Public Secrets (18 page)

“No, it’s true. I was a career choice for Angie. The pity is, she didn’t realize I was fond enough of her once to have helped her there without marriage. But we jumped in and were both too lazy or too cautious to jump out again when it went bad.” He studied her fingers, long and slender, tangled with his chunky ones. “Looking back, I can see every mistake so clearly. I won’t make them again, Bev—if you give me a chance.”

“P.M.” She moved then, flustered and frightened. His hands came to her shoulders, surprisingly firm, holding her face-to-face.

“I want you to marry me, Bev, for all the right reasons.”

She hesitated, surprising herself. The answer didn’t come through her lips as quickly, as surely, as it had jumped into her head. It was her heart that stopped it, she realized. Her heart that
wanted to give him what he wanted. She lifted her hands to cover his.

“I can’t. I’m so sorry I can’t.”

He stared at her, watching her eyes, the regret in them—and the trace of pity that made him want to scream. “Because of Brian.”

She started to agree, then found that answer unclear as well. “No, because of me.” She drew away, and pulling on a robe, got out of bed. “I can’t let go, you see. I thought I had, I’ve wanted to, but I can’t.” She turned back, her face in shadows, her voice clear and filled with regrets. “Being with you is the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time. It’s made me feel happy again. And it’s made me see things clearly for the first time in years.”

“You’re still in love with him.”

“Yes. I think I could live with that, I think I could accept that somehow and go on, with you, with someone. But I’m the one who drove him away, you see.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t he ever tell you?” She smiled a little as she sat on the edge of the bed. It was easy to talk to him like this, to think of him as friend now, rather than lover. “No, I suppose he wouldn’t speak of it. Not even to you. After Darren was killed, I cut Brian out of my life. I punished him, P.M., and Emma. I hurt Brian when he needed me most, blaming him because I was too afraid to blame myself.”

“For God’s sake, Bev, neither of you was to blame.”

“I’ve never been sure of that. I wouldn’t let him grieve with me. And when he was suffering, when we both were suffering, I turned him away. He didn’t leave me, P.M. I left him. And poor little Emma. In our way, I suppose we both abandoned her. Seeing you again, being with you, has made me realize just what I did. To all of us. You deserve better than a woman who didn’t love enough, and who’ll always regret it.”

“I could make you happy, Bev.”

“Yes, I think you could.” She cupped his face in her hands. “But I wouldn’t make you happy, not for long. You’d always know I loved him first, and in a way I’ll never love anyone else.”

Yes, he had known, he had known that and her answer before he had asked the question. It would have helped if he could have
hated her for it, and hated Brian. But he loved. “Why don’t you go back to him, talk to him?”

“Darren would be almost ten years old now. It’s too far to go back, P.M.”

E
MMA HURRIED ACROSS
the grounds. If she looked as though she had a purpose, none of the sisters would stop and question her. She had an excuse prepared—a botany report for a science project.

She only wanted to be alone. She was ready to scream and wail with the need to be alone. She didn’t even want Marianne’s company. Emma was sorry she’d had to lie to her closest friend, and would confess the sin to Father Prelenski in the afternoon. But she needed an hour, an hour alone, to think.

She cast one quick look over her shoulder, then skirted around a row of hedges. Tucking the notebook she carried more securely under her arm, she dove into a small grove of trees.

Since it was Saturday, she was allowed her jeans and sneakers. It was cool enough in the shade of the greening trees to make her glad she’d worn the sweater. Once she was certain she was out of view from any of the windows of the academy, she dropped to the ground. Inside the notebook were more than a dozen clippings, most of which had been passed on to her by Teresa and other equally curious classmates.

The first was of herself, and Michael, from the summer before. She smoothed it carefully, battled embarrassed delight as she studied her face and form, depicted so clearly in newsprint. She looked wet and disheveled, and unfortunately for her ego, didn’t fill out the bikini very interestingly.

But Michael looked wonderful.

Michael Kesselring, she thought. Of course the paper hadn’t printed his name, hadn’t bothered to find it out. It had been her the press had been interested in. But all the girls had squealed over Michael and demanded to know who he was and if Emma had had a summer romance.

