Woman in Red (32 page)

“I don’t see that we have anything to talk about,” she replied.

“Look, I’m only trying to help. I know things have been rough for you lately.”

“I don’t need your help.” She started to move past him, but he grabbed hold of her arm. She recognized the wild, unfocused look he wore, and she felt a flicker of panic. It was the same way he’d looked at her before kissing her for the first time.

His face was the same now as then, a bit more lined perhaps, yet it no longer held any appeal. There seemed something almost feminine in the brilliantined perfection of his dark, wavy hair, brushed now with gray. And in the harsh light of day, the pouches under his eyes that had once made him look excitingly decadent by candlelight merely made him look old.

“Don’t be stupid, Eleanor. It’s not going to be easy for you with Joe gone. I know. I checked your bank records.” Her mouth fell open in shock, but he was unapologetic. “You don’t have to look at me like that. It’s not as if I was spying on you. Believe me, my only interest is in your and Lucy’s welfare.”

She quivered with indignation. “How dare you. ”

“My point is,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “whether you like it or not, you’re going to need money. And that, my dear, is the one thing I have plenty of.”

“I don’t want your charity!” she hissed.

“Call it a back payment on what I owe you then.”

“Knowing you, you’d expect something in return.”

He drew his head back to fix her with an injured look. “Do you really think as little of me as that? I’m not the terrible person you paint me to be. Honestly. The way things ended with us . . . I handled it badly, I’ll admit. And don’t think I haven’t had my regrets.”

Regrets? What did he know about regrets? “I stopped caring about all that a long time ago,” she informed him coldly. “Really, there’s no reason to trouble yourself on my account.” She wanted no part of Lowell White, neither his money nor his belated regrets.

“We have a child. Isn’t that enough of a reason?”

Blood surged up into her head, swelling against her temples, making them throb, but she managed to remain outwardly calm. “Lucy doesn’t know anything about you. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.” The thought of Lowell’s getting anywhere near Lucy made her suddenly glad that Joe wasn’t alive, for that would have killed him more surely than any bullet.

“She doesn’t have to know,” he said, wearing a cozily conspiratorial look that made her skin crawl.

Eleanor felt like screaming,
Enough
! She’d had her fill of secrets. First with Lowell, then with William. And, like toadstools flourishing in the dark, they had poisoned all that she’d held dear. In the case of William McGinty, by allowing feelings to grow where they shouldn’t, which had very
nearly led to an indiscretion. She shuddered now to think what might have happened, with Joe’s body scarcely cold, if Captain Lewis from the home guard hadn’t showed up at her door when he did.

She hadn’t seen William since, nor did she intend to. The fact that it was torture to be apart from him only added to her resolve. She’d told him to stop coming to the house, and when he disregarded her wishes, she refused to let him in. Lately, he’d taken to leaving boxes of supplies on her doorstep. Eventually she would have to put a stop to that, too, but so far she hadn’t had the heart.

Now she had Lowell to contend with.

“I see no point in continuing this conversation,” she told him. “You’ve offered your help and I’ve told you I don’t need it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have errands to run.”

She attempted to move past him, but Lowell only tightened his grip on her arm. In the hard press of his lips against his teeth and cold depths of his eyes she saw his true nature: a man unaccustomed to being thwarted. “All right, we’ll postpone the discussion. But you can’t put me off forever, Eleanor. Don’t forget, she’s my daughter, too.”

Eleanor reared back to fix him with a fierce look. “You don’t want your wife to know that,” she said in a low, warning voice. “It might not go over so well with her.”

He laughed, as he once had at her provincial ways that he’d claimed to find so endearing. “You think I believe you’d say anything to my wife? Think what it would do to your reputation, my dear. You’d go from sainted widow to fallen angel overnight.”

“I don’t give a fig for my reputation.”

“That much I believe,” he said, eyeing her thoughtfully. “In fact, that’s what I’ve always found so attractive about you.
You’re not like the rest of them, are you? Not under the skin. You only pretend to be because it makes life easier. But I know what you’re really like.” He languidly traced a finger along her cheek, sending a shiver of loathing through her. He seemed to be enjoying her discomfort. “There’s something you seem to have forgotten, though. If this gets around, Lucy will know, too. Are you prepared to take that risk?”

Eleanor felt all the fight go out of her. He knew her all right. He knew she’d do anything to shield her daughter from the truth. Lucy was having a hard enough time as it was dealing with Joe’s death. This would devastate her.

“All right,” she said, in a weary voice of defeat. “Pick me up outside your office tomorrow, before work. We’ll go for a drive. We can talk then.”

“No, someone might spot us. It’s better if I come to your house.”

She felt herself stiffen. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“What, you don’t trust me, Ellie? You think I’ll try to seduce you?” He smiled, as if at her naiveté. “I suppose I should be flattered that you still think of me that way.”

She hadn’t considered that. She was thinking only of the danger to Yoshi. But what was the alternative? If she offered any further protests Lowell might grow suspicious and do some nosing around on his own. And at least in the privacy of her own home, surrounded by mementos of her life with Joe, a life that had been solid and good, she wouldn’t feel so unclean.

Yoshi would just have to make himself scarce. There was an old, abandoned cabin along the trail up Spring Hill where she occasionally stopped to rest on long hikes. The boy would be safe there for the duration, well-hidden from view.

It was with trepidation nonetheless that she gave Lowell directions to her house. “Woodbury Lane, the last house on the left. You can’t miss it.”

His smile stretched into a grin that left her chilled, even as she stood in the warm spring sunshine with birds chirping in the trees overhead. “I know the way,” he said.

