The Mysteries (37 page)

I felt sure she'd changed her name. It was the easiest, and most ordinary, way to disappear. Most women still took their husband's name when they married, especially if they had children, and it made them practically impossible to find.

I tried to find Jenny's sister, but there was someone else living at her ten-year-old address, and there was no listing for her in the greater San Antonio area. Maybe her husband had been transferred to another state, or overseas, or maybe she'd left him and changed her name, too.

It was a relief, really, when I had to stop my compulsive Web searches and get ready to go into town for my meeting with Laura. I knew I needed a break. Tomorrow I'd take a slightly different tack and dig through my memories and old address books for everyone I could recall who'd once known Jenny, and I'd track them all down. They, in turn, would suggest others, until, finally, the magical combination was reached and the connection made.

I knew I could do it, and I tried to put it out of my mind, to concentrate instead on the evening ahead. But what should have been pure pleasure, a date with Laura, had become a duty, a distraction from what I really wanted to think about. Before leaving, I slipped Jenny's card into my breast pocket, where I could feel it against my heart.

Approaching the pub Laura had named, I saw a slim figure in green just vanishing through the door. Immediately, all other thoughts fled as I hurried after. She was wearing the same leaf-green linen dress she'd worn to our first meeting, but instead of anxiety on her face, this time I saw happiness.

“You look great,” I told her, bending to kiss both cheeks, inhaling her fresh and sexy scent with pleasure.

“Thank you.” She smiled and tilted her head coquettishly. I was ambushed by emotion, startled by how quickly my fantasies about Jenny had been displaced by desire for the woman standing in front of me.

“What would you like to drink?”

“They're advertising Pimms' cup, to celebrate summer. Shall we? Something appropriately English for my last night here.”

I heard her with a pang of loss. “I hope this won't be your last night in England.”

“No—of course it won't. I'll probably be flying back and forth between London and New York a few times over the next few months. And that's just on business.”

I bought our drinks and we moved to a table in the back corner, which fortuitously had cleared.

“Cheers,” I said, raising my glass.

Instead of responding, she dipped into her big shoulder bag and brought out something wrapped in plain brown paper. “Happy birthday, even if it is a day late.”

I was startled, embarrassed that I'd mentioned it, but oddly pleased she'd remembered. “You shouldn't have.”

“It's no big deal. Just something I happened to see that I thought you might like.”

It was a book. The sight of the cover made me smile: it was faded red, with the image of an American Indian with a writhing green snake in his mouth.
Weird America: A Guide to Places of Mystery in the United States
.

“Oh, wow, this is great! I had a copy when I was in high school, but it disappeared a long time ago. Thank you!”

She ducked her head, smiling. “You're welcome. I thought maybe, as a change from the mysteries of the British Isles, this might tempt you back to explore your native land.”

“As a matter of fact, I have been thinking about going back.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

“Whereabouts, exactly?”

“Well . . . I have a reason to go to New York . . .” I touched my breast pocket and hesitated, wondering whether to tell her about Jenny.

A faint pink flush appeared in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkled. “I guess you do,” she said softly, gazing at me.

She thought I was flirting. Damn. I felt like a complete heel, but I had to tell her. “I'd love to visit you, but—”

She went very still at that “but.”

“Something's come up. Some old business. Personal business. I told you about Jenny.”

“The girl you left behind.” She took a large swallow of her drink.

“The girl who left me. Whatever. I had a card from her today. She wants to meet and talk about what happened to us. She's going to be in New York on the sixth of September—that was our anniversary.”

“So you're going to meet her.”

“I think I have to. She didn't give me any way of getting in touch with her before then, but I'm working on it.”

“What's her situation?”

“I don't know. She didn't say.”

“What are you expecting to happen?”

“I'm not expecting anything.”

She gave me a hard look.

I shrugged. “OK, at the least, I'm expecting some answers. Why she left me. Why she never tried to get in touch before.”

“If you're a father or not.”

“Well, that's something I should know, don't you agree?”

“Of course.”

