Regrets Only (5 page)

Maybe then Bill and Faith wouldn’t be quite so quick to attack him.

4

Tuesday, January 14th 2:18 a.m
.

M
organ tossed and turned, unable to sleep and unable to concentrate on any of a stack of books by her bed. Her flannel nightshirt itched, and she pulled it off only to put it back on moments later when the cool breeze through the open window sent a chill down her spine. She opened the drapes but the black night sky beyond her window offered no solace so she drew them again. Suddenly a cold sweat overcame her and she shivered, feeling her hair stick to her neck and face. All she could think about was that fateful hour sixteen years, three months, and two days ago, when she had walked out of Our Lady of Grace Hospital knowing she would never see her twin babies again.

Baby John Doe and Baby Jane Doe. Four pounds two ounces and four pounds four ounces. She’d had a few moments to hold them together in her arms in the delivery room, the boy on her right side, the girl on her left. Their red faces grew redder and they’d both shrieked with the unique power of infant lungs. Restless, their arms and legs flailing, they’d fought off any attempts to wrap them in striped hospital blankets until Morgan had moved over in the bed and put the two babies together side by side. As they’d lain with their shoulders and arms touching, they’d quieted. Who knew what transpired between them, but they’d seemed instantly serene, completely peaceful.

Nobody in the primitive delivery room had made the normal effusive comments. Instead the doctor, a general practitioner who had driven more than fifty miles for the delivery, had conducted two Apgar tests and dictated brief comments to a nurse for the file. He’d missed the dermatological pits behind the twins’ left ears, and it had been Morgan who noticed the tiny, pin-size indentations that were almost invisible to the untrained eye. The nuns in attendance seemed to execute their duties in a perfunctory way, throwing cold stares her way when they passed by the bed. They knew she had decided long before this moment to give up her children and the silent disapproval was palpable. A wealthy couple from Main Line Philadelphia, a couple who had never been identified to her, waited in the wings, out of sight, ready to name the babies, take them home, and no doubt baptize them. The paperwork had been signed a month before. The discretion promised by her attorney had failed in the remote hospital setting she’d chosen outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, but would be preserved back in Philadelphia. He’d assured her of that.

Could it possibly be true? Were the Herbert twins her children?

Morgan got out of bed and walked barefoot, following the trellis-patterned wool runner down the winding stairs. For the past twelve years she’d lived in this house—it had been a source of tremendous comfort to her—and yet it suddenly felt overwhelming, huge and vacant and echoing in the night. Four bedrooms, a finished basement, it was a home meant for a family with children and pets, yet she’d somehow convinced herself that it was perfect for one person who rarely if ever had guests. What had she been thinking? What form of self-deception had she mastered?

Morgan tiptoed across the foyer and opened the double doors that led to her library. In the dark, she made her way to her desk and nearly collapsed into the upholstered armchair beside it. She flicked on the desk lamp and then removed a blue leather photo album from the bottom drawer. Holding the large book in her lap, she opened the cover.
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wallingford Reese announce with pleasure the engagement of their daughter, Morgan Adele, to Rodman Carlisle Haverill.
The newspaper clipping had yellowed and its corners were torn. Above the text was a photograph of a pretty nineteen-year-old girl, the ends of her hair curled up.
Morgan was presented at The Assembly last winter.
The next page held the engraved wedding invitation and a small card announcing the reception immediately following at the Union League.

Flipping through the pages, she saw image after image of a bride in a dress covered with delicate beading. In each, her smile seemed careful, reserved. She cut cake, danced, mingled with guests, but never stared directly at the camera. But in every photograph a pronounced spot appeared on the front of her bridal dress—the black mark she would never forget. “What on earth have you done?” her mother had screamed in near hysterics. As she’d waited to be escorted down the aisle, the plate of cherry cordials in the ladies’ room had tempted her. One, just one, she’d thought, but as she bit, the liquid center had oozed out unexpectedly, dripping from her mouth to her chest. “How could you be such an idiot? All this effort and expense and we’ll be staring at your stain for the rest of our lives.” Those were the last words her mother had uttered to her before she became a wife.

