Garden of Lies (78 page)

him the rest. Even if he curses me, hates me, that would be better than this ... this wall between

us. This awful invisible barrier.

Oh, she wanted him back so badly, seeing him standing there, so familiar, so unbearably dear.

Staring at her with those deep eyes, the first part of him she had fallen in love with. She could

almost feel the heat of his body. She wanted to reach out, wrap herself in all that warmth. Lose

herself in him.

But not if she had to lie to him.

She jerked her head up, and held his gaze.
Be brave,
she told herself.

“You probably wondered, yesterday in court—” Rachel stumbled ahead, slowly, as if learning

to walk again after an illness, groping for words, “why David Sloane hates me so much, why he

wanted to hurt me. You see, he and I ... we were lovers. A long time ago. During my internship. I

got pregnant, and he ... well, he wanted me to have an abortion. But I couldn’t. Not his way, cold,

like having a tooth pulled, as if it didn’t matter. And so ... I ... I made
him
do it, the abortion.

That’s why he hates me. And that’s why ... I was sick, you see, so sick afterwards ... and they said

... oh God ... the X rays ... they said I would probably never have a child ... a chance in a

thousand. ...” She broke off, stepping backward, feeling the cold edge of the marble mantel

against her back. She felt as if she were shrinking, huddling to ward off the awful pain inside her.

“Now you know. Why you should have married Rose instead. Why there’s no point in us going

on from here.”

She felt tears rising in her, but she held them back. She had no right to cry, feel sorry for

herself. This was
her
doing. And right now she was making Brian look like when he was

wounded in Vietnam, pale as death, shocky, pupils dilated.

[484]
Oh, my love, I wish I could go back, change what happened, start all over. How different

our lives might have been! But I can’t. What’s done is done. And I accept that. All I ask is that

you not hate me too much, that you try to understand.

But Brian wasn’t saying anything, he just stood there staring at her, with those eyes that

seemed to reflect a whole universe.

She felt lost, floating, weightless. Free of her lie at long last ... but, oh God, so alone.

Go now,
she told herself.
Go before you start begging him to forgive you, to take you back.

Rachel turned away, and started for the door. She felt as if she were walking through water,

slowly, with a strange weightless grace.

Don’t look back,
she told herself.

“Rachel. Wait.”

She stopped, turned, and saw through a film of tears his blurred shape rushing toward her. A

tiny bead of hope rose in her.

She pushed it away. He wanted to say good-bye, that was all. To wish her luck perhaps. That

was Brian, always gracious, even in the worst of times. A true gentleman.

Oh God, why wouldn’t he just let her go? She couldn’t bear the thought of them parting like

tennis partners shaking hands after a match.

Then suddenly Brian was crushing her in his arms, knocking the wind out of her.

Rachel’s heart took flight with a startled burst.

Oh Lord, was this really happening, Brian’s arms around her? Oh, the miracle of him, his

strong hard body and his bones, so blessedly solid, as if she’d been drowning and now he was

dragging her onto some wonderful shore.

“Rachel,” he murmured, his voice choked with tears. “You idiot. How could you ever think I

would stop loving you? And all this time I thought it was me, that you’d stopped loving
me
.”

He was crying, they were both crying. She tasted salt when she kissed him.

“Brian,” she whispered, “oh, Brian ... can you ever forgive me?”

She waited, hearing sounds she had not noticed a few minutes [485] ago, the ticking of a clock,

Custer purring on the end of the sofa, the hissing of the radiator.

Then she heard Brian say, “I already have.”

Rachel, delirious, wanted it to go on and on, this marvelous soaring feeling, but there was still

something she had to know, something too important to be left for later.

She pulled away slightly, needing to see his face when he told her.

“Am I enough for you, Brian? Just me? Without a child?”

The light in his eyes was clear, achingly bright, shining with love.

“You are enough,” he said.

Rose, walking quickly, saw the open door at the end of the east corridor. Max’s office. There

was a light on.

She broke into a run, her heart slapping against her rib cage.

Oh, let him be there,
she prayed,
oh please.

All weekend she’d been chasing Max. First, phoning him at his apartment, over and over.

Letting it ring and ring and ring. And this morning, the frustration, having to hold herself in,

somehow to get through the meeting at Di Fazio’s, before she could let herself think of Max.

And now finally,
finally,
she would be able to see him. Not yet lunchtime, he should still be in

his office.
Please ...

She stopped in the open doorway, her heart, too, seeming to come to a standstill.

Max was crouched in front of the oak cabinet behind his desk, unloading files into a carton.

“Max, what on earth is going on?”

He glanced up, giving her a sheepish smile. “Well, I guess it looks like I’m moving.”

Some kind of joke, of course. And not a funny one.

Rose scanned the office, saw how empty it looked, his desktop swept clean, cartons stacked

over by the glass-front bookcase.

Oh, Mother of God, he was not joking.

Rose felt as if she had run for miles and miles ... only to cross the finish line too late. Hot,

aching all over, blood pounding. She wanted to lie down, somewhere dark and cool, away from

the pain [486] in her chest, from this nightmare, from the awful sight of Max packing his things

in that box.

This isn’t happening. I’ll walk out of here, and when I walk back in again, everything will be

just as it was. Exactly the same as before.

“What
is
this? Max? For God’s sake,
tell me.”

“I tried to call you last night,” he said. “Your line was busy. I was going to tell you. I’m sorry

you had to be surprised this way.”

“That’s funny, that’s really funny, because I tried to call you last night. I tried calling you all

weekend as a matter of fact.”

