Michael’s Wife (7 page)

She awoke early Saturday morning, her first thought that Michael would be coming home. He'd want to know what she'd been doing for the last two years and she wouldn't be able to tell him, and God only knew what he'd do then. A woman who'd deserted her baby couldn't have been up to much good.
God, I'm scared
. Her only hope was that she wasn't Laurel. She had no proof of this, just a feeling.

As she dressed she stood before one of the barred windows by the bed, the bars reminding her of another problem. Would they send her to prison for deserting a child she couldn't remember having? But no one would believe that she couldn't remember. Would a doctor be able to prove it? Would the Devereaux' pay for a doctor to cure an amnesia they didn't believe in? A cure might prove beyond a doubt that she
was
this hateful Laurel Devereaux. It might also identify the nagging thing she feared. She was afraid to regain her memory … and she was afraid not to.

Just before lunch Laurel sat on the stone edge of the fountain, trying hard to think of nothing at all, watching sunlight glimmer on the clear water as it ringed beneath the dripping jaws of the creature.

She looked up and Michael Devereaux walked across the flagstone toward her.

He walked with a rapid smoothness, a flowing control that brought him up to her with startling suddenness. She knew it was partly her fear of him that made him look so big in the black sweater.

“I see you're still here.” He rested one foot on the ledge beside her and gazed down at the water. “Have you called your parents?”

“No.” She realized she'd been holding her breath.

“You don't think they'd be interested to learn you've rejoined the world?”

“I … suppose I should call.…” She could sense the contempt under the gruff sarcasm in his voice and it added to her uneasiness.

“But you don't want to. You don't care a damn for anyone, do you?” He had a slight stoop to his shoulders she hadn't noticed before.

The anger in his half-lidded eyes had given way to cold indifference. She knew he was going to ask about the last two years, and she knew that either truth or evasion would bring back the fury. She was too afraid to lie.

Just then Jimmy came screeching from the kitchen, some of his lunch still on his face. When he saw his father, he did a mid-run left turn.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Laurel felt reprieved as she watched the big body stoop to catch the small one and lift him onto broad shoulders with unexpected gentleness.

“Michael, be careful with him.” Claire appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“He's a big boy, Claire. Aren't you, slugger?”

Jimmy drummed little fists on Michael's head.

“You two ruffians, honestly.” Claire laughed as she joined them and they walked off, excluding Laurel as though she didn't exist.

A stranger would have thought them a happy family group—Jimmy on his father's shoulders going up the stairs—Claire fussing about, reaching up to pull Jimmy's pants leg down, touching Michael with a familiar nonchalance. And Laurel felt resentment. Her situation was impossible. No one wanted her or needed her here. They had been happy enough before she came.

That afternoon she lay on the big bed trying to make up a plausible story for the last two years. Michael had not brought it up at lunch, but he would. His clothes were gone from the wardrobe so she didn't have to worry about his sleeping here. But she must have a story, a story that would hold up in court as well. She worked on it until her head ached, tossing on the bed until the cover was rumpled. Everything she thought of sounded just as silly as the truth.

If I had someplace to go, I'd just leave
. No one would really care. They'd be relieved to get rid of her. She couldn't be any more miserable someplace else or more degraded.
It's awful being Laurel
!

The sounds from the courtyard had been providing a faint background for her thoughts for some time. It gradually intruded on her senses—the sound of splashing water.

Jimmy's scream brought her off the bed and to the door. She was on the balcony and then running down the stairs before she saw them in the pool.

Jimmy clutched Michael around the neck, his blond head thrown back, pudgy legs trying to crawl up his father's chest away from the water. Claire stood a few feet away in what looked like a black tank suit.

“For Christ's sake, settle down. Now, go to Claire. Just relax and let yourself float.” Michael had to force the child's arms from around his neck and then pushed him toward Claire.

“Consayla.” Jimmy choked down water before he reached the safety of Claire's arms.

“Now turn him around and send him back.”

