Second Time Around (28 page)

“Who then?”

She saw a dark crevasse open before her.
Never mind
She’d already said too much. So much for helping. “Uh-uh. I’ve changed my mind. You’re not getting me to say who. No comment.”

“Then how about this question: Is it true that your life will be ruined if Lane doesn’t come back? You’ve lived off her for seventeen years. You depend on her for your livelihood.”

Brandy tossed the afghan aside, plenty warm now. “I’ve been her best friend since high school. I’ve been happy to work as her personal assistant—and be her friend—ever since she left Dawson. If she chooses not to come back, I will miss her terribly, but my life will not be ruined.” She looked at Randy, who was shaking his head no, making a turn-the-key motion in front of his mouth. “I just so happen to be married to a wonderful man who—”

“Is it true your mother was a drunk and beat you?”

All breath left her. She hung up.

Vipers. All of them.

Long Island, New York

Millie watched the reporter on TV. Her name wasn’t Millie anymore. Hadn’t been for forty-six years. But suddenly, that name had come to life. And it scared her to death.

The TV reporter sat next to her father, Ray Reynolds, in a nursing home, holding a microphone toward the elderly man. Her father looked so frail… “Yes, it’s true my daughter, Millie, was headstrong. But no one loved her more than David. He would have made the perfect husband. He was so attentive and caring.”

“She sounds like a handful. Hardly the perfect wife?” said the reporter.

“My Millie was strong-willed, and it often took both David and myself to make her see how things should be.”

“Such as?”

Millie’s mother, Rhonda Reynolds Grayson, pointed a craggy finger at the screen. “How can you tolerate that, Tracy? It’s a bunch of lies!”

Millie—who’d changed her name to Tracy a lifetime ago— shrugged, but in truth, it was starting to get to her. It had not been easy seeing David again as the winner of the Time Lottery, and it had almost made her skin crawl when he’d told the world he was going back to 1958 to stop the crash that had killed her.

Killed Millie Reynolds.

The crash that had borne Tracy Osgood Cummins.

She was shocked to discover that he had never married and was still pining for her. Yet it was proof that her initial desire to escape from David’s obsessive, all-encompassing domain had been a wise one.

“They’re making him out to be a legend,” Millie’s mother said. “It’s sickening.”

“He
was
a good man,” Millie said. “He had the makings of a great businessman. That was never the issue.”

“Freedom was the issue. For you—and for me.”

Millie moved to her mother and hugged her from behind. She never could have pulled off her “death” had it not been for her mother’s cooperation. Rhonda was the perfect coconspirator, because back in 1958 no one ever would have suspected Rhonda Reynolds of having a rebellious bone in her body. In public she’d appeared to be the obedient, complacent fifties wife. June Cleaver had nothing on Rhonda. Even Millie had believed the image—until her father and David had teamed up to make Millie his wife.

At first she
had
loved David—or at least been interested in him, though now, in hindsight, she realized her interest initially had stemmed from his. David had been intently responsive to all that encompassed Millie’s life. He was different from any man she’d known. She’d been flattered, until she recognized his interest for what it truly was: controlling interference. The organizational, detail-oriented, totalitarian attributes that made David such an asset at Mariner Construction made him unbearable as a fiancé and future spouse. But to be fair, now Millie blamed part of her suffocation on the times. Being a woman of independent nature did not suit the complacent role of a woman in 1958.

And her father had to take his share of the blame. He and David had all but conspired to make her David’s wife. They didn’t care about her feelings as much as they cared about the business. It was as close to an arranged marriage as one could have in the twentieth century. And Millie would have rather died than go through with it.

Hence, her “death.”

It had been quite a thrill when she’d pushed David’s brand-new 1958 Pontiac Bonneville Sport Coupe with the “Wonder-bar” a.m. radio; a sliding Plexiglas sun visor; a “Memo-Matic” power memory seat; Rochester “TriPower” triple, two-barrel carbure—

Why do I remember those details?

Because David had repeated them so many times. He was always well versed on all the details of his possessions.

Including me.

She shivered and forced her thoughts back to the car. Her revenge. Her escape. She’d taken great pleasure in pushing the car off the cliff, into the ocean. The fact they’d never found her body was a detail that was more easily accepted in the unsuspicious aura of that innocent time. And getting a new identity had been fairly simple without the added security of photo IDs and computers.

Her mother zapped the TV picture to oblivion and turned to face her. “You can’t let them get away with this. You can’t.”

Millie looked at the blackened television. “Is this because of what’s being said about me, or the fact that you saw Father again?”

Her mother also looked at the television, as if Ray’s face were still on the screen. “Divorcing him was the best thing I ever did. I had thirty-two good years with Connor.”

