Silver Girl (48 page)

And he had turned to her and said, “You’re never going to leave me, Meredith, right? Promise me. No matter what?”

“No matter what,” she’d said.

Freddy’s eyes had closed then, though Meredith could see manic activity beneath his twitching lids. She had stayed awake as long as she could, watching him, thinking,
David. I wonder what made him dream of David?

But now she suspected he hadn’t been thinking about David at all. He’d been thinking about money, the
SEC
, a looming investigation, being caught, discovered, indicted, imprisoned. He had invoked his brother’s name to throw Meredith off the trail of his real worries. He had known how to lie to her, even when he was only semiconscious.

No matter what,
Meredith had promised. But she hadn’t known what kind of “what” he was talking about.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Meredith said. Toby was very patiently holding his utensils in the hover position over his plate, waiting for her.

Toby’s face darkened. “The guy is the biggest creep on earth,” he said. “He didn’t deserve you.”

It was confounding hearing these words from Toby. Quite possibly, Freddy had said something similar about Toby so many years ago, when Meredith told him about how Toby broke up with her on the night of her high-school graduation.
You’re better off without him. He didn’t deserve you.

Toby put a forkful of pasta in his mouth and chewed sadly, if such a thing was possible.

“You’re luckier than Freddy,” Meredith said. “You got me at my best. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. That was the best Meredith, Toby, and she was yours.”

Toby swallowed and looked at her. “You’re at your best right now.” He fingered the fraying sleeve of her ancient T-shirt. “You’re the best Meredith right now.”

Meredith thought back to the day of Veronica O’Brien’s funeral. Meredith had arrived at the church nearly an hour early, and the only person there was Toby. He was sitting in the back pew, and Meredith had tapped his shoulder and he turned and they looked at each other and—what could Meredith say? She hadn’t seen Toby in nearly twenty years at that point, but the sight of his face brought her to her knees. He stood up and took her in his arms. It started out as a condolence hug. His mother had, after all, just died. The indomitable Veronica O’Brien was gone.

Meredith said into his chest, “I’m so sorry, Toby.”

He tightened his grip on her, and she felt her body temperature rise. She thought she was imagining it. Of course, she was imagining it. She was married, married to rich and powerful Freddy Delinn. Freddy gave her everything her heart desired, so what could she possibly want from Toby now? But the human heart, as Meredith learned then, rarely paid attention to the rules. She felt Toby’s arms tense around her, she felt his leg nudge up against her leg, she felt his breath in her hair.

“Meredith,” he said. “My Meredith.”

The next thing Meredith knew, Toby was leading her out of the church, leading her to the shady spot under a majestic tree where his car was parked. He opened the passenger-side door for her and she got in.

She stared out the windshield at the trunk of the hundred-year-old tree, and when Toby got into the car, Meredith said, “Where are we going?”

“I want to take you somewhere,” he said. “I want to make love to you.”

“Toby,” Meredith said.

“Did you feel it back there?” he asked. “Tell me you did.”

“I did.”

“You did, right? Look at me, I’m shaking.”

Yes, Meredith was shaking, too. She tried to think of Freddy, who had hired a helicopter and a private car to get her here, but who had not given her the most precious thing—and that was his time. He hadn’t come with her.

Meredith said, “This is insane.”

“I should have been more persistent at Connie’s wedding,” he said. “I knew then that I’d made a mistake with you.”

“You broke my heart,” Meredith said. “I thought we would get married.”

“I want to take you somewhere.”

“But the
funeral
…”

“We have time,” he said. He started the engine and drove out of the churchyard

“We should turn around,” Meredith said.

“Tell me you don’t want me.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Meredith said.

“So you do want me?”

She was glowing with arousal, but it wasn’t just sexual. A part of Meredith had been yearning for this moment—Toby wanting her back—since she was eighteen years old.

