A Tangled Web (63 page)

“I went back. Garth came—”

But Stephanie had plunged into herself again. “So when he kicked you out, he told Penny and Cliff, and they hated me. Didn't they? I know they hated me. He told them I'd left them to play a silly game because they weren't as important as—”

“Stephanie, he didn't—”

“But it was only going to be for a week! They could understand that, couldn't they? And then later they thought I was dead, so maybe . . . maybe they didn't hate me so much.”

“He didn't tell them. We've never told them. They don't know.”

Stephanie stared at her. “They don't know I've been gone all this time? They think you're their mother?”

“Well, damn it, that was the idea, wasn't it? You wanted me to convince them of that when you asked me to take your place.” Sabrina drew in her breath. “I'm sorry. Yes, they think I'm their mother. They know I'm their mother; I have been, you know, for over a year. And I've been Garth's wife since December. Stephanie, I'll tell you the whole story, but please let me tell it all; don't say anything until I'm finished. Please.”

“You took over my family.
You stole my family!
”

“What are you talking about? I didn't steal anyone! They weren't sitting on a shelf waiting to be stolen; they're human beings who love and who need love, and I went to them because you asked me to, and I stayed because—”

“Because you wanted them for yourself!”

“
Because I love them! Because you were dead. Because they became my family!
”

The kitchen was silent. The two women sat so still they might have been sculpted in their chairs, leaning slightly forward as if wanting to touch but unable to; as if a barrier, more formidable than anyone could measure, kept them apart. Stephanie could not make sense of it. For over a year, with so many chances for mistakes and blunders and nostalgia for another way of life, Sabrina had played a part so brilliantly she had swept a whole family into her embrace and they had loved it enough to make her a part of them without ever wondering if she belonged there. Well, she doesn't, Stephanie thought. She's an impostor. She's only been filling in.

From upstairs came the sound of something being moved across the floor, a lamp, perhaps, or a chair. Oh, Léon, Stephanie thought, what are we going to do? She pictured him upstairs, unable to sleep. “He's sketching,” she murmured. “He does that when he's worried about something or he can't sleep. He fills pages: people, landscapes, fantasies, dreams . . .”

“You love him very much.”

“More than . . . almost more than anyone. We were going to ask Robert to marry us.”

Sabrina burst through the barrier between them; she jumped up and put her arms around Stephanie, holding her close. Stephanie's head was against her breast; she felt her tears and her warm breath through her blouse. “I'll tell you everything that's happened. And then you'll tell me. We can't think about what comes next until we do. Oh, I wish it was just the—”

“—two of us. I know. We could have such a good time, just being together. Finding out again—”

“—how wonderful it is. How perfect. Whatever else happens—”

“It is perfect.” Stephanie looked up at Sabrina and instinctively they laughed together. “It's not the same with anyone else; how could it be?”

“I know.” But Sabrina's smile faded and she stood with her head bent. Because it had been perfect when they were growing up and, later, when they had separate homes and separate lives and had turned to each other for support and encouragement, but now, when they were caught in a tangle of conflicting needs, she did not see how it could ever be perfect again.

Stephanie went to the stove. “We'd better have more tea. It's going to be a long night.”

Sabrina watched her fill the teakettle, and then she began to talk, even before Stephanie returned to the table. She began with Brooks's call from London, telling them the yacht had exploded off the coast of Monte Carlo and everyone aboard had been killed. She described the funeral and her frantic attempts to tell everyone that it wasn't Sabrina who had died; it was Stephanie. “But they all said I was in shock; poor Stephanie Andersen, in shock, distraught, incoherent. And I suppose I was. I broke down and said sometimes I couldn't tell who I was, Sabrina or Stephanie, and that was when Garth took me away.”

In her mind Stephanie saw Sabrina fall beside the open grave, crying,
It wasn't Sabrina! It wasn't Sabrina who died!;
she heard people gasping and saw Garth leading Sabrina away. But Sabrina had left something out. “Before
that, before the funeral, why did you think it was me, in the coffin?”

