Maggy's Child (16 page)

“Link, is that you? I thought they sent you up for thirty years.”

“They did. I do a little dope, get busted three times in four years, and they go calling me a persistent felon. It wasn’t like I was dealin’, for God’s sake. That persistentfelon rap had me doin’ big time. But Nicky here got big bro a good lawyer, and the guy sprung me. Sentence commuted to time served. I been out for eight years.”

“I’m so glad!”

“Me, too.” Link was looking her over, though she doubted he could see much in the dark. “How ya been, baby girl? Last time I seen you, you was a little bit of a teenager. Nicky tells me life’s been treatin’ you pretty good since.”

The last time she’d seen Link was when she’d gone with Nick to visit him at the prison in Jesup where he had
been an inmate. Nick had been torn up over his brother’s fate and hadn’t wanted to go alone. Twelve years ago, when Link had been inside for just a few months.

“I’m doing okay.”

“That’s great.”

It suddenly occurred to Maggy just how absurd the conversation was under the circumstances.

“Nick King, what are you and Link doing prowling around my woods in the middle of the night?” She turned her head to scowl at Nick.

He had lit a cigarette and was puffing away as he listened to her and Link. The tip glowed bright red in the dark.

“And put that out! Somebody might see it!” Irritation sharpened her voice.

“Still bossy,” Link observed sotto voce to his brother.

“Link’s my, uh, driver tonight. When you left, I left too, and had him follow you to make sure you got home okay.”

“Yeah, then he made me park and walk up this damned hill so he could stare up at your window and make sure you got tucked in for beddy-byes all right and tight.”

“Shut up, Link.” Nick took another drag on his cigarette. Its red glow illuminated his face, and Maggy could see that he was frowning at his brother.

“Only you happened to be coming out the window,” Link continued with a grin, disregarding Nick’s annoyance completely. “We watched you, then followed you into the woods.”

“Do you make a habit of leaving parties claiming you’re sick and then climbing out your bedroom window?” Nick asked.

“What hubby don’t know won’t hurt him, right?” There was an innuendo in Link’s voice that Maggy didn’t like.

“I’m only going to visit
Tia
Gloria. Lyle—doesn’t like me to, so I sneak out sometimes. It saves an argument.”

“
Tia
Gloria?” Nick sounded surprised. “Don’t tell me the old lady’s still kicking!”

“She is indeed. And I’m on my way to see her right now. If you gentlemen will excuse me, of course.”

“
Now
she sounds like a rich bitch,” Link observed. “Hoity-toity.”

“I do not!” Nettled, Maggy turned on her heel and strode off through the trees. When she emerged from the woods, some distance down the slope and out of sight of the house, Nick and Link were right behind her.

“Go away,” she said over her shoulder to them.

“Not on your life,” Nick answered while Link grinned companionably down at her.

Maggy walked on, ignoring them. Not that it did any good. She didn’t even have to look around to know they never got farther from her than three paces away.

Windermere was built atop a wooded hill. To the east of the house where the driveway was, and to the rear, where the three of them now walked along a grassy verge, the hillside had eroded into a rocky cliff, obviating the need for a wall such as surrounded the rest of the property. About three hundred feet below, at the base of that cliff, was Willow Creek, and the dock where
The Lady Dancer
waited.

“You got a car out here?” Link sounded confused when he saw that they were headed toward what appeared to be a sheer drop-off.

“Not a car. A boat,” Maggy responded.

“You visit
Tia
Gloria by boat?” Nick asked, surprised.

“I told you, Lyle doesn’t like me to visit her. This way I can do it in secret.”

“To hell with Lyle.” Nick’s voice was hard.

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“You never used to let anybody tell you what to do. What, did ol’ Lyle buy himself a slave when he forked over twenty bucks for that marriage license?”

“Where’s the boat?” Link intervened hastily as Maggy glared up at Nick. Years ago, when Maggy’s and Nick’s verbal exchanges had consisted for a time of nearly endless bickering under the throes of adolescent growing pains, Link had gotten into the habit of running interference between them when necessary. He fell back into the role easily now. Just as easily as Maggy and Nick slid back into the grooves of their previous relationship. Being with Nick, even after so long a time apart, came as naturally to Maggy as breathing. So naturally that it scared her.

