Public Secrets (44 page)

M
ICHAEL PACED THE
corridor, stabbed out his cigarette, then paced again. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Emma took her breathing carefully. After three weeks, her ribs still tended to twinge if she moved the wrong way. “It’s what I want to do, and what I feel is best.”

“Holding a press conference the same day you’re being released from the hospital is just stupid. And stubborn.”

“I’m better off making a formal statement than trying to dodge them.” She spoke lightly, but her arms were ice-cold under her linen jacket. “Believe me, I know more about this than you.”

“If you’re talking about that bullshit Blackpool started, it’s already blown over. He did himself more damage than you.”

“I don’t care about Blackpool, but I do care about my family and what these last few weeks have put them through. And I want to have my say.” She started to walk into the conference room, then stopped and turned back. “The police investigation ruled it self-defense. I’ve spent the last three weeks convincing myself of the same thing. I want my record clear, Michael.”

It was useless to argue. He’d come to know her well enough to understand that. But he tried anyway. “The press has been behind you ninety-nine percent.”

“And that one percent makes an ugly stain.”

He relented enough to cross to her and brush a thumb over
her cheek. “Have you ever wondered why life gets so screwed up?

“Yes.” She smiled. “I’ve begun to believe that God really is a man. Are you coming in with me?”

Sure.

The press was waiting. Cameras, lights, microphones at alert. Flashes went off the moment she stepped up to the podium. Murmurs accompanied them. She was very pale so that the healing bruises showed in vivid contrast on her skin. Though no longer swollen, her left eye was a mass of ugly fading colors that spread to cheekbone and hairline.

When she began to speak, they quieted.

She gave them only the facts, and not her feelings. She had learned that much. What she felt inside was hers alone. It was a brief statement, just over eight minutes. As she read, she was grateful that Pete had helped her refine it. She ignored the cameras and the faces that studied her. When she was done, she stepped back from the mike. It had already been established that she would not take questions, but the questions came.

She had turned away, her hand on Michael’s arm when one penetrated.

“If he had abused you all those months, why did you stay?”

She didn’t intend to answer, but she looked back. They were still hurling questions. Only that one lodged in her mind.

“Why did I stay?” she repeated. The room fell silent again. It had been easy to read the statement. She almost knew it by heart. It was just words printed on paper, and they hadn’t touched her. But this, this one simple question drove straight into her heart.

“Why did I stay?” she said again. “I don’t know.” She fumbled, forgetting not to look at the faces, not to see them. It seemed vital that she answer the question. “I don’t know,” she said again. “If, two years ago, anyone had told me that I would allow myself to be brutalized, I would have been furious. I don’t want to believe that I chose to be a victim.” She sent Michael a quick, desperate look. “And yet I stayed. He beat me and humiliated me, but I didn’t leave. There were times when I could see myself walking away. Getting in the elevator, going out to the street and walking away. But I didn’t. I stayed because I was afraid, and I left for the same reason. So it makes no sense. It makes no sense,” she repeated, and turned away. This time she ignored the questions.

“You did fine,” Michael told her. “We’re going to get you out the side here. McCarthy’s got the car waiting.”

They drove to Malibu, to the house on the beach that her father had rented. Emma rode in silence, with that one question echoing over and over in her head.

Why did you stay?

S
HE LIKED TO
sit on the redwood terrace in the morning, watching the water and listening to the gulls. If she tired of sitting, she could take long walks along the shore. The outward side of abuse had healed. Her ribs still troubled her occasionally and there was a thin scar just under her jawline. It could have been repaired easily enough. But she discarded the idea of a plastic surgeon. It was barely noticeable. And it reminded her.

The nightmares were another legacy. They came with daunting regularity and were a montage of old and new. Sometimes she walked the darkened hallway as a child. Others as an adult. The music always came, but it was cloudy, as if it played underwater. At rimes she heard Darren’s voice clear as a bell, but then Drew’s would layer over it. She would freeze, child or woman, in front of the door. Terrified to open it.

Then as her hand closed over the knob, turned it, pushed, she would wake, sweating.

But the days were calm. There was a breeze off the water, the scent of flowers Bev had planted in tubs and window boxes. And always music.

She’d been given the chance to see her father and Bev start again. That soothed the most raw of her wounds. There was laughter. Bev experimenting in the kitchen, Brian in the shade playing guitar. At night she often lay in bed, thinking of them together. It was as if they had never been apart. How easy it had been once the step had been taken, for them to bridge the gap of twenty years.

And she wanted to weep, for she could never be a child again and fix the mistakes that had been made.

They waited six months, though Emma knew they were both anxious to get back to London. That was their home. She had yet to find hen.

She didn’t miss New York, though she did miss Marianne. The months she had lived there with Drew had spoiled the city
for her. She would go back, that she promised herself. But she would never live there again.

She preferred to watch the water, to feel the sun on her face. She’d been alone in New York. She was rarely alone here.

