Winter Affair (2 page)

Leda didn’t recognize the man because she’d never seen him. Years ago she had managed a peek at some newspaper photos, but those were grainy and poor, with an uncooperative subject. It was no surprise that the man she’d encountered in the graveyard had appeared to be a stranger.

But Monica knew him. She had remarked to Leda as they were leaving the cemetery that prison hadn’t changed Reardon much. He still had the look, the manner, the presence, that had deceived Leda’s father and everyone else.

Leda couldn’t argue with that. She had stood face- to-face with him for only a few moments, but she remembered every glance, every movement, every gesture, of his with a crystalline clarity she would not have thought possible. Never in her life had a chance meeting with another person left such an indelible impression. She was shaken by the experience, unable to dismiss it from her mind. As she moved about the kitchen making a snack, she reviewed what she knew about the man who had ruined her father’s business and his life.

Eight years earlier Reardon had been a test pilot with her father’s aeronautical engineering company. He had been working on developing a new jet fuel that wouldn’t catch fire in the event of a plane crash. Headstrong and ambitious, but brilliant in his field, Reardon had a reputation for flashes of insight coupled with an incautious nature. He became convinced that his fuel was ready to be tested in flight, but Leda’s father disagreed with him. According to testimony given at the trial, Reardon waited until Leda’s father was out of town and then ran the test anyway, without the top man’s permission. The test failed and the robot plane exploded, killing several of the onlookers. The shock of the accident that resulted in the deaths was so severe it caused Leda’s father to suffer a fatal heart attack almost immediately. Reardon, as the responsible party, was indicted for criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter in the deaths at the testing site.

Leda was only seventeen at the time, but she remembered that Reardon was blamed for all of it, and convicted at his trial. His appeals took a couple of years, but he finally began serving his sentence after he lost the last one. Monica had told Leda that Reardon had just been released from prison the previous week.

Leda filled a mug with hot water, watching the tea bag stain the liquid until it gradually became the color she wanted. Reardon didn’t look like a monster, she thought as she tossed the used bag in the trash. He looked like a man to be reckoned with, all right, imposing and memorable, but not quite like the ruthless opportunist Monica described. But then, how much could she really tell from a silent encounter that had lasted only a few minutes? Intuition and hunches didn’t stack up too well against the mountain of evidence that had sent Reardon to jail.

Leda glanced at the clock above the stove and resolved to make it an early night. She had to catch the 6:53 train from the Yardley, Pennsylvania, station into New York for her audition. It was a test for a shampoo commercial, and almost certain to be a disappointment. Leda had the requisite shimmering blond hair, but so did a hundred other actresses, and one could never be certain what the advertiser had in mind. In the past few months she’d been deemed too tall or too short, too heavy or too thin, too pretty or not pretty enough, and on one disconcerting occasion, “not clean enough.” Alarmed at this report, Leda had been relieved to hear that this meant she was considered “sexy” rather than “wholesome.” The product to be pushed was white bread, and apparently sexy didn’t cut it.

Leda made a face at the muffin she was slicing. Commercials were hardly the theatrical triumphs of her college dreams, but they paid the bills. She would much rather be doing Shakespeare in the park than extolling the virtues of lemon fresh detergent, but she had to start somewhere and she had to keep from starving before she got where she desired to go. The life of an aspiring actress was a ton of legwork and a truckload of rejection. Even if she got the commercial, it would do nothing to make her employable the next time around. Then the advertiser might be looking for a plain Jane to demonstrate a sinus headache, or a perky brunette to smack her lips over chicken soup. So Leda kept her hand in doing stage work. It didn’t fill her pockets, but did give her the experience she would need in order to interest producers on and off Broadway. After her audition in the morning, she had to make it back to Pennsylvania in time to do the matinee of Picnic at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope. She had signed for a six week run ending in January, and she was just settling in and beginning to enjoy the experience.

