Beautiful Lies (43 page)

“No, now the
Cross
goes to it. That way, the shell doesn't suffer such a shock. Cullen was one of the first to realize the value. The shell is brought on board, seeded, then put flat on the ocean bottom again. But it has to be turned regularly and cleaned for forty days so a pearl will form.”

Liana knew about the seeding process. The shell was opened and a wedge inserted. Then a highly skilled technician made an incision in the oyster's gonad and inserted a tiny nucleus made from Mississippi pig mussel shell covered with some of the oyster's own mantle tissue. Afterwards, over a period of months, the oyster secreted nacre to “heal” the injury. Seeding had always been the most ex
pensive part of a pearl farm's operation. The Japanese technicians flown in to do it had earned many thousands of dollars for only a few days' work.

She wondered if that, like so many other things, had changed. “Have any Australians been trained to do the seeding? Is it more economical now?”

Sarah glanced at her. “Don't you know? These days Cullen does it himself.”

“Cullen?”

“He taught himself before I arrived. He's quite the star in these parts. He seeds all his own shell right on board the
Cross.
He's always taken rigid sanitary precautions. He got ahead of the game when some of the other companies weren't producing as well. That's why Southern Cross has grown so quickly.”

“Good for him.”

Sarah gave her a questioning look. “I'm sorry. This is certainly none of my business, but you seem happy at his success.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, then it's even a better story, as it turns out. The overall success rate for seeding's only about 30 percent. Of those pearls, only about 5 percent will be real quality. The others will be baroque—irregular in size or shape….” She stopped, flustered. “I'm sorry. Of course you know that.”

“Or keshi,” Liana said, remembering how excited she had always been to see each new batch of keshi pearls, which were pearls the oyster had formed on its own, ignoring the nuclei. They had inspired some of her best work.

Sarah was warming up. “I'm partial to keshi, myself. They can be so interesting.”

“I always liked working with them,” Liana agreed. “Rebel pearls. I—” She stopped.

Sarah gave her first truly genuine smile. “Cullen's success rate is much higher than the average. Ten, even 15, percent of his pearls are quality. And nearly 50 percent of his implantations are successful.”

“Does he know why?”

“Not precisely. But
I
think it's because he sings while he works on them.”

“You're kidding me.”

“He loves them. He really does. You know what they say about talking softly to your houseplants? Well, oysters are a step up the evolutionary ladder, aren't they?”

Liana could just picture Cullen, whose baritone was delightfully off-key, singing to the oysters as he had so often sung to their baby son.

“And Cullen has wonderful hands,” Sarah added. “Healing hands. I think there's power in them.”

Liana wondered if Cullen realized that his assistant manager was in love with him.

“Anyway,” Sarah continued, “the process goes on and on. Three pearls for nearly every oyster. When they're too old to continue, we seed for mabe pearls—five at a time, if we're lucky. Once the oyster is removed, we sell it in Broome or overseas, and then we sell the shell for paint.”

Mabe pearls were grown directly on the shell, using variously shaped nuclei. They were flat on one side and much less valuable. Because they had to be cut from the shell, they were the oyster's last stand, and Liana had never liked working with them.

“It's become quite an industry, hasn't it?” Liana was still trying to take it all in. Cullen had revived a failing business and turned it into what was obviously a tightly run, profitable pearl farm. Along the way he had inspired fierce loyalty and even love in this woman.

“I'll show you all the buildings, if you like. We're still small, of course. But we're expanding rapidly. Cullen has the knack for this, you know. He knows when to take chances and when to hold steady.”

“'Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em….'”

“I'm sorry?”

“It's a song. About a gambler. When we were married, it was one of Cullen's favorites.”

Sarah's voice cooled. “I suppose this
is
the right sort of business for a gambler. But there's nothing reckless about Cullen's decisions. Everyone on his staff has a voice, and we all share in the profits. We've asked him to hold tight when he wanted to try something new, and he listened to us. That's hardly the mark of a gambling man, is it?”

“Cullen and I have a long history, Sarah. It would be difficult to erase it completely.”

“You know, I've wanted to meet you. But never under these circumstances, of course.”

“Why did you want to meet me?”

“Well, I work so closely with Cullen, I can't help being curious.” There was no apology in her voice.

“We were married a long time ago. I'm not sure what that has to do with Cullen's life now.”

“You lived here with him. I've seen your work. Cullen still keeps some of your pieces. You're enormously talented. Brilliant, really. He won't have an in-house jeweler, you know. He sells his stones wholesale, even though he could do a good business selling at least some of them in settings right here in Broome. I think…”

“What?”

