A Tangled Web (62 page)

Stephanie shuddered within her sister's arms. “I didn't remember anything about you. I remembered other things, other people—flashes, really, not connected to anything—but I never remembered you. I love you, I love you, but I didn't remember you. Why didn't I? Oh, Sabrina, so much has happened! How will we ever put it all together?”

Sabrina gave a shaky laugh. “We'll start at the beginning. But not yet. Let's not talk yet; let's just be together—”

“No, we have to talk. We have to. I lost everything—did you know that? It was so awful: like walking through a fog, through
nothing,
just—”

“—emptiness,” Sabrina said. “I thought of that when I thought about you, everything gone: an awful—”

“Nothingness. That was it. I knew the names of things, and languages—isn't that odd?—or maybe not. One of the doctors told me I was repressing things about myself because I'd had some kind of conflict that caused pain or guilt . . .” She and Sabrina exchanged a quick look; then Stephanie veered away from it. “So there was nothing about myself. Nothing. Except, somehow there must have been something, because it never seemed right that my name was Sabrina. And Léon painted a portrait of me, a double portrait, and when I looked at it, it made me feel so
happy . . .” She shook her head. “I can't believe it. It's all back, as if nothing had happened. But I don't know anything about you, what you did, what's happened—Oh! Penny and Cliff! Have you seen them? Do you know how they are?”

There was a pause barely the length of a heartbeat. “Yes. They're fine. You're right; we have to talk. Do you think we could make some tea?”

“Oh, yes, let's. We can't just stay here; I want to know everything. Let's go to the kitchen. Oh, but Léon—” Stephanie looked for him. “Léon?”

“Yes.” He was beside her, thinking: Penny and Cliff, Penny and Cliff. She said those names once and wondered if they were her children. “What would you like? Shall I make you some tea and then”—he forced himself to say it—“then I'll leave the two of you alone.”

A look of confusion swept over Stephanie's face. “No.” She stood up, and Sabrina stood with her; they clung to each other, arms around each other's waists. “Would you mind?” she asked Sabrina. “I want Léon to know everything.”

“If that's what you want.”

“I know you'd rather it's just the two of us, after so much time . . .”

“Yes. But we'll do what you want.” Sabrina extended her hand. “Hello, Léon. I'm glad to meet you.”

Through his bewilderment and cold fear, he saw the swift understanding between them, the unspoken assumptions, the powerful love, and knew he could not break that bond, nor would he even try. It was theirs alone, and it changed everything: it turned his world and Stephanie's upside down. But he liked this woman: the love she had for her sister; her warmth and directness. She would not lie or participate in others' lies, he thought. He took the hand Sabrina held out to him and saw the shadowed look in her eyes and wondered what part of this incredible meeting was causing her pain. “Léon Dumas,” he said. “But I don't know your name.”

“Sabrina . . . Longworth.” Her tongue tripped on it. “But also . . . Stephanie Andersen.”

Stephanie frowned. “That was a long time ago . . . and it wasn't for real.”

“But they told us you were dead and I couldn't—”

“
Dead?
” Stephanie stared at her and suddenly all the events of the past year seemed to surround her, pieces fitting into place. “Lacoste . . . Max Lacoste. Sabrina Lacoste. But he was Max Stuyvesant, and I was Stephanie Andersen. He didn't know that, of course; he thought I was you, so when he told me my name was Sabrina, when he said I never had children and he'd never heard of Garth, that was the truth, as far as he knew it. But he said we were married, and I never married him; how could I? He made that up, I suppose, when the yacht exploded, and he changed his name and let everyone think we'd been killed. He made us disappear. Of course you thought we were dead; what else could you think? And then”—she looked wildly at Sabrina—“
then you couldn't change back
.”

“You and Max weren't married?” Léon asked. He could make sense of nothing but that.