Leda considered herself lucky to be appearing in the production at all. Her agent had initially sent her out to read for the role of Millie, the tomboy kid sister in the play. It was actually a better part than the lead and it was the part Leda wanted. But the casting director took one look at Leda’s leggy figure and golden tresses and cast her as Madge, the hometown beauty queen who falls for a charismatic drifter. When Leda protested, showing up for rehearsal the next day in braids and fake glasses, a baseball cap jammed backward on her head, the director had laughed and told her to surrender. She was going to play Madge, and Leda wound up doing just that. No one in the audience would accept her as the bookish, intellectual Millie, even though Leda herself was closer in spirit to Millie than she ever was to Madge. But acting was playing “let’s pretend,” and so Leda pretended, six times a week and twice on Saturday, recreating an August weekend in small town Kansas for the denizens of a Delaware Valley winter.

Leda rinsed her empty cup and set it on the drainboard. Her thoughts drifted away from her career and back to Kyle Reardon, like the needle of a compass returning to its pole. Reardon hadn’t spoken a word to her, but the communication between them had been instant and complete. Leda resembled her father very much; Reardon had recognized her from that resemblance, and from her presence at the grave. What might he have said to her if Monica hadn’t interrupted? Forgive me, I’m sorry, I never meant to do any harm? Leda knew from the accounts she’d read that Reardon had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, claiming that he had received permission to conduct the test, and that his fuel had been sabotaged. Apparently, no one had believed him.

All of those involved—the jurors who had convicted him, the judges who had denied his appeals, the police and the press and the public—had thought him guilty. Maybe her emotional response to Reardon’s undeniable attractiveness was influencing her opinion. Compelling men could be criminals too.

She didn’t know what to think. The man had brought flowers to her father’s grave, in the dead of winter, a few days after his release from prison. Why? The act itself was touching, almost pathetic. It was the awkward gesture of someone uncomfortable with the niceties of custom but determined to do something positive, something right. But when he reached his destination, he had thrown the flowers away. Did he feel himself unworthy of the offering, as Monica believed? He certainly hadn’t looked happy; his gray eyes had been haunted, the eyes of a man who lived with pain and had come to accept it.

Leda shook her head briskly, chasing the topic of Kyle Reardon from her mind. She had to concentrate on the audition in the morning and her performances for the rest of the week.

She left the kitchen and headed for her bedroom, intent on studying her lines for the first act. The director had a problem with Leda’s interpretation of the second scene, and she was going to prove to him that she was right.

* * * *

Leda didn’t get the commercial. She was told her hair didn’t bounce properly and was sent home. On the way back to Yardley, she stopped off in the rest room at the train station. She stared glumly at her reflection in the fly spotted mirror. Her bounce free hair lay in still profusion on her shoulders, the reason for her most recent failure. Leda shook it back in disgust and studied the rest of her features. They were even, well proportioned, giving her the sort of looks most other women envied, but which were almost a disadvantage in obtaining the serious roles Leda craved. She wanted to play Rosalind and Lady Macbeth and Stella DuBois, and she was usually stuck with the flashy, fluffy parts for which the shapely blonde was typecast. She’d even lost out on Juliet in her high school play because the English teacher casting it envisioned the youngest Capulet as a striking Italian brunette. Leda shrugged. There was always tomorrow, and she had learned to be philosophical about the vagaries of potential employers. Maybe she would be lucky next time.

She had a quick lunch back at her apartment and changed her clothes, then headed north to New Hope. Her little green sports car followed the familiar river road almost by rote, and she observed with real pleasure the snow whitened scenery as she drove along. Leda disliked warm climates where winter never came; despite the ice and traffic hazards, it was her favorite season.

