Sleeping in Eden (34 page)

Though Lucas had serious reservations about Angela's half-baked plan to interrogate the designer of the ring, the sheer simplicity of her scheme and her determination to follow it through impressed him. Before he had a chance to excuse
himself from the impulsive trip to Omaha, Angela categorically dismantled all his watertight arguments.

Like a child playing her parents off each other, Angela confessed to already bringing up the topic of Lucas's short departure with Jenna on the phone. She didn't provide too many details, but Lucas got the impression that the reason she'd masterminded for needing him on the two-hour drive to the small Midwestern city was something that tugged at Jenna's already frayed heartstrings. What was it this time? A subtly communicated need for a father figure? A faint suspicion on Jenna's part that Angela's tough exterior was nothing more than an elaborate ruse? That inside the controlled, attractive exterior dwelled a sad little girl who longed for stability and love? Either way, it seemed Jenna didn't even pause to question it. According to Angela, his wife not only granted her permission, she seemed eager for Lucas to make the trek with the confused young woman.

“We're going to see my father's lawyer,” Angela explained, filling Lucas in on the story she had constructed.

He sighed, hating the thought of lying to his wife, but now that things were falling into place, he could feel the pull of the Woman's mystery as if it was anchored deep inside. The thought of knowing was intoxicating enough to cloud his vision, even though he believed himself duty bound to deny it. “Why would Jim have a lawyer from Omaha?” he asked, forcing himself to try to poke holes in Angela's plot.

“You know he didn't trust anybody here. Besides, my mom grew up in a little town a few miles northwest of Omaha. My grandfather did all his business there. It's plausible that my father would follow suit.”

“It's plausible.”

“No, it's possible. And we just made it so. Act as if it's true.”

Lucas gave a barely perceptible nod. “Why isn't Jenna taking you?” he asked.

“She didn't offer.” Angela avoided his eyes. “And she didn't question it when I asked for you to escort me.”

He knew that Safe House was currently sheltering two young women, and that Jenna was all but drowning in the mire of their complex problems and the complications of a pair of frightening boyfriends. “She's very busy,” he told Angela.

“That works out just fine for us.”

Lucas didn't know how to respond.

Amazingly, getting a day off work proved almost as easy as convincing Jenna that Lucas needed to go. Though his schedule was already nearly full for the following day, Angela persuaded him to call Mandy and beg the long-suffering nurse to clear his agenda.

“I need a personal day,” Lucas croaked into the phone, thankful that his aversion to lying caused his voice to crack as if he really was in desperate need of a little time off.

“You haven't taken a day of vacation in two years!” Mandy exclaimed so loudly he had to pull the phone from his ear. “No sick days either! Are you sick?”

“No,” he confessed. “I'm not sick. I just . . . I need this.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Mandy?”

“Yeah.”

Lucas took a deep breath. “You'll do it?”

“Of course I will. But next time it would be nice if you planned your personal day a bit in advance.”

“Thanks, Mandy. Reschedule everything you can, and be sure to give the patients who need to be seen to—”

“Don't tell me how to do my job.”

“Okay.” He paused. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

Lucas clicked the phone off and covered his eyes with a damp hand. Stifling a little groan, he said, “I can't believe you orchestrated this. It feels wrong.”

Angela turned from the counter where she was preparing vegetarian wraps for a late supper. Jenna would be home in minutes, and while her impending presence made Lucas's stomach knot, Angela was leaning against the counter with natural
ease, slicing a cucumber into papery rounds like a gourmet chef. “Look,” she muttered, pointing the tip of her knife at his forehead in mock threat, “Jenna's fine with it, Mandy's fine with it, and you owe this to me.”

“I owe you?”

“You're pretty free and easy with your false accusations,” Angela reminded him.

It saddened Lucas a little to think she might be proven wrong. “I'm not sure my entirely reasonable assumption that Jim killed you makes me liable to you,” he muttered.

“And her. You owe it to her.” Angela set a fist on her hip and narrowed her eyes at Lucas. “You took her ring and now you don't want to follow through? You started this, I'll remind you. And you're going to finish it.”

“I'm following a passion to its conclusion?” Lucas said wryly, quoting their earlier conversation in the car.

She winked. “Exactly. We're in it together, whether you like it or not.”

“Where does that leave Jenna?”

Angela's expression turned serious. “You want to tell her?”

“What makes you assume I haven't shared the ring with her already?”

“You haven't.”

It bothered Lucas that she was so certain. “Maybe Jenna would understand. Maybe she'd support us. Or even . . . help.”

“She'd try to talk us out of it. She might even contact someone about the ring, with or without our consent.”

It was true. Jenna had a very finely bordered sense of justice, and though Lucas's own understanding of right and wrong was usually just as harshly defined, the Woman was blurring all his careful boundaries. He didn't want to give up the ring and he didn't want Jenna to, either. Even if it seemed like the right thing to do. Maybe black and white weren't quite as distinct as Lucas had always imagined them to be.

“You're right,” he finally sighed. “But if this proves to be a dead end, if Michael Kane Designs has nothing to offer us,
we need to turn in the ring ourselves. This woman deserves that.”