It had made her feel very grown-up to talk about him. Of course, she’d embellished the tale more than a little, about how he’d carried her in his arms, given her mouth-to-mouth, pledged his undying love. She didn’t think Michael would mind—especially since he’d never know about it.

With a sigh, she replaced the clipping and took out another. It was the one Teresa had brought over the night Emma had had her ears pierced. She couldn’t count the number of times she had taken it out, stared at it, studied it, tried to dissect it. Her eyes were constantly drawn to her mother’s face, frightened as they searched and searched for some resemblance. But not all heredity could be seen, she knew. She was a very good student, and had taken a special interest in biology when discussions of heredity and genes had come up.

That was her mother, and there was no denying it. She had grown inside that woman, had been born from her. No matter how many years had passed, Emma could still smell the stink of gin, she could still feel the pinches and slaps and hear the curses.

It terrified her—terrified her so that just looking at the picture had her digging bitten-down nails into her palms, had the palms themselves sweating.

On a choked cry, she tore her gaze from Jane’s picture and looked at her father’s. She prayed every night she was like him—kind, gentle, funny, fair. He had saved her. She had read the story often enough, and even without the printed words, she remembered. The way he had looked when she’d climbed out from under the sink, the kindness in his voice when he had spoken to her. He’d given her a home, and a life without fear. Even though he had sent her away, she would never forget the years he had given her. That he and Bev had given her.

It was hardest to look at Bev somehow. She was so beautiful, so perfect. Emma had never loved another woman more, never needed one more. And to look at her made it impossible not to think of Darren. Darren who had had the same rich dark hair and soft green eyes. Darren whom she had sworn to protect. Darren who had died.

Her fault, Emma thought now. She was never to be forgiven for it. Bev had sent her away. Her father had sent her away. She would never have a family again.

She put it away, and spent some time going through older clippings. Pictures of herself as a child, pictures of Darren, the wide, stark headlines about the murder. These she kept hidden deep in her drawer, knowing if the nuns found them and told her father, he would get that sad, hurt look in his eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she couldn’t forget.

She read the stories through, though she could have recited
them by heart by this time. Looking, she was always looking for something new, something that would tell her why it had happened, how she might have stopped it.

There was nothing. There never was.

There were new clippings now—pictures and stories about Bev and P.M. Some said Bev would at last get a divorce and marry P.M. Others played up the juicy angle of two men who had been like brothers torn apart by a woman. There was the announcement of Devastation’s new label, Prism, and pictures of the party in London on the day it had become official. There was her father with another new woman, and again with Johnno and P.M. and Pete. But not Stevie. With a sigh, Emma took out another clipping.

Stevie was in a clinic where they put drug abusers. They called him an addict. Others called him a criminal. Emma remembered she’d once thought he was an angel. Emma thought he looked tired in the picture, tired and thin and afraid. The papers said it was a tragedy; they said it was an outrage. Some of the girls snickered about it.

But no one would talk to her. When she had questioned her father, he had told her only that Stevie had lost control and was getting help. She wasn’t to worry.

But she did worry. They were her family, the only family she had left. She had lost Darren. She had to make sure she didn’t lose the rest.

Carefully, in her best penmanship, she began to compose letters.

S
TEVIE READ HIS
in the sunlight, as he sat on a stone bench in the garden during his morning walk. It was a lovely spot, filled with tea roses and hollyhocks and bird songs. Little brick paths wound through it, under arbors of wisteria and morning glories. Both the staff and the patients at Whitehurst were given free rein there. Until the sturdy stone walls rose up.

He detested the clinic, the doctors, the other patients. He despised the therapy sessions, the scheduling, the determined smiles of the staff. But he did what he was told, and he told them what they wanted to hear.

He was an addict. He wanted help. He would take one day at a time.

He would take their methadone and dream of heroin.

He learned to be calm, and he learned to be cunning. In four weeks and three days, he would walk out a free man. This time he would be more careful. This time he would control the drugs. He would smile at the doctors and reporters, he would lecture on the evils of drugs, and he would lie through his teeth. When he was out, he would live his life as he chose.

No one had the right to tell him he was sick, no one had the right to tell him he needed help. If he wanted to get high, he’d get high. What did they understand about the pressures he lived with day after day? The demands to excel, to be that much better than the rest?

