High Heels and Holidays (21 page)

“I'm not very good at this, am I? I don't really love Carol. I just said that. I lied. I'm sorry.”

“Okay . . . I think. And you just said that to Mom, too, right, lied to her, too? But why should Mom be the one apologizing?”

Evan lowered his head, fairly whispering his next words. “She had an affair with Walt Hagenbush. Ten years ago. She told me all about it on our wedding anniversary, three months ago. She told me she needed to confess what she'd done because—well, I'm not quite sure why. I think it's her menopause, truthfully. She hasn't been handling it well. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that nothing has been the same for us since she told me.”

Maggie sucked in three breaths before ever breathing out again. “Mom—
my mother
—had an affair? Oh, that's just ridiculous. Who'd ever—no, scratch that, that isn't nice. But, seriously—who'd be that brave? Walter who? With
Mom
? Alex, I think I need a—”

“A brandy, I agree,” Alex said, already heading for the drinks table. “Sterling, for reasons I don't care to delve into too deeply at the moment, you also would seem to be in need of a small restorative.”

“Yes, thank you so much, Saint Just,” Sterling said, taking a large white linen handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing it at his forehead. “Our poor Maggie. We've never had a divorce in the family, have we? It's all so . . . so sordid.”

Actually, as far as Maggie was concerned, it all was beginning to seem pretty stupid. Her mother had committed the worst sin in marriage. Not having an affair, although that was pretty bad, but telling her husband about it ten years later. Ten years! Who the hell cared, ten years later?

Well, her father, obviously. He'd stewed, he'd simmered, and then he'd gone out and found Carol, the chippie. She said as much. “So you went out and found Carol to get some of your own back on Mom, right?”

“Just so I could say that I'd had an affair, too, yes,” Evan agreed as Maggie dedicatedly nursed the snifter of brandy, hoping for numbness to set in somewhere besides her lips and molars.

“So did you? Or did you just tell Mom that you did?” Maggie grimaced as she looked at Alex. “And do I really want to know the answer to that question?”

“No, my dear, I don't think you do. I also believe that you do not want to insinuate yourself between your mother and father in this matter, also a point toward keeping your knowledge as minimal as possible.”

“Too late, Alex—I'm already going to go to my grave thinking about my mother and some . . . some Walter. Alicia Kelly, checking into a by-the-hour motel. God.”

“I should be going,” Evan said, getting to his feet. “I called ahead and have a room at the Marriott waiting for me, but I felt sure your mother would try to contact me here. And don't worry about money, Maggie. I've maintained a MasterCard account in my own name for several months now. I do watch Dr. Phil now and then, you know. Cheaters have to be up to all the tricks. But your mother must know more of those tricks than I do, because she found me out, didn't she? Perhaps I wanted her to?”

“Oh, God,” Maggie said a few minutes later, once Alex had put her father into a cab and come back upstairs. “I knew we were dysfunctional—but who could have imagined any of this? And you want to know the worst? It's Christmas. Who do I go to for Christmas? Mom or Dad? Hey, do you think I can just send them both cheese trays and stay home? I mean, there's got to be a pony hiding somewhere in this pile of—oh, never mind.”

“Maggie, shame on you,” Alex said, heading for the door once more. “As I recall the thing, you have an appointment with Dr. Bob in the morning. What do you say I meet you at his office at ten, at which time we'll be off to Greenwich Village. Oh, and then a visit to your friend, Felicity, to learn if she, too, received a rat in the mail.”

“I suppose we have to do that, huh? Tell Faith, that is. And Jonathan West, too. I don't trust Lover Boy to take us seriously on any of this. Jeez, love makes people weird, doesn't it? Steve used to be a good cop who never thought about the political end of a case, even broke rules when he felt the need. He's probably thinking about his future now, with Christine in the picture. And Dad used to be a good—never mind. Go home, Alex. I think I'm going to have a pity party, and I don't want you to see it.”

“I could stay,” he said quietly.

