Bleeding Heart (31 page)

We stood there, watching the kids splashing around in the pool, their high, excited voices floating across the yard to us. After a moment or two, I said, “How did you find out that Mackenzie was building a house in Woodhaven?”

“We got to talk about that now?”

“I think you know that’s why I came.”

“It was a mistake, okay? Yes, I wanted him to suffer. I wanted to make him pay for what happened to Hannah. Eleanor told me about his heart problems, and I knew the digitalis would make things worse, but I didn’t mean to kill him. I really didn’t—I wouldn’t have been that stupid! I need to take care of Danny. He doesn’t have anybody else who can do that now.”

“But you came to Woodhaven to track Mackenzie down, right? That seems pretty premeditated.”

“Yeah, I know. But the truth is—” She hesitated, turning to face me. “Do you want to know the truth?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“Okay,” she said, looking out across the work site. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a
plan
. I just knew I had to do something. I had to get Danny away from this hellhole, and I had to somehow make that fucker pay for what he did to Hannah. I had him on Google Alerts. I saw a notice that he was building some huge place in the Berkshires. I figured it would be easier to get to him there than at his headquarters in Atlanta. By then Jack was already all wrapped up in his legal battles. He barely registered it when I told him we were leaving. I lucked out when I saw your ad in the PennySaver. The only two things I know anything about, really, are farming and computers.”

“You took the job so you could be nearer to Mackenzie?”

“Yeah.”

“It must have seemed like a miracle when Eleanor called that day.”

“Not really,” Mara said. “I’d gone up to the house a few times after I started working for you, just looking around. Curious about where the monster lived, you know? I didn’t think anyone’d moved in yet. But Eleanor caught me there one afternoon. And I had to think fast, so I told her that I worked for you and that I was just checking out the property, hoping maybe we could do the landscaping. She was so nice—and she didn’t suspect a thing. She befriended me and Danny after that. She put in a good word for us with Mackenzie, though I know he double-checked with Mr. Lombardi before letting her put you down on the call list. I feel really bad about how I betrayed her. But I couldn’t help myself. I’d do the same thing again if I had to.”

“What I don’t understand,” I told her, “is why you stayed after they started the investigation into Mackenzie’s death. You must have known that they’d discovered he’d been poisoned. You were right there when Detective Erlander asked me about the digitalis.”

“I was going to leave,” she said. “I was going to leave that night, actually. But then Erlander called me at home, remember? He asked me all those questions about you—you and your husband. And I got worried that they’d think you’d done it. Erlander seemed clueless enough to charge the wrong person for the right reason. And I also felt bad about how the whole thing had hurt the business. I wanted to make things right.”

She’d stayed out of loyalty. I felt awful about what I had to tell her.

“You need to come back to Woodhaven with me and explain what happened. I’ll help you find a good lawyer. I have a feeling
that if you’re honest about what happened—and why—the authorities will be lenient.”

“I can’t right now,” she said. “I’ve got to stay for Hannah’s funeral tomorrow. But I’ll come back after that. I promise.”

I looked at her and said, “I’ll have to tell them if you don’t. I’ll have to go to Erlander myself, if you’re not back by the end of the day on Monday.”

“I’ll be there,” she said, meeting my gaze forthrightly, but I didn’t believe her.

I glanced in the rearview mirror as I drove away. She was still standing where I’d left her, watching me go. It was the last time I’d probably ever see her, I realized. She would take Danny and move on. Some out-of-the-way place where Erlander couldn’t find her. Change her name. Invent a new story. She’d done it before. That’s what she was going to do now. Start over again—again. Somewhere that wouldn’t remind her of the past and everything she’d lost.

That’s what I’d do, anyway.

T
he wreckage of the Delaney farm—and the family itself—haunted me as I got back on the highway. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing the fallow fields and potholed roadway . . . the ugly tangle of equipment and holding tanks behind the house . . . the children swimming and playing within shouting distance of all those pipes and pumps and toxic chemicals. It was early evening by the time I took the Woodhaven exit off the turnpike. In stark contrast to the countryside around Shalesburg, the Berkshires, burnished by the setting sun and the first red flares of autumn, had never looked more beautiful.