“Well, I think he's decided that no one else should set his pearls.”

Liana didn't want to think about that. She didn't want
to think about the art of merging pearl and precious metal into something beautiful and unique. The moments when some nameless part of herself had been made whole by the wonder of creation.

Suddenly the air seemed heavy and still, but her own body was clammy with sweat. She shook her head, then realized it was a mistake when the landscape blurred. “I don't design jewelry anymore, Sarah. I probably couldn't if I tried.”

“That seems a pity.”

She could feel her heart beating faster, trying to send blood to limbs that were suddenly, maddeningly numb. “People change, and so do their interests.”

“Well, I hope mine never change. I love this place, and everything we do here.”

Liana had lived in this place for almost five years, loved the man who owned it, hated the same man when he nearly gambled it away. And, in the end, she had taken a gamble, too. She had thrown in the dice and cashed in her own personal chips when she walked away from Cullen and Pikuwa Creek.

And what had she lost as a result? Even as she struggled with familiar panic, the answer was perfectly clear. She had lost her heart, her soul, the muse that guided her hand and her imagination. She'd left a man because he'd made a terrible mistake, and then she had gone on to make her own.

She hated Pacific International and her place in it. She hated the life she had fashioned for herself out of a desperate yearning for security. She hated the woman she had become.

Sarah's brow furrowed. “Liana, you're pale. It's the climate. You're not used to it anymore. And it's Matthew, isn't
it? I've been going on and on, and walking too fast, besides. Cullen will give me a real bagging if you faint.”

“I'm…not going to faint.” Liana took a deep breath as panic surged through her in increasingly forceful waves.

“Let's just get you over to the shade.” Sarah took her arm, but Liana shook off her help.

“It has nothing to do with the heat.” She squeezed her eyes closed. She was catapulted through time by the fierce thunder of her heart, to a place Sarah had never seen, a tiny pearl farm of dilapidated buildings, of patched-up luggers and workers who only grudgingly appeared after their pay evaporated at the local grog shop.

Despite all she had endured here, she had loved it, sometimes even reveled in the hardships. She had not been driven away by heat or flies, venomous snakes or crocodiles. She had not, as she had told herself for ten years, been driven away by Cullen's mistakes. She had been driven away by a childhood that had left her torn apart. She had not found peace or happiness here, because she had never looked for them in the only place they could be found.

Inside herself.

“Lee?”

She opened her eyes to find Cullen standing in front of her. Sarah was retreating. She didn't know how he had sensed her distress, or if that was why he had come. She didn't even know how long she had stood there, reliving the years of their marriage. This was not the Pikuwa Creek or Southern Cross she had known. This was not the man she had known.

Yet it was.

He cupped her face in his hands. “Your skin's as cold as the water out there.”

She covered his hands with hers. “I'm so sorry, Cullen.”

“For what?”

“For believing all these years that everything was your fault. For being so afraid Matthew would love you more than he loved me. For leaving you when you needed me most.”

He shook his head, as if he, too, had been vaulted backwards in time and understood exactly what she meant. “You had to leave. You were right to leave me.”

“There were other ways. I could have stayed nearby. We could have gotten counseling. Even if that didn't work, I could have shared Matthew with you. But I ran so far and shut you out so completely because I still loved you. Can you understand that?”

“I understood it even then.”

“And look what you've done. Look what you've become. I gave up on you, even though I knew this was all inside you.”

“Don't make that mistake, Lee. It wasn't your duty to stay on and hold my hand. You did what you had to.”

“That's the frightening part. I ran away and gave up everything I ever was in exchange for Pacific International. And it's destroyed me.”

He was silent, because there was no way he could understand completely.

She turned away from him and stared out at the bay, where seeded silver-lip oysters floated in blissful ignorance of the treasure they harbored. “In ten years I have done nothing but grow more afraid, more insecure, more determined to wall myself off from the world.”

“It hasn't destroyed you.” He lifted her hair off her neck, twisting it high on her head. Then he gathered her in his arms and gently forced her back against him.

“Maybe it took coming back here to see it clearly.”

“It hasn't destroyed you.”

“What's left of the woman I wanted to be?”

“You're successful—”

“At a job I despise! I hate Pacific International, Cullen. I hate what we do and the way we do it. We carve the world into smaller and smaller pieces and sell it at bigger profits. I try to make a difference when I can, to protect people who need it, but I'm one voice among many. I have a title but very little power. My father set it up that way. It was Matthew he wanted. The only thing I ever did right in Thomas's eyes was have a son. He told me so when I crawled back to San Francisco and asked him for help after I left you. He made me a figurehead. I can hold Matthew's place until he's old enough to take over Pacific. And as my reward, I get a job there and the pearl. But only because I'll pass it on to Matthew.”

