Escape (26 page)

Feeling as vulnerable as I did, I would have given anything to avoid a confrontation with Amelia. But I couldn’t just turn and walk away. Forget cowardly; it would have been
rude
. It also would have been imprudent. Amelia had been respectful to James, and she was paying Lee’s bills.

She looked totally together in her plaid shirt and khakis. When younger, she’d had the same pure blond hair as Vicki and Jude, and though hers was now mixed with white, it remained thick. For as long as I’d known her, she’d kept it short, brushed back behind her ears in a clipped, CEO-appropriate style. Gentleness wasn’t a priority for her. Even today, under a cloud cover that softened the afternoon light, she looked flinty.

She also looked smug. “Trouble in paradise?” she asked in her ballsy alto.

“Actually, no,” I replied without lying. New York was no paradise, not by a long shot.

“He didn’t look happy with you,” she pressed. “No kiss? No hug?”

“You weren’t with us last night.”

“No,” she conceded. “I suppose it was kind of him to come.”

Kind? What about loving or devoted or worried? Even
horny
? Amelia had chosen the blandest word, so I tossed it right back.

“James is that way. He cares about people. He’s the kindest person I know.”

Kindness was the last word anyone would ever use to describe Jude, who had to be behind this somehow. My presence stirred up things in Amelia; she had made that clear at our last one-on-one.

“Does it upset your parents?”

“His kindness?”

“Your separation.” There was a gleam in her eye. I didn’t want to think it was malice, but I couldn’t blame it on booze. She had been with Charlotte prior to our meeting, meaning she wasn’t drinking then, and she didn’t have a glass with her now.

I gave her a puzzled smile. “There’s no separation. He’s busy at work, and I need a rest.”

“A trial separation, then?”

“Not in the sense you mean.” I thought to leave—make up an excuse, say I didn’t feel well—but if Amelia had a point to make, she would make it either now or later. Better now, while we were alone.

“Jude says you’re avoiding him,” she began.

I smiled, curious. “Is that what he says? No. I’m not. We just don’t have much to say to each other.”

“I’m sorry for that. I was hoping it would be different.”

“I’m married, Amelia.”

“But not happily,” she said, raising a hand to forestall my reply. “Say what you will, but I sense problems. And that’s all right. Every marriage has its tests. You would have had those if you’d been married to Jude, too.”

Amazed, I laughed. “Jude and I couldn’t pass the
admissions
test.”

“I’m sorry for that, too. I used to hope you were the one.”

I was flattered, but not surprised. She had liked me that summer. The dislike had come when I left and she had needed a scapegoat. “He’s probably better with someone else.”

“Who?” she asked, less composed. “He messes up every time. Why
do
children let parents down?”

I didn’t have to think about that one. “Maybe because their expectations are too high.”

“Shoot low and you get low.” She moved to the space where James’s rental had been, now an empty spot beside Vicki’s van. After scuffing the gravel for a minute, she studied the van, running a hand over its logo before turning to lean against it.

Pensive, she stared at the woods. “It’s hard with kids. You raise them to be one thing and they turn out to be another. You do your best, but there are no guarantees. Vicki was easy. My son? A challenge from the start. He knew just which buttons to push.”

Thinking of some of the outlandish things Jude had done—like bet with his buddies on football, with the loser having to run naked around the town green, which I only heard about but would have loved to see, since Jude had lost and been quite pleased about it, Vicki said—I had to smile. “At some level, it’s endearing.”

“Fine for you to say. You aren’t his mother.” She looked at me then. “And you aren’t his wife. Tell me, where’s James from?”

“Maryland.”

“What do his parents do?”

“They work for the government.”

“Career bureaucrats?”

“Not bureaucrats. They’re civil servants. Administrations come and go, but they stay.”

“Do they own a home?”

“A small one. Why the questions?”

“I’m trying to get a fix on why you chose him over Jude.”

“Amelia,” I reminded her with an astonished laugh, “Jude ditched me. He chose Jenna.”

“Well, I know that,” she granted, “but for you to choose someone so different—I’m just trying to understand. What was the appeal?”