I loved this bittersweet time of the year in southern New England when the nights have turned chilly and the gardens, though already starting to die back, are still full of color and texture. The dense ranks of turtleheads with their gleaming purple helmets. The delicate, orchidlike sprays of the Japanese anemones. I drove past a garden where the wide hoop skirts of the hydrangea bushes—white and otherworldly in the fading light—looked like so many ball gowns gently adrift on the darkening lawn.

I parked the car by the barn and ducked into the office to check the messages. There was nothing that couldn’t wait until morning. I walked up the path to the house, cricket song throbbing in the cool night air as loud and piercing as bagpipes. But the place felt empty to me. The office already seemed so deserted without Mara. And she wasn’t the only person I was missing. Gwen still hadn’t called. And there was no word from Tom.

With a rising sense of shame, I thought back on the last time Tom and I were together. How selfish and self-involved I’d been! While he’d been so emotionally honest and frank with me. And right about so much. Since Richard’s disappearance, I’d prided myself on my independence and self-sufficiency. But I realized now that I couldn’t keep sitting on the sidelines of life. What I saw and learned at the Delaney farm that day had opened my eyes to many things. Not least of which being the importance of the fight that Tom had been waging for years. I was ready to join him—and that fight—if he’d still have me.

I decided to wait until the next day to call him. I needed to get some sleep and think through exactly what I was going to say. But I was still as nervous as a schoolgirl when I finally steeled myself to dial his number on Sunday afternoon.

“Alice,” he said when he heard my voice. And just the way he said it made me realize that everything was going to be okay.

“I hope you’re doing the right thing in terms of Mara,” Tom told me after I filled him in on my trip.

“I know I am,” I said. “God, Tom, if you could have seen that place! Mackenzie’s company ruined a farm that had been in the family for generations—and the whole area is being torn up and destroyed. Hannah Delaney would be alive today if she hadn’t been exposed to those chemicals! I can’t condone what Mara did, but I sure can sympathize.”

“Yes, I know,” Tom said. “I’m still worried about your role in all this, though. Letting Mara disappear without telling Erlander. It’s taking the law into your own hands. I can see how he might even consider you an accessory.”

“Well, no one but you knows that I went to Pennsylvania yesterday. I’m going to call Erlander and tell him what Mara did, but I don’t see why I need to tell him
when
I found out. I could just as easily have waited until tomorrow, say, to start wondering where she’d gone. It’ll be Labor Day, anyway; no one will be looking for me in the office. I can lie low, keep the answering machine on, and mentally move my trip to Shalesburg forward. Then I could call the police Tuesday morning, after Mara’s well on her way.”

Tom was quiet for a moment, thinking this over.

“Didn’t the family see you?”

“No, I don’t think so. Mara hustled me out of the house before anyone noticed I was there. I talked to someone at the store in town, but I can’t imagine Erlander’s going to track her down. I think this could work, Tom.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I hope so. You can count on me to back you up if it comes to that. I’m no big fan of Erlander and the way he’s conducted this investigation. At the same time, he’s obviously putting two and two together now.” He paused, then seemed to decide. “The best possible scenario would be for him to learn the truth about Mara’s involvement when it’s too late to grab her.”

“Thank you,” I told him. “For understanding and for supporting me on this—and Mara.”

“I’ve seen too many towns like Shalesburg,” Tom replied. “I’ve heard too many stories like Mara’s—people whose lives have been devastated by fracking. And it’s always the poor and helpless. It’s always some desperate farmer just trying to hold on to his land.”

“Yes. I see that now. I finally—”

“It’s a national disgrace!” Tom went on. “Letting these special interests run roughshod over the law. What you told me about EnergyCorp refusing to release its chemical formula? That’s just criminal! And the only people making any real money out of butchering the countryside and destroying innocent lives are the damned Mackenzies of this world!”