“Matthew's our son, and Thomas is dead. We're the ones who have a say in what Matthew becomes.”

“Don't you see? Thomas was craftier than I ever thought, because he realized we teach our children by example, not by words. And what has Matthew ever seen from me? I buy and sell the planet, just like Thomas did. I have no real life outside my work. My world is as narrow as the walls surrounding me. I
am
my father. I am Thomas Robeson. And every day I'm teaching Matthew to be just like me.”

“You're forgetting the differences. You're a terrific mother. You adore Matthew, and he knows it. You've given him everything.”

“I've kept him away from the other person who adores him.”

“He's a wonderful kid. That's all the proof required.”

“He's gone, Cullen!” She turned in his arms and pushed against his chest. “He's gone, and, damn it, don't you see?
I
drove him away! He came here, under his own steam, because I wouldn't let him come home with you. I've tried to control him, exactly the way my father controlled me. Thomas knew that would happen. He died knowing it, the bastard.”

He framed her face, holding her still. She felt tears welling in her eyes, then spilling to her cheeks. Cullen didn't brush them away. “Be quiet and listen. One, we are going to find our son, and then we are going to ask him why he ran away. And until he's told us, we are
not
going to continue to blame ourselves. Neither one of us.”

“What do you have to blame yourself about—”

“Two,” he said firmly, “from this moment forward we are finished with the past. Done with it. I made mistakes. You made mistakes. Bloody hurrah. We were young. We should have resolved things differently. We didn't. It's over.”

“It's not over. We have a son who's missing!”

“It's over, Lee. We've made amends as best we can. And now we have only the future to concern ourselves with.”

She stood absolutely still, trying to absorb what he'd said.

“Yes,” he spoke for her. “It can be that simple. Let it be that simple.”

“I want those years back,” she said at last. Her voice was barely audible. “Don't you see? That's what all this is about.”

He gathered her close. “But we can't have them. We only get the years ahead of us. And it will be up to us, won't it, how we live them? Because no matter whose shadow we're standing in, in the end, we're the ones who decide what happens next.”

W
here once there had been small cluttered rooms, now the inside of the bungalow was open and airy. Despite changes in the interior design, there were few personal touches. A carving of a whale embellished a coffee table; framed photographs of Matthew covered the wall behind a plaid sofa. The living area had only basic furniture, although stacks of books and a modest entertainment center testified that Cullen spent at least some time here.

“I made the structural changes, but I never seem to have the time to fix up the place.” Cullen moved papers from the sofa and gestured for Liana to sit. “I can turn on the air con if you'd like.”

She shook her head. A breeze from the bay swept through the open windows, and the house was comfortable. She sat back and closed her eyes. “You don't have to fuss. I'm feeling better.”

“I'll fetch something to drink.”

She was drained. As she rested, she could hear waves
washing against the shore and the shouts of men in the distance.

“Sarah must have stocked the shelves. I found juice.”

She looked up and saw that Cullen was holding out a glass. When she took it from him, she was glad to see that her hand was steadier.

“I put your things in Matthew's room.”

“Matthew's?”

“I always think of it that way, even though the house is so different. But it's in the general vicinity of the one he used as a little boy.”

“Do you remember when he learned to climb out of his crib and crawled in bed with us in the middle of the night?”

“I remember it could be bloody inconvenient.”

He smiled, and she found herself smiling back. Despite everything. “Do you remember his first Christmas?”

The smile disappeared. “Too right. I lost the money we'd saved for gifts.”

“That's not what I meant. We had a wonderful Christmas, Cullen. I made mother-of-pearl ornaments for the tree—”

“Bells and stars and angels. I have them.”

“Do you?” That both touched and surprised her. “They should go to Matthew someday. They're part of his history.”

“You baked biscuits, tiny round ones with chopped cherries. Even though it was hot enough to grill a snake on the veranda.”

She made a face. “Grilled snake never seemed festive.”

“I made Matthew a truck to pull behind him.”

“I made him a teddy bear.”

“No, you didn't. You made him a flaming zoo.”

“So I overdid it a little. He loved them. He still keeps some in his room.”

“I saw them.”

They fell silent, both thinking, she knew, of the teenager, not the toddler.

Cullen set down his glass when they'd both thought too long. “The cops will be watching out for him, Lee. They know me. They listened to everything I said. Whitey Pendergast in Derby promised he'll ring up a bloke he knows at Hall's Creek to ask if he's seen or heard anything.”

