All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (20 page)

And the greatest change, she knew, lay deep within herself.

She forced herself to unlock the door of her father’s cottage. The sunlight from the east spilled into the room, and old dusty air flooded out around her. No one had come here in a long time. The one main room held the few essentials of the solitary composer’s life – the piano (not the best, for the salt air), the kitchenette where Francie had prepared that treacherous cup of tea, the double bed where (family legend had it) Dominic had brought an end to Renée Dane’s career by impregnating her with Francie. The bed—

She swallowed the sickness in her throat and touched the bed.

The bed, ancient site of her greatest shame.

Oh, God! She battled down her nausea. She felt as frozen as she had on her rare occasions of stage fright, as terrified as if the curtain were about to rise on an unfamiliar act. She shut her eyes to block out the image of those younger players, trapped in their cross-dramas, clashing in one terrible moment.

I can’t think about that….

But you will. You’re here, aren’t you? And it’s time the dreams stopped.

When she forced her eyes open, the phantoms had fled. Before her stood merely an old, dusty bed, sagging, nondescript, where heaven and hell had never met in supreme explosion. Beyond it, Francie had never stood at the stove, brewing her beguiling ticket to oblivion, ensuring her own death on the Chesapeake shore. And Laura herself had never fled this room, destroyer of her own dreams.

The musician in her could not resist testing the keys of the piano. She winced at their sound, discordant, neglected, ruined by the rich air of the bay, untouched for how many months before Dominic’s death. Had he still sought refuge here, after the trauma of Francie’s death?

For surely he had known.

Francie had never been found. When Laura had first awakened in a Newport News hospital, disoriented, empty and sick from convulsions, Cam had soothed her with the promise to search for Francie’s body. And he had tried. But two days had passed, and the evening tide had claimed Francie. Days melted away, Laura grew stronger, Cam searched, but Francie never washed up, mute witness to her own killing.

But not the only victim.

Another life had vanished that day, at Francie’s hands. And Cam, suffering from his own loss, had expressed the savage regret that sharks did not hunt the Chesapeake.

“Bitch.”

Her voice startled her in the claustrophobic silence of the room. She said it again, enjoying the strength of the word, and it occurred to her that she had not dared before to acknowledge her fury. And she had a right to her fury! Forget what she herself had done in this very room, forget that she had put herself beyond the pale in one ill-thought moment, forget that she had brought all this upon herself (as Cam had justly told her) by attempting to deal with Francie and her murderous ideas alone. Fate – or Diana – had denied her the chance to exact her vengeance.

She opened the cabinet above the stove and found it empty. Dominic must have cleaned it out years ago, tossing away the tea, thinking it a leftover from the times he had brought the twins out with him while he worked. He didn’t like tea; he claimed that aged Scotch better oiled his muse.

So only she and her baby had tasted Francie’s fine poisonous brew.

And her baby had not survived.

On such a day had Francie merrily prepared tea for her twin, a task threading together all the events of their lives:
Oh, for God’s sake, Laurie, have some tea! You’re so on edge! And trust me, okay? I’ll behave, I promise. I’ll be so sweet and penitent, Di will hardly believe it’s me.
And later, brushing her hair, carefully putting on her lipstick:
Let me borrow your dress – red for courage!
Admitting:
I’m scared, Laurie. I’ve never been so scared of anything in my life.

But, on such a day, not so scared that she hadn’t thought to poison Laura into inaction, so that she could destroy Diana once and for all.

~•~

I never want to come here again.

Laura locked the door behind her – no sense advertising her visit – and faced west, away from the cottage. The sunlight invaded her sight; beneath her eyelids danced a thousand sunbursts. She dug into her bag for her sunglasses.

A lone gull, attracted by the movement, uttered an ungodly cry and careened in closely. Probably looking for food, she thought, and remembered abruptly that she hadn’t eaten since last night. But her hunger faded before the pull of this panorama of remembered death. She walked down into the breeze and the shifting sands at the edge of the Chesapeake, and in a few minutes the crescent of the cove yawned before her.

She descended into the abyss and sat down near the tide.