To love and to cherish until parted by death. She’d taken that solemn vow but had been unable to keep it. The expectations were too high. All she remembered of that time was the sensation that there wasn’t enough air in the house; each day was a battle not to suffocate. After five years of marriage, she’d walked out, leaving behind a baffled, heartbroken man and their toddler son, who would never know his mother. It was the first—but far from the last—completely selfish thing she’d done. More than a decade later, while she was in the final year of a psychiatric residency, the twins had resulted from an affair with a man who’d failed to mention that he was married. At that point, what choice did she have?

She shut the album and hugged her knees to her chest. How could she ever have thought that she could forget the past? How could she have expected not to suffer with her choices? She could construct a reasonable argument that her past decisions were ordered, rational, some part of a grand plan. She’d had ambitions beyond maintaining an exquisite estate, serving on the boards of prominent charities, and living out the preordained mission of the daughter of Walter Reese and the wife of Rodman Haverill, and she’d acted in accordance with that design. But if she allowed herself to feel—to really feel—she realized that her policy in life had been more closely akin to one grounded in scorched earth. To what had she been reacting? From whom had she been running away? For a psychiatrist, an expert schooled in the contours of emotions, she found herself now without a single answer or explanation for her own behavior. She’d left three children behind and one of them was dead. No words, no logic could begin to explain that. The only sensation was a feeling of pain that was beyond anything imaginable.

Perched atop the mantel was a white marble bust of one of her ancestors. In the gray light of early morning, the carved eyes stared at her. Harsh. Accusatory.

The album fell to the floor. She dug through the clutter on her desktop until she found the newspaper with a story on Foster’s suicide. Although she’d stared at his face a thousand times since she’d bought it that evening, she needed to look again at the long face, full lips, thin nose, and big eyes, features that so closely resembled her own. “My son,” she whispered into the empty room. “My child.” Her voice trembled as she repeated the words. Who would he have been? Who might he have become? Could she have saved him?

Suddenly, her stomach convulsed and she lurched forward to grab the wastebasket under her desk. Her mouth filled with water and she struggled to swallow what didn’t want to stay inside her. Every joint ached and the muscles in her lower back cramped, as her intestines felt ready to explode. Her fingers and toes tingled. Her eyes throbbed.

She eased herself down onto the rug and curled up in a fetal position, hugging her knees. Lying on the floor, she listened to the tick of the ogee wall clock, the scratch of a branch against the mullioned window, the creak of an upstairs floorboard. The sounds of her house seemed magnified into a deafening cacophony. She wished she could pray for guidance, but as a scientist, she knew no mystical help would come her way. She had to decide her fate for herself, which left her with only one answer. Despite the passage of time, despite the rage she had no doubt caused, she had to talk to her children, or at least to the two that remained. Maybe, just maybe, she could salvage something from this emotional wreckage. And if not, failure would be her ultimate punishment. If that happened, if her children rejected her, she knew she would lack the courage and energy to continue. That she’d accomplished what she set out to do thirty years earlier meant nothing now.

5

Thursday, March 6th 6:45 p.m
.

Y
ou look truly lovely,” Archer said as he helped Lucy out of her overcoat.

“Thank you,” she replied, feeling a mixture of modesty and excitement no doubt brought on by the novelty of this evening. That she was at the Philadelphia Flower Show—a social event she’d only read about in the papers—was odd enough. A fund-raiser to her meant a chowder supper at the Somerville VFW or a raffle at the local library. One that required advance ticket sales, let alone formal dress, was a novelty. But that she was attending this gala as the date of Archer Haverill was odder still. Had he simply worn her down? Or had his persistence made him more appealing? she’d wondered as she stared at the pile of pink message slips on her desk with the box marked “Please call” checked on each one. “Why don’t you just see what he wants? And if you’re not interested in the answer, give him my name,” Janet, the administrative assistant for the Homicide Unit, had offered. In an effort to ignore Archer, she’d stayed away from his bar, missing several good readings and a poetry contest in early February. But when the dozen white roses in a cobalt blue vase arrived on her desk, even Jack had suggested a response was warranted. “Give the guy a break, O’Malley. Maybe your finely honed detective instincts aren’t right. What have you got to lose?”