“Down there.” Maggy, glad of the distraction, pointed toward the glinting strip of black cellophane far below that was the creek. The stone walls of the cliff glistened palely in the moonlight, seeming to defy any attempt at descent.

“Down
there
?” Link was aghast.

“You sound like Horatio, repeating everything I say,” Maggy said, shooting Link a part amused, part irritated glance.

“Horatio?” Nick’s attention was caught. “Do you mean
Tia
Gloria still has that horrible bird?”

“He never liked you much, either,” Maggy sniffed. Then, because she couldn’t help it, she started to giggle. Horatio was
Tia
Gloria’s beloved parrot, an Amazon double-yellowhead who had been Tia’s closest companion for most of her life. The bird, like the woman, was probably over fifty by now. For some reason, he’d taken a fixed dislike to Nick the first time he ever laid eyes on him. Nick had reciprocated that dislike with interest.

“Do you remember when he chased you down the stairs?” Maggy asked Nick, the memory surprising her into a giggle.

“Hoo-boy, I do!” Link said, chortling. “Nicky came running out of the building screamin’ like his pants was on fire with that bird screechin’ ‘Bad boy, bad boy!’ and flappin’ after him! When he landed on Nicky’s back, I
thought the kid was gonna pass out! It was the funniest thing I ever saw in my life.”

“Ha, ha,” Nick said sourly.

“What’d ya do to him, Nicky?”

“He threw a ball at Horatio’s perch. When Horatio came after him, he got exactly what he deserved. Even if the other kids did call him Junior Birdman for weeks afterward.”

“Until I beat ’em up.” Nick grinned. “If I hadn’t been afraid to go near the damned bird after that, I would have fricasseed him for Sunday dinner. Do you mean to tell me the thing’s still alive?”

“Very much so.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I don’t recall inviting you to accompany me.”

“There she goes again,” Link muttered.

“Do you really not want us to come with you, Magdalena?” Nick asked softly.

Maggy hesitated. She knew from experience that that soft voice didn’t mean anything at all, and that ninety-nine times out of a hundred Nick would do as he damned well pleased whether she liked it or not. She knew that she ought to at least try to send him away, for her own sake and David’s. But it was such fun, laughing over old times, and it felt so good to have him near, just for a little while. Out here, where she didn’t have to watch everything she said, everything she did for fear Lyle would find out. What harm could it do, if she took him with her to visit
Tia
Gloria? Once, long ago,
Tia
had had one heck of a soft spot for Nick. Though he was nothing else any longer, surely Nick could still be her friend. Just for a little while, here out of sight of everyone else. Maggy discovered with a rush of feeling that was almost painful that what she most hungered for was a friend. And Nick had always been her dearest friend in the world.

“You’re still wearing your suit,” she said as if stating an
objection, her eyes running over him and registering this discovery for the first time. “
Tia
Gloria won’t know you.”

Indeed, she hardly knew him herself. In all the years of their acquaintance, she didn’t think she’d ever seen him in a suit except that once at her prom, and that had been a rather ill-fitting tuxedo. This suit fit him as though it had been custom-made. She had noticed it at the party, thinking that his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, hard-muscled workingman’s physique lent the traditional businessman’s attire a sexiness that it rarely possessed. Now, with his black hair tousled into unruly curls by the wind, a pronounced five-o’clock shadow darkening his cheeks, his shirt collar unbuttoned, and his tie at half-mast, he was so dangerously attractive that it made her heart speed up just to look at him.

“I’ll remind her.” Nick grinned down at her, clearly reading her capitulation in her words. Maggy did not smile back, not with her mouth, but her eyes were smiling as she turned her back on him with a toss of her hair and headed straight for the sheer side of the cliff. Thought he was clever, did he? She would show him.

“Whoa!” Nick grabbed her arm from behind just as she reached the edge. “You may not have noticed, but you’re about to run out of ground.”

“There’s a path, silly,” she said, pulling her arm free of his hold and sitting suddenly, so that her legs dangled over the three-hundred-foot drop. Her smile had reached her mouth by the time she shoved off without warning, scooting on her rear end over the eight or so yards of steep shale track that was the only way down the cliff face to the chiseled rock ledge that marked the beginning of the footpath.

