Second Child (44 page)

But a sense of normality had slowly begun to come back to them, and today the air was alive with excitement about the ball. All day florists’ trucks had been arriving, the doors to the dining room remaining closed, the curtains drawn over the windows. The theme of the party, known only to the committee, had remained a secret, although
practically everyone had done his best to worm it out of one of the members.

Early this morning a large unmarked truck had arrived, and all day a crew of men had been working, but none of them were willing to answer a single question. Now, lying on the patio around the pool with Brett Van Arsdale and a few of their friends, Teri was still trying to figure it out. She glanced up at the truck still parked in the lot next to the clubhouse and groaned with exasperation. “Hasn’t your mother said
anything?”
she asked Brett for at least the third time that day. “I mean, what’s she wearing?”

“How should I know?” Brett replied, not even turning his head to look at her. “Why don’t you ask Phyllis?”

Teri rolled her eyes. “I have,” she said. “Every day for the last month. But she won’t say a word. I even tried to get her to tell me what color dress to look for, but she just told me to suit myself.”

Brett snickered. “I’ll bet she wouldn’t have said that to Melissa.”

Teri’s smile faded and a frown creased her brow. “That’s not very nice. It isn’t Melissa’s fault she cracked up.” Ever since the day they’d taken her half sister away, she’d carefully defended Melissa against any criticism, insisting that whatever had really happened, it wasn’t Melissa’s fault. “Anyone can have a breakdown,” she’d steadfastly insisted. And though she’d never given any sign of it, she’d thoroughly enjoyed the admiration she received for her loyalty to the half sister she’d only known for a few short weeks.

“If she really did,” Brett replied, voicing the idea that had been whispered around the Cove over the last few weeks. “I mean, maybe she’s just faking it so they won’t put her in prison for the rest of her life.”

Teri rolled her eyes impatiently. “That is so stupid. If you could see her—”

“I know,” Kent Fielding groaned, quoting everything he’d heard at least a dozen times before. “ ‘She doesn’t say anything at all. She just sits there, staring at nothing.’ ” He shuddered exaggeratedly. “She sounds like a zombie to me.”

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about D’Arcy
anymore,” Cyndi Miller giggled. “If she’s busy possessing Melissa, she can’t bother us tonight.”

“Oh, please,” Teri complained, “can’t we talk about something else? Come on, Brett, let’s go in for a swim.”

She got up from her chaise and started down toward the beach. Brett followed, catching her hand in his as they reached the bottom of the steps and started across the sand.

“It’s just talk,” he said by way of an apology. “No one really means anything by it.”

“Well, it’s mean,” Teri grumbled.

“So it’s mean,” Brett replied, shrugging. “But everyone isn’t as nice as you are. I mean, no matter how weird Melissa got, you always took her side.”

Teri looked up at him. “And I always will,” she said. “She’s my sister, and no matter what she did, I’ll always love her. So now can we just drop it?” Letting go of his hand, she ran down the beach and into the water, ignoring the shock of the cold against her skin. Finally she plunged through a wave, surfaced, and rolled over onto her back. “Come on, chicken,” she yelled to Brett, who was still on the beach. “It’s great!”

“It’s cold!” Brett yelled back, but finally took a deep breath, steeled himself, and dove in after her. He swam toward her underwater, but at last his breath ran out and he surfaced.

Teri, laughing, was twenty yards away.

Brett set out after her again, falling into the steady rhythm of a strong Australian crawl, but Teri proved to be a stronger swimmer than he’d thought, and it took him almost five minutes to catch up. Finally, coming abreast of her, he began treading water. “Hey,” he gasped. “What gives? When you first got here, you could barely swim at all. Remember how I had to pull you out that first day?” But as Teri grinned at him, a thought came into his mind and he cocked his head, squinting at her in the sun. “Or were you faking that day?”

Teri’s lips curved up into an enigmatic smile. “I guess you’ll never know, will you?” she asked. Then, as Brett grabbed playfully at her, she kicked away from him and started back toward shore.