Johnno had visited twice, staying two weeks each time. For her birthday he’d given her a pin, a gold Phoenix rising out of a ruby flame. She wore it often, wishing for the courage to spread her wings again.

P.M. married Lady Annabelle, detouring to L.A. on their way to a honeymoon in the Mexican Caribbean. Watching the way the new Mrs. Ferguson doted on her husband nearly restored Emma’s faith in the possibilities of marriage. Though plump and pregnant, Annabelle had worn a white leather mini to her wedding. P.M. was obviously delighted with her.

Even now they had company. Stevie and Katherine Haynes had arrived the night before. Long after she’d gone to bed, Emma had heard her father and Stevie playing. Like old times, she’d thought. The music had made her wistful for the days during her early childhood, when, as though she had been Cinderella, Brian had come to take her to a never-ending ball.

“Good morning.”

She turned and saw Katherine holding two cups of coffee. “Hello.”

“I saw you out here and thought you might like a cup.”

“Thanks. It’s a beautiful morning.”

“Mmmm. I couldn’t sleep through it.” She chose a chair beside Emma. “Are we the only ones up?”

“Yes.” She sipped at the coffee.

“Traveling makes me restless. I imagine you find a lot here to photograph.”

Emma hadn’t picked up a camera in more than a year, and was sure Katherine was aware of it. “It’s a beautiful spot.”

“A change from New York.”

“Yes.”

“Would you rather I went away?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Emma’s fingers began to tap against her mug. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“But I make you uncomfortable.”

“Your profession does.”

Katherine stretched out her legs to rest her ankles against the bottom rail. “I’m here as a friend, not as a doctor.” She waited,
watching a gull soar out to the water. “But I wouldn’t be a good friend, or a good doctor, if I didn’t try to help.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look fine. Not all wounds show though, do they?”

Emma looked at her then, calm and passionless. “Perhaps not, but they say time takes care of that.”

“If that were true, I’d be out of business. Your parents are concerned, Emma.”

“They needn’t be. I don’t want them to be.”

“They love you.”

“Drew’s dead,” Emma said. “He can’t hurt me anymore.”

“He can’t beat you anymore,” Katherine agreed. “But he can still hurt you.” She lapsed into silence, sipping her coffee and watching the waves. “You’re too polite to tell me to go to hell.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

With a light laugh, Katherine turned her head. “One day I’ll tell you about all the rude and revolting things Stevie pulled on me. You might come close, but I doubt you could match him.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

Thrown a bit off stride, Katherine lifted one shoulder. “Ask me again in six months. Bev tells me you’re seeing someone named Michael.”

“He’s a friend.”

I love you, Emma
.

“A friend,” she repeated as she set the coffee aside.

“A detective, isn’t he? The son of the man who investigated your brother’s murdér.” Taking Emma’s silence in stride, Katherine continued. “It’s strange how life runs in circles, isn’t it? Makes us feel a bit like a puppy chasing his own tail. I’d just finished a miserable divorce when I met Stevie. My ego was belly-down, and my opinion of men…Well, let’s just say I found certain varieties of slugs more attractive. I detested Stevie on sight. That was personal. Professionally I was determined to help him, and get him out of my hair. Now here we are.”

Though she no longer wanted it, Emma picked up the mug again and sipped the cooling coffee. “Did you feel as though you’d failed?”

“With my marriage?” Katherine kept her tone easy. It was a question she’d wondered if Emma would ask. “Yes. And I had.
But then people fail all the time. The hard part isn’t even admitting it, it’s accepting it.”

“I failed with Drew, I accept that. Is that what you want me to say?”

“No. I don’t want you to say anything unless you need to.”

“I failed myself.” She sprang up, slamming her mug on the little redwood table. “All those months, I failed myself. Is that the right answer?”

“Is it?”

On an oath, Emma turned to the rail. “I don’t want to do this. If I’d wanted a psychiatrist, I could have had a dozen by now.”

“You know, you made quite an impression on me the first time I saw you. You were about to storm out of Stcvie’s hospital room after giving him the dressing-down I’d been dying to give him. He didn’t want help, either.”

“I’m not Stevie.”

“No, you’re not.” Katherine rose then. She wasn’t as tall as Emma, but when her voice grew crisp, she projected total authority. “Would you like me to quote you statistics on how many women are abused every year? I believe it runs about one every eighteen seconds in this country. Surprised?” she asked when Emma stared at her. “Did you want to feel as if you were the only member of an exclusive club? How about how many of them stay with their abusers? It isn’t always because they don’t have friends or family who would help them. It isn’t always because they’re poor or uneducated. They’re afraid, their self-respect has been shattered. They’re ashamed, they’re confused. For every one who finds help, there are a dozen more who don’t. You’re alive, Emma, but you haven’t survived it. Not yet.”

“No, I haven’t.” Emma spun around. Her eyes were damp, but there was fury behind them. “I have to live with it every day. Do you think talking about it helps, finding excuses, choosing reasons? What difference does it make why it happened? It happened. I’m going for a walk.” She raced down the steps and headed toward the surf.