Keepsake (33 page)

He remembered it all too well. It had only added to Alison's allure, as fair as the guys were concerned. "Something like that," he said, trying to ward off the sinking feeling in his gut. If
Myra
was making all of this up, she was as good a storyteller as Ulysses.

The waitress came with
Myra
's beer and she took a sip before resuming her tale. "Sometimes I think that's why Alison liked me," she mused. "Because I dated so much. I knew about, you know, psychology and stuff between guys and girls," she said, lowering those big, black lashes and batting them once or twice. She was Myra Lupidnick, after all; she truly could not help herself.

"Did she talk about
Rand
much?"

"Oh, not at all, at first. He was always 'this guy I like.' But I couldn't figure out where she'd get the chance even to meet a guy, much less develop some kind of relationship. I started watching her in school, I saw her talking to
Rand
in the hall once, and from the way she looked at him—from their body language—I knew."

She shrugged and took a good long swallow of beer this time. "So I confronted her about it, and after a few times of denying it, she said, yeah, it was
Rand
. And then she opened up. I think, because she'd bottled it up so long and she had absolutely no one to talk to, and really, she was in love with him. It was
... she really loved him. You know?"

Myra
's face got a thoughtful, faraway look; she was back in her parents' split-level, advising the most beautiful and mysterious girl in town in matters of the heart.

"It was the real thing," she murmured at last, shaking her head. "I felt so bad after they found her."

"And yet you didn't say anything."

"No. I didn't,"
Myra
acknowledged.

"Did the police ever question you?"

"Hardly at all."

She folded one hand meekly over the other and lifted the fingertips back a little, staring at her messed-up nails. She sighed, then looked up and said, "I was scared, Quinn. Don't forget, my dad was a foreman at the mill. He would have lost his job for sure. And after a while, when they didn't arrest anyone and the whole thing seemed to fade away, well, it didn't really make any difference anymore, did it?"

It was all he could do not to pop her over the head with the Chianti bottle.
Idiot! You could have done the right thing and come forward and my entire life would have been different!

But he knew better than to go down that road. He'd been down it so many times before, and it always ended smack in the same brick wall. He reminded himself for the thousandth time that a dozen lives had been saved because a crime, this crime, had gone unsolved. It was enough. In the grand, chaotic scheme of things, it was enough.

A thought occurred to him. "Does your husband—does George—know about any of this?"

"Oh, no. I could
never.
That's just what I mean. That's why it's been eating a hole through me all these years. Right here," she said, pointing a chipped red fingernail at her heart. "And I'm just
... ready to start over. I really want to start over," she repeated, this time with a trembling lip.

A big tear rolled out and sat on her thickly caked lower lashes, unable to break through and run. Quinn waited, mesmerized, for the tear to fall, but she blinked and it flattened into a saline line in the rim above her lashes.

"I'm sorry," she said, dabbing at her eye with the back of her wrist and leaving a smudge on the skin there. "I didn't think I'd cry."

Considering the amount of mascara she wore, that was Quinn's assumption, too. Her sincerity and g
ood intentions touched him—much
more at that moment than they ever had in high school. Somewhere under all that makeup was the still-pretty face of an ordinary girl who had always wanted simply to please.

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "Hey, now,
Myra
... you've carried this ring around for a long time. You didn't have to do that. You could have just chucked it and forgotten about the whole thing, but you didn't. I think Alison would appreciate that you stayed loyal to her memory."

"Really?" she asked, doing more dabbing, this time with a
cocktail
napkin.

"Absolutely."

He picked up
Rand
's ring and circled his thumb absently over the chiseled surface of its stone, sobered by the awareness that Alison Bennett had once slipped it over her finger and dreamed of setting up house with its owner.

But had she really? The ring wasn't proof of anything. Thank God, it wasn't proof—even of paternity, much less of a murder. Quinn could rationalize that much. He could live with the responsibility that
Myra
was handing over to him. For entirely different reasons, he would do exactly what
Myra
had done: nothing. And if the ongoing silence ended up boring a tiny hole in his heart, so be it—because this time, finally, it was his turn for happiness.

The waitress came over and asked to take their order, but neither of them was hungry, so they settled for splitting a side order of calamari. Quinn realized that he did not have even an appetizer's worth of small talk left in him, but he needn't have worried.

Myra
, looking more relieved and brighter by the minute, suddenly said in a much perkier voice, "I almost forgot!"

She fished around in her purse again, and this time she came up with something more lethal. "The letter!"

"What letter?"

"From
Rand
. Oh. I guess I haven't filled you in. Do you want me to start from the beginning?"

"Please.''

Quinn accepted the letter from
Myra
, not daring to glance at it until he got his emotions under control.
A letter from
Rand
.
What next? A notarized confession? This was turning into the probe from hell.

Myra
took a deep breath and said, "Okay, this is what I know firsthand. Alison and Rand had been
... uh, well, doing it, since July in the summer after our junior year. Their first time was in the backseat of his—you remember the red
Pontiac
? God, I loved that car. It happened after he took her home early from a wake
reception at his parent
s
'
house. Alison made up a story about how she thought she was coming down with something; that's how she got out of going home
later
with her parents. Even
Rand
believed her. But I guess she knew what she wanted.