The following morning Eleanor could scarcely concentrate on her chores, she was so wound up. She’d spent a restless night, thoughts of Lowell scampering through her head like the mice she could hear rustling in the walls as she’d tossed and turned in bed. Yet somehow she managed to get Lucy dressed and fed and off to school. She was in the midst of packing Yoshi off to the cabin, with explicit instructions that he was to stay put until she came to fetch him later on, when the boy hung his head, saying in his broken English, “I go, not come back. Better for you that way.”

Eleanor’s voice was firm as she told him, “No, Yoshi. You have a home with us, as long as you need it. And I promise it won’t always be this way. This war can’t go on forever. And when it’s over, things will go back to the way they were before.”

“Not same as before. Mister Joe not come back.” Yoshi lifted his head to eye her mournfully. He’d loved Joe like a father and was taking his death hard.

“No, Mister Joe won’t be coming back,” she echoed sadly, her gaze drifting past him.

As she stood there, staring out the window, momentarily lost in thought, she was struck by the irony of it. Given how she felt about William, one might have thought a part of her would feel secretly liberated by her husband’s death. Yet she
missed Joe, more than she would have thought possible. She missed his kindness and his ready laugh, the unfailing courtesy with which he’d always treated her. Joe hadn’t been a demonstrative man, but he’d always made sure she knew he loved her. Little things, like rising in the dark of winter mornings to get the fire started so the house would be warm when she and Lucy got up and driving into town to fill the car with gas whenever he knew she’d need to use it. What made it worse for her was that his body had yet to be recovered. According to Captain Lewis, he’d gone down with the
Hornet
when it was sunk.

She looked back at Yoshi. “Here. I packed you a lunch.” She handed him the picnic basket she’d filled with enough provisions to last several days, including the little Japanese rice balls stuffed with bits of cooked fish and vegetables he’d taught her to make. “You might get bored, but at least you won’t go hungry.”

“I read book.” He proudly held up the early reader, one of Lucy’s old ones, with which Eleanor had been teaching him English.

She smiled at him. “I think you’re ready for something a little more challenging than
Dick and Jane
.” Yoshi might not have had the advantages of a privileged upbringing, but he had a quick mind and he loved to learn; in no time he’d mastered the alphabet and had worked his way through Lucy’s primary and secondary readers. Now Eleanor plucked a tattered book off the bookshelf, one of Joe’s old
Hardy Boys
mysteries, and tucked it into the basket, saying, “This ought to keep you busy for a while. Now scoot.” She shooed him out the door, remaining on the stoop a while longer watching him trudge across the spring-blown yard: a slight figure in an old canvas jacket of Joe’s that hung on him like a sail at
half mast, his shoulders bowed, and his fine black hair falling over his forehead. When the war was over she’d miss having him around, she knew.

Yoshi darted a glance over his shoulder as he was nearing the gate that opened onto the field, and she saw the worried look on his face. He knew only that she was expecting a visitor, but it must have been obvious to him from how keyed up she’d been all morning that it wasn’t just a social call. He might even have thought Lowell’s impending visit posed some sort of threat, and he would have been right about that.

For while it was true that Lowell had a vested interest in letting sleeping dogs lie, Lucy was his child nonetheless, and where blood ties were concerned people had been known to act in ways that flew in the face of reason. So the night before, in the midst of her tossing and turning, Eleanor had come to a decision: If all Lowell wanted was to salve his conscience, she would take his money and hopefully that would put the matter to rest. Every cent would go into a savings account for Lucy, though.

What was less easily resolved was the matter of William. As she went back inside to finish washing up from breakfast, she thought that perhaps the real threat didn’t come from her former lover but from her own wayward heart. Where she ought to have been on guard was in allowing herself to care so deeply for William. The fact that they’d never so much as kissed did nothing to erase the guilt she felt. For in her heart, she knew she’d betrayed her husband a thousand times over, with a married man no less. And now that Joe was dead, gone too was the chance to atone. The most she could do was banish William from her sight, knowing that otherwise she might weaken.

It was a wonder she was still functioning, really. It wasn’t just her husband she missed, but William, too, with an acuteness that bordered on desperation, as if he were some essential element she needed in order to survive, without which she was slowly withering away. The only thing that kept her going was knowing she had to be there for Lucy.

An hour later Eleanor had finished tidying up and was tackling the ironing when she heard a car pull into the drive. She unplugged the iron and peered out the window. Lowell was striding up the front path, holding an enormous bouquet of flowers. The sight was at once absurd and deeply unnerving, causing her to let out a small cry, muffled by the hand she clapped over her mouth. What on earth . . . ? Why, anyone would think he’d come courting!

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, as he handed her the bouquet. She left him standing in the entry as she hurried off into the kitchen in search of a vase, taking advantage of the opportunity to collect herself.

When she returned he was seated in the easy chair by the fireplace. Joe’s chair. The sight of Lowell’s brilliantined head resting against its high back, the spot left darkened by Joe’s sweat—that of a working man who’d earned an honest wage, by his hands not his cunning—filled her with sudden rage. For a moment she was tempted to send him packing. But she reined in her emotions. The sooner they got this over with, the better.

From the pocket of her shirtwaist she produced a snapshot, which she handed to him. “Here. I thought you might like to have this.” It was a photo of Lucy, taken the year she’d turned five, on a summer day when they’d all been out on Joe’s boat. Eleanor had chosen it because Lucy, with her hair bleached several shades lighter by the sun and her face
freckled from the outdoors, looked the least like Lowell than in any of the other photos. But Lowell only glanced at it before tucking it into his pocket, prompting her to remark, with barely contained contempt, “Don’t you even want to know what she looks like?”