She blinked back tears, nodded. “I know. But not tonight, Alex. You know,” she added, trying to smile, “you can make a perfect hero, but you can't make a perfect life. Only in fiction, you know? It's why I write happy endings. I like happy endings . . . but I don't see one here. Not right now.”

He'd barely closed the door when Maggie was wishing him back, but she didn't go after him. She was too used to being on her own, working things out for herself.

Except she hadn't really been alone. Not since puberty, according to Sterling. Alex had been . . . had been her imaginary friend.

Now he was her for-real lover.

Speaking of lovers . . . both her parents had taken lovers.

And Rat Boy was still out there.

What a mess.

“Time to play Snood,” Maggie said out loud, heading for her computer and what she knew would be at least two hours of mindless Snood shooting.

When she woke up the next morning she was on the couch, the almost empty brandy snifter still balanced on her stomach, and she could hear her alarm clock buzzing down the hall in her bedroom.

“Dr. Bob!” she said out loud, and ran to take her shower, grab an iced cinnamon-and-sugar Pop-Tart, and head for the psychiatrist's office.

Five minutes into the hour-long session, she was wishing she'd overslept and missed the appointment.

“Well, now, Margaret, this is an upsetting situation your parents have put you in, isn't it? How do you propose to deal with it, hmm?”

Maggie reached for her second tissue of the session. “Isn't that what you're supposed to tell me? Isn't that why I pay you the big bucks?”

“I'm not here to solve your problems for you, Margaret.”

“Yeah, you got that in one,” Maggie muttered into the tissue, then blew her nose. “But I don't know what to do. He's on one side, she's on the other—and I'm smack in the middle. I'm taffy, that's what I am, being stretched in two directions at once.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Dr. Bob said, reaching down on the side of his desk and coming up with a small blue box tied with a silver ribbon. “Here you are, Margaret. I'm giving out sugarless fudge this year, except to my bulimics and anorexics, of course. They'll receive autographed first editions of my new book—well, the one that's just come out in paperback, that is. Oh, would you like one, Maggie? Instead of the fudge, you understand. Although I did tell you it's sugarless, correct? I know you're on a diet.”

Maggie just let that one roll over her, one more problem in her life, and one she didn't have time for right now, thank you. Good old cheerful Dr. Bob should just be happy she hadn't as yet reached for a cigarette.
Yet
being the operative word, because she was teetering on the brink.

“Can we get back to my mom and dad? I'd call the sibs—my siblings, that is—except I already know how each of them will react, and it won't be good. I want to help Mom and Dad, I really do. I just . . . I just don't want to get involved, you know? That's selfish, isn't it?”

“Self-preservation, Margaret. It's in our nature, and perfectly understandable. But let me help direct you, as you're clearly conflicted. For the moment, your parents are finding their own way, reacting in their own way, and they both deserve the time and space to do just that, without interference. Your job, if you'll think of it that way, is to be supportive but nonjudgmental.”

“Kind of hard to do that with Mom on the phone every three seconds and Dad living here in New York.”

“True,” Dr. Bob said, leaning back in his oversize leather chair. “You are on the horns of a dilemma, aren't you, my dear?”

Maggie held up one finger as she chuckled in what she hoped was a rueful way. “Oh no, that one doesn't work for me anymore. You pity me, I do a knee-jerk stand-up riff for me and say it's not all that bad. I have a great career, lots of friends, a nifty condo, cup more than half full, yadda-yadda. The old self-esteem bit. But it won't work this time, Dr. Bob. And you know why? Because my life is a mess on so many levels, that's why. Someone's out to kill me. Did I mention that?”

Dr. Bob, who had been scribbling something on a yellow legal pad, slowly turned his head to look at her from beneath his thick eyebrows. “Really,” he said in that hugely irritating neutral voice of his. “And how long have you thought someone was out to get you, Margaret?”

Maggie actually picked up her purse and opened it, began to search inside for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes, before she stopped herself. “Not out to
get
me. Out to
kill
me. Oh, cripes, never mind. It's nothing for you to worry about.”

“Because Saint Just will protect you, hmm?”

