mistaking her preoccupied look, he said, “Don’t worry, you did great. You’ll see when it airs.”

The interview was the furthest thing from her mind, but she replied, “I just hope I made sense. I can’t remember half of what I said.”

“You said everything you needed to.”

She drew her legs up, hugging them to her chest. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the end. They’ll think what they like.” Let them believe it was despair that had driven Monica to drink, and ultimately to suicide. That was something they could wrap their brains around, a Lifetime movie played out in real life.

“And by this time next week no one will even care.” He sat down next to her, putting his arms around her. “The only one who matters is
you.
”

“I’ll be all right,” she said, then smiled. “I guess the shock still hasn’t worn off.”

“It takes time.” He drew her close so that her head was tucked under his chin. He smelled of Ivory soap and the essence that was his alone, the scent that he would take with him when he left.

“I can’t help thinking if I’d done it differently—stood up to her sooner …”

“You can’t second guess these things.”

“How could she hate me that much? Her own sister.”

“It wasn’t about you.” With her head against his chest, his voice was a comforting rumble. “You held up a mirror, that’s all, and she didn’t like what she saw.”

“She wasn’t always that way.” Once they’d lain in bed at night whispering secrets to each other. Monica had looked out for her then, when kids in school teased her about being fat … with their dad, too. It wasn’t until her sister got older that everything changed. She became closed off and haughty, leaving Anna to wonder if it was something
she’d
done—imagined crimes she’d gone to great pains to make up for, setting in motion a pattern she would carry with her into adulthood.

“I could see that,” he said, though she suspected he was only being kind.

“Once she became famous … well, it was like a car without brakes.”

He nodded in understanding. “It’s like the worst thing that can happen to a drunk is winning the lottery.”

“There was that, too. Her drinking.”

“Drink enough, and you go crazy.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

He drew back to smile at her, and she saw the lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I drank to
keep
from going crazy—or at least that’s what I told myself.”

“Because of Faith?”

“I thought so at the time, but that was only an excuse. I had demons of my own.”

Gathering up her courage, she asked softly, “Marc, what’s going to happen to us?”

For the longest time he didn’t respond, and she felt a pocket of cold form around her heart. She wanted to snatch her words back. Couldn’t she have waited until morning? Did she have to spoil what little time they had left?

“I wish I could tell you what you want to hear.” He released her and pulled away, his arms dropping heavily to his sides. “But it’s not that simple.” He meant Faith, of course.

“I know.” She thought of all she’d been through these past months; it hadn’t killed her and this wouldn’t, either. “I was just thinking aloud.”

“Anna …”

“You should throw something on. You’ll catch cold,” she told him in a queer dead voice that didn’t seem her own.

He held her gaze, not moving. She watched a bead of moisture dribble down his neck. After a long moment he went to retrieve his robe. For some reason, that’s what got to her most: the sight of his blue terry bathrobe reflected in the mirror on the bathroom door as it swung open. It looked so … connubial somehow slung on the hook next to hers. She realized she’d come to depend on such things to reaffirm his existence in her life—his toothbrush and razor in her medicine cabinet, his battered Dockers on the closet floor. But she’d only been fooling herself.

When Marc reappeared, hair combed into wet tracks, she rose slowly from the bed, feeling more sure of herself than she had in years, even with her heart in free fall. “I know you have to go,” she said firmly. “But I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

“Are you sure?” From the pained look he wore, she knew it had been weighing on him as well.

She knew what it would mean: weekends here and there, the occasional romantic getaway, enormous phone bills the only thing she’d have to show for it. And if his wife found out? Anna could only hope she’d want Marc to have the happiness she couldn’t give him. She thought selfishly.
Why should I be the one making all the sacrifices?
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “I know I won’t see you every day or even every week, but I can live with that.”

Marc shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I can.”

“So that’s it? It’s over?”

“Maybe it’d be best if we gave it some time.”

Anger flared in her. “I expected more from you than that tired old line.”

“I’d give anything if it didn’t have to be this way.”

She turned away so she wouldn’t be moved by the heartbroken look he wore, saying coldly, “I see it now. What you get off on is rescuing people. Now that I’m out of the woods, you can move on to the next damsel in distress.” Anna knew it was true in only the most superficial sense, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “I guess that’s what your wife has over me. She’ll always need you more than I do.”

“Anna, please.”

She spun around. “It’s true, isn’t it? I’m being punished because I’m stronger.”

“Don’t.” His voice cracked.

Don’t be this way. Don’t ruin it. Don’t say what you’re feeling.
The mantras she’d adhered to all her life, but they were no longer working. She
had
changed, and in some ways not necessarily for the better. This new side of her—well, it was faintly and disturbingly reminiscent of Monica. But if her sister had been too caught up in herself, Anna realized she hadn’t been self-centered enough. Maybe it was time she stopped depending on others to stick up for her and started sticking up for herself.

“I waited all my life for this.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to let go.”

“Me either.” The few feet that separated them might have been an ocean.

“I won’t necessarily be waiting if and when you’re free.”