“No. Oh, Sabrina, that's what you meant about my being gone.” She kissed Sabrina's cheek. They were still standing together, their arms around each other, their hands moving, stroking, caressing in constant reminders that this was real. “You meant you thought I was dead. But there wasn't a . . . body. How could you think—?”

“I don't know. We have to figure that out. But first I want to know about you. Everything. Robert wanted to tell me but I—”

“You know Robert?”

“That was how I found you. I'll tell you the whole story when you tell me yours . . . or we can take turns, but—”

“But not standing in the living room.” Léon felt he had to do something, say something, to restore a sense of reality. He felt he was losing Sabrina . . . no, he thought, Stephanie. I must remember, her name is Stephanie. It seemed to him she was disappearing into her sister, the
two of them merging as their voices, identical voices, overlapped and they held each other as if they could not ever again be torn apart. And what they said made no sense. “Come; we'll make tea and then you can talk. I'll stay if you wish.”

This time Stephanie hesitated. She glanced at Sabrina. “It might be better if we're alone.”

Léon's fear rose again, but he only nodded. “I thought so.” He led the way to the kitchen, a long narrow room with tall wood cabinets, a worn wood floor, and a high window at one end above a planked table and four wooden chairs with rush seats. Léon switched on the ship's lantern above the table and went to the stove.

“Léon, I'll do it.” Stephanie finally left her sister's side and went to him, her arm around his waist, her head on his shoulder. “I'm sorry. I love you; I don't want to hurt you. But there's so much . . . everything is so mixed up and I can't tell you about it, not yet . . . or maybe I should . . . Oh, I don't know what I should do!”

Léon hesitated, afraid of confusing her even more. But then he thought, the hell with it. He had his fear to deal with, and he had to try to balance the sisters' almost mystical closeness. He took Stephanie in his arms. “I love you. And you love me. We haven't dreamed this; we haven't chased a fantasy or clung to each other out of desperation. We came together freely and offered to each other all that we had and all that we were, and it didn't matter what we had been before. From the moment we loved, our past had nothing to do with the life we were building together. We knew that we would change each other, and our lives would change, and
that was what we wanted.
That was what made us happy. I want you to remember that.”

“I will,” Stephanie said gravely. “I couldn't forget it.” She reached up and touched his face. “I love you. But everything is so complicated . . . I'll tell you about it later, I promise. I'll tell you all of it. But Sabrina and I
have to fill in our lives, and we have to do it in our own way, and I don't see how you can be part of that.”

She was changing as he watched her, growing stronger, more positive, more sure of herself. Because now she has a self, he thought. The recovery of her memory and her sister beside her have filled in all the empty spaces that I alone, and all the love in the world, could not fill.

“I'll be upstairs,” he said, and kissed her, and felt her respond with the passion she had shown earlier that night, and that was what he took with him when he left the room, a passion that could not—if there was any meaning in the world—be taken from them.

Stephanie stood at the stove, her back to Sabrina, waiting for the water to boil. As soon as Léon left, she had begun trembling and now she could barely lift the kettle. “Let me help,” Sabrina said at her shoulder.

Stephanie did not turn around. “I'm afraid.”

“We both are.”

The words they had not said, the questions they had not asked in the rush of emotions in rediscovering each other, hung in the room.

Will you try to take your children? What will you do about Garth? Do you want to come home? It's my home now, my . . .

Will you walk away from my family? Will you make room for me with them or will you fight? It's my family, my home, my . . .

But they could not say them aloud.

Sabrina poured steaming water into a red-patterned teapot. “Tea bags,” she murmured, and Stephanie opened a drawer and took out a handful, then reached up and brought down two mugs in a red and white pattern that matched the teapot. “Oh, it's not fair!” Sabrina cried. She stared through sudden tears at the cheerful mugs. “You're back, we're together . . . we shouldn't have anything to be afraid of; we should be rejoicing, celebrating, singing, dancing . . .”

But there was too much between them besides joy and
discovery: they were mired in the quicksand of what they had begun one year ago.