“I don't know. The room was dark and I was crying, everything was blurred . . . but it did look like you. I remember how dark it was—there were a few candles, that was all—and everything seemed hazy because I couldn't stop crying . . . but still . . . I don't know. Maybe we'll be able to find out sometime . . .” She fell silent. “Shall I go on?”

“Yes.”

She told Stephanie everything in that long year: how she had helped Garth in the sex-for-grades scandal at the university that had almost cost him his job; the job offer from a company in Connecticut and their visit there; her growing love for Garth and the children, their love for her. And then she came to Gabrielle's telephone call—
I know what the two of you look like and I'm telling you, I saw you, or her. Or a ghost
—and her trip to Avignon, and then Cavaillon.

It was dawn when she finished: the sky over Vézelay lightening to pearl gray and then a soft wash of color that turned the bougainvillaea to pink and gold. From upstairs came the sound of a door closing, footsteps, another door.

Stephanie sighed. “Why did you come looking for me? You didn't have to. You could have gone back, to Garth and Penny and Cliff. I might never have remembered who I was.”

“You don't mean that. You know why I came here. I had to find you; you're part of me.”

“Yes.” Stephanie smiled faintly. “Thank you. What an odd thing to say. Thank you for finding me, for giving me back my past. Thank you for loving me.”

But now what? 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 . . .

They sat quietly, staring blankly ahead, and turned together as Léon came in. He stopped short, arrested by the
sight of those identical faces, identical poses, even an identical exhausted droop to their shoulders.

“I'm going to the studio,” he said casually, as if this were an ordinary morning, with an unremarkable visitor. “I'll be there all day, if you'd like to walk over later on.”

Stephanie tried to focus on him. Nothing in Sabrina's story seemed to have any connection with Sabrina Lacoste and the life she lived in France, or with Léon Dumas, whom she loved and wanted to live with for the rest of her life. She felt a sinking inside as she thought of her two lives, each like a seamless sphere.
How will I ever put them together?

“Come at one; we'll go to lunch.” He said nothing about the bewilderment on Stephanie's face; he ached to hold her and comfort her but at the same time his anger was growing because she seemed to be shutting him out, his beloved Sabrina who . . .
No, damn it, why can't I remember? Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie.
He wanted to demand information, but he knew she had to tell him freely who she was and what she had been, and whether she wanted his help in patching her two lives together. He could not force any of that on her. “One o'clock,” he said again. “We'll go to Melanie's.”

Sabrina glanced at Stephanie's frozen face and said, “We'd like that. And I'd like very much to see your studio.”

Léon walked the length of the room and kissed Stephanie. “I love you.” He nodded to Sabrina. “I'll see you at one.”

Then they were alone again. “Are you too tired to go on?” Sabrina asked. “Should we wait?”

“No, I don't want to wait. I want you to know what I've done, what it's been like . . .”

They made coffee, and Stephanie warmed croissants in the small oven and filled a dish with red pears. “Let's sit outside; I like it there.”

They sat at the table where she and Léon had eaten dinner . . . a lifetime ago, she thought. The sun was higher
now, lifting over the houses across the street, warming the old stone wall, the painted wooden gate set deep within it, the rough flagstones of the courtyard. A nuthatch sang in the chestnut tree spreading above them; blue jays swept across the open sky. From the street beyond the wall came the clang of iron shutters being raised by merchants opening their shops, the laughter of children skipping down the hill to school, the rumble of German and Spanish, English, French, Italian, Swedish that accompanied groups of tourists, cameras clicking, making an early pilgrimage to the basilica at the top of the hill. “What a lovely place,” Sabrina said. “No wonder you chose it.”

“We chose it because Léon has a friend here who found us the house and the studio. We didn't have time to look around.”

“Why not?”

“Wait. I'll tell you the whole thing. I don't understand all of it; there's so much we don't know. But . . .”