“Magdalena!” Nick sounded as if he were on the verge of a heart attack. He had apparently grabbed for her again and missed. As she reached her destination in a shower of rocks and looked saucily up over her shoulder at him, she
discovered him squatted by the cliff edge, one hand still extended as though to catch her, his face unnaturally pale against the backdrop of the night sky.

“Come on,” she called, a taunt in her voice as she stood up and brushed off the back of her jeans. “You wanted to visit
Tia
Gloria, didn’t you?”

“You little brat, you did that on purpose to scare me,” he said. The accusation was true, so she didn’t dispute it, instead grinning widely as he stared down at her for a moment as though debating the wisdom of following her example. The shale slope was off-putting, but it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it looked, as she had discovered when Herd had first shown her the way. And it was by far the fastest way down to the creek. Just as she was opening her mouth to jeer at Nick for cowardice, he sat and shoved off. Maggy stepped quickly back out of the way as he came rocketing toward her on his backside while a mini-avalanche of small rocks rained down in his wake.

“Good boy!” She clapped her hands in mock applause, moving toward him again as he slid to an ungainly halt.

“Damn, I’ve ripped the seat out of my pants,” he growled, standing and brushing his hands over his rear end.

“Let me see.” Trying not to laugh, Maggy moved around behind him, lifting the tail of his coat out of the way so that she could inspect the area in question. The seat of his navy wool suit pants was indeed shredded. She could see white cotton briefs through the tears in the cloth. The pale skin of his small, hard, and nicely rounded butt was also clearly visible through a rip in his shorts.

“You’ve got a hole in your underpants. I can see your tushie,” she said in a taunting singsong of a little-girl voice, in almost exact imitation of the words he had once used to tease her.

“What?” He felt his backside, discovered the hole, and burst out laughing. Maggy couldn’t help herself. She laughed, too.

“Shame I don’t have a Coke to throw at you,” he said, grinning at her.

“Thank goodness.” Like his, Maggy’s laughter had subsided, but a lingering smile curved her mouth. She felt happy suddenly, lighthearted and carefree and
young
. It had been years since she had felt that way. She discovered that she liked the sensation very much.

“Now what do I do?” he asked half humorously. “I can’t go visiting with my butt hanging out.”

“With your coat on, you can’t even tell your pants are ripped,” Maggy said, but the grin that lurked around her mouth robbed the words of any comfort value.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Suppose I have to bend over for something? Suppose it’s hot in there and I want to take off my coat? Suppose you decide to have a laugh at my expense and tell everybody?”

Maggy burst out laughing again. “Would I do that to you?”

“Yes,” Nick said. “You would.”

“Well, if you’ve changed your mind about going, all you have to do is climb back up there.” Maggy pointed toward the top of the cliff. The twenty-odd feet of the shale track that rose from where they stood to the grassy verge overhead looked smooth as glass and nearly perpendicular.

“Hell,” Nick said, looking up.

“It’s your choice.”

“You,” Nick said, eyeing her, “are loving every minute of this.”

Maggy was surprised to discover that his words were the absolute truth. “Yes, I am.”

Nick grinned. “So am I.”

For a moment they beamed at each other in perfect amity, coconspirators, partners in crime. That was how it had always been between them. It was as if the years that had passed since they had been together had vanished, and they were once again Nick and Magdalena, Magdalena
and Nick, best friends,
family
, world without end. Always, growing up, they’d loved each other best.

“I’m glad you’re back, Nick,” Maggy said suddenly in a low voice, the smile dying from her face, wiped away by a flood of emotion. “I’ve missed you.”

Nick reached for her, appeared to change his mind at the last moment, and folded his arms over his chest instead. His eyes were very green suddenly as they gleamed through the night at her.

“I’ve missed you, too, Maggy May,” he said.

The name, which she suspected he used deliberately, made her wince. She would have turned and walked away, but there was nowhere to go. The ledge they were on was less than six feet wide, and no more than eight feet long. She was stuck, stuck with him and the memories he deliberately invoked. Memories of the night they had become more than best friends, more than family to each other. The night they’d become lovers. Rod Stewart’s hit “Maggy May” had blasted out over Nick’s car radio. She could still remember lying curled in Nick’s arms afterward, listening to that song. Nick had sung along—he’d always fancied himself a singer—and afterward he’d started calling her Maggy May. For what little afterward there’d been.