Silk and Stone (62 page)

Ten years of clothing for an invisible man.

“She set us up,” Charlotte said again as Sam parked the car in the graveled lot before a delicate whitewashed house huddled in a grove of tall firs by the lake. Their aunt’s sedan already sat by the entrance. A driver in suit and tie held the car door for her. Alexandra rose gracefully from the backseat, then looked over at them.

Sam gritted her teeth. “I know she did. She wanted that woman to think we’re one happy trio. As if this isn’t the first time we’ve seen her since we came home.”

“This isn’t
home.
” Charlotte slung a large leather purse over one shoulder, jerked her sunglasses off, and stared at Sam hard. “It stopped being home the day the
Raincrows died. We never should have come back. She won’t let us alone. You’ll always be caught between her and Jake.”

Sam gripped her hands. “I don’t want any more trouble. The past is finished, you hear? We’re not kids now. She has no control over either of us—no control over how I lead my life, or over Jake. I’m going to put an end to any doubts about that. I’ll do as I please and be perfectly civil to her whenever our paths cross.” Sam tugged at Charlotte’s steely fingers. “I’m not going to worry about Tim either. He’s got too much at stake in his political career to risk stirring up an old feud. I know you’re afraid of him. He won’t bother us. I promise you.”

Charlotte sagged a little. “Sammie, I came back here because of
you
. You’re the only family I care about.”

“Then help me move forward. I can’t fight everyone—you, and Alexandra, and Tim, and Jake too. The past can’t hurt us. Jake has to believe that, or we’ll never—” Her throat ached, and she had to stop.

“Okay, Sammie, okay.” Charlotte squeezed her hands worriedly, but looked over at their aunt with narrowed eyes. “I hope you’re right.”

“Well, ladies.” Alexandra leaned back in a wicker chair and studied them. Her voice had a measured tone, as insidious as acid etching its way into glass. The time for a reckoning had come. They were alone in a room that overlooked the lake, at a table set with linen and crystal and a bouquet of jonquils in a bud vase. “The last time I saw you, we’d made a rather nice truce. I thought we had some peaceful times ahead of us. But then you left without a word to me. Was it that hard, Samantha? Was the idea of accepting my help so repugnant to you, really?”

Sam thought of the day they’d left, of Tim, of scooping the tip of his ear into a plastic soup bowl and tossing the bowl into a dumpster along the road outside town. And she thought of Jake’s anger when he’d heard about her deal with Alexandra—of Jake rejecting her, sending her
away with his beloved ruby in safekeeping. A lot of murky water churning under the bridge that day.

“I decided I’d try to get a modeling contract in Los Angeles,” she answered smoothly. “I couldn’t go without taking Charlotte, and I knew you had a … responsibility … to keep Charlotte with you.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I was worried
sick
? That I had no way of knowing if either of you were all right? You could have ended up in a gutter somewhere.”

“But we didn’t.” Sam removed her gloves and spread her fine-boned hands on the white tablecloth. “The day we got to L.A. I walked into one of the biggest modeling agencies in the country. I showed them the jewelry brochure I’d made. They took one look at my hands and offered me a contract. Call it dumb luck, but that’s the way it happened. They advanced me the deposit for an apartment. I went to work and made five thousand dollars the first
month.
”

“You could have stayed in Pandora. I told you I’d pay your bills. You could have been near Jake in prison—I’d have had Orrin speak to the authorities. Conjugal visits, special privileges. Didn’t you ever think of that?”

Since Sam wasn’t
going to
tell her how things
stood
between her and Jake, she didn’t answer. Charlotte had been twisting a napkin as if trying to wring blood from it. She smoothed it on the table. “Jake understood,” she said sweetly. “He wrote to Sammie every day.”

Sam stiffened. Alexandra looked at her skeptically. “And how is Jake?”

“As fine as a man can be after spending ten years in a cage.”

“I’ll tell you what I think.” Alexandra stroked one fingertip along the table’s edge, as if outlining her thoughts. “I believe you left because you were ashamed of him.”

Sam leveled a harsh gaze at her. “No.”

“Oh, I know you’re a very loyal person. You wouldn’t divorce him. You wouldn’t admit that his recklessness
and his violence frightened you, that he’d ruined your life, your reputation. So you fled to California, hoping he’d forget you.” She leaned forward. “Samantha, you don’t have to stand by him now. He’s a free man. He can take care of himself.”

It took all Sam’s willpower to continue sitting there.
I want peace
, echoed through her mind.
No more hard feelings. No more old feuds
. “I love him. And he still loves me. The day he came home was the happiest day of our lives.”

One unerring truth, one ragged hope, and one enormous lie.

Alexandra’s eyes bored into her. “I heard that you were seen in town not long after he returned. With a bruise under one eye.”

“I had an accident.”

“Did you?”

“Jake didn’t hit her,” Charlotte said evenly, though she looked out the window as she said it. Her gaze swung back to Alexandra’s. “She’s like me. She’d never put up with a man who treats women that way.”

