Woman in Red (45 page)

She smiled. “Getting taller by the day.”

“And Yoshi?”

“As hardworking as ever. In fact, I’m already wondering how I’m going to manage without him once this war is over.” She turned to William, wearing a look of polite interest that didn’t quite disguise the troubled expression he’d noticed earlier. “And you? You must miss your family.”

“I miss Danny,” he said, not wanting there to be any confusion about where his sentiments lay.

She took another sip of her lemonade. “How’s he taking it?”

“When we talk on the phone, he doesn’t say much, so it’s hard to tell. But it has to be tough on him, and Martha isn’t making it any easier.”

“She’s hurt. She wants to punish you. Once she comes to her senses . . .” Eleanor trailed off at the perplexed look on William’s face.

What was she getting at?
he wondered, in a mild panic. Did she
want
him to reconcile with his wife? The only reason she would wish for that, he realized with a sinking heart, would be if her feelings toward him had changed. Suddenly he was afraid to find out what she’d come to tell him.

The telegram in Eleanor’s pocket was like a hot coal burning through the fabric of her dress. It had arrived the day before yesterday, and since then she’d been in a state of turmoil, pacing about, unable to sit still for more than few minutes at a time, happy one moment and miserable the next. Just when she’d see her way clear, it would grow murky again and she’d be back to plowing little furrows in the rug with her restless feet. It wasn’t until this morning, after yet another sleepless night, that she’d come to a decision. That was why she was here. To tell William.

Only he wasn’t making it any easier. In a firm voice, he declared, “It’s over with Martha and me.” He eyed her across the small wicker table on which his glass of lemonade sat untouched. He appeared puzzled and more than a little worried, as if wondering what could have brought about this sudden change of heart on her part.

Eleanor sighed. She’d been afraid of this. “You don’t know that for sure.”

Comprehension dawned in his blue eyes. “This isn’t about Martha, is it?” he said softly.

She dropped her eyes, answering, “No.” In that moment, with his eyes burning into her, she found her resolve weakening. But she knew there was no other way. “This came the other day.” With a deep sigh, she withdrew from her pocket the flimsy yellow slip of paper, folded and refolded so many times it was coming apart at the creases. She held it out to him. “They found Joe. He’s alive.”

William gaped at her. “But how . . . ?”

“He was in the hospital all this time, but it was a while before they could identify him,” she explained. “He’d lost his dog tags and most of his memory it seems. The doctor I spoke with is hopeful it’ll come back, but no one knows for sure. He’s well enough to be shipped home at least. They’re transferring him to the Naval hospital in San Diego. Lucy and I are taking the train down. We leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

“So that’s it then.” William spoke in a queer, flat voice.

She nodded, her throat tight.

She could see a battle being waged in his anguished face, between what he knew was the moral thing to do and what he selfishly wished for. Finally his mouth shaped itself into
some semblance of a smile. “I suppose I should offer my congratulations, but right now I’m finding it difficult.”

Eleanor’s eyes flooded with tears. “This has nothing to do with you, William. You have to know that. I’m . . . I’m grateful Joe’s alive . . . but I would give anything if it didn’t mean—” She broke off, finding it suddenly difficult to speak.

Abruptly he jumped out of his chair and began pacing back and forth. Laird brought his head up, ears pricked at the sight of his master in such a state of agitation. Eleanor had never seen William this way either, not even the night they’d buried Lowell. She watched him rake his fingers through his hair, which had grown long in the weeks they’d been apart. His eyes seemed to leap like flames from the bony planes of his face when at last he swung around to face her. “Don’t do it. Don’t stay with a man just because you pity him. From everything you’ve told me about Joe, he wouldn’t want that either.”

Slowly she shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to him. Not after what he’s been through.”

But William was too crazed to listen to reason. “Haven’t you sacrificed enough? My God, Eleanor, you don’t even love the man!”

“You’re wrong about that. I
do
love him.” She spoke with quiet finality. “Maybe not in the same way I love you, but enough to know I could never hurt him. Whenever I think I can’t live without you, I wonder how I’d live with myself if I were to leave Joe, especially now when he needs me most.” She seized hold of William’s hands, tears spilling down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Haven’t we done enough harm? Look at you and Martha. And what
about Lowell’s family? How can we possibly destroy another man’s life on top of all that? And my little girl? Lucy would never forgive me.” This morning it had been something Lucy had said to her that had solidified her decision.
When Papa comes home I want to sleep in your room, so I’ll always know where he is.

But William only shook his head, unwilling or unable to accept what she was telling him. “No. I can’t lose you. I
won’t
lose you.” He spoke through gritted teeth, his eyes hard and bright with tears that he refused to let fall. “You think something like this will ever come again? It’s once in a lifetime. I had to wait almost forty years to find it and if I live another forty without you, I’ll die a lonely old man. And you, Eleanor . . . every night you lie down next to Joe, you’ll be thinking of me. Is that really what you want? Is that how you see this ending?”

She rose to her feet, reaching up to cup his dear face in her hands, feeling the warmth of his skin and the tensed muscles flickering underneath. “That’s what makes this so hard. If it were any easier, it would be because I didn’t love you so much.”

Everything about him seemed to cave in at once, his shoulders sagging in defeat and his tall, bony frame swaying like a tree in a high wind. Eleanor felt unsteady, too, thinking that if she didn’t go now, this very instant, she wouldn’t have the strength later on.