“They should be here by now, Cullen. They left Jimiramira days ago.”

“Dad probably stopped off to see the sights. That's all. And this isn't California. He could be by the side of the road somewhere, repairing an axle or the radiator. Matthew's going to see the real Australia.”

She was touched again, because he was still trying to protect her. “Look, you must have things to do. Let's make a deal. I'm going to rest. Then I'll rustle up some dinner. You come back whenever you're done. It'll be waiting.”

“When was the last time you cooked? Does Sue let you in the kitchen?”

“Whenever I want to be there.”

“How often is that?”

She waved off his question. “I haven't forgotten the basics.”

He checked his watch. “I'll be back about six. My private line rings down at the office, too, so you don't have to answer it. Sarah or I will get it there.”

“Cullen, about Sarah…”

He looked as if he'd been expecting a question. “I'll give it to you one more time, straight-out. I tried mixing business with pleasure just once. With you. I'll admit Sarah would like a relationship. But I'm a dab hand at resisting dangerous impulses.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I was going to ask if we should invite her to eat dinner with us.”

“That's not what you wanted to know.”

“But the other's none of my business, is it?”

“I couldn't begin to say.” He jammed his hat back on his head. “I don't know what you'll find in the kitchen, but when you lived here, you did wonders with nothing.”

She smiled sadly. “Never with nothing. There was always something here to work with.”

 

Exhausted, she slept on the sofa for an hour; then she prowled the house, inoculating herself against the past by immersing herself in it. He had torn down walls, added a wing and a deck in the back, which he'd screened with white lattice smothered in bougainvillea. She wondered who he entertained here. He denied that he and Sarah were lovers, but he was not a man who would adapt easily to celibacy. She knew there had been women, even if there wasn't one now.

The house was different, but it seemed familiar. It smelled like the sea, like nectar-laden tropical flowers with a cloying, unavoidable note of mildew. The heaviness of the air was a nostalgic serenade against her skin. The rooms were different, but the view remained exquisite. Mangroves to the southwest, teeming with insects and birds. Pikuwa Creek to the northwest, trickling to the bay but promising a torrent of pindan-tinted water when the monsoons arrived. In the farthest distance, the sails of a boat, not the quaint triangular sails of an earlier era, but still a reminder of the ocean's enormous wealth.

Cullen's bedroom had windows all around, as if he couldn't stand to be shut inside, even as he slept. Bamboo blinds and a king-size bed were hints that he didn't always
sleep alone. But there was little else in the room except a framed photograph on a wooden chest that Cullen had rescued from an old sailing lugger when they were still married. She lifted the photograph and wondered how Cullen explained it when he brought women to the room. Matthew's likeness stared back at her—this, too, from the days when she and Cullen were still married. But in the shadows, almost like a ghost, a slender young woman stood and watched the little boy.

Liana was that woman. She remembered what Cullen had said about living in the shadows of others, and she wondered if he thought of that each time he saw this photograph.

She was able, somehow, to face all that, to wander the rooms where they had lived as a family. She found the room he'd referred to as Matthew's, a large room now, where once there had been a nursery. She sat on the bed her son should have slept in each summer. She gazed out the window at the view that should have been his.

But she couldn't face her studio. She avoided that side of the house as if it were a murder scene, cordoned off by crime scene tape; as if, once she looked closely, she would see the chalk outline of a body on the floor. Cullen had renovated the space for her in the earliest days of their relationship. Before her pregnancy. Before their marriage. Before things began to disintegrate.

He had taken what was then the largest room in the house, one that looked directly over the bay, and built workbenches and shelves. He had installed a separate diesel generator for her use alone, and wired and plumbed the room to her specifications. He had even installed an air conditioner for the hottest days, although they could not afford one anywhere else in the house. The studio had been her sanctuary, and she had spent blissful hours there, turning Cullen's pearls into art.

And she had been successful. More successful than either of them had dreamed. Her work had been sold in Sydney, Paris and Tokyo, fetching prices that had astounded her. She had considered hiring a production staff, negotiating to bring out a line under her own name, opening her own showroom in Broome or Darwin. Before Cullen's gambling ripped the heart out of Southern Cross. Before their marriage succumbed to a plague of silence, followed by recriminations and lies. Before she snatched Matthew and left her young husband forever to return to San Francisco and her father's tyrannical demands.

Through the years, she had wondered what Cullen had done with her studio. Now, so close to finding out, she couldn't take the final step. Her muse was gone, and she had no hope it would return. But if the studio was gone, too, transformed into a sleeping porch or Cullen's personal office, then the muse was surely dead, entombed in a room used for other purposes. The days when she might have resurrected it would have fled forever.