*   *   *

Phyllis, dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a white blouse—smudged here and there with blotches of paint—stood back and surveyed the banner that was finally ready to be put up over the orchestra stand at the far end of the dining room. She ran a hand through her hair, remembering too late that there was still some wet paint on her fingers. But instead of feeling a flush of humiliation as she saw the smile on Lenore Van Arsdale’s face, she only chuckled ruefully. “Maybe I better call the hairdresser and have him stock up on paint thinner.”

Lenore, almost to her own surprise, found herself joining in Phyllis’s laughter. Three months ago, she was certain, Phyllis wouldn’t have been in this room at all—or if she had, she’d have shown up dressed for a formal luncheon and imperiously handed out orders to the workmen. But for the last three days Phyllis had been there with the rest of them, working hard to make the room exactly as they wanted it for tonight. All day yesterday, and through this morning, she’d painstakingly worked on the banner, determined that every letter, executed in a brilliant red edged with gold, be perfect. “My father was a sign painter,” she’d explained when she’d announced she’d do the lettering herself. “From the time I was in kindergarten, he taught me everything he knew. In high school, when all the other girls were working as waitresses, I was painting signs. I hated it, but I was good at it.”

The other women had glanced at each other in surprise, for even after almost fifteen years, this was the first time any of them had found out what Phyllis’s father had actually done for a living. “He was in advertising,” was the most she’d ever said before, then quickly changed the subject.

But a lot about Phyllis had changed over the last weeks. In the first days after the doctors had led Melissa away, she’d barely been seen at all, staying behind locked doors, emerging from the house only to drive to the hospital where Melissa had been taken. But after a week—a week in which Teri had told Brett that all Phyllis was doing was brooding in the library all day with the curtains closed, Lenore had finally taken pity on her and gone to talk to her.

“I don’t know what to do,” Phyllis had reluctantly admitted.
“I know everyone thinks it was all my fault, that I was too hard on Melissa, but …” Her voice had trailed off and her eyes filled with tears. Lenore’s years-old grudge against the woman had melted away in the face of Phyllis’s self-recrimination.

“Nonsense,” she’d replied, though privately she believed that most of what Phyllis had said was true. “I’m sure you did the best you knew how, and no one can blame you for what’s happened. If you sit here in the dark for the rest of your life, you won’t have much of a life left and you’ll never be of help to Melissa or anyone else. Now let’s get you dressed and go have some lunch.”

“But I couldn’t,” Phyllis protested. “I couldn’t face anyone. What will I say? People will stare at me!”

“People will certainly stare at you if you try to turn into a hermit,” Lenore replied. “Now, come on.”

She’d taken Phyllis upstairs, gone through her closets and selected a deep maroon suit and a simple blouse. “Wear this. It’s not gaudy, but on the other hand, if you wear navy blue or black, it will look like you’re in mourning.”

Phyllis had winced. “I—I feel like I am,” she’d stammered.

Lenore sighed heavily. “Well, you’re not. Everyone in town knows what happened, and they know Melissa isn’t dead. So you can’t act as though she is. It will only make things worse than they already are.”

Phyllis had echoed the sigh. “I suppose so. At least that’s what Teri’s been telling me. But I just haven’t known
how
to act.”

Lenore, for the first time in her adult life, had spoken literally without thinking. “Well, she’s absolutely right. Let’s face it, Phyllis—you’ve
never
known how to act. You’ve spent a whole decade trying to pretend to be something you’re not, and it hasn’t worked. So why not give it up and just try being yourself?”

And over the last weeks it seemed that was exactly what had happened. Phyllis had begun showing up at the club again, but more and more often it was with Teri. And instead of pushing their way into whatever group happened to be there, Phyllis and Teri had usually taken a spot by themselves.

Inevitably, people had begun to drift over to speak to
her, at first simply out of adherence to the Cove Club Crowd’s strict sense of duty, but eventually because they discovered that Phyllis had changed.

She was quieter, and seemed to listen more, and, somewhere along the line, had lost her sense of desperation. She seemed to have mellowed.

Perhaps, out of Melissa’s tragedy, the people of Secret Cove decided, some slight amount of good had emerged.

Now, giving a few final instructions to the workmen, the two women emerged from the dining room just as Teri was approaching the door. “Caught you,” Phyllis told her. “Thought you could sneak a look, didn’t you?”