“James isn’t different. He’s everything I’d grown up planning to have and to do. Jude was the anomaly. James coming along when he did was a reminder, a
sign
of where I was meant to be.”

“I don’t believe in signs,” Amelia stated.

Not wanting to mention cars that stalled or coyotes that howled, I remained silent.

“Things just happen,” she went on, “and not always the way we plan.” She shot an aggrieved look toward the green. “I didn’t plan to be in
this
town, that’s for sure.”

Resentment? “But you love it here,” I protested.

“Really? I’m here because I married Wentworth Bell. I did not plan on his dying at the age of forty-eight, any more than I planned on heading the Refuge, but when there’s no one else to do it, and you have to sleep at night with the echoes of those Bells saying that the Refuge has to stay in the family, you can’t walk away. My taking over when Wentworth died was the only responsible thing to do.”

“But you
love
it,” I insisted. To me, that had always been her strength. She was possessive of the place, involved in every aspect of its operation. The Refuge had grown on her watch. “And you’re
good
at it.”

She sighed. “Well, it’s what I have, and there’s no point in doing something unless you do it well, but it isn’t what I’d grown up planning to do.”

“What was?”

“You’ve talked with Lee. Can’t you guess?” She folded her arms. “She and I didn’t grow up together. She’s much younger—her mother was my mother’s baby sister. And my side of the family wasn’t in trouble with the law. We were just poor. I was working from the time I was ten. My dream was not having to work.”

“A woman of leisure? I have trouble picturing that.”

“We grow into our lives. You see me as I am today. But I wasn’t always the one giving orders. When I was in high school, I worked in a nursing home, and I did whatever I was told. The pay wasn’t great, but it was something.”

“Where did you meet Wentworth?”

“Oberlin. I was on scholarship. Needless to say, his family wasn’t pleased with his choice.” Her mouth twitched. “Sound like Lee?”

It did, though having thought of Amelia one way for so long, it was still an adjustment. “Bretton is an aristocratic name.”

“Isn’t it though. Amelia Bretton Bell. I’d have chosen something else, if it hadn’t had a certain ring to it.”

She was staring at me, her gaze defiant but vaguely … diluted. It struck me that her fawn eyes were faded, their gold flecks less noticeable than I remembered them being. Of course, gold eyes were a Bell trait, and she was a Bretton. In that, just then, she seemed more human.

“Why am I telling you all this,” she said, a question but not.

Me, I was still waiting for the other shoe to fall.

“Maybe because I want you to know that I do occasionally have reason to be sour. Vicki thinks I drink too much, but I don’t. I’m careful. I grew up with sots. I know the pitfalls. Not that I don’t imbibe now and again. Drink can lighten the mood when you think you’re doing the right thing but get it thrown back in your face.”

Absurd, since we weren’t really friends, but I felt like she was confiding in me—like she was trying to share something and not succeeding terribly well. I waited.

With another sigh, she pushed away from the van, and for a minute, I thought the conversation would end there. Then her step faltered, and I felt that small window of humanness open wider.

“Jude thought I was awful. He made fun of my house, my car, my jewelry. Did he not see how hurtful that was? Fine, if he didn’t want to live in a house like ours, I could live with that, but in a filthy cabin? Do you know how a parent feels when an adult child rejects her like that?”

“He just wanted to do things his way,” I tried gently, though I’m not sure she heard. The tidy ball that was Amelia had begun to unravel. She was speaking again barely before I was done.

“But how was I supposed to deal with that? A parent cares. Her children think she’s immune, because she is officious, because her life has
demanded
that of her, but she has feelings. Every mother does. You have no idea what it’s like to see your child doing one destructive
thing after another, when there are better options. But he won’t listen. You point out facts. He sneers. You try to talk sense into him, but he is deaf. You raise your voice and get emotional for once, and what does he do? He walks away!”

“He’s here now,” I said softly, but I felt bad for this different Amelia. Her eyes were haunted. I had never seen them like that.

“He’ll leave again. He isn’t comfortable with me.”

“I thought things were going well.”

“For him, maybe,” she said, and sputtered. “What’s not to go well? He takes what he wants and ignores everything else. But I see it coming. He’ll leave again unless someone like you gets involved.” There it was, the other shoe. Her eyes drilled mine. “You could save him, Emily. Are you sure there’s no hope for the two of you?”