I longed to touch her but knew I didn't have the right. “Laura, I want to be honest with you.”

“Honesty is good,” she said, her tones measured. “Is that why you never bothered to call me?”

“I meant to. I overslept.”

She gave a delicate snort. “You overslept by
two days
.”

“I went to sleep Monday night. I dreamed I saw Fred, and she told me how to go under the hill and disappear. Then I heard a bird singing. It was the phone. It was you. I might never have woken up without your call. You saved me.”

I saw her battling with disbelief. Almost against her will, it seemed, she decided to believe me. “Is this because of Peri? Are you in trouble for going after her?”

I shrugged. “She decided to come back. It wasn't anything I did. But I guess I have been playing with fire. And you know what they say about that.”

She looked at the garish cover of the book lying on the table. “I shouldn't have given you that. You should get out of this business.”

Might as well tell me to get out of my life, to stop being the kind of person I was, drawn to mysteries. I drained my glass and nodded at hers, which was nearly empty. “Want another drink?”

“No. No, thanks. I'd rather have something to eat.”

We made our way through busy streets, the warm and vibrant circus of London in the summertime, to Chinatown and Lee Ho Fook's. Not a particularly romantic place to dine, which was probably just as well given the state of play between us, but the food was reliably great.

After we'd settled in and decided what to order, I asked Laura how Peri was doing.

“She's good. Great. She's more like her old self again, but different. I mean, she's a lot like she was when she first came to London, before she went off to college, but with that, she's, I don't know, older, I guess. More grown-up. More settled, somehow. Hard to explain. But she's good.”

“Has she talked about what happened?”

“She doesn't want to dwell on the past. She's here now, this is her life, that's what's important.”

“She hasn't told you anything?”

Laura frowned. “I didn't say that! Of course we talked, that first night up in Scotland. We had a good long talk and she told me a lot about it.” She shook her head. “Strange, though.”

I leaned forward, eager to know more. “Strange, how exactly?”

“Well, strange mostly that it wasn't stranger, I guess. The way she talks about it, she ran off with this rich and powerful man because she couldn't resist knowing what she'd be like with him, in a completely different life. She lived in his house, met his friends, went to parties, listened to music, went horseback riding—he had a whole stable of gorgeous horses, and she was always horse-mad . . .” She trailed off, sighing, then went on.

“I don't know, it sounds not so different from what might happen to a beautiful girl swept off her feet by an eccentric, foreign billionaire. The only thing that made it different was the way she was completely out of touch with me and everyone else she'd ever known. No letters, no phone calls, no turning up at Christmas. And even that, she claims, was mostly her fault. She
could
have kept in touch; she just forgot. Forgot.” She shook her head in wonder. “And she talks about it like she was only away for a few months. That's what it felt like to her: months, not years.”

“Is she living with Hugh?”

“Not yet.” She busied herself fixing a duck pancake. “She's been staying with me. He had a few things to take care of.”

“The other girlfriend?”

She frowned. “His
film
. He's been working day and night. He's not quite finished yet. She doesn't have to move in with him right away; the lease on my flat has another month to run. I wanted to renew it for another year, in her name, so she'd have somewhere of her own, no pressure, but the landlord wouldn't agree; he's decided to sell.”

“So Fiona's out?”

“It's really none of my business,” she said with excessive gentleness. “But I don't think she ever actually
lived
with him.”

I thought Hugh would be advised to get his locks changed, and take any other precautions he could think of to keep the two women apart. Fiona might not be a sorceress like Fuamnach in the story of Etain, but she had just as much reason to feel jealous, and jealousy could be a dangerous emotion.

But I didn't say any of that to Laura.

“They are definitely an item, then—Peri and Hugh?”

Her face softened. “Oh, yes. It's like before—they're completely besotted with each other. I'm glad. It makes it easier to leave, knowing she'll be with him, and happy. I've been encouraging her to think about college, but I don't know what she'll decide to do. Right now, just being with him seems to be enough for her.” Her smile was wistful.