She hadn’t answered that question, but she’d agreed to meet Archer for a drink on a Tuesday, a day that held no significance in the dating world. And, as they stayed until closing, sharing a reserve Cabernet from his private stock, he hadn’t seemed half-bad: polite, interested in her work, clever, and undeniably handsome. She’d laughed as he related stories of the many crazy submissions he’d screened for his literary series—an essay on a rodent colony that lived under the author’s sink, a 900-page memoir by a failed ballerina who couldn’t do a split, a so-called collection of poetry that turned out to be all the same poem except for single word changes. His appeal rose further when he drove her the short distance home in his brown BMW that had to date from President Reagan’s administration. “I just can’t part with it,” he’d said, somewhat apologetically, as he’d held open the passenger-side door. She’d admired the lack of pretension, as well as the apparent loyalty. Only by reciting her mother’s admonishments in her head had she been able to resist the urge to invite him up to her apartment.

She’d barely arrived at her desk the next morning when he called to invite her to the preview dinner for the Flower Show. “I have to admit I usually go with my father,” he’d said, “so I’ve never paid much attention to the band. But we can try to make the best of it.”

Black tie. The invitation had precipitated a fashion crisis of proportions she was unwilling to admit even to herself. Only after trying on virtually everything in her closet had she settled for a navy blue ankle-length maid-of-honor dress that she’d worn in her elder brother’s wedding. “Be sure to iron the bow in the back,” her mother advised when she’d called for reassurance. “Men like a nice, round fanny,” she whispered as if the telephone could report her blasphemy directly to the Pope. “The bow makes it look as if you’ve got at least a bit of one.”

Archer now handed their overcoats to the woman running the coat check at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, took the claim stubs, and put a five-dollar tip in the glass jar on the counter. He adjusted his cummerbund and stuffed a handkerchief in his pocket. Turning to Lucy, he offered her his arm. “It’s a Latin-inspired theme this year—
fiesta de las flores
. Perhaps I can borrow a guitar from a troubadour and serenade you.”

Inside the main hall, they found themselves standing in a village, a reproduction of Loiza, Puerto Rico, facing a yellow-painted church with ornate trim. A warm glow reflected from the mock street lamps onto a rectangular pool, which was surrounded by daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and heuchella. Samia rose topiaries made an outline of a couple dancing. The air smelled sweet. Incredibly romantic, she thought as she walked past well-dressed men and women strolling through the displays or standing in small groups.

“This is amazing,” Lucy exclaimed, unable to contain her enthusiasm. “If I’d known you were offering this kind of beauty, I’d have accepted an invitation sooner.”

Archer smiled and squeezed her arm. “There’s more. Lots more. The place is huge.” He removed a crumpled diagram of the convention hall from his pocket, unfolded it, and consulted it briefly. “Can I get you a sangria?”

She nodded, and let herself be led to a bar that had been set up next to a series of smaller flower arrangements. As Archer got drinks, she scanned the entries submitted by various area garden clubs and several Center City florists. A blue ribbon dangled from a moss-covered urn filled with bird-of-paradise.

“The judging takes place in the afternoon before the preview dinner,” Archer explained as he handed her a goblet. “I always thought there was as much politics in the decisions as merit, but I suppose that makes the Flower Show no different from any other institution.”

“Spoken like a true cynic.” She reached for the ribbon and turned it over to see if it offered more information on the back. It was blank. “Who decides the winners?”

“I’m not really sure. But it couldn’t be only people who are involved with flowers because one year my father was a judge. And he couldn’t grow a cactus in the desert. In the show’s defense, he wasn’t invited to do it again.”

She laughed and took a sip of the sweet wine. Remembering she was there on Mr. Haverill’s ticket, she asked, “Why didn’t your father want to come tonight?” Then she added quickly, “Not that I’m not happy to be here in his place.”