The only reason I felt even remotely bad was the pleading I heard, which was odd
—sad
—coming from as regal a woman as Amelia. But this other shoe didn’t fit me.

“I can’t,” I said, pleading right back that she not ask this. “The time for Jude and me is done. But not your time with him. If he doesn’t want to head the Refuge, he can do other things.”

“Like what?”

I tried to think what might work. “Create a title for him. Make him a roving ambassador—VP at Large, or something.”

“Isn’t that what he used to be?”

“Not formally, and not with a promise he wouldn’t end up back here as CEO. That’s what terrifies him.”

“It terrifies me, too,” she argued, her voice rising. “What happens when I die? Who’ll take over? Noah? Oh, lovely. He’s nine. And if he inherits his mother’s brains, I’m sunk.”

“What about Charlotte?”

“She’s
three
.”

“There are cousins—”

“It was supposed to be Jude!” Lowering her voice, she tried again. “He loves you, you know.”

I might have reminded her that she had denied that barely a week
before. But suddenly there seemed another point to make. “Jude loves what he can’t have.”

“He came back for you.”

“No. He didn’t know I’d be here. He came back for
you
. He wants …” I stopped, considering.

“What? Tell me. I’d give him most anything.”

I was suddenly on that bench outside the General Store with my dad. “My parents would say the same thing. The only thing I want is to be loved as a grown person with the right to her own dreams.”

“Don’t I love Jude that way?” Amelia argued. “I let him live where he wants, even if I think it’s a hovel, and dress how he wants, even if he looks like … like someone I grew up with and spent my life trying to escape. I
let
him do this.”

Just as my father “let” me stay here. “But he feels your disapproval.”

“Because what he’s doing is
wrong
,” she insisted.

“For you, maybe, but he can’t live for you.”

“Help me, Emily. If you care anything for Vicki, you’ll do this, because I’m her mother. I love my son. I want a relationship with him. I went ten years without. I can’t do that again.”

“Oh, Amelia,” I said, regretful not about Jude but about Amelia’s inability to accept the truth. “I can’t control Jude. My life is elsewhere, and it’s everything he hates. I don’t have any pull with him.”

“You do. You are the best woman who ever entered his life. He calls you his conscience.”

Well, I did know that. The fact that Amelia did, too, suggested Jude might have put her up to this.

“Talk to him,” she pressed. “Reason with him. Tell him that he
should
get custody of Noah. Tell him that he could revolutionize the Refuge—that he could leave his mark—that he could make it a one-of-a-kind place for his son to inherit.” She took a quick breath. “Help me in this, Emily. Would that be
so hard
for you to do?”

I didn’t answer, and she left me soon after. A week and a half earlier, when my head had been filled with static and my energy depleted, I would have packed my bags and driven off. I had problems enough of
my own without taking on hers. But the similarities between the two couldn’t be missed. I was to my father what Jude was to Amelia—a child rejecting a parent’s dream. If in helping them I helped myself, we might both benefit.

At least, that was my rationale for not leaving Bell Valley that day.

And then something happened that clinched it. Lee woke up Friday to find four flat tires on the truck she had been driving to and from work. The truck was old, the tires new, and the deed was done in a way that wouldn’t be captured on film. Someone had fired a gun from cover of the trees, likely using a silencer to avoid waking Lee.

We met with the police in the kitchen of the Red Fox—three of Bell Valley’s finest munching on apricot scones while Amelia insisted they had a murderer to catch, which did nothing for Lee’s peace of mind. The police promised to watch the house, but beyond cataloguing the kind of bullet used, there was little else they could do.

Lee was freaked out, and I couldn’t blame her. But while she used this as an example of why she shouldn’t rock the boat, I used it as an example of why she should. It took a while—and Amelia’s insistence—to convince her. Leaving Amelia to tell the police what we would need from their files, I led Lee to Vicki’s small office to make the call in private.

“Monday at ten?” she echoed Sean, looking at me. When I nodded, she said, “Yes. Thank you. Yes. Ten. I’ll see you.”