Her stepfather had died two years previous, but her mother still wore his picture in a locket. Theirs had been a sacrificial, giving love.

“I’m not sure what it will prove if I come forward,” Millie said.

“It will prove that you were a strong woman who was willing to give up everything to escape a bad relationship. A huge step, considering the era. You’ll be an inspiration to woman all over the world.”

“I don’t want to encourage other women to fake their deaths.”

She shrugged. “It was the only way out. We both knew that.”

“But what will David say if he comes back and hears the truth?” Millie asked.

“He’s not coming back, honey. He jumped into 1958 to prevent your crash. Unless you managed to pull it off at a later date, he’s thrilled and happy there.”

“And I’m miserable. As his wife.”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “It’s his Alternity, not yours. You’ve had a wonderful life with Deke. And I wouldn’t trade my redheaded grandchildren for anything.”

Millie and Deke Cummins had two sons and a daughter, and now three granddaughters. Which reminded her… She looked at the clock. Deke and her son-in-law would be back any minute from golfing. It took snow or ice to keep those two from the course. And New York had plenty of both in January.

Her mother started to get up from the chair and Millie hurried to help her. “I’m going down for a nap, honey. You think about coming forward, all right?”

How could she do anything else?

Peachtree City

Yardley Pruitt shut off the television and threw the remote on the floor. “That’s it! I can’t take any more.”

Vanessa’s husband, Dudley, returned the remote to the coffee table. “It’s best not to overreact. The press exaggerates.”

Yardley began to pace in the Caldwell living room. “Any minute now, my dear ex-wife will get the Nobel Peace Prize. I think they’ve set a record in finding her past students and colleagues. I even saw the requisite neighbor ‘She was such a nice person’ interview.”

His granddaughter, Rachel, looked up from the book she was reading on the outskirts of the room. “My grandmother sounds like a very nice person.”

Yardley turned toward her. Honestly, he’d forgotten she was there. “The press can make anybody sound better than they were. Like that David Stancowsky. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s up for some award, too.”

She cocked her head. “They were pretty hard on Lane Holloway’s ex. And one of the Time Lottery higher-ups is in trouble for having an affair with last year’s winner.”

She was missing the point. “Yes, yes. The press can do that, too. They can do whatever they want, create their own form of the truth. But I could tell them a thing or two about Dorian—and even David Stancowsky.”

Dudley straightened a pile of magazines. “You know him?”

“Mariner Construction built a bank building for me back in the seventies. At first I didn’t get the connection, I was so wrapped up in the fact that Vanessa had won.”

“Small world.”

“Cruel world.” Yardley resumed his pacing. “David Stancowsky is not the king of the business world. If I remember correctly, he didn’t do that great a job. In fact, I don’t think we even paid him in full because of it. The world should hear
that. That
would balance out the Saint David talk. I’m just as good a businessman as he is.”

“Are you thinking about giving an interview?”

Yardley stopped near the phone. “I was thinking about it.”

“You’d better be careful, Yardley. It’s hard to be interviewed and have things come out as you plan. And afterward, the interviewer can put a spin on things and make—”

“Yes, yes. Are you implying they’re smarter than I am?”

Yardley saw his son-in-law and granddaughter exchange a look. Then Dudley said, “Just be careful. And don’t let them rile you.”

“I assure you, I’ll be the essence of restraint.”

Rachel Caldwell retreated to her bedroom, glad to escape the presence of her father and grandfather. She could hardly wait until semester break was over and she could return to college. To independence. To
away.

Usually dinners with Grandfather were a non-event. She’d gotten the meek-and-mild routine down so well that they rarely asked her a question and most of the time truly forgot she was even there. But tonight, she’d been forced out of her cocoon by her grandfather’s stupid ranting about the press. She didn’t care about his connection with David Stancowsky, but for him to disparage the good press her grandmother was getting was petty.

She sprawled on the bed, getting comfortable on the blue-and-green comforter. When Rachel had first heard the glowing accounts of her grandmother’s life she’d been skeptical. The new information was a complete one-eighty to everything she’d heard about Dorian Pruitt. Surely the press was wrong. But when the reports continued and intensified… her grandmother seemed like a cool lady. A woman of spunk and independence, brains and creativity. And people liked her, genuinely liked her. Rachel would have liked to meet her.

Now it was too late. She was dead. And Rachel would never know her.

But her mother would.

It wasn’t fair. Right this minute her mother was back in the past, back to the time when
she
was twenty-one, Rachel’s age. She was getting to spend time with Dorian.

Which meant there was no way Rachel’s mother would come back to the future. No way she’d come back to
this
life, with her boring volunteer activities, and her boring family, with their boring dinners.

Mother and daughter were spending time together in the past.

Mother and daughter were
not
spending time together here in the present.