She told Sabrina everything, from the moment she'd awakened in the hospital and looked up into Max's face to the day she and Léon left Cavaillon. Sabrina listened with a sense of wonder that they had been so far apart for a year, living in different cultures, speaking different languages, and yet they both had worked in antique shops, had made new friends and fallen deeply in love, and had been in danger, had faced a man with a gun and felt the helplessness that comes when reason is not enough.

When Stephanie finished, Sabrina stirred. “Terrible, terrible. What you went through . . .”

“It was worse for Max,” said Stephanie, almost coolly, and Sabrina drew back a little.

“Are you mourning him?”

“He was good to me and he—”

“He lied to you about being his wife; he hid your past from you—at least what he thought was your past—”

“I don't forgive him for that. But he cared about me, he was good to me, and he died in a terrible way.”

“And almost took you with him.”

“He saved my life!”

“But what got you there in the first place? He was running, Stephanie, hiding . . . from what? Most of us aren't living with men who are being stalked; what was he up to? Probably some scheme like Westbridge; there's no reason to suppose he'd do anything legal for a change.”

“Westbridge? Max's company? What about it?”

“Oh, you don't know. No, how could you? The stories came out last December. They smuggled antiquities out of Third World countries; they had customers who paid millions of dollars for a vase or a funerary sculpture or a piece of a mosaic floor . . . anything and everything. They faked rare porcelains, too, but that was almost a sideline. If Max was doing the same kind of thing in Marseilles . . . what did he do there?”

Stephanie hesitated, strangely reluctant to expose Max, even in death, even to Sabrina. But they had to talk about it; too much hinged on Max, in London and perhaps in Marseilles. “He made counterfeit money and sold it around the world.”

“Good Lord, he never changed, did he? I suppose he smuggled it in; how else would he do it?”

“Yes.”

“What was his company?”

“Lacoste et fils.”

“He never had sons.”

“He liked the sound of it. I suppose he thought that any company with a father and sons had to sound respectable.”

“And who worked with him?”

“Oh, he had people in a lot of countries. I don't know who was here, except for Andrew. Andrew Frick. The engraver. An artist, Max said. A genius.”

“Where is he? We ought to talk to him.”

“I don't know. He's disappeared.”

“You mean you called or went there?”

“Robert tried to find him after Max was killed, but he'd vanished. The telephone at Lacoste et fils was disconnected,
and there was nothing in the office or the warehouse: Robert called the police and they broke in and found nothing. Not even a piece of paper.”

“Frick cleaned it out?”

“Or someone else; I don't know how many people worked there.”

“You never went there?”

“No. Max said I'd find it dull. And then, after I met Léon . . .”

“You wanted to stay home when Max went to Marseilles.”

Stephanie nodded. Their eyes met. “It was never right between us. I tried, because I knew he cared for me and I was grateful for all that he'd done, but I never felt really married to him.”

“Because you weren't. Even Max Stuyvesant couldn't fool you completely.”

They smiled together, sharing the small joke about Max—always so certain of his irresistible powers of persuasion—and it struck Sabrina that for this brief time she and her sister were living entirely in the moment: being together and puzzling something out, as they had done through all their growing up when they had relied on each other for companionship and love and understanding.

But her thoughts were moving ahead. “So Max could have been killed because of what he did in Marseilles. But he said you were in danger, too. Meaning Sabrina Longworth was in danger. And that could only have been because of something that had happened in London. And London was Westbridge.”

“I didn't have anything to do with Westbridge.”

“You're sure? You were there for five weeks. Long enough to hear something or repeat something.”

“I didn't. You were there for years, it was your life; I was only borrowing it.”

“Wait, maybe it was this. Do you remember, just before you left for the cruise, you wrote a letter to me. You thought I'd read it after we switched back. I found it at
Ambassadors after you'd—after I thought you'd died. You said in the letter that you'd told Rory Carr he could tell you nothing you didn't already know.”