Okay, now she
really
wanted a cigarette. “You know what, Dr. Bob? One of us needs a shrink. What do you mean,
Saint Just
will protect me?”

“There's an ethical question here, I believe. But as I never registered him as a patient, and he most certainly didn't pay for my time . . . yes, I think I'm safe in telling you this, Margaret. Your Saint Just was here the other day.”

“My Saint Just,” Maggie repeated, getting that Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole feeling again. “Here. As in
here
here? To see you? You've got to be kidding. Why?”

Dr. Bob shook his head. “No, I'm afraid I can't allow myself to go that far. But he was here, and he does seem to enjoy being referred to as Saint Just. And he is most definitely quite protective of you. And, while he seems rational, I must tell you, Margaret, the man appears to be laboring under an illusion. One of... well, very nearly omnipotence, I'd say. Very self-assured, extremely confident. Bordering on arrogant, I'd have to say, although totally charming.”

Maggie grinned. She couldn't help herself. “Yup, that sounds like Alex.”

“And you see nothing odd in that, Margaret? That your cousin should have cast himself in the role of your imaginary character, your fictional hero? And, as we both know from recent events that have reached the media as well as been discussed between us in this office, the man seems to have a penchant for embroiling himself in . . . adventures.”

“He's not the Lone Ranger on that one, Dr. Bob. I'm in those adventures, too, remember?” Maggie said, beginning to bristle a bit. “And none of them were our fault. Things just . . . they just seem to happen to us, that's all. Kirk, for one, was certainly not my fault. Like helping Bernie when she found her first husband had come back from the dead to die in her bed. And don't tell me it was our fault that someone went apeshit at that romance convention. Oh, and England? We just happened to be there, that's all. I mean, come on, like it was
my
idea to discover that guy swinging from his neck outside my window? And look at Rat Boy, for crying out loud. I sure didn't ask him to send me a dead rat, or that stupid poem threatening to kill me—or at least hinting at it. Who would
ask
for that sort of—”

Dr. Bob held up his hand, stopping Maggie in mid-rant. “You're serious, aren't you, Margaret? Saint Just—that is, your cousin Alex—was serious? There's someone possibly out to kill you?”

“Finally!
Yes
, someone may be out to kill me. One guy is already dead—Francis Oakes. The police are on it—well, sort of—and I'm being very careful, but yes, I'm feeling like I have a target painted on my back, and it's not a nice feeling to think that someone could actually wish you dead.”

“And how
do
you feel about that?”

“How do I feel?” Maggie searched for words. “Angry. Confused. Vulnerable.” She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Mortal.”

“Ah, yes, I understand,” Dr. Bob said, carefully placing his pen on the yellow pad and giving Maggie his full attention. “We are all mortal, aren't we?”

“Most of us,” Maggie mumbled under her breath, then nodded. “I don't like to think about that. More than anything, that's what's got me going, I think. Thinking about that, that is. I . . . I don't think about that. Dying.”

“But when you do?”

Maggie looked up at the psychiatrist. This wasn't why she'd come here this morning. She'd come for some magic answer about her parents. “I don't know. I think . . . when I think about dying I think that's okay, because it would be the end of the world and everyone else would go out with me. That's not too crazy, because when I . . . die,
my
world would end, so that would mean the world is sort of over, right? For me, at least, even if it does go on somewhere else. I mean, think about it. They killed JFK, for one, and the world didn't stop. We'd just like to think it couldn't go on without us.”

“So, in your mind, you're making a fiction of fact, a fiction that makes you comfortable with the idea that, just maybe, you're indispensable to the world?”

Maggie considered this for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Hey, like they said, whatever floats your boat.” Then, growing more and more uncomfortable, she went on, stealing from something Bernie had once said to her, “Besides, I figure I'm going to go in my sleep at one hundred and three, with a young stud sleeping beside me.” Then honesty won out. “No, that's not true. I'd be too self-conscious about my wrinkles to let a young stud near me. I think I'd rather have my M&M's and a cigarette, to tell you the truth. The one hundred and three, however, still stands.”