Angela considered his words for a moment, head tilted as she studied the sharp tip of the knife blade. “My dad didn't kill her, he didn't kill anyone.”

It was the first time that Lucas had heard her refer to Jim as her dad. He didn't agree with her, but he also didn't want to give her a reason to jump on the defensive. “If we can't prove that,” he said, trying to placate her, “maybe someone else can.”

She nodded once. “Okay.” Then her eyes glittered and she turned to carve a red onion in half with one well-aimed sweep of her wide blade. There was a quick snick of sound followed by a dull thud as the length of the knife embedded itself in the worn butcher block. Her shoulders seemed stiff with defiance when she added, “But I have a feeling about this.”

Lucas didn't want to admit it, but he did, too.

J
ess let Meg go without a fight. It was in him, she could see fire in his eyes. But the flames died quickly, quenched by something inside her that spilled out so soft and slow she wasn't even aware of its stealthy departure until it was too late. It wasn't tangible or quantifiable, but it was real, and the unspoken words between them silently acknowledged the truth: Meg was not in love with Jess and probably had never been. The realization made him go pale, and she reached a hand to warm the marble of his cheek.

He jerked away.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered.

“You said that already.”

They stood facing each other in the dim, cold light of the porch. It wasn't where Meg would have chosen to talk, nor when, but her inadvertent apology in the dining room began something that she couldn't stop. It was a hapless admission, a thought she hadn't meant to give voice to, but once the words slid from her lips, they opened a spreading fissure along the length of her ongoing lie and it all leaked out.

There was nothing more to say. Jess seemed to understand this as Meg's hand fell slowly back to her side. He helped to widen the distance between them by taking a deliberate step back. His face was steely, a chiseled study in hurt, and he didn't even attempt to temper himself for her benefit. Though he had
spent the last two years of his life trying to make her happy, he did nothing to ease the agony of the moment. And then, apparently before he could change his mind, he spun on his heel and walked away.

Meg opened her mouth to call after him, but what was there to say? Good-bye? Not like this, she thought. It can't end like this.

“Your ring,” she blurted, twisting it off her finger though it was strangely painful to do so.

“Keep it,” he called, not even pausing to look over his shoulder. “I don't want it.”

“But . . .”

Jess turned at the car, and she struggled to read his eyes in the shadows. His chin was severe, his gaze black and hidden beneath the line of his heavy brow. For a second Meg thought he was waiting for her and she took a step toward him. She stopped cold when out of the darkness he said, “I loved you.”

The slam of his car door cut the lingering sweetness of his confession with a sound of harsh finality.

Meg had no idea that it would hurt so much to hear him say it like that. Like his love was already gone.

After having them both, it was difficult to have neither. She was suddenly a map without borders, peppered with holes, directionless. And although she tried to ignore their absence, Jess and Dylan left jagged cracks in her heart that simply refused to fill. She tried to push things deep into the gaps, to smooth them over with friends, classes, and another season of the Girls' Football League, but as Jess and Dylan continued to take pains to remove themselves even further from her life, Meg felt their loss in all the hidden places that had refused to heal.

Jess switched to an out-of-state school for his sophomore year of college and took an internship at a law firm in Minneapolis so he wouldn't have to come home during the summer. While his decision could be considered an investment in his
future, Meg felt sure that it had much more to do with severing his past. And when Dylan graduated from Sutton High, he impulsively joined the Air National Guard and left for boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. She didn't even know he was leaving until he'd already been gone a week. Meg was heartbroken, but she also felt a grain of satisfaction that Dylan, who had felt so directionless, was doing something.

When it became obvious that the girl Meg had been was long gone, Linda finally asked her daughter, “What do you want?”

“I don't know,” Meg confessed.

“Maybe I should ask, ‘Who do you want?' ”

It was a fair question, for after their breakup, Meg had admitted that her seemingly platonic relationship with Dylan was more complicated than she first let on. Jess had asked how she could have lied. After the initial shock and suffering that filled his days after Meg's apology, Jess embraced his fury and didn't keep secrets about what had transpired between her and Dylan. All the same, she didn't want to field such inquiries from her mother. She forced a smile, but the expression faded fast and never reached her eyes to make cheerful creases. “Both,” she murmured.

Linda laughed at her daughter's attempt at humor, but Meg hadn't been joking. “They're both good boys,” Linda said as if it was a matter of making a decision between two equally appealing choices. But if it were that easy, Meg would not have found herself lamenting the fact that it was no longer her choice to make.

“Good boys,” Meg echoed, because her mother expected a response.

“But I think it's best we leave this all in the past.” Linda patted her daughter's knee soothingly. “There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

Meg groaned. “That's a terrible expression.”

“And it's a big sea.”

“Now you're mixing your metaphors.” Meg forced a chuckle for her mother's benefit, and knew that when Linda walked
away, it was with a feeling of accomplishment. They had talked, they had laughed, she had come to her senses—supposedly a surefire recipe for success. But it was banal, and it didn't work.