At the table they held hands, their heads close together. “Tell me what happened to you,” Sabrina said. “Where were you when you couldn't remember anything?”

“In a hospital in Marseilles. I woke up and Max was there and I didn't know who I was. But I don't want to talk about—”

“And that's when everything seemed empty. Like a fog. That was how I thought of you. As if you'd disappeared into a fog, a cloud, an emptiness, all of space.”

“Yes, yes, that's what it was! And everything was muffled and I felt so
alone.
Even later, when I'd feel happy . . .”

“Yes, even then,” Sabrina murmured.

“You know; of course you know. You always know. What were you doing? Sabrina, I don't want to talk about me; I want to know about my family and what you've been doing, where you've been—”

“I'll tell you later. I want to know about you, and about Robert and Léon and that shop you worked in, and everything else. All of it.”

“No!” She jerked her hand from Sabrina's. “I have to know about my children! How did you tell them? Do they hate me? They thought I was dead! They thought I'd run off from them and then I was killed—”

“So did Garth.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What?”

“He wouldn't have cared. Things were so bad between us . . . you must have found that out right away. I was afraid to tell you in Hong Kong; I was afraid if you knew, you wouldn't change places. But it must have been obvious. He barely knew I existed, and all I wanted was to get away from him. And when you broke your wrist and I stayed in London, I was so relieved; I just didn't want to go back to him.”

Sabrina tightened her muscles, trying to still the tremors that ran through her.

“What's wrong?” Stephanie leaned forward and took Sabrina's hands in hers. “What's wrong? Why are you shaking?”

Sabrina shook her head. “I'll be all right. Just give me a minute—”

But Stephanie's fingers were moving over Sabrina's, feeling the rings on her left hand. She spread her sister's fingers across her palm. “You're married! You didn't tell me. We've been talking all this time and you never said a word. Who is it?”

Sabrina looked at the dark window giving back their reflections: the only people in a darkened world. She took a breath, as if plunging off a cliff into the unknown, because there was no way to hide it or to soften it.

“Garth,” she said.

Stephanie dropped her sister's hands and shoved her chair back, the legs scraping on the wood floor. “What are you talking about?
Married to Garth?
That's crazy; you couldn't be. You didn't even like him. It's been a year; there's no way you could live with him that long, much less marry him. And anyway, why would he—” Her breath came in short bursts; her face was flushed. “Why would you make up something like that? You're not married!”

“We were married last Christmas. Stephanie, listen—”

“I don't believe it. Why?
Why would you?
”

“Because we love each other.” Sabrina's tremors had stopped; her body was cold, her voice flat. She would tell the whole story and then somehow they would go on; they would decide about the rest of their lives. She wished she could have put it off and enjoyed the miracle of being with Stephanie, but that was like a child's prayer that everything would be easy. “I told you I couldn't change back. The world thought Sabrina Longworth was dead, so I couldn't be her, ever again. I was living Stephanie Andersen's life and I knew it was wrong, that it couldn't go on,
and I tried to leave Garth, over and over again, but something always came up, something with the university or the children or the trip to Stamford, and then he figured out who I was and . . . kicked me out.”

“He figured it out? When?”

“Just before Christmas.”

“
Christmas?
From September? All that time he didn't know? Didn't even have a suspicion?”

“He had reasons for overlooking things, for finding explanations. He wanted to believe I was his wife.”

Stephanie flinched. After a moment she said, “Was there a funeral?”

“Yes. In London.”

“And you didn't tell him then?”

“I tried to. Stephanie, let me tell it all, from the beginning.”

“So he finally got it and kicked you out.” Abruptly her thoughts switched to Sabrina, and, as it had been through all their lives, it was as if she were inside her. “What a terrible time for you; what an awful thing, to lose everything, to have someone tell you you can't have it anymore or even come close . . . But you didn't lose it, did you? You're still there?”