Second Child (45 page)

She squeezed Teri’s hand affectionately, dismissing Melissa from her mind.

Everyone, after all, was better off with Melissa gone.

Charles Holloway pulled up to the Harborview Clinic and nodded to the guard, who pressed a button that allowed the large wrought-iron gate to swing slowly open. At either side of the gate a cyclone fence, discreetly screened with tall shrubs, stretched away into the distance. The fence completely surrounded the fifty landscaped acres on which the clinic sat, but as Charles drove up to the mansion that housed the insane patients within, he had no sense of being in a prison. Rather, the clinic still looked exactly like the estate it had once been, and though he’d
been shown the security systems installed when it had been converted to a private mental hospital, they’d been so cleverly concealed that he could see none of them now.

Charles parked the Mercedes on the apron in front of the main building and hurried up the steps. The receptionist,
sitting
at a small antique desk just inside the front door, smiled welcomingly at him. “We can always count on you, can’t we?” she asked.

Charles nodded an acknowledgment of her words, but his eyes shifted immediately to the day room. The receptionist’s smile faded as she understood what he was looking for.

“Not yet,” she said. “They brought her down again this morning, but she did the same thing she always does. She seems to feel safest in her room.”

Charles felt the faint hope he’d been nursing all day die within him, but he made himself smile. “Well, maybe tomorrow.” He mounted the stairs to the second floor, where a duty nurse sat at another desk—almost identical to the one downstairs—placed at right angles to the wall on the landing.

“You can go right in, Mr. Holloway,” the nurse told him.

Charles strode down the west corridor, pausing outside the third room on the left. He peered through the small window in the door and, just as he had yesterday and the day before, saw Melissa sitting in a chair by the window, her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead.

Staring at nothing.

No, Charles told himself as he turned the knob on the door and went inside. She sees something. She’s looking at something she only sees in her mind—something she can’t understand. But she’ll figure it out, and when she does, she’ll be all right again.

“Melissa?” he said, pulling a straight-backed chair close to his daughter. “Missy, it’s me. Can you hear me?”

There was no response from Melissa at all. It was as if she hadn’t heard his words, wasn’t even aware of his presence.

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t hear you,” Andrews had assured him only last week. “Melissa’s personality is still there, even though we don’t see it.” He’d
paused for a moment, searching for a simile. “Maybe you should think of it as a game of hide and seek. You can’t see Melissa, and you can’t hear her, but she’s somewhere nearby, and she might very well be listening to you. You have to remember that she’s a very frightened little girl, and it’s quite possible that she’s so terrified of what might happen to her that she simply won’t expose herself.”

“But D’Arcy says she’s asleep, doesn’t she?” Charles had asked.

Andrews had nodded. “But D’Arcy probably doesn’t know the whole truth, any more than Melissa did. Melissa knew D’Arcy existed, but had no knowledge of what D’Arcy experienced. We have to assume D’Arcy’s the same way.”

“Has D’Arcy told you what happened?”

Andrews shook his head. “As I said, it’s quite probable that she doesn’t know. All I can say for sure is that she’s protecting Melissa. Or at least she thinks she is.”

It had taken Charles several weeks simply to adjust to the reality of his daughter’s dual personalities, and though he’d finally been able to accept it enough to discuss D’Arcy with Andrews, he had been unable to bring himself to talk to the strange and silent girl who seemed to have simply appropriated Melissa’s body.

And so on his daily visits he sat next to Melissa, holding her unresponsive hand in his own, talking quietly to her, sometimes telling her about what he’d been doing, but more often reminiscing about the past, about the good times they’d had together.

Today he stayed with her for nearly an hour. Finally, he glanced at his watch. “I have to go now,” he said apologetically. “It’s a big night at home. Your mother’s been spending all her time getting the club ready, and she hasn’t even told me what the theme of the party is. But from the look on her face the last few days, I’ll bet it’s going to be something special.”