Innocent enough, that cove. She and Francie had often gone down there to sunbathe while Dominic wrote, untying their bikini tops safe from all prying eyes, giggling, half-hoping that someone would come along and startle them. And, oh, the confidences flying between them there, on those very sands! Francie planning to study in New York after graduation, sight-reading Laura’s first forays into songwriting, endlessly speculating what life would
really
be like once they were out of school and out from under Dominic’s thumb. Laura never mentioning, not then, not until later, her own plans for escape, with her secret savings account and her mother’s filched social security number and her squirreled-away birth certificate and passport.

She scooped up a handful of sand and let it drift down through her loosely-laced fingers. The grains clouded the stones in her mother’s ring and dulled the gleam of the gold, and she scooped it up and sifted it over and over, while day and time slid away and Francie reappeared there on the sand beside her, talking and singing and laughing. Always laughing.

Meg, too, laughed. She had envied her twin that, and she envied Meg now, for that insouciant giggle and that slapdash confidence. She herself had been too serious a child, too quiet a teenager, too solemn a wife. (“For God’s sake, lighten up,” Cam had complained so often, and maybe his other women had provided him the laughter he missed from her.) Whether her fear of Dominic had stilled her laughter, or whether she simply had never learned how (for in that house only Francie had laughed, and usually at someone), she knew that she had never approached life as a game but as a deadly serious obstacle course.

Any gift she’d had for laughter had died with Francie.

And so here – on Francie’s deathbed, scene of who only knew what pain and terror in those last terrible minutes – Laura forgot Francie’s betrayal, her selfish disregard of everything blocking her destruction of Diana (and if that had included Laura’s unseen child, what of it?). She cast away the anger and shame she had carried across the years that separated her from Francie’s death. She let the waters wash over her toes and watched the gulls screeching overhead, and she thought that she would forgive Francie anything, if only she could hear her twin laugh again.

Later, she did not remember falling asleep.

The rush of the waters rocked her to sleep, and the sun laid its healing cover over her. She slept away her grief, and when she awoke, the afternoon had begun to wane.

She had buried her dead. Francie and her unknown baby both – they had deserved her mourning, and she had finally given it. She stopped at her car, brushed the sand off as best she could, and looked back towards the bay in farewell.

I will never come here again.

Chapter 8: Three Little Maids Are We

LUCY MAITLAND HAD NEVER STOPPED looking for her missing sisters. A waste of time, her husband told her after it became apparent that they weren’t to be found. “Give it up, don’t break your heart over this,” Tom advised. “They’ll turn up when they feel like it.”

Her brother-in-law counseled her to save her energy and money. All the ads in the world wouldn’t help, Richard said, Laura would never come back.

Her sister Diana cut to the heart of the matter. Francie, she announced, had damn well better not return, not while she was still drawing breath.

But still Lucy searched. Newspaper and Internet ads, news alerts, calls to Cat Courtney’s management, a PI once when her Christmas bonus permitted – anything that might work, anything that might bring her sisters home again.

Because, no matter what, they were still a family. She believed that, she had taken on the responsibility of keeping the family together, she had willingly served as its core all these years. And she knew that, until she had all her sisters back, the family would never be complete.

So why, on a morning when she should have been ecstatic, when half of her search had come to an end – why did she feel nothing so much as hurt and resentful and not really sure that she wanted her prodigal sister back after all?

~•~

She slammed down the phone and glared at her brother-in-law. “Where is she?”

“How would I know?” Richard snapped back. “I’m not her keeper.”

“Well, you saw her last.” Lucy buried her face in her hands for a moment and told her stomach to settle down. She didn’t need this excitement; nausea had haunted her all morning, and Richard’s terrible mood only made it worse. “Didn’t she say anything? Shopping, swimming,
anything?
”

“Not a thing.” Richard leaned back. She peeked through her fingers and noticed that, although his voice had gentled, his expression seemed just as moody. “Maybe she went to visit some old friends.”

“I don’t remember that she had any friends,” said Lucy. “Of course, we were away at school those last years, but she always seemed to be such a loner. Did she mention anyone that she might want to look up, places to visit for old time’s sake?”