The parking lot at the playhouse was empty except for Elaine’s gray Volkswagen. Elaine was a local seamstress, a friend of Monica’s who was coming in early to refit Leda’s costumes. She worked part time as a fill-in wardrobe mistress for the playhouse, which couldn’t afford a real one. As a consequence, the actors had to accommodate her schedule. The two fifties style dresses that Leda wore on stage were too big, cut for the actress originally slated for the part. She had backed out when she got that sought after holy of holies in the acting profession, a steady job. It was a contract role on a New York based television soap opera, and she had left New Hope the same day, leaving Leda with outfits made for a shorter, slightly heavier girl. Leda pulled in next to Elaine’s car and got out, hurrying toward the back entrance of the theater.

The building had a picturesque location on a small waterfall of the Delaware River, and the sound of the gushing torrent filled Leda’s ears as she climbed the wooden steps to the rear porch and let herself in the door. She made her way down the narrow corridor to the wardrobe room. Elaine was waiting for her inside, tapping her foot, her measuring tape in hand.

“Come on in and let’s get going,” she greeted Leda. She was never one for elaborate preliminaries. “Get out of those jeans.”

Leda obeyed, stripping quickly and standing in front of Elaine in her underwear.

“Look at that waistline,” Elaine sighed. “I haven’t seen my ribcage in twenty years.”

Leda smiled to herself. Elaine’s fondness for ice cream would keep her ribcage invisible for the rest of her life.

“I saw your aunt Monica in the bank this morning,” Elaine announced, picking up the party dress from a nearby chair and dropping the pink confection over Leda’s head.

Temporarily imprisoned in chiffon, Leda closed her eyes. Elaine was her aunt’s age, a grandmother, and a bigger gossip than Monica, if that were possible. Their conversation must have been interesting.

It was. “She told me that Reardon fella was out of jail,” Elaine mumbled through a mouthful of pins. “They didn’t keep him locked up long enough, if you ask me.” She tugged expertly on the net bodice of the dress.

I didn’t ask you, Leda thought as the folds of material settled around her legs. Elaine pulled and tucked and adjusted, taking in the seams of the gown. As she did so she kept up a running monologue on the disgraceful return to Yardley of the unwanted convict, Kyle Reardon. Leda listened in silence, fascinated by this outpouring of venom against a man Elaine didn’t even know.

“No one will give him a job, of course,” Elaine concluded with satisfaction. “He’ll be panhandling in the streets pretty soon, unless he moves.”

“I guess that’s the general idea,” Leda observed dryly, wincing a little as Elaine stuck her with a pin. “To get him to move.”

Elaine glanced at her sharply. “I wouldn’t think you would want to see him back here,” she said tartly.

Leda made a dismissive gesture. “Elaine, I was away when it all happened, and it was a long time ago. I suppose I should hate Reardon, but I really find it difficult to hate anybody.”

“Well, you wouldn’t say that if you’d been in town at the time. Your poor father. He was a very popular man hereabouts, and Yardley is a small community with a long memory. You can’t expect people to forget that all they did was lock that hothead up for a few years and take away his pilot’s license. Small price to pay for your father’s life, and the lives of the others who died in that accident.”

“He can’t earn his living without his permit,” Leda pointed out. “Don’t you think that’s going to hurt him?”

“He’s trying to get it back,” Elaine said huffily, gesturing for Leda to turn around. “He filed in Harrisburg already, I heard.”

“How do you know?” Leda asked suspiciously, craning her neck to look over her shoulder.

“Stand still,” Elaine barked, lifting the hem of the dress and examining it. “Where are the shoes you wear with this?”

Leda pointed, and Elaine scooped the high heeled pumps off the floor. Leda stepped into them, and Elaine crouched down, muttering to herself.

“I asked you how you knew so much about Kyle Reardon,” Leda repeated, holding herself rigid.

“He rented that apartment above Sara Master’s garage,” Elaine replied. “He gets his mail in the same box she does.”

“Sara’s been reading his mail!” Leda exclaimed, shocked into motion. The fabric tore out of Elaine’s hand.

“Stop jumping around!” Elaine said, exasperated. “You’re going to look like a harlequin in this dress if you don’t settle down.”

“Has Sara Master been reading that man’s mail?” Leda demanded in a strong voice, ignoring the reprimand.