William’s anguished gaze met hers, stripped of all hope but showing the glimmerings of understanding. As he took her in his arms one last time, holding her tightly, she could feel the muffled beating of his heart through the soft fabric of his shirt, a heart that would stubbornly go on beating long after this was over. Life would go on, too. Maybe not as
they wished it. But, in one form or another, it would go on all the same.

“Good-bye, William.” She pressed her lips to his in the most fleeting of kisses. Moments later she was darting down the path, the honeysuckle that grew along the hedge assaulting her with its sweet scent as she raced past, blinded by her tears. She never looked back.

The phone was ringing. Colin could hear it all the way back from the shed, where he was stowing away his equipment. He’d spent most of the morning repairing the damage done by the storm that had rolled in the night before last, pounding in stakes that had come loose and digging out lines that were buried in silt. It was filthy, backbreaking work, with little reward, but the sight of the lines strung out in neat rows, the fledgling oysters clinging to them with the same tenacity he’d shown in his own efforts, was deeply gratifying to him in a way that he couldn’t have put into words. Out on the flat with the tide retreating, his conscious mind seemed to recede as well. There was just the sun and the wind and the reedy calls of the seagulls circling overhead.

He was thinking of Alice, as he often did these days, as he walked toward the house to check the answering machine. He hadn’t seen her since the night at Owen’s, more than two weeks ago, and they’d only spoken on the phone a few times since, most recently when he’d called to let her know Jeremy’s trial date had been set. They were both keeping
their distance, backing away from the intimacy of that strange day, as if from a too hot fire. Colin ate most of his meals at home these days and Alice was so caught up in her work and in helping her sister cope with Gary’s breakdown, she didn’t seem to notice that he hadn’t been to the restaurant in a while.

The moment of truth for Colin had come, oddly enough, when the hostage crisis was past, after he’d handed Gary over to the police. Looking around, he’d realized, to his horror, that Alice was still in the house. With Gary’s gun . . . and the man she had every reason to want to kill. The scenario had spun itself out in his head, with all its frightening possibilities, and he’d been gripped with a terror greater than any he’d felt going in. Then, suddenly he’d caught sight of her, walking toward him across the lawn, a slender figure silhouetted in the moonlight. In the darkness, from that distance, she could have been anyone, and for a heartstopping moment, in his nerve-shot state, he’d even imagined it was Nadine. Nadine emerging unharmed from the rubble of the Twin Towers, as he’d watched her do a thousand times in his dreams.

When Alice had finally stepped into view and he’d seen no evidence of the terrible things he’d been imagining, Colin had felt a rush of relief at knowing she was safe. And something else as well: the knowledge that he didn’t have the strength to sustain another loss. The next time he wouldn’t be able to pull himself out of the abyss.

When she’d phoned the next day to give him an update on her brother-in-law, Alice, perhaps picking up on his mood, had been guarded as well. The conversation, while friendly, had had the feel of a missed connection. No one listening in would have guessed they’d ever been intimate.

“Gary’s lucky in one sense,” she’d said. “If he hadn’t been one of their own, he’d be in jail by now.” Instead, Gary had been taken to a psychiatric hospital in Bellingham, she informed him.

“What do the doctors say?” Colin had asked.

“He should pull out of it. He’s still pretty depressed, but they think the psychosis is only temporary.”

“Which means he’ll be declared fit to stand trial.” Colin had found himself slipping on his lawyer’s hat.

“I’m not sure it’ll come to that. I can’t imagine he’ll get off with just a slap on the wrist, but Gary has a lot of influential friends. They’ll bend over backward to cut him a break.”

“Even if it means making an enemy of the mayor?”

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him anymore.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling,” she said after a pause.

Colin had found himself wondering once more what had happened in those few minutes when she’d been left alone with Owen. But she hadn’t volunteered any more information and he hadn’t pressed her. “How’s your sister holding up?” he’d inquired.

“Not so good. But she’s keeping it together for the kids’ sake. And I know she’ll get through this. She’s a survivor.”

“It must run in the family,” he’d said. And she’d laughed knowingly.

After they’d hung up, Colin had begun thinking about his own family. How long had it been since they’d had anything of real substance to say to each other. When he’d been in rehab, his parents and brother had dutifully attended family week, but in the end none of them had been willing to admit their own role in his dissolution. During
the worst of his drinking, his mom would declare staunchly to anyone who even hinted that he had a problem that there was nothing wrong with her son that a new wife wouldn’t fix, and Pop had always been quick to pour him another drink and point to Patrick, who could put away more beers on a Friday night than any man standing and who hadn’t let it interfere with his life. It had taken a full flameout on Colin’s part for them to finally accept that he was an alcoholic, and now that he was sober they referred to it only in the past tense, as if alcoholism were a curable disease, like meningitis.

He didn’t blame them, though. God knew he hadn’t made it any easier for them. Besides, they had their own troubles. His grandmother, for one. Marma, as she’d been nicknamed by Patrick at an early age when he couldn’t pronounce her full name, Martha, was a bit of a terror. For years she’d had one or both of his parents running over to her house at least once a day, on some pretext or other. Things had improved somewhat since she’d moved into an assisted living facility, but she hadn’t abandoned her martyr role and no visit with her was complete without a litany of complaints.