He shook his head. A gauzy curtain of dust motes floating on the plane of sunlight softened the lines of exhaustion around his eyes; Lucy thought that he had not slept well and noticed, irrelevantly, that he needed a haircut. “She really didn’t say much. She was fairly close-mouthed about her plans—” this from the man who posted
No Trespassing
signs all over his personal life— “except that she’s staying at Edwards Lake for a couple of months. Something about needing privacy to write some songs.”

You’re lying through your teeth.

That bothered her. He usually told her everything (well, almost everything – he maintained an admirable if maddening silence about the women inhabiting the fringes of his life). That he chose to cast a fine reticent shade over the previous evening drew her suspicions. Something had disturbed Richard’s generally even temperament; something had dampened the enthusiasm she’d thought he’d show over Laura’s return.

She realized, with a start, that he had not mentioned Francie.

Even as she formed the question, he scraped back the chair. “Good luck, Luce. I’ve got to run.”

“You’re leaving?” She hadn’t counted on this.

He touched her cheek. “I’m in Charleston next week. I need to get some work done. You don’t want me here anyway. The Abbott girls need to spend some time together without the rest of us.”

A convenient excuse, but he was right. Time enough for a grand family reunion when Laura showed up –
if
she showed up – and she and Diana had time to absorb this shock to their lives. Lucy pretended reluctance as she gave in. “Okay. Call me later, will you? And, Richard – you never said—”

“Hmmm?” He shrugged on his leather jacket.

She pondered how to ask. He’d proved himself a slippery customer when it came to eluding subjects he didn’t want to discuss. “Did Francie come with her?”

His eyes shuttered instantly. “No.”

He meant that cool retreat to intimidate. Lucy was made of stronger stuff. “So what did she say?”

“Ask her. Maybe she’ll tell you the truth.”

Lord! No mistaking the bitterness now. She certainly
would
ask. “Have you told Di yet?”

“No,” he said briefly. “She must have left early. I tried calling, and I went by her place before I came over here.”

Oh, no. No use making excuses. He knew that Diana was a late sleeper, that if she had deserted her bed at that hour, she must be sleeping in someone else’s.

“I didn’t leave a message.” He looked at her directly. “This isn’t something to hear on voice mail. And I’m out of pocket until evening, so—”

“I’ll tell her.” The less Richard and Diana had to deal with each other, the better. “She’s on tonight, so she’ll be in by four.”

“Thanks.” He gave her an unexpected hug. “Sorry I’ve been such a grouch, Luce. I’ve got a lot on my mind, and Diana being missing in action this morning didn’t help. Plus—”

She accepted his hesitation, because she had fears of her own, and she thought she understood his. “Plus, this changes everything. I don’t know if I’m ready. Are you?”

“Ready has nothing to do with it.” She sensed him stepping away mentally, even as he headed out. “Laura picked a bad time to come home, but then she didn’t consult us. Considering what happened to her, she didn’t need to.”

A sad commentary, thought Lucy, shutting the door, how little they had known Laura, how cheaply they had valued her, that her return loomed mostly as an inconvenience. Small wonder that she had so easily walked away. She must have vanished in spirit long before she vanished in body.

But not this time,
thought Lucy.
When I find you, you’re staying put.

She still could not fathom Richard’s anger (anger? yes, he
had
been angry), but she was honest enough to admit that Laura’s return disturbed her. She cherished being the family center. It was her right. She had kept the family together, and that gave her a certain dominance that she did not want to yield. Laura was no longer the mouse to do as she was told; she might well upset the balance of power.

Lucy retrieved her family scrapbook. Tom often joked that they would have to pry it from her on her deathbed, that she would still be rearranging the pictures and press clippings that documented the Abbott family. All fine and good for him to say! He came from a large, secure family with parents married for over forty years and siblings who all came home for Christmas. The Maitlands
worked
, and Lucy, whose mother had deserted her, whose father had left her stashed with the Ashmores so that he could junket around Europe with another man’s wife, whose sisters had walked away without a backward glance, valued the genuine love so lacking in her own family. The Abbotts had not worked. She saw the debris in Diana’s glazed eyes, in Julie’s immaturity, in the loneliness of Richard’s heart, in the missing places at Thanksgiving dinner – but that was no reason to pretend that the Abbotts had never existed.