Maybe he’d gone too far before. Maybe. So he’d keep it a
social thing. The frigging doctors swilled their bourbon. He’d do a line if he felt like a line. He’d smoke some hash if he had a yen for it.

And fuck them. Fuck them all.

He tore open the envelope. He was pleased that Emma had written him. He could think of no other female he’d had such pure and honest feelings for. Taking out a cigarette, he leaned back on the bench and drew in the scent of smoke and roses.

He let the letter lie on his lap. He sat on the bench and smoked his cigarette. And wept.

P
.
M. OPENED HIS LETTER
as he sat in the empty house he’d just bought on the outskirts of London. He was on the floor with the ceilings towering over him, a bottle of ale by his knee and the cool blues of Ray Charles coming from his only piece of furniture, the stereo.

It hadn’t been easy to leave Bev, but it had been harder to
stay. She had helped him find the house, as she’d promised. She would decorate it. She would, now and then, make love with him in it. But she would never be his wife.

He blamed Brian for it. No matter what Bev had told him, P.M. eased his pain by placing the blame squarely on Brian. He hadn’t been man enough to stay with her through the bad times. He hadn’t been man enough to let her go. Right from the beginning Brian had treated Bev badly. Bringing her a child from another woman, asking her to raise it as her own. Leaving her for weeks at a time while he toured. Pushing her, he thought viciously, pushing her into a lifestyle she never wanted. Drugs, groupies, and gossip.

And what would Brian say, what would they all say, if he announced he was leaving the group? That would make them sit up and take notice, P.M. thought as he swallowed some ale. Brian McAvoy could go to hell and take Devastation with him.

More out of habit than curiosity, he opened Emma’s letter. She wrote him every couple of months. Cute, chatty letters that he answered with a postcard or a little gift. It wasn’t the girl’s fault that her father was a bastard, P.M. thought, and began to read.

P.M. studied the picture for a long time, then slipped it inside the folded letter, and the letter inside the envelope. Divorcing his wife had been one thing, he realized. Divorcing his family was something else again.

J
OHNNO SPENT HIS
first day back in New York sleeping, and his second composing. He was living alone at the moment, and gratefully so. His last lover had driven him to distraction with obsessive cleanliness. Johnno was fastidious himself, but when it had come to washing all the bottles and cans that had come into the house from the market, even he had been baffled.

He appreciated the silence—after the housekeeper had left. He thought idly about spending the evening out, but decided he was too lazy. It wasn’t jet lag as much as it was the strain of the last few weeks. The legalities and hassles of the new label, the difficult visit with Stevie at the clinic, and worse somehow, the time he had spent with Brian, watching his oldest friend snuggle down deeper into a bottle.

Yet the music Brian was writing was better than ever. Stinging, lyrical, sharp-edged, dreamy. He wouldn’t speak of his feelings, of his hurt or anger over P.M.’s relationship with Bev. But it was there in his music.

That was enough to keep Pete happy, Johnno thought as he stripped off his shirt. As long as Devastation kept rocking, all was right with the world.

He took out the shrimp salad his housekeeper had made up, uncorked a bottle of wine, and pushed idly through the mail which had accumulated during his absence. When Emma’s handwriting caught his eye, he grinned.

With a laugh, Johnno pushed aside the salad, lifted his wine, and settled into the letter.

And what was he supposed to do about Emma? Johnno wondered. He could show the letter to Brian and say “Look, read this and straighten your ass up. Your daughter needs you.” And if he did, neither Brian nor Emma would forgive him.

She was growing up, and growing up fast. Pierced ears, training bras, and philosophy. Brian wouldn’t be able to keep her in a bubble much longer.

Well, he would try to be there when the blow came, for both of them. Tilting back his glass, he drained the wine. And it looked as though he’d be spending a few days in Martinique.

W
ITH THE WHITE
sand heating under him, and his rum growing warm, Brian watched his daughter cut through the surf. What was she racing against? he wondered. Why did she always seem to be in a hurry to get from one point to the next? He could have told her that once she reached the finish line the glory was only momentary. But she wouldn’t have listened.