"After that, it was whenever and wherever they could. I remember she said they did it once in the gardener's cottage when you and your father were off buying some fancy trees for Mrs. Bennett. I'll bet you never knew that,"
Myra
said, smiling behind her next sip of beer.

"How right you would be," Quinn said faintly.

Myra
put down her glass with a grin; she was relaxed and in her element now. "Anyway, that's pretty much how the summer went," she said. "Alison was happy, all things considered, and no one was the wiser."

"Except you?"

"Not me! I didn't know any of this at the time; those two were amazing at keeping it secret. And besides, Alison and I didn't really become close until after we went back to school for senior year. I remember I told her how pretty her hair was, but that it would look fantastic if it was highlighted. I've always had a professional interest in hair, you know. She said she couldn't afford highlighting, so I offered to do it for her. They have kits. Anyway, that was in early September. I didn't learn about
Rand
until late September, and by October I knew she was pregnant."

"She told you she was?"

"Not in so many words. She said, 'I think maybe we were careless a few times.' Well, what else could that mean? Later, of course, I knew. Eventually, so did everyone."

He nodded. "How did she seem about it?"

"Not depressed or scared, if that's what you're thinking. I remember she just looked
... well, you know what they say about
the glow of pregnancy."

Quinn didn't have all that much experience with
the glow of pregnancy
—none, to be exact—so he settled for a vague nod of recognition. "She had that glow?"

"Oh, yes. She was radiant. No morning sickness, nothing. And don't forget, she had
Rand
's ring. She had his promise that they'd get married as soon as they got their parents' permission.
Plus
, she also had his word in writing."

She pointed to the pale blue sheet that lay on the table in front of Quinn. It was his cue. He picked up the letter and began dutifully
, reluctantly,
unfolding it.

Myra
rested her cheek on her fist and said dreamily, "He bought that stationery special, you know. He told Alison that he wanted something permanent that wouldn't fade or tear. He wanted her to know how serious he was. I remember thinking, that was so sweet."

Dearest Alison,

I need you to know that their will never be another girl in my life. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can't stop thinking of you, no matter where I am. In study hall, on the field, and driving around. I drive around a lot, thinking of you. I wish we could be together more. Nothing really matters to me except you. You know, I'm glad you're pregnant. Maybe I shouldn't be but I am. It's a sign that our love was meant to be. And also, since your pregnant our parents can't say no. I know my mother would never want you to have an abortion no matter what. And your mother wouldn't either. So I think we're o.k. on that. Know this, Alison—I love you. I love you.
I
love you.

Yours, Rand

Misspellings and bobbled punctuation aside, the letter was still powerful in its naive sincerity. Quinn felt like a voyeur reading it, and yet he couldn't help himself. It was like staring at a
film
of his past.

At least one mystery was now solved:
Rand
's embarrassing collapse as an athlete in the fall of their senior year. It wasn't a poor recovery from his injury that had taken him out of the competition with Quinn to be quarterback; it was his obsession with Alison.

Quinn refolded the letter and laid it gently beside the class ring—two such ordinary items, and yet so resonant with power. He stared at them while the candle's flame sputtered and fretted in the chianti bottle, dropping bits of light in a random pattern over the poignant still life.

Stilled life, he
realized. Alison was dead. What did these keepsakes matter now? Tokens of love, proof of malfeasance—what did they matter?

Quinn said wearily, "His feelings do seem straightforward. ''

"Guys always are," said
Myra
, still with her cheek on her fist.

She was watching Quinn for his reaction, and he was determined not to
have
one. He said without emotion, "He wanted to many her."

"At first," said
Myra
.

She made herself sit up straight again, like a witness at a trial. "But then suddenly he asked for the letter back. He said she could keep the ring, but she had to give him the letter back. They had a
huge
argument over it. It was on a Sunday afternoon, late. Alison and I were working on the homecoming float that Coach and a couple of teachers had rolled onto the athletic field behind the goalposts temporarily.

"Alison's father was supposed to be picking her up any minute when suddenly
Rand
showed up on the field, I don't know from where. I saw him before Alison did. He looked grim. He didn't say boo to me, just marched right up to Alison and said, 'We have to talk.'

"They walked way over to the far end of the field. You couldn't hear them, try as I might. It was getting dark, but I could see she was upset. She folded her hands across her jacket—body language, right?—while she watched him walk back and forth, back and forth, throwing his hands up every once in a while. He was more upset than she was, I think. Then Alison's father showed up and whistled her back and
Rand
cut across the field and disappeared. Her father was really pissed. He said, 'What did I tell you?' and gave her a kind of a shove on her shoulder. Not a
shove
shove, exactly, but a little less than a shove."

Quinn listened intently to her precise recounting of the event. No question,
Myra
was the perfect witness, not calculating enough to put undue spin on events, just an alert, keen observer. Shit. Quinn
dreaded where this was going.

"I assume that Alison talked about it afterward with you?" he asked, hoping against hope that she had not.