Teri grinned at her stepmother. “Well, you can’t blame me for trying.”

“I can, but I won’t,” Phyllis replied. “Come on. We’re going to be late for our hair.” She turned to Lenore. “How about if we meet you there?” she asked. “Charles is going to the hospital, and I have something I want him to take to Melissa.”

Lenore’s countenance softened into an expression of sympathy. “How is she? Has there been any change?”

Phyllis compressed her lips into a resigned smile. “I wish I could say there has,” she said. “But Dr. Andrews seems to think it could take a long time.”

Lenore shook her head sadly. “If there’s anything I can do—”

“I wish there were. But it seems as though there’s nothing, really, that any of us can do. And who knows? Perhaps she’s better off just the way she is. I know it’s a horrible thing to say, but if she
does
get better, what’s it going to be like for her? The things she’ll have to face …” Her voice trailed off, but then she straightened her shoulders. “Well, I simply cannot dwell on it, can I? After all, I have Teri to think about, too. And you,” she added, turning to her stepdaughter, “have a lot to do tonight, or Brett’s going to wind up going to the ball alone.”

“Oh, no he’s not,” Teri assured her. “The one thing I am is prompt.”

The two of them said good-bye to Lenore and started away. Lenore watched them leave. It was remarkable, she thought, how well stepmother and daughter got along. For each of them the other seemed to have replaced the person
they’d lost this summer, and both seemed to be better for it.

Perhaps, after all, she and her friends had been far too hard on Phyllis over the years. Perhaps, after all, Phyllis hadn’t been pushing Melissa too hard.

Perhaps Melissa’s madness had been there all along, and Phyllis had only been doing her best to keep it under control. It must have been awful for her, all those years, coping with a child whose grip on reality had been so tenuous.

Yes, Lenore decided as she got into her Corniche, it had probably all ended the only way it could have. In all likelihood, Phyllis was right.

Perhaps it would be better if Melissa never remembered what had happened at all. Perhaps it would be better if she simply stayed in her world of fantasy and let everyone else’s scars heal as best they could.

As they walked along the beach toward Maplecrest, Teri reached out and took her stepmother’s hand. “How’s it going?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

Phyllis was silent for a moment, but finally smiled at her stepdaughter. “I’m fine,” she assured her. “And you were right—they’ll do anything for you, as long as they think you need help. All those years I tried to be just like them, and they treated me like dirt. But now I do what I want and say what I want, and they’ll forgive me for anything. It’s as if they’ve decided I’m a saint.”

“Well, aren’t you?” Teri asked, her voice reflecting perfect innocence. “I mean, I just don’t see how you did it all those years. With Melissa getting weirder and weirder, and you doing your best to help her. It must have been even worse for you than it was for her. I mean, she didn’t
know
she was going crazy.”

“Well, I didn’t either, really,” Phyllis replied. She began talking, letting herself ramble on. It was so easy talking to Teri—Teri always seemed to understand how she felt about things.

Especially how she felt about Melissa.

After that day when they’d taken Melissa away, she hadn’t known what to do. She’d been certain everyone in
town was talking about her, and all she’d wanted to do was hide. But then Teri had begun talking to her, explaining that none of it had been her fault. “You didn’t know what was happening to her,” she’d insisted. “No one did. So how can anyone blame you?”

“But they do,” Phyllis had replied. “They’ve always thought I was too hard on her.”

Teri had shrugged. “Then tell them
that,”
she suggested. “Tell everyone you see that it was all your fault. And see what happens.”

And to Phyllis’s surprise, it worked. All she’d had to do was summon up a few tears for Lenore Van Arsdale, and suddenly a woman who’d snubbed her for more than a decade had turned into her best friend.

And the rest of them—all the people she’d thought were so smart—had fallen right into line.

She smiled silently to herself. All those years, when Melissa had humiliated her in front of everyone … Now, with Melissa finally out of her way, she was at last getting the recognition she deserved.

And, in Teri MacIver, she had the daughter she deserved as well.

Her life, finally, was turning out exactly as she’d planned it that first day she’d arrived at Maplecrest and recognized Teri as the perfect child she’d always wanted.

Now they were together, the two of them, and life was just the way it was supposed to be.