She completed her tour in the kitchen, where she was bathed in nostalgia. Cullen had done little here, but what did a man who was a “tinned” food gourmet need with butcher-block islands, granite countertops or glass-paned cupboards? The same peeling black linoleum covered the narrow counters. The same black and white tiles covered the floor. The refrigerator was new, but small, in keeping with the few fresh supplies he kept on hand. The stove was older now, and even more tired. The round table in the corner was covered with a cherry red plastic tablecloth in an obvious attempt to brighten the room. But except for a few new saucepans under the stove and new glasses in the cupboard, the kitchen was just as she'd left it.

She found rice in the same cabinet where she had al
ways stored it and put it on to steam. She found knives in a familiar drawer to chop vegetables Sarah had undoubtedly stocked. She found a can of boned chicken and marinated it in soy sauce, powdered ginger and chopped garlic as she stir-fried the vegetables. And when everything had been added and the dish was finished, she took out the cutlery and plates she had bought in Broome before Matthew was born.

Cullen was late, arriving well past six. She had listened all afternoon for the telephone, but if it rang, it only rang in his office. When he appeared in the kitchen doorway, he took one look at her expectant face. “I just got a bit of news.”

“Did the police call?”

He tossed his hat to a peg beside the refrigerator. “No, they'll ring us the moment they have something to say, but not before. I spent the afternoon contacting all the station managers along the route Dad probably took. No luck there, but I had some luck with Winnie.”

“Winnie? What did she say?”

“She rang me to say that no one at the station has heard from Dad. She checked with the neighboring stockmen. Nothing there, either. No one spotted the Jackeroo. But that's to be expected. Those are lonely roads. She did think of something as we talked, though. She disconnected and rang the father of the girl Matthew brought to Jimiramira.”

Liana remembered Winnie's story. “Tricia?”

“That's right. She asked him if he would speak to Tricia and see if Matthew had given any indication he might be going somewhere else after he met up with my dad.”

“And?”

“As it turns out, Matthew told Tricia he was coming here to Western Australia.”

“That's all?” When he nodded, she went on. “Nothing about where or why?”

“I suppose we had a bit of luck just getting that much out of her.”

“Then you were right. He
is
coming to Pikuwa Creek. This isn't a wild-goose chase.”

“It's little enough, but it's a good omen.”

“Would it be like your dad to take his time getting here?”

“It's just been too long. I don't know what Dad's like anymore. I reckon he could be feeling his age a bit and have regrets. It's possible he sees this as his last chance to be part of a family again.”

Liana turned back to the stove. Her heart was pounding, not only from the news about Matthew, but from memories, as well. How many nights had Cullen hung his hat on the same peg, then stood in that very doorway watching her put the final touches on their dinner? The past and the present blurred. If she didn't feel twenty-four, how could she feel so many of the same emotions?

“What do you think of the house?” Cullen asked.

“I like it. You've worked so hard.”

“You've seen it all?”

She turned off the burner and faced him again, because she couldn't warm the food any more without destroying it. She shook her head in answer. He didn't seem surprised, although she wondered if he could guess what she'd chosen to avoid. “I like the deck,” she said. “Could we eat there?”

“I'll just see if the table needs a swipe or two.”

“I already took care of it. Let's dish up in here and take everything outside.”

“It smells wonderful. You haven't forgotten how to cook.”

“I guess it's like riding a bike.”

He seemed in no hurry to eat. “It's a different life you lead now, isn't it? Household help. Limousines at your disposal. Designer condo and clothing.”

“Different, yes.”

“Back then, I couldn't have given you any of those things, even if I hadn't been gambling.” He wasn't apologizing—but he wasn't just making conversation, either.

Neither of them made a move toward putting food on their plates. Liana's breathing grew shallower. She could feel her pulse speeding up, but not in panic.

“I never wanted those things,” she said. “I still don't. They came with the package.”

“Package?”

“Security. A position at Pacific International. I had a son to raise. By the time I left Australia, I didn't believe in myself. I wanted to be sure Matthew would always have everything he needed. But I didn't go back to San Francisco for designer clothes and a limo. Those things never mattered to me.”

“You were an artist. You could have supported yourself. Did the job matter so much, Lee?”

“I wanted it,” she admitted. “I wanted one sure thing in my life after years of uncertainty. For the first time Thomas actually offered me something I needed.”

“He held it out to you the way the snake in the Garden of Eden held out the apple. Take this and you'll have everything you ever wanted.”