I smiled to myself as Tom continued his tirade, though I’d heard a lot of it before from him: “. . . blame an army of high-paid lobbyists . . . total lack of government oversight . . . desperate need to overhaul the whole campaign financing mess . . .” And I would probably be hearing much of it again. At least I hoped so. But I needed to get used to Tom’s fiercely held convictions. Not to mention his lack of restraint in voicing them. Richard had been low-key about most of his opinions, political and otherwise. He used to poke fun at people who “clambered up onto their little soapboxes” to espouse this or that cause. I used to agree with him. I used to believe in Richard’s “go along to get along” approach to things. Until I saw where that led.

“Tom,” I finally cut in, “you’re preaching to the choir here.”

“Oh!” He sounded startled. Then he said with an embarrassed laugh, “I’m sorry, Alice. I tend to get carried away.”

“I’ve noticed,” I told him. “It’s actually one of the things I really admire about you. How passionate you feel about these things.”

Again he took a moment to respond.

“And certain people, too,” he said.

“Yes,” I told him. “And those certain people have been thinking—as you suggested. I’m sorry about the way I behaved the other night. I want to make it up to you. Would you like to come over for a special dinner tomorrow night?”

“Yes, I would,” Tom said. “Very much. But if you’ve been on the road all day—as you’ll be telling Erlander, remember—I doubt you’re going to be in much of a mood to put a meal together. Why don’t you come to my place instead?”

“I’d like that.”

“Well, let’s see if you still feel the same way after you’ve tasted my cooking.”

T
he next morning I decided it would be best to just unplug from the world. My daughters, who usually stay with me over the Labor Day weekend, were busy elsewhere this year—Olivia at her in-laws’, and Franny and Owen visiting friends on Long Island.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay on your own?” Olivia had asked me a few days before during one of our regular phone calls. I found it amusing how she’d started to mother me, routinely taking my temperature on Green Acres, the Mackenzie investigation, even my relationship with Tom. Though I don’t think she realized it, she was obviously in training for her next job.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can manage,” I’d told her. “How are you feeling? Morning sickness any better?”

“Finally! I can actually look at eggs in the morning again without gagging. I can’t believe you only had to go through this torture for six weeks!”

I was enjoying sharing pregnancy war stories with my older daughter. Being an expectant mother had softened Olivia’s hard edges and sweetened her more acerbic tendencies. There was an
ease and flow to our conversations now that had all but dried up after Richard left—yet another thing to blame him for. Though we’d touched on it only briefly, I sensed she was thinking about him a lot these days and missing a father’s presence in her life. She was calling me more often and talking longer and more intimately than she had in many years.

“So we really don’t know
anything
about Daddy’s side of the family?” she’d asked the one time we discussed Richard directly. We’d been talking about physical characteristics and wondering if the baby might be a redhead like Allen.

“No,” I’d told her. “Your father was adopted, and he never expressed any interest to me in trying to find his birth parents.”

“I have such a hard time with that!” she’d said. “How can anybody not care about where they came from? About who they are?” But I understood that what she was really having a hard time with was the fact that half of her genetic makeup—and a quarter of her baby’s—remained a total mystery. And she was worried that there were unwelcome genes Richard might be handing down that she couldn’t know about in advance and prepare for.

“I think your father never felt loved as a child,” I’d told her. “He never felt he belonged. I really believe that did something to him, something that began to affect him more and more as the years went by. Your baby
will
be loved—and he or she
will
belong, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

I spent the morning where I’m always the happiest: in the garden. I worked in the long border behind the house—where I couldn’t be spotted from the road—weeding, pruning, and deadheading. The warm, dry summer had taken its toll. The dahlias had shot up to almost seven leggy feet, and I had to stand on tiptoe to top off the blooms. The monarda that just a few short weeks ago had been blanketed with butterflies and hummingbirds was now
covered in mildew, the once bright red bristling flower heads blackened as burnt marshmallows. I cut the whole patch down, folded the load into the wagon with the rest of the cuttings and debris, and started across the lawn to the woods where I kept the compost heap, pulling the wagon behind me. I was upending it onto the pile when I heard a car door slam.