Who could she have been talking to when Max called? Oh, of course, Clare, calling from

Syracuse, babbling, so upset she could hardly talk straight. Nonnie. Another stroke, a minor one,

but still worrisome. So Rose had had to spend half an hour calming her down, all the while

wanting to hang up, so the line could be free in case Max called.

And he
had
called ... but only to tell her good-bye.

Jesus. The irony of it struck her, and Rose started to laugh and cry at the same time.

Max looked up at her, smiling, a bewildered expression on his face. “Want to let me in on it?”

“Oh, Max, you look so funny squatting down there. Like ... like ... oh, I don’t know ... like I

caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, or something.” Tears squeezed from the corners of

her eyes, and wet her temples.

Then he was rising, his face red and hot-looking, gazing at her with such a woebegone

expression that her laughter abruptly stopped.

“I’m taking over the litigation department in L.A.,” he explained. “It all happened kind of

suddenly, and you were so caught up in that trial ... I didn’t want to throw you this until ...”

“Is it what you want, Max, is this really what you want?”

Max shrugged, almost grinned, the ghost of a grin. “It’s a great opportunity. And Mandy loves

it out there. I’ll have her summers, school vacations, that kind of thing. I took her out with me to

look around last weekend. We even got in some pool time.” He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt,

showing a forearm toasted golden brown. “Look, you believe it? In the middle of November.

Yeah, there’s worse places to be than California.”

God, Max really
was
leaving. And for good.

[487] Rose felt as if the floor—with its parquet floor and Oriental rug—had unhinged suddenly

like a trapdoor, dropping her into black space.

Max, her staunch, never-failing pillar of support. The one friend she had counted on

completely. She had taken him for granted, like the good air she breathed, always there.

And now ... She wanted to say,
Max, don’t go. I need you. I want you.

But the words wouldn’t come. She’d just be making a fool of herself ... embarrassing them

both. Max had already left her. That was clear. In his mind and heart he’d already put three

thousand miles between them. He’d been traveling those miles probably from the minute he

walked out her door four months ago, when she had not done one thing to stop him.

It’s too late.
The terrible realization sank home like a blow.

“When?” she asked.

“A week. I’d prefer more time to finish up things here, but Gary says it’s a broken rudder out

there.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “So here I am, trying to clean up twenty-three

years. I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a hand.”

Rose made a sound in her throat, a sob she just barely managed to hold back. She ducked her

head, so he wouldn’t see the pain in her face. Then she pasted a phony smile on, and spoke in a

bright, congratulatory tone.

“Love to, but I have an appointment. I’m in kind of a rush. But, hey, listen, if you’re not too

busy, we’ll have lunch or something before you go, okay? Champagne and everything.”

“Sure thing.” Max was on his knees again, digging into the bottom drawer of a file cabinet. He

waved a manila file absently in her direction. “I’ll check and clear a date soon as I can find my

calendar under all this rubble.”

Rose paused, taking in the scene, memorizing it, grainy with the early afternoon light that

sifted in through the Venetian blinds. Max’s bent head, the hump of his broad back pulling the

back of his shirt taut across the shoulders. One wrinkled tail had worked out over the waistband

of his gray slacks, and she remembered him once saying, when they were in the shower together,

that he was “built like an old buffalo.”

She thought of that now. A buffalo. Somewhere she’d read [488] that the Plains Indians, if

caught in a blizzard while out hunting, kept from freezing by killing a buffalo, then cutting open

its belly and crawling inside until the storm had passed. And that’s what she’d done with Max,

wasn’t it? She’d used him to stay warm.

What else should she have expected? That he’d be here, waiting with open arms for her

forever? No. She had hurt him. And he had done what any sane person would do.

And now it was too late.

She had imagined herself unwinding with Max over a glass of wine at the end of the day, the

way they used to. She, telling him everything about the trial; how it had climaxed, the settlement

meeting this morning. And the thing that had been puzzling her, haunting her all night long, the

weird coincidence of her long-ago guardian angel turning out to be
Rachel’s mother.

If only they could go home now, uncork that bottle of wine, take it to bed with them, then after

they’d made love, as she lay in his arms, they would talk about everything, just like before. Only

it usually had been
her
talking, asking advice ... and Max listening, hadn’t it?

Now suddenly there was so much she wanted to know about Max. But there wasn’t time. She’d

lost her chance.

Rose, feeling tears coming, turned away, and slipped out the door.

Chapter 37

“The Lord will open to them the gate of paradise, and they will return to that homeland where

there is no death, but only lasting joy. ...”

Rose listened to the young priest’s words, her eyes dry as she watched him place a wooden

cross on top of the simple white-painted coffin.

Lasting joy?
she echoed in her mind.
Well, I hope so. God knows Nonnie took no joy in living.

Let her get what she can out of death.

She was surprised at how little emotion she felt.
I’m not sorry she’s dead, how could I be? But

I’m not glad, either.

And, really, wasn’t this what Nonnie had been toiling toward, all those First Fridays and

Sunday masses, the endless rosaries and confessions, accumulating points for admission to

heaven as if life itself was not much more than a giant bingo game?

Thank God, at least, it had been quick. A series of tiny strokes following Clare’s call last week,

and then Nonnie had slipped away in the middle of the night. Everyone had been spared, Nonnie

most of all, the nightmare that would have followed if she’d lived. Bedridden, her mind gone, an

oversized infant to be fed, changed, washed, diapered.

Rose glanced over at Marie, seated beside her on the wooden pew. Thinner than ever, and

older, yet oddly dignified, holding herself straight, face flinty as an Indian-head nickel, wearing a

ratty navy coat with a bit of torn lining drooping from one sleeve.

Rose felt the same old pity and irritation rise up inside her.
Look at her, still as aloof as a cat.