By the time she reached the edge of the blue pool Laurel's panic had turned to anger. “What are you doing?”

“I'm teaching my son to swim, obviously. Come on, Jimmy. You're doing fine.” Beads of water clung to the black hair on his chest and arms.

“He's too young. Look at him. He's terrified.”

“Consayla.” And the sobbing child was passed back to his father, turned around, and sent skimming back to Claire.

“If he's going to live here, he'd better learn to swim.”

“He's not even two. Stop it!”

“I was swimming by the time I was one.” Michael hoisted Jimmy out of the water onto the flagstone. “That's all for now, son.” He lifted himself out of the pool in one quick graceful movement, dripping water on Laurel as she knelt to pick up Jimmy.

She wrapped him in a towel and held him close. “Hush, baby, hush.”

Michael stopped toweling himself and watched her, cocking his head to one side. “Is there really a mother instinct in you, Laurel? Or is this for show?” The soft irony was back in the deep voice.

“I feel sorry for him. Anybody would—poor kid.” She stared back with all the defiance she could muster.
I hate this man
, she told herself and then looked away. She didn't like the word “hate.”

Claire had covered her ugly swimsuit with a towel; she had thick legs for a woman her size. “Come on, sweety. Claire will find some warm dry clothes for you,” she said, taking Jimmy from Laurel and walking off with him. Laurel had never heard Claire call him anything but “bad boy” before.

“Let's get one thing straight, Laurel. There will be no interference between Jimmy and me. You walked out on that right two years ago.” Michael followed Claire across the flagstone.

I've got to get out of here
. Laurel fled to the shadows of the arcade and almost stepped on Evan Boucher.

“Hi.” He wore a lab coat over rumpled blue jeans. His soft hazel eyes watched her expectantly.

“Is that the only word you know?”

Evan blushed and looked down at his dirty tennis shoes.

“I thought you were supposed to be in the lab.” She hadn't been very nice to this boy, but she didn't trust him.

“I heard the kid screaming and came out to see what was the matter.”

“And saw the whole thing, I suppose?” Laurel sat in a wicker chair and looked across the courtyard. Michael walked along the balcony and stopped outside Jimmy's room to watch them.

“Yeah. You don't seem to be everybody's favorite member of the family.” He sat in the chair next to hers and she saw him stiffen when he noticed Michael. “How come your husband's so mad at you?” When she didn't answer he leaned toward her and whispered, “Mrs. Devereaux, I know it's none of my business, but if you need help.…”

“Help?” Laurel giggled and then laughed. “From you?” Michael turned abruptly and stepped into Jimmy's room. “Do you think I'd go for help to someone who sneaks around other people's houses?”

“Sneaks …?”

“You were sneaking out of the house when I met you the other morning, not walking in to see about a job.”

“Oh, that.” He sighed and leaned back in the chair. “I did come about the job, but, you're right, I was leaving when you saw me.” Evan's shy smile moved the drooping corners of his mustache out. “I climbed that wall first thing in the morning so's I'd be the earliest to apply, and when I got to the door, nobody answered it, but it moved a little and I saw it wasn't locked … I peeked in … everything was so grand … I'd just never seen anything like this house before except in movies … please, don't tell anybody. I just looked in one room, I swear it—the one with all the couches and chairs and velvet drapes—and I just stood in the door.”

“But why were you leaving?” He looked so sheepish, she half believed him.

“I realized the place was too much … you know what I mean? It was too grand for Evan Boucher, and I thought of what would happen if I got caught like that and I just chickened, I guess. And then you did catch me … when I saw you … please don't be offended, Mrs. Devereaux, but I've never seen anything like you before either.”

Now they were both blushing.

“And then Miss Bently came along and … what else could I do? But Professor Devereaux's a nice old guy; I'm glad I stayed now.” Although he'd let it grow to his shirt collar, his brown hair curled and waved around his face and gave him a boyish look. “But you haven't answered my question. Can I help you somehow?”