Screened by the trees, I watched Gwen walk across the drive, knock on the kitchen door, and then lean over and peer in, shielding her eyes against the bright morning sunlight.
Damn her timing!
I thought. Though I was pleased that she’d finally come by, I knew how hard it was for me to hold anything back from Gwen. And what I’d learned about Mara and Mackenzie really needed to be kept under wraps for at least another day. That would be the safest and wisest thing to do. For Mara—and for me. I stayed where I was by the compost pile, not moving.

Gwen knocked again, called my name a couple of times, waited a minute or two, and then started walking back toward her car. But she stopped in her tracks after she’d taken a few steps. Something in her peripheral vision—my bag of gardening tools that I’d left by the border, perhaps?—must have caught her eye and made her turn around. Then she spotted my red plaid shirt through the trees.

“Alice?” she called across the lawn. “Are you
hiding
from me?”

“Of course not,” I lied, emerging from the woods and pulling the empty wagon behind me. “I didn’t see you until just now.”

“Really? I’ve been knocking on your door and practically screaming your name.”

“What’s up?”

“Well, it’s great to see you again, too.”

“Sorry,” I told her, leaving the wagon by the border and crossing the lawn to her. “I just didn’t expect you right now.”

“Well, excuse me. I’m obviously interrupting important work here.”

“I said I was sorry,” I replied. “Can we maybe just start this whole conversation all over again?”

“Oh, who are we kidding?” she said, touching my arm. “I know you’re still pissed off at me. And disappointed. I understand why. Let’s sit down somewhere and talk, okay?”

“Of course,” I said, relieved that Gwen herself would seem to be the main topic of conversation. “Grab a seat under the trees, and I’ll get some lemonade.”

“I want you to know that I really took what you said about me and Sal to heart,” she told me after we’d settled into the Adirondack chairs under the willows. “I may not act like it all the time, but your opinion means more to me than anybody’s. At first, I was really hurt and mad about how hard you’d come down on me. But then I began to remember the good things you’d said. That I was competent and capable, and that I needed to find a way to get the board back on my side.”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t be all that hard if you tried.”

“Well, I gave it a lot of thought,” she said, “and decided you were right, that the problem was the women on the board. I’ve been handling them all wrong. The truth is, it’s mostly the women who do the heavy lifting. Who get things done. So I sat down and reworked the strategic plan that I inherited when I took the job, reorganizing the restoration into three different phases—and lengthening the construction process by another year. That way, rather than having it look like we were way behind in our fund-raising, I made it seem that we were more than halfway to our goal for Phase I.”

“Pretty clever,” I said. “But don’t you think they’ll see right through that?”

“Oh, they did, all right!” Gwen said. “I invited the women on the board, and every female mover and shaker I could think of in the area, over for tea at Bridgewater House last Wednesday. I told them that I needed their advice. That I really believed in Bridgewater House, and I wanted more than anything to make the restoration a reality. But that I thought we’d maybe been setting ourselves up to fail. Maybe we should spread out the fund-raising schedule, and also come up with some real incentives for people to make major gifts. Gigi Lombardi sniffed and said she thought that was
my
job, and if I couldn’t handle it, then maybe someone else should!”

“I can’t believe you included her in this, Gwen! I warned you about her. She’s out to get you.”

“I knew that, and I decided it was best just to look the tiger in the mouth—in this case, one wearing bright red lipstick. I said that of course I’d step down if that’s what the board wanted, but first I hoped they wouldn’t mind looking over some of my ideas. I put the new plan up on PowerPoint and walked them through it while they scarfed down éclairs from Lenox Patisserie. And then I showed them my mock-ups of all the naming possibilities. I’d taken a lot of photos and airbrushed in the engraved marble plaques to make everything look real.”

“What plaques?”