He drove through the town of Villanova to the O’Brien house. He screeched into the driveway, and he and Meredith got out. The day was hot, Meredith was wearing a black lace Collette Dinnigan dress; it was too fancy for the Main Line, and now it was plastered to her, and itching. Toby led Meredith into the O’Briens’ garage, which smelled exactly the same as it had twenty-five years earlier—like cut grass and gasoline from Bill O’Brien’s riding mower. A tennis ball hung from a string over one of the bays; it had been placed there when Veronica smashed her Cutlass Supreme into the garage’s back wall after too many gimlets at Aronimink. As soon as they were shut in the cool dim of the garage, Toby took Meredith’s face in his hands, and he kissed her.

And oh, what a kiss it had been. It had gone on and on, Meredith
could not
get enough, it had been so long since someone had kissed her like that. Freddy loved her, but there were a hundred things more important to him than sex and romance. Money, money, money, his business, his reputation, his clients, his profile in
Forbes,
his appearance, his yacht, his suits, his early bedtime—all of those rated with him in a way that kissing Meredith did not.

“Come upstairs with me,” Toby said. “To my room.”

She thought of parking with Toby in the Nova.
The best of times are when I’m alone with you
. She tried to think of Freddy, but she couldn’t conjure his face. So, she would go upstairs with Toby. She would have him again, just this once.

They hurried through the house, up the stairs. It was so familiar, it played tricks on Meredith’s sense of time and place. She had started her day in Southampton 2004, but now it was three o’clock in the afternoon and she was in Villanova 1978. Toby’s room was exactly the same—why hadn’t Veronica turned it into an exercise room or a study like every other empty nester? There was Toby’s lava lamp, his poster of Jimmy Page, his water bed. The heels of Meredith’s Manolos got caught in the shag rug. She stumbled and Toby caught her, then somehow they both crashed onto the water bed, and this knocked Meredith back into her present self. She stared up at the ceiling, and there were the tape marks from where Toby had hung his Farrah Fawcett poster.

He started to kiss her again. She said, “Toby, stop. I can’t.”

“What?” he said. “Why not?”

She rolled onto her side, creating wave motion in the mattress. She looked into his green eyes. “I’m married, Toby.”

“Please, Meredith,” he said. “Please?” He looked like he might cry. She reached out to wipe away the first tear with her thumb.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” she said. “I can’t.”

He watched her for a second, perhaps to see if she was bluffing. She hoisted herself up off the bed and straightened her dress.

“So that’s it?” he said.

“We should go back,” she said. “It’s your mother’s funeral.”

“Is it the man you love?” Toby asked. “Or is it the money?”

Meredith stared.

“Is it the houses? Is it the place in France? Is it the behemoth boat? I saw her once, you know, in the Mediterranean. Saint Tropez.”

“Toby, let’s go.”

“Does he make you laugh?” Toby asked.

“No,” Meredith said honestly. “But you’re not very funny right now, either. Let’s go back.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

Meredith turned on him. “What am I supposed to do? Allow you to make love to me, allow the feelings to come back, and then watch you take off tomorrow for… where? Where, Toby?”

“Spain,” he said. “On Tuesday.”

“See?” she said.

“You wouldn’t come with me even if I asked you,” he said. “Because you’re married to money.”

Meredith shook her head. “I wouldn’t come with you even if you asked me because you wouldn’t ask me.”

On the way back to the church, Toby wept silently, and Meredith felt bad. He had just lost his mother. But Meredith was angry, too—for so many reasons.

Connie and Wolf had been ascending the church stairs. Connie waved to Toby to hurry up; they were to follow the casket inside. She herded Meredith along, too, but Meredith demurred. She wasn’t family. Connie studied her critically and said, “Did you two go somewhere together?”

Meredith kissed the side of Connie’s face. She said, “I have to leave right after. I’m sorry, Con. I can’t stay for the…”

“You can’t stay?” Connie said.

“I have to get back,” Meredith said.

Toby appeared then, over Meredith’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “She has to get back.”

Now, Meredith smiled sadly at Toby. “At your mother’s funeral…”

“You did the right thing,” he said. “Then.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did. Then.”

Meredith reached a hand out to him, and he grabbed it and brought it to his mouth. They rose from their chairs and faced each other and Meredith thought,
My God, what am I doing?
And in a flash, it came back: the greedy, hungry desire for this man. Did Toby understand? Did he feel it? Toby lifted her up by the hips, and she rubbed against the length of his body. He was more powerful than Freddy; Meredith felt featherlight, no more substantial than a wish or a hope. Toby kissed her, his mouth was warm and buttery, tender at first, then fierce. She wanted fierce. She wanted fire.