Laurel found herself smiling at him for the first time. His story sounded silly enough to be true and not nearly as silly as her own. “Not unless you're a doctor, Evan Boucher.”

“Are you sick?”

“I must be. My total memory of my life starts exactly six days ago.” Laurel expected to shock him but he just nodded casually.

“Oh, amnesia. I wondered.”

“Don't pretend that you believe it,” she said bitterly. “Nobody would. I don't expect you to.”

“Oh, I believe it.”

“You do?”

“Sure. It happens sometimes. I should know.”

She leaned toward him. “Have you had amnesia?”

“No, but I worked in an institution a year or so ago and they had a whole wing of just people … Who couldn't remember.”

“An institution.…”

“Yeah. I was an orderly type. But I didn't stay long. I couldn't take it … you have to be.…”

“What did they do to them … the people who couldn't remember?”

“Oh, hey. I didn't mean to scare you. They didn't mistreat them … just tried to help them remember … kept them there until they did … I better get back to my job … I seem to be making you feel worse … I always say the wrong things.” He stood and almost tripped over his own tennis shoes in embarrassment. “My feet are as clumsy as my mouth.”

“Evan, how long did those people have to stay there?”

“Some just a little while—few months—and others never did get out … sometimes depends on whether your family wants you back. Good place to get rid of people you don't want hanging around.” He laughed and his mustache straightened a trifle and then drooped as he sobered suddenly. “I … did it again, didn't I?”

“Yes, you did.”

He shook his head and then slapped himself on the forehead. “Look, forget what I said. What do
I
know? Those people had wonderful treatment, honest.”

Laurel walked slowly out into the sunlight to get warm and then just kept walking. She could hear Evan's plea behind her but she didn't turn.

“Please, it's not you. It's me. I always say the wrong things to the right people … Mrs. Devereaux? Oh … hell.”

That night Laurel prowled. She put a coat over her nightgown and walked the covered walkways where hanging palms and leafy vines made weird silhouettes on the walls in the moonlight and the twisted trees in the courtyard created moving, menacing shadows. There seemed to be no darkness in this desert world with the harsh sun in the day and the moon at night sending its eerie glow through barred windows and wide archways. There seemed no place to hide in darkness and to nurse jangled nerves.

It was cold and the pool steamed, the steam wisping and writhing in the moonlight as if from a witch's caldron. She paced back and forth beside it, tense and writhing inside like the steam. She couldn't bear to stay here but couldn't think of any place to go. Evan Boucher had offered help, but she dismissed him. Whether he was a fumbly lovesick kid or a house burglar, he wouldn't be much help. She still couldn't bring herself to trust him. Her parents had been cruel enough to disown her and she didn't know them anyway.
It's hopeless
.

She walked toward the recess of the garages at the back of the courtyard, and in a corner under the stone steps that led to the old nursery was a door she had noticed before but never opened. A thick wooden door like all the doors in this house, but locked. A large old-fashioned key of wrought iron was still in the lock. The key turned easily and the door opened to the outside world, a world she'd scarcely seen since she'd entered this house and become Laurel Devereaux.

Laurel pocketed the key and closed the door behind her. The house was built on the slope of a hill and the city of Tucson spread out on the valley floor below her, its lights snapping like stars in the clear night, dark jagged peaks rising up behind it on the far side of the valley.

Below her she could see the patio of another lush home with a steamy pool. She'd forgotten how close the rest of the world was, once inside this self-contained house at her back.

The hill rose steeply behind the house and the giant branched cacti marched widely spaced to the top, their ghostly profiles standing out on the skyline. Toward the front of the house a chain link fence that must have been ten feet high enclosed an area of desert outside Paul's laboratory and sloped down the hill almost to the drive of the house below.

Rustling noises on the hill around her gave Laurel the creepy feeling that unfriendly night eyes watched her. She turned back to the door. And then a measured thumping from within the house caught her attention.