“The Trish and Maurice Moorehead Front Parlor . . . The Tifton Family Keeping Room . . . The Gigi and Salvatore Lombardi Dining Room . . . Well, you get the idea. I have to say, the photos did look pretty spectacular and I had them blown up into these easel-backed posters that they could take home with them. ‘Just to live with the idea a little,’ I suggested. They all just sat there, primly sipping their tea, totally noncommittal. I considered handing in my resignation after they all left.”

“But?”

Gwen sat back in her chair and took a long drink of lemonade, swirling the ice around in her glass before continuing.

“The phone rang about an hour later. Gigi wanted to know why she couldn’t have the front parlor. It was the biggest and most important room in the house, and she felt that she and Sal deserved it because he was board chair. Then Linda Tifton phoned to say she didn’t like the marble plaque. It looked too much like a tombstone. Perhaps something in gilded wood would be more elegant? And did we have to call it the ‘keeping room’? Did anyone even know what that was anymore? I got more than $75,000 in pledges by the end of the day!”

“That’s great, Gwen. See? I
knew
you could.”

“But wait—this is what I really wanted to tell you,” Gwen went on. “Sal and I had arranged to spend the weekend at a little B&B in Vermont. He gave Gigi some cock-and-bull story about a business trip, and we drove up together Friday night. We were both real quiet in the car. I kept thinking about how I’d pulled the campaign out of the fire and how great it was that Gigi had come through. I began to think about how I actually kind of
liked
her. Sure she’d shown her claws, but it was only because she really loved Sal and wanted to save her marriage. So what the hell was I doing? When we got to our room, I told Sal I was so sorry but I just couldn’t go ahead with it.”

“And?” I asked.

“And you know what? He was so relieved! I think he’d just been worried about me, honestly, and wanting to help out in some way. He said he still loved me and always would, but that he really didn’t want to break up his marriage or hurt Gigi. We had a good laugh—and then a good cry. He slept on the couch, and we came back down the next day, his meeting unexpectedly canceled.”

“Oh, Gwen! I’m really proud of you for the way you’ve dealt with all of this.”

“Yeah, well, it took me long enough to learn how to stand on my own two feet. And now that I have, I have to say I’m looking back with a lot of regret on how I handled things with Graham. I wish I’d listened to you then, too. You were right that I never should have gotten involved with him.”

“Sometimes the rules don’t apply,” I told her. “Not when your happiness is at stake. You said you felt an amazing connection with him. I understand you wanting to pursue that—wanting be with him. Sometimes you have to listen to your heart and everything else be damned.”

“Yeah, sometimes. But this wasn’t one of them,” Gwen said, setting her empty glass down on the grass. She rose and stretched and then perched on the arm of her chair, looking down at me. “I may have pretended otherwise. I may have even let myself believe we had something going for a little while. But underneath it all, I knew the truth. Graham was a lot of fun, but that was all it was ever going to be, Alice.”

“Okay,” I said, uncertain why she looked so upset. “So you’ve figured out how you really felt about him. At least you don’t have to worry that you lost the one great love of your life, right?”

“I lost something else, though,” Gwen told me. “And it has me really spooked. I keep debating with myself whether or not I should go to Erlander with it—but then I’d have to tell him about my relationship with Graham. And that would jeopardize my job just when things are starting to look up. I try to tell myself it’s not all that important, that I should just stop worrying. But I can’t help it. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, obsessing about it.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about?” I said,
realizing that this was the real reason Gwen had come to see me. “Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

“The truth is, Alice, I was furious with Graham when he died. I’d announced to the board a week or so before that I’d gotten this huge anonymous pledge, but then Graham told me he’d have to put it off for a while. And he was so vague about what was going on and when I could expect it! I finally decided I had to do something to pin him down. I prepared a printed pledge that would have committed him to making good on the money within the year, and I gave it to him the night before he died. But he refused to sign it. We had a fight and he ended up tearing the paper in half. He called me some pretty nasty things—mostly saying that I was only after his money like everybody else.”