The pointed reference to Tim wasn’t lost on their aunt. Her face tightened. But she continued to train her attention on Sam. “You’ve made a great success of your life. I’m very proud of you. You have the look of a woman who has good taste, and class, and
substance
, a woman who’s grown accustomed to certain refinements. And what have you come home to? A log house in the middle of a wild cove, and a husband who has a criminal record. A husband whose closest companions have been murderers and rapists and child molesters. A man who will never quite be clean again. A man who has quite likely been damaged in ways that no one, not even you, can overcome.”

Sam struggled with the frayed limits of her patience. A cruel inner voice taunted her. Maybe it was true, that Jake would never be the same again. But she couldn’t believe that, couldn’t let her aunt’s insight weaken her determination. “I won’t even try to explain why you’re wrong about him. But you
are
wrong. You can’t change
me. You can’t change my decisions. If that’s all you’ve been waiting for, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Can you honestly tell me you never looked at another man while Jake was gone?”

“Oh, I looked. But that’s all I did.”

“
Ten years
. The prime of your youth. Without intimacy, without companionship, without children. Has Jake made that up to you? Can he
ever
make that up to you?”

“He already has, just by coming home.”

“Samantha, don’t misunderstand me. I want you to be happy. I’m afraid pride is holding you to a husband who no longer exists.
I’m on your side
. I will help you discreetly extricate yourself from this marriage and start a new life here.”

Nothing had changed. Sam’s stomach twisted sickly. There would never be any compromises with Alexandra. Only a battle of wills. All Sam could do was keep Jake out of it. “I understand you perfectly. You’re worried about Orrin’s political image. A niece who’s married to an ex-con doesn’t fit in with the Brady Bunch platform, does it?”

Cold rage segued into Alexandra’s eyes. “You can’t harm what I’ve created. And when Jake leaves your life in shambles again, I’ll be there to pick up the pieces. Just as I did with your mother. Because I seem to be the only person in this family who can distinguish between hard, cold reality and wishful thinking.”

“In other words, the end justifies the means.”

“Precisely.”

Sam stood. Charlotte followed, scowling from her to Alexandra. “This was a nice reunion,” Charlotte announced. “Let’s do it again in about a hundred years. Bring Tim next time. I’ve got a set of carving knives I want to show him.”

Sam took her by one arm with a warning grip. “What is that supposed to mean?” Alexandra demanded, posed on the edge of her chair.

“Nothing,” Sam answered. “Leave us alone. Leave
Jake
alone.” Her mind whirled. She had to play by their aunt’s rules. “You’ve had a score to settle since the day
you married Judge Vanderveer—the day Sarah saw you for what you are. You feed off other people’s lives; you took her brother’s goodwill, his good name, even the
respect
that had existed between the Vanderveers and the Raincrows for generations.”

The words fell like small bombs, ripping away all pretense of civility, clipping the last of the polite veneer from her aunt’s expression. Sam looked down into that dangerous vortex—the pride and anger, the humiliation and the hatred for being humiliated—and she knew she should stop, retreat, think this through rationally.

But it was too late. Years of loneliness, then being pushed to the edge of despair every day since Jake’s tormented return, had found a channel. “That’s why the old ruby has always been so important to you—it’s a medal you can wear. It represents your claim on a history you never earned or even understood. Without it you’ll never forget you come from a family of ambitious mill bosses who used you to pull themselves up the social ladder.”

The silence that followed resonated through the room with chilling effect. Alexandra didn’t breathe; she radiated eerie calm. “What claim do you have on righteousness, Samantha? Your husband killed for you. You deserted him. I had people in place, watching, waiting. He never wrote to you. He wanted nothing to do with you. I suspect he doesn’t want you now. You don’t have the courage to admit that. You say hateful things to me because you know I’m telling you the truth. You have nothing.”

“I have the ruby. I’ve had it since I left town.” Her aunt’s eyes flickered. It was a naked, predatory flash of interest. “I’m the only one who knows where it is,” Sam continued. “And if you do anything,
anything
to interfere in our lives, I’ll make certain it disappears for good.”

She walked out, Charlotte trailing her with quick, urgent strides. Sunlight dappled them through the graceful firs as they crossed the parking lot in numb silence. “Sammie,” Charlotte said finally, her voice strangled. “I’m so proud of you.”

Sam leaned on the car and put her head in her hands. She wasn’t proud of anything she’d said. She had
wanted to weave a safety net for her and Jake. Instead, she’d created a noose.

Behind the closed doors of the conference room of one of the state’s most powerful newspapers, a long table was strewn with coffee mugs, soft-drink cans, and photocopies of the anonymous handwritten notes. Excitement seeped into the air like the scent of blood. After much debate, two news editors, the executive editor, the publisher, and one of the newspaper’s lawyers traded a tacit look of agreement. The executive editor nodded her permission to the reporter who sat across from them, watching the interplay avidly.