I wanted to know more about Peri's experiences in the Otherworld, but there was no point in pumping Laura about it; even less than there'd been in quizzing Peri. Whatever she told me would simply be just another secondhand story, her experience, always at a distance from me, something I could not understand. This was my obsession, to want to know something that couldn't be known. I might as well accept that the Otherworld would always be a mystery to me. Some people, a very few, were privileged to go there and return to tell the tale, but I was sure now that I would not survive the experience.

So I let Laura change the subject. We chatted about New York and London and enjoyed the food. She had insisted on paying, pointing out that she'd invited me. It was still early when we left, and the daylight streets were full of noise and life, people coming and going, talking and laughing, spilling out of pubs and restaurants as if all were part of one huge, communal celebration of midsummer. The magical golden dusk seemed to hold such promise, as if the whole long evening were just beginning, stretching out ahead of us, alluring and full of endless possibility. Standing on the street corner, I inhaled the warm, fume-laden city air like an intoxicating perfume. I was clearheaded in spite of all the drinks I'd consumed, and I felt more wide-awake than ever before in my life.

I touched Laura lightly on her bare arm. “Where to now?”

“I have to go home and finish packing. I'm off to New York in the morning.”

“So this is good-bye?”

Conflicting emotions flickered in her eyes, and she made her decision. “Ian, I'd like to stay in touch.”

“So would I.”

“I'd like to know what happens with Jenny. You'll let me know?”

“Of course.”

Suddenly her eyes widened, and she gasped. “I haven't paid you!”

“Forget it.”

“Don't be silly! Did you bring your bill?”

I thought of the two draft bills, still on my computer. I shook my head. “Really, it's on the house. Peri would have come back anyway. I'm not out-of-pocket—you paid for everything in Scotland, and now you've just paid for dinner.”

“That was for your birthday.”

“OK, then will you grant me this as a birthday wish? I don't want to be paid. I'm happy if I helped. I did it for love—or friendship. You don't owe me anything.”

When I'd finished my little speech she stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss me. This was not a perfunctory peck, such as I'd given her on meeting; this was full on the lips, and it was warm and promising. When I put my arms around her, she seemed to melt against me. If we hadn't been on a busy street corner, surrounded by people, it might have developed into something much more. It was the best kiss I'd had in years.

My head was spinning when we parted. “Shall I—”

She shook her head. “Not tonight. Come and see me in New York, Ian. Whatever else happens.”

“I will,” I promised.

I watched her descend into the Leicester Square underground station and didn't follow. I couldn't bear the thought of going tamely home alone. I was too wide-awake, too restless and hungry for life.

So I walked. I was walking as a way of thinking, and exploring the territory inside my head meant I paid little attention to which way I turned. I was alert enough to keep out of the traffic, and my course was northerly because that would eventually take me home. Apart from that, I might have been in another world. I daydreamed about Laura, that promising kiss, and fantasized about where it might lead. I imagined us exploring New York together, as, many years ago, I'd explored it with Jenny. Then I wondered what Jenny looked like now, and what she expected of our meeting, and if she still had fantasies about me.

With my mind so pleasurably occupied, it's not surprising I lost track of where I was and where I was going. All of a sudden it was dark but for the yellow streetlamps casting their unnatural glow, and I found myself on a street I didn't know.

It was a quiet, residential street of substantial brick terraces, heavily parked with cars along both sides. It looked in no way a major thoroughfare, and I didn't recognize it as being along any of my usual routes. After a moment of uncertainty, I kept walking. When I got to the corner I should be able to find the name of the street and get my bearings.

Before I reached the corner, though, something caught my attention, movement glimpsed from the corner of my eye. Looking around, I saw someone coming out of the house across the street. That sounds ordinary enough, but somehow I knew immediately it was not. The door, as it shut, made no sound. The figure emerging from the front gate onto the pavement was that of a woman, not very tall, wearing a long dress. She was carrying something wrapped in a blanket cradled against her chest. Although I couldn't see anything of it, from the size and the way she carried it, I felt certain it was a baby.