She had wanted to kiss Freddy good-bye before the
FBI
dragged him away last December, but when she’d taken his arm, he’d looked at her in wild confusion.

Toby’s hands were in her hair. It was the tree on Robinhood Road all over again; something so old it was new. She could feel him hard against her leg, an occurrence that had confused her at age fifteen and that, truth be told, confused her now. Was she finally going to make love to Toby O’Brien again? His hands shifted to her back, his hands were up inside her T-shirt, unhooking her bra. Meredith thought of Freddy with his hand on Samantha’s back. Was Meredith acting out of anger, out of retribution? If so, she should stop right now. But she didn’t want to stop. She was pulsing with heat and light; she was experiencing an arousal that was as cutting and bordering on painful as it had been in her new body. This was a different kind of sexual awakening. It was electrifying in its utter wrongness.
Stop!
she thought. But she had no intention of stopping. It felt like Toby was going to tear her T-shirt in two just to get at her.

She twisted and darted inside the house.

“Meredith?” Toby said. He thought she was running away.

“Come on!” she screamed.

They made love on Toby’s bed amid his rumpled sheets, which smelled like him. The sex was urgent, quick, rough, and desperate. Afterward, Meredith lay panting; the inside of her elbow hurt from where Toby had pinned her. Toby touched Meredith’s hair, her graying hair, she was so much older now, but there was something fountain of youth–like about this summer. Meredith felt seventeen. She grabbed Toby’s hand—the thought of being touched gently unnerved her—and she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it first, then bit it.

“Ouch!” he said.

“I’m starving,” she said.

That night, she feared she might dream about Freddy or Samantha or the warden at Butner—but instead she dreamed about their dog, Buttons. In Meredith’s dream, Buttons was Toby’s dog. He was standing on the bow of Toby’s boat, eating a striped bass. Meredith was yelling at him—
No! Please Buttons. No, you’ll get sick!
Toby was dressed in a white naval cadet’s uniform, with the brass buttons and flat-top hat. He tried to pull the fish away from Buttons, but Buttons fought back like a junkyard dog and Toby ended up reeling backward and falling into the water. Meredith checked over the edge, but there was no sign of him, except for his floating hat. He had disappeared.

She woke up. Toby was propped on one elbow, watching her. She had inhaled the plate of food that Connie had made her, as well as a dish of panna cotta with berries, which Toby had brought to her in bed. She had left the smeared dishes on Toby’s nightstand, and she’d fallen asleep without brushing her teeth. Now, she felt louche and irresponsible. Her elbow still hurt, and there was a dull soreness between her legs.

She couldn’t help wondering if Freddy had ever gazed at her like this. She wanted so badly to believe that he had, but it was probably time to admit that Freddy had only adored himself. And money. And, possibly, Samantha. Meredith almost hoped he had adored Samantha, because that, at least, would mean Freddy was human.

She said to Toby, “I dreamed I lost you.”

“I’m right here,” he said.

Later, Meredith tiptoed naked across the hallway to her bedroom and climbed out onto her Juliet balcony for one quick second, almost daring the paparazzi to come get her.
You’re the best Meredith right now.
She nearly laughed at the thought. She could do so much better than this.

Meredith slipped on a robe and padded down to the outdoor shower. She stayed in as long as she could in good conscience, and then she went back upstairs to dress. Toby was asleep in his bed, snoring. Meredith gently closed his door.

She retreated to her room. She pulled the cardboard box out of the closet. In that box was the spiral-bound notebook that she had been taking notes in on the day that Trina Didem interrupted her anthropology class to tell Meredith that her father was dead. Meredith had kept the notebook.

It still had plenty of empty pages. Meredith lay across her bed the way she used to as a schoolgirl. She meant to write Freddy a long letter that would elicit all the answers she needed, but the only two words that came to her, which she traced over and over again until the letters were heavy and dark, were
OBLIVION
and
LOVE
.