He leaned forward, taking both Melissa’s hands in his own. “I wish you could be there,” he said softly. “Remember what I always promised you? The summer you turned thirteen, I’d take you to the August Moon Ball and dance the first dance with you.”

For a split second a flicker of interest seem to spark in
Melissa’s eyes, and he felt his heart suddenly race. “Missy?” he asked. “Missy, did you hear me?”

But as quickly as it had come, the spark died away. Charles reluctantly got to his feet. Kissing her gently on the forehead, he left the room, but even after he closed the door, the image of that strange brief light in her eyes stayed with him.

He turned back and gazed once more through the glass panel in the door.

Melissa, though, sat as she’d been sitting before, her eyes staring at nothing. Then, just as he was about to turn away, her right hand came up and gently fingered the string of pearls around her neck.

Charles’s eyes flooded with tears as he remembered her words when she’d opened the box containing the necklace last Christmas.

“I’ll wear them to the August Moon Ball,” she’d breathed.

But she wouldn’t be going to the ball. Not tonight. Perhaps not ever.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Charles turned and hurried away.

Teri tightened her arm around Brett Van Arsdale’s neck and let her head rest against his chest. Her eyes were closed, the slow music of the last dance of the evening enveloping her in its gentle melody. All around her other couples were moving just as slowly, as if by slowing their steps they could prolong the perfect evening.

And it had been a perfect evening, ever since the doors to the dining room had been thrown open at precisely eight-thirty. By then most of the club members had gathered in the large foyer, and when Phyllis Holloway and Lenore Van Arsdale had finally stepped forward to unlock the huge double panels of polished mahogany, the crowd had unconsciously held its breath.

Collectively, they gasped in amazement as the doors were thrown open to reveal a nearly perfect re-creation of the dining room as it had been a century ago. Temporary panels had been placed against the walls, covered with a red-flocked wallpaper that was the closest anyone had been able to find to the original. The chandeliers—never replaced over the past century—had been freshly gilded for
the occasion, and new bulbs put in that imitated the flickering of the original gas jets.

Along the walls, mounted to the temporary panels, were real gas sconces, their flames lending the room a glow that seemed to wipe away the passage of time.

Potted palms filled every corner of the room, and on the orchestra stand there were no microphones. Tonight, the orchestra would play without amplification. Above the orchestra the banner that Phyllis herself had so carefully lettered, announced the theme of the ball.

And, indeed, the whole evening had felt as if the intervening century had never taken place at all.

Phyllis had thought of everything—each of the women had a dance card, tied around her wrist with a velvet ribbon. The music, all of it, was from another era, the orchestra playing from yellowed sheet music that had been culled from almost every attic in Secret Cove.

Pictures were on display—faded daguerreotypes from another era—but nearly everyone who had been at that first August Moon Ball a century ago had a descendant present at the party tonight.

Brett, after absorbing the spectacle, had swept Teri out onto the dance floor, and pulling her close, whispered into her ear. “It’s almost creepy. You don’t suppose D’Arcy is actually going to show up, too, do you?”

A chill had run through Teri. She’d quickly shaken it off, and yet, for the first hour of the dance, it seemed to her that the same thought must have crossed other people’s minds, for time after time she saw people glancing furtively toward the door, then reddening slightly as they realized what they were doing.

But as the hours had passed, the crowd had relaxed, and now, as the last strains of the final waltz faded away, a ripple of applause passed over the room.

The guests began drifting toward the doors, all of them pausing to congratulate Phyllis and Lenore on the success of the evening. Phyllis listened to the compliments, the
words of praise sounding far sweeter than the music itself could possibly have been.

At last Teri and Brett, their hands entwined, approached the door. Teri leaned forward to kiss her stepmother’s cheek. “It was perfect, Mother,” she murmured.

Phyllis, her eyes dampening at the word Teri had just used for the first time, pulled back slightly, wondering if it had been a slip of the tongue.

But Teri was smiling at her. “It’s how I feel,” she said, “I just feel as if you’ve always been my mother. And I think you’re as perfect for me as the ball was for everyone else.”

Phyllis felt her heart swell with pride. “And I feel the same way,” she whispered, holding Teri close. “I feel just as if you’re the daughter I always wanted. And now I have you.”

A few moments later Teri and Brett stepped out into the night. It was warm and balmy, as if the weather itself had conspired with Phyllis to make the evening perfect, and when Brett started toward the parking lot, Teri stopped him. “Let’s walk,” she said. “Let’s go home the way they would have that first night.”

They descended the steps to the pool, then on down to the beach, Teri pausing to remove her shoes before stepping onto the cool sand. The moon was high, the sea glittering with silver light, and as they walked, Teri slipped her hand back into Brett’s.

She sighed. “Wasn’t it just wonderful?” she said. “Sometimes I wish I’d lived back then. I mean, when everyone had a big staff, and all the houses were full of guests all summer. Don’t you think it would have been fun to live then?”

Brett made no answer, but slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. They walked silently, coming at last to Maplecrest. When they were on the porch, he put his other arm around her and pulled her close, kissing her. “Why don’t you invite me in?” he whispered. “Your folks are at my house, and won’t be back for at least a couple of hours.”

Teri said nothing for a moment, instead pressing herself close to him and kissing him once more. But then she drew back, shaking her head, a tiny smile playing around the
corners of her mouth. “Not tonight,” she whispered. “It’s a hundred years ago, remember? Nice girls didn’t do that kind of thing.”

Before Brett could protest, she’d slipped out of his arms and through the front door, closing it silently behind her.

The lights in the foyer had been left on, and Teri paused in the entry way for a moment, resting her weight against the front door, feeling the house surround her.

It felt like home.

As each day went by, the past slipped farther and farther into the recesses of her memory, until now she could almost believe she’d never left here at all, never been taken away from the casual luxury of these immense rooms to grow up in the cramped confines of the tiny house in San Fernando.

Suddenly, unbidden, an image of the fire that had been the first step to bring her here leaped into her mind. She shuddered involuntarily before quashing the memory, locking it away with all the other memories of the things she’d done.

None of it, she told herself, was real. The only reality now was that she was back in her rightful home, with people who loved her.

Or who at least loved the image she had so meticulously built and so carefully presented to the world.

She sighed contentedly, slipped off the thin silk wrap she’d bought especially for tonight, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Going into her room at the end of the hall, she hung the wrap in her closet, then dropped down into the chair in front of her vanity to admire the room once more.

It was exactly as she’d always pictured it, every trace of Melissa finally removed. Cora had packed up her half sister’s things, storing them away in the attic, and then the decorators had come in—the same decorators who had rolled back time at the club tonight.

They had rolled back time for her, too, giving her the room she’d dreamed about since she was a little girl, the room she still felt a tiny thrill in every morning as she woke up. The walls were covered in an emerald moiré that was the exact shade she’d envisioned, and more of the shimmering material was swagged around the four-poster
bed she and Phyllis had found in an antique shop in Portland. Melissa’s chest was gone, banished to the little room beneath the eaves. That had been Teri’s own idea, to put Melissa’s bureau in what Melissa herself had thought of as D’Arcy’s room. Now an ornate hand-carved armoire stood in its place, with its matching night tables flanking the bed.

All of it exactly as she’d imagined it.

She was absorbing it all in the mirror when she heard the first faint sound from upstairs.

She frowned slightly, then shrugged it off. Surely the noise had been nothing more than a branch brushing against the walls.

It came again.

A soft, whimpering sound.

As if someone were crying.

Teri’s frown deepened and her pulse beat more quickly. But then the nearly inaudible sobs died away and the house was silent.

Until the footsteps began.

She heard them distinctly, moving across the ceiling above her with a slow and stately tread.

She thought she heard a door open, then close again with a soft click.